The consequences (if there are any) of not travelling to my meeting this week won’t hit me until tomorrow or later in the week (I suspect I’ll have at least one very early morning to match New York time), but today, it was all benefit.

I got to sleep about three extra hours; I got to go to the JCC and work out; I got to take a walk with Diane and Jeff in the evening; I even got to watch some of the backlog of TV programs on the Tivos.  Diane also showed me the Tai Chi DVD she’d recently bought, and I tried some of the warmup — it takes a lot of concentration!

I tried to make a DVD from one of our old MST3K tapes, but something went awry during the capture — the image jumps right-and-left every 1.5 seconds or so, which is rather disconcerting, especially when there are words on the screen (it’s not too bad at other times).  The other tapes I’d transferred didn’t have this problem, so it might have been a loose connection (I’ve been moving the VCR between the Mac and its usual spot).

I did manage to get a good enough transfer to see how much squeezing 90 minutes onto a single-layer DVD hurt the quality, and it was easily visible.  So I guess I’m going to go pick up a double-layer drive sometime, because I do have a few things where I want to maintain as much quality as I can.  Maybe I should just get a faster Mac with a double-layer drive already installed….

Today’s been a day of deciding not to do things. It hasn’t been a very exciting day. But I didn’t want to break my string of daily entries, so you get to read a very mundane posting — unless you choose to stop now.

This morning, I decided not to go to a week-long meeting in Somers, New York, next week. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that yesterday’s events entered into my calculations — it wasn’t fear, though, it was not wanting to deal with the additional hassles at security. But that wasn’t the real reason I cancelled my trip — it was learning that several of the people who were originally going to be there all week were only going to be in for the first day of the meeting. I still gave it a lot of thought, but finally came to the conclusion that I could participate adequately by phone — and that way I won’t lose my Sunday to travel. Of course, I also won’t get to go to Ralph’s Italian Ice, but I’ll cope.

I also decided that we probably don’t have to do anything about our cooktop, either. When I tried to clean it, there was a mark which wouldn’t come off — I thought it might have been a crack. I called KitchenAid to see if there was anything that could be done short of replacing the glass, and there wasn’t. A not-so-quick search eventually yielded the model number, at which point I discovered that a glass replacement was $300+; a new cooktop would be even more. So I went back to look very carefully, and, as far as I can tell, all we have is a deep scratch.

Tomorrow, I visit the hazmat disposal site and the dentist. I hope neither of them leads to exciting writing either.

Yesterday, I mentioned one of the truly awful films of all time, King Dinosaur, in passing. Naturally, that reference got more comments than anything I’ve written in weeks.

So let me be perfectly clear:

There is no Criterion Collection edition of King Dinosaur. It is available on commercial DVD, but not by itself; you can get it as a double feature with Ed Wood’s The Bride and The Beast or you can get it as part of the “Sci-Fi Classics 50 Moviepack 12 DVD Set”, but even I have standards about how to spend money.

On the other hand, I must admit that the source I dubbed from wasn’t all that pristine; it was a Saturday Morning Movie Classic on KFCB, Channel 42, Concord (now KTNC) and the engineer on duty didn’t treat the material with the care it deserved. It wasn’t quite aligned on the flying spot scanner, so that the left edge of the image shows the edge of the film. But I suspect that would vanish in the overscan if I were to play the DVD on the TV instead of the computer, so I’ll live.

I should also mention that I had to replace other classics on VHS, including Little Shop of Horrors and The Blob. And to my delight (or horror), there is a Criterion Collection edition of the latter — and now I own it. Some day, I’ll get around to unleashing it….

Way back in the springtime, we went to Kehillah’s annual benefit and charity auction, where we bid on a couple of items.

One was Shabbat dinner for eight with the head of school. The other was four hours of professional organization from Lisa Mark, owner of The Time Butler.

Dinner came and went, with no lasting impact on our lives (though it was tasty and the conversation was quite enjoyable).

We put off calling Lisa for a few months, but we eventually got around to making the appointment for a two-hour visit. I stalled by giving her a tour of the house, which took up most of the time, but she did “encourage” us to clear off the kitchen table — we filled up a couple of bags of paper during that exercise.

She returned a couple of weeks later, and we used up the other donated hours. On that visit, we cleared out the media shelves in the family room, uncovered the coffee table, and rediscovered the desk. We also filled up several bags of stuff (books, VHS tapes, magazines, toys, and who knows what else) which were suitable for charitable donations — and Lisa took it all away.

She’s been back twice since then, helping us deal with the shelves and desk in the kitchen, all of which are organized, clear, and usable for the first time in a long time. And again, we donated a bunch of stuff to charity (as well as filling a recycle bin!).

In between visits, I got rid of some excess hardware by putting it on craigslist (most of it sold within an hour); I’ve also started transferring old VHS tapes to DVD (though why I needed a DVD version of King Dinosaur is a matter of some debate with the rest of the members of the household).

There’s no magic to it — we’re doing all the work (well, she wields the labelmaker…) and making all the decisions. But she acts as a forcing function — when she hands us a pile to go through, it seems silly to just put it back where it was (though “later” is always a valid decision — and I’ve deferred some things by moving them to a room we haven’t reached yet).

I’m happy we won her services, and happier that I finally got around to calling and making the appointment!