On Monday a nice man named Brian came and installed FiOS, so I now have internet (of my own! with my own router doing what I like! and the Slingbox works!) and television (yay! television!) and a phone (it’s rung twice so far, and it’s just weird when it rings; I haven’t had a telephone in years).

Brian looked a lot like Balthazar Getty. I’m just saying.

We’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics, especially volleyball, track, and gymnastics, and all Max’s shows (Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, etc.) are available on-demand, so that’s cool.

I mowed and even edged the front lawn today. It looks nicer than we thought it would.

The house was cleaned on Monday, and a ton of trash went out on Tuesday.

There’s a dude on TV now (men’s high bar finals) named Epke. I think EPKE is a good name. It sounds like an end table at Ikea.

Ooooo, Epke fell down. Darn. That would’ve been an insane score. He did crazy stuff.

Let’s see. I got a library card the other day. It’s a nice library, and it’s very close. I paid fifty cents in the book-sale section for, um, the audiobook of the novelization of the movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was so hilariously stupid that I couldn’t pass it up.

I unpacked more stuff into the basement closets, including all my winter clothes and the duffel bags they rode in on. And I put the empty electronics boxes and Christmas tree into the attic, which freed up a lot of space.

David and Lisa brought over the stripey chair for Lin’s room and the big-ass blue chair and ottoman for my room (they seem much bigger here than they were at their house) and the cabinet with drawers that Lin’s going to use as a dresser for Max.

The 50“ Samsung plasma TV I saw for redacted at Sears a few weeks ago, and was sorely tempted by, is now redacted plus seven hundred dollars, so I’m bummed about that. I should’ve bought it when it was on sale. I think that’s what I want, as I’m no longer sold on LCD being a must-have, and 50” plasmas are comparable in price to 42“ LCDs. I need at least a 46” to have the same size 4:3 picture as I do now. The math for 16:9 vs. 4:3 is very misleading.

But I made Brian give me an HD-DVR (not the standard-def non-DVR box he walked in with), so I gotta get the new TV soon. He even left me an HDMI cable, which I don’t think he had to do. He also took away about four miles of coax we ripped out of the giant switch that was attached to the old dish.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a fall TV preview (and, honestly, for the Olympics to end) so I can program all my serieses in.

We ate at a fancy French restaurant last weekend. I had some really wonderful sturgeon caviar and some stuffed veal—my first veal in years and years—that made me wonder what the big deal about veal is.

I hung the moon-and-stars shelf and touch lights in the playroom, and another useful shelf in the downstairs bathroom.

I fixed the leaking faucet; turns out I was wrong about where it was leaking, so I did not in fact need the big wrench. It was a bad seal between the top rubber gasket and the bottom of the sink, due to the misalignment, so I fixed it with plumber’s putty. I don’t know if that was right or not, but it worked like a charm, so I don’t care.

Jasper sleeps on his high Ikea Lack shelf in the living room every day. It pleases me that he’s taken to it, since I put it up specifically for him.

And Bonnie Hunt, who I love, has a new TV show coming. So things are good.