First, a recommendation (thanks to John MacKintosh):

http://www.whoohoo.net/operababy/operababy.swf

We had very light traffic for Halloween, maybe ten sets of kids, perhaps two dozen kids total; we have lots of left-over candy, only some of which is worth eating (Jeffrey convinced us to order some “interesting” candy from Oriental Trading Company, and it’s not geared to adult tastes). I stopped at the Post Office this morning to pick up my Hanukkah stamps, and the people in front of me were all saying that they’d had very few visitors, too.

The smoke detector people aren’t kidding when they tell you to change your batteries when you change your clocks in the fall. I decided to do it “later” and so we were rudely awakened at 4am yesterday by the sound of the smoke detector outside our bedroom chirping for a new feeding of electrons. I changed that one immediately, and then replaced the batteries in the other four last night (I’m not sure why a three-bedroom, one-story house needs five smoke detectors, but that’s what we’ve got), so I should be ok for another year.

This weekend, we have to get the living room and dining room completely cleared out (Diane’s been packing stuff all week, but now it’s time to unbolt the china cabinet and move the furniture). New window coverings should arrive in about two weeks, and we had the carpet installer in yesterday to measure our room and the hallways. It’s going to look very nice when we’re done, but getting there is a messy prospect.

There’s also the Junior Youth Group Monte Carlo night on Saturday (I’m a dealer and chaperone), Book Group at the Temple Sunday afternoon, and dinner with friends on Sunday night. And we’re three weeks behind on watching Firefly, two weeks behind on Nero Wolfe, and one week behind on Smallville and Enterprise. We’ve also started TiVoing Monk, I haven’t done last week’s New York Times crossword puzzle yet, and I still have tons of books that I bought at WorldCon. It may not be the most restful weekend.

Shabbat Shalom!

I had a brilliant, if unoriginal, idea yesterday. We need to clear everything out of our living room and dining room by Monday so that the floor refinishers can do their thing. The books are mostly taken care of, but there’s much more to deal with, including a big rug, and we were despairing of finding a place to put it.

Then inspiration struck: have the rug cleaned.

So this morning, the rug left, to return after the floors are ready. If only the rest of the stuff were as easy to deal with.

Got spare time?

Then try this. [Link via Jenny]

Saving space

My A/V (err, Home Theatre) furniture is full. I want to get a HDTV-ready TV, which won’t fit in the cabinet we have — but most of the ones I’ve seen for big TVs don’t have as many places to put other equipment as I’d like. But perhaps I can give up on at least one technology. [Link via Garret]

And I’m suddenly very interested in having a DVD Recorder; that would let me dub my LaserDiscs and put that player away (and, over time, I could get rid of my stock of VHS tapes, too).