grrgoyl

Guess who wasted no time moving back in last night? Yep, I peeked out to investigate all the banging and slamming to see the FCW (same as just CW, don't be confused) and a male friend moving all kinds of furniture in. When I joked about eagerly counting down to her return, I had no idea it was a matter of hours rather than days or weeks. I might not have been so breezily snarky had I known. She looks a little chunkier which I think is great, assuming that means she's clean. I'd rather have a fat next door neighbor than a tweaked-out one. I immediately phoned Tery, who had already seen her as she was leaving. She said Tracey was sneaking the long way around the building from the upper parking lot, and Tery was almost mauled by her dog before its retractable leash stopped it. Tracey herself hung back around the corner to avoid being seen, unsuccessfully. Though I'm not sure I understand the point of skulking around like that if you're just going to throw things around as if you live in a bowling alley once you get upstairs. With that racket going on, I was very thankful indeed that I had to work last night. More thankful still that the Alcoholic apparently only has email capabilities at work so couldn't harass me about it, cuz you know damn well she was up all night watching her like a hawk.

Until I got to work, where I'm not exaggerating, I had 24 dogs and 12 cats to take care of. 24 dogs and 12 cats! Could have been the makings of a really wacky Disney flick if they weren't all penned up. I was slightly peeved that one of the dogs belonged to a vet tech who had left him accidentally. Of all nights to saddle me unnecessarily with an extra animal, pick the night that I've got a full-to-bursting house. She apologized profusely over the phone though. Fortunately no one was on medication, which was the only thing that made it bearable. The hospital was filthy from such a busy day, and between the mounds of laundry, bloody surgical instruments and all the sweeping and mopping I had to do (not to mention filling out 35 patient charts), I was moving all night nonstop.

The only animal that gave me a headache was ANOTHER senile, half-blind poodle (I'm telling you, no one should get a poodle. They all end up this way). Spanky barked half the night before I finally got fed up, swatted the door of his pen with a broom and growled, "Shut. Up." Whereupon he promptly retreated to the corner, curled up and fell fast asleep. Guess he just needed to be told when it was time to stop barking. Crazy-ass poodles. Oh, except for the moment while I was walking dogs at the beginning of the night and about 8 of them started barking and howling at the same time. I silenced them by screaming at the top of my lungs. In the kennels, I'M the gorram alpha dog and the sooner they learn this, the better we all get along. I'll admit, this is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the job.

I told Tery "the boss" that I was going to start demanding an extra per diem in my paycheck for every type of animal above a quantity of 10. She doesn't agree that this is a great idea. So this is how it feels to have The Man keeping you down...

This morning my fingers feel like useless twigs attached to my hands that I don't have full control over and my brain feels like it's wrapped in cotton. This also explains why I'm wasting time updating rather than working. I'm just getting my fingers limbered up, okay?

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Now just to wrap up some buying sagas that I know are keeping everyone up nights worrying.

dchatonly: I filed my claim with Amazon and my jaw dropped when less than 10 hours later they notified me that he had issued a refund for me. I just don't get it. I was so sure he had either fled the country, was in a coma somewhere, or was just a shifty scam artist, and it turns out that he was none of these things. Wouldn't it have just been easier to cancel the transaction and refund me originally, rather than drawing it out for nearly a month and inciting all those hateful comments? dchatonly is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. And I still say I'm well rid of him.

Mr. Advent speakers: I finally coaxed him into a pick-up time and place yesterday. My god, it was like pulling teeth. He withheld crucial information to complete the transaction right up to the last second. He called me to say he was at the Radisson down the street from me, but refused to tell me what he or his car looked like. Had I not been a little less stingy, I might still be cruising the parking lot trying to hook up. And it wasn't like I could call him to say, "Where are you exactly?" because his number showed up as private on my ID.

I pulled in and he approached me from the building. He was a leggy, well-groomed, white-haired man. "I'm the Expedition," was all he said as he pointed at the lot full of cars and followed on foot. Again, the bare minimum of information. I inched forward, unsure how to explain that all SUVs look alike to me. I snuck peeks in my rear window to see which direction he was heading. Miraculously I found it and parked beside it. Big huge enormous gas-guzzling Ford Expedition. He couldn't have failed to notice my newest, biggest bumper sticker that says "Osama ♥ your SUV" or the other one that says "If religious groups want to be in politics, they should pay taxes." Yes, I'm the liberal pinko commie lesbian who will be doing business with you today, sir.

He gave me the speakers, not without feeling the need to throw in a little sales pitch about how great they were and his reasons for selling them. I felt this was wholly unnecessary and just wanted to get out of there. I raced home and hooked them up. They sound great, crystal clear without being overpowering. The first test was back to LOTR:TTT, where they performed just as I was hoping they would: quiet (but perfectly audible) background sounds without overwhelming the center speaker, where all the dialogue comes from. With the tower units I had to crank everything up just to hear them talking, and then would have to hurriedly turn it down again for the thunderous battle scenes. Not cool. Better still, this brand of speakers seems to successfully mute that pesky OWA channel. Regular music sounds great on them too...again loud enough without making you beg for mercy.

I'm sure Tery will disagree with me and will insist on adding a subwoofer. I'll make her happy, though to me a sub is like high beam car headlights: nice to have when you're in the middle of nowhere, but easily annoying other people if you forget it's too high. (I am inordinately proud of this analogy. It came to me last night as I was being blinded by an oncoming SUV.)

This is our bird, Pepita. 



She's an orange-winged Amazon parrot.  Pepita had a pretty rough life before coming here.    She grew up in the wilds of Ecuador, until she was caught and given as a gift to an American who worked there for a few months.  Then after she had a bit too much whiskey at a fiesta, she was hidden in a duffel bag and smuggled across the border.    The American brought her home and gave her to his mother, who was kind of sickly.  She was subsequently rescued by Tery when the mother went into the hospital and left poor Pepita at Tery's hospital for almost a year.    We've tried to do right by her ever since, including not permitting any more whiskey; hard liquor and exotic birds just don't mix.

I'll admit I was fairly ambivalent about Pepita joining our family.  I mean, she's substantially more of a commitment with a lifespan of 80 years than our succession of ferrets that barely last 6.    And of course at the beginning Pepita didn't care much for me either -- parrots tend to bond with only one person.    But we've both sort of grown on each other, and now I'm forced to admit that, while she certainly isn't the cuddliest of our animals, she does have more character and is more likely to engage in a 2-way conversation (not to mention a singalong). 



She is amusing most of the time.  You can tell what mood she's in by the sounds she makes.  One of our favorites is an unmistakable chuckling noise.    This is usually in response to people laughing (either on television or live) but is also sometimes a reaction to any extremes of emotion, leading occasionally to very inappropriate chuckling.    For example:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Hagrid:  (anguished) Buckbeak's been sentenced to death!!!
Pepita:    LOL

Or, worse still:

Lord of the Rings:  The Two Towers
Saruman:  (high-pitched, strangled cry)  To war!!!!
Pepita:  LOLOL

I prefer to think she possesses a very black sense of humor rather than that it's completely random. 

I'm telling you all this as background for my tale of trying to get new speakers.  Back when we lived in a townhouse and our stereo was on the ground floor, we invested in quite an extensive system, complete with a DTS receiver and great towering speakers (plus a subwoofer the size of an ottoman).    Since moving into our third floor condo, these speakers have largely been used as end tables to support lamps, for fear of raining plaster down on the head of our very quiet, very unobtrusive, very thoughtful neighbor.    It seemed an awful shame, especially considering my ginormous DVD collection, that we couldn't enjoy the glories of surround sound in our new home.

I know that stereo technology has made tremendous advances since our initial purchase; bigger doesn't necessarily mean better anymore.  Since I have more money than I know what to do with since changing careers, I thought it might be worth a try to switch out our gargantuan towers for more moderately-sized bookshelf speakers that we could actually use.  Not to mention the fact that the average subwoofer now is closer in size to a shoebox and obviously much better suited to condo living. 

I found a fellow on Craigslist selling a nice-looking pair of Advents for only $20 (more on him later).  This I felt would be perfect to test my theory without too much of an investment.  With an eye towards possibly selling our current set, I fired up the old DTS to make sure everything was in working order.  However, it was not.    The sub had power but no sound.  I asked Tery to fiddle with it, since she's always been better at speaker-speak than me.   

Re-enter Pepita.  We had The Two Towers running while Tery messed with various settings, and the whole time Pepita was getting turned on by the music, emitting a constant but subdued stream of clicks, wolf whistles and tiny "woo's."  After about 10 minutes of this, I told her, "Bird, you aren't the sixth speaker!"    This led to a series of jokes about stereo systems that include birds.  "Warning:  Parrot not included, however, batteries not required" and "It would be easier to get the fader mix right if we could figure out how to mute the OWA (orange-winged Amazon) channel."  And so on.    I finally found something that Tery laughed at with me.  And when we laughed, so did the bird.  Good times...

But, more about Mr. Advent speakers.  He emailed me with his number and I waited until noon the next day to call.    It took about 5 minutes to make him understand who I was and why I was calling, at which point he grumpily said, "Yeah, I'm in a meeting, can I call you back?"    Sure.  But why did you answer your phone in the first place if you couldn't be interrupted, ass?    That really irks me about cellphone users.  My sister turns hers off when she's at work, because she's not available to talk.    Dick.  He finally did call back, again speaking in irritable grunts and clipped sentences.  We decided on a meeting place but not a time, as he had to check his schedule.  That was yesterday.  No word today, which also irks me.  I'm not expecting him to put his life on hold for a $20 deal, but I didn't force him to list his stuff on Craigslist.    He has until the weekend to settle this before I start looking elsewhere.   

But I'm still without a sub.  I've scoured the internet looking at options.  The problem I've noticed with reading user reviews of speakers (or I suppose anything) is that I have no idea if this person is dissatisfied because they're an audio snob with higher standards, or if that person can't stop raving because they just moved out of their parents' basement and have nothing to compare it to.  Also it seems the majority of consumers are looking for components that WILL rattle windows, the exact opposite of what I need (I noted with amusement one eBay listing that actually said, "Back in the dorm I got more than one noise violation with this baby!!").    I just want something that will add a fuller sound without peeling the paint off my walls.

I thought my problems were solved in a chance conversation with my sister in Boston.  She had gotten a Pioneer bookshelf system (also on Craigslist) with a sub that she never used.  She offered to send it to me, but wasn't sure of the specs or even if it worked.  She described it to me and it seemed to fit the bill perfectly, until she flipped it on to test it.    "Hey," she said excitedly, "that sounds....nice."    The more she listened, the more she fell in love.    I had simultaneously opened her eyes ears to a whole new dimension in music listening, and talked my way out of a free sub.  "Yeah, tell Tery I DEFINITELY think she needs to get one of these," she joked.  I didn't mind.  But I guess it's back to the old drawing board online surfing for me.