Just Playing Mister Nice Guy Again

I took Sarah home from school yesterday, and while I was there I put up their Christmas lights. It's not like it's a hard job or anything though. Their house has a really low-pitched roof, and all you really have to do is walk around the edge and squat down, hanging the lights on the already-existing nails. As usual, there were a bunch of them that were burnt out too. Sarah counted 16 of them out of four 50-light strings. I really think this should be the last time they use those crappy lights. They are the big (c9?) size which are crappy-made and use tons of electricity. If it were me, I spring for the new LED lights. They look great and use hardly any juice at all, plus I doubt if they will ever burn out.

This weekend I stayed home for the most part. I did some cleaning and some laundry and stuff like that. I had Sarah and Teresa over for spaghetti and meatballs on Saturday. I never have to twist their arms to come for dinner. T will always come just because it's free and she doesn't have to cook, and Sarah just likes to come over period. It went well, but I wasn't overly pleased with how the meatballs came out. It's funny (NOT) how the simplest little ingredient can make such a difference. In this case it was the quality (or lack thereof) of the seasoned bread crumbs that I put in them. Last time I made them they were great, but this time not.

I bought myself a present on Sunday. Fred Meyer has a watch sale going on this week, and I finally went and bought myself a replacement for my aging Timex Datalink watch. That's the watch that stores a whole bunch of your personal information in it. The old one was in pretty sad shape. The main mode button had broken off, so it you wanted to use it you had to find yourself a paper clip. Other than that it worked fine. It had two limitations though: The data transfer method and the software/capacity of the data. The data transfer method was actually via a barcode flashing thing that the monitor did. You put both the computer and the watch in "transfer mode" and hit the button while holding the watch up in front of the monitor and it downloaded that way. When it first came out computer monitors were small and it worked great. Now that monitors are much larger, the data transfer is persnickety at best. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. The new watch does the same task via a USB cable. The software and capabilities of this watch are much, much better. I had to manually type all the info in though because the old version had no export capability.

I printed out my Christmas card mailing labels last night in anticipation of my Christmas cards arriving. I ordered them online and I'm hoping they'll show up today. I like to use computer labels because that gives me a physical "list" of names to use, and I know that way I don't miss anybody. It's also much faster and easier. It's sorta different this year, being "solo" like I am. In the past I had always had to put up with whatever cards T had in her pile of "discounted after Christmas sale crap" from the year(s) previous. I also had to always listen to how much of a waste of money sending out cards was.

Not any more.