My Awesome brother-in-law and adorable nephew #2 spent a few days with us this past week. AwesomeBIL was installing a surround sound system for us in the basement, to go with our casino-won HDTV. He also built us a custom unit for everything to sit on, and it looks really good. The sound system is amazing for L4D2. I can hear exactly what direction the hunters and spitters are coming from. In fact, last night, I finished The Parish for the first time.
So, pictures!
Here’s what it looked like before, with the old TV:
And now here’s what it looks like:
We’ve got a 7.1 surround system and plenty of storage space for components and controllers. And, right now, DH is running in the basement while I’m upstairs, and I can hear the TV as clearly as if it were here. Hmmm…
As regular readers know, I’m taking Innovation & Risk this term. The final project for that class is a group project where we needed to come up with a disruptive innovation idea and apply the various models we learned in class to realize the innovation. My group’s innovation is BIOSCREEN, a biofilm layer that literally eats infectious virii and bacteria on contact and can be easily applied to hard surfaces in any building with modern air circulation.
One of the fun parts of this presentation is coming up with a way to demo your innovation. I thought of the idea of using disappearing ink that we would label and describe as H1N1 virus that we’ve dyed blue and suspended in a liquid for safety that we could spray onto a surface that had been theoretically treated with BIOSCREEN. The disappearing ink would disappear, and we could say that the virii had been eaten, tada!
This, however, presented a challenge. Before you continue, ask yourself where you would buy disappearing ink. Toys R Us? Yeah, they don’t carry it. Spencer’s? No go…and by the way, they have basically become a soft-core sex shop, so be forewarned. Smaller toy shops? No luck at the ones in my immediate vicinity. One toy shop woman looked at me like I must be crazy to even ask for it and suggested I try OfficeMax (which resulted in serious Why The Face from me). Buying online means buying either in bulk or paying $8+ for express shipping of a $1 bottle of disappearing ink. Creating it yourself is do-able, but it requires chemicals that are even harder to find. Remember those magic shops that they used to have in malls? They’re all gone now, at least around here.
So, on Sunday night, I was frantically Googling to try to find disappearing ink in my area. “Magic shop” led to only a few hits, mostly in downtown Chicago, and I didn’t want to drive there on an evening just to buy disappearing ink. However, “Joke shop” turned up a local gem: JJ Blinkers (warning: site is noisy!), a joke and costume shop in Antioch, just a few miles from home. They were already closed when I was Googling, so I made a note to call them the next day. I also found a store in Waukesha, WI…which is out of the way for my dear husband from his work in Milwaukee, but he was willing to head out there for me if JJ Blinkers turned up dry.
I got out of our morning staff meeting at work at around 10:20am on Monday and proceeded to call JJ Blinkers to check on the ink status:
Female voice: JJ Blinkers! How can I help you?
Me: I need disappearing ink. Do you have any in stock?
Female voice: [chuckling] Sure! Liquid or powdered?
Me: Hmm…well, I–
And my cellphone got cut off. So, I called back.
Male voice: Hello?
Me: Hello? (wondering if I somehow redialed wrong, because that sounds like DH, but I checked my display and sure enough, I was connected to JJ’s)
Male voice: This is JC, right?
Me: (even more confused, but then I realize they probably have me on Caller ID) Oh yeah, I just thought I had called the wrong number for a sec. I need disappearing ink.
Male voice: Yep, in powder or liquid form?
Me: Liquid form, just a couple of small bottles.
Male voice: Great! I’ll bring it home with me tonight!
Me: ::boggles::
Speaking of why the face…I was totally confused. It had sounded like DH, but I’d clearly called JJ’s, and whoever I talked to both seemed to know who I was and why I was calling JJ’s but then told me they’d bring it home.
So, I called DH’s phone and got his voicemail. I left him a message describing my confusion and proceeded to be absolutely perplexed. I wondered if my phone had somehow connected me to Scott and not the joke shop without telling me…or if someone working at the joke shop actually knows me from somewhere. Or, if caller ID had gotten much more sophisticated and they knew my address? Or, if the owner had simply meant that he had it at home and would bring it to the store tonight such that I could pick up tomorrow.
Hours later, DH calls me back and lets me know that, completely appropriately, the joke shop helped him confuse me. It turns out that DH had tried to call me at 10am, but realized I was still in the staff meeting. So, he decided to just head over to JJ’s on his way up to Milwaukee to save me from having to call. He was there right when I was calling, overheard the saleswoman and realized it was me. So, when I called back, they conspired to have him pick up the phone and handle my call. It was awesome on two counts: the hilarity of my confusion and the fact that DH had been a sweetheart and had handled this for me.
Very funny, JJ Blinkers… And thank you, dear husband…you are awesome.
For those who don’t follow the twitter feed, DH finished the half marathon in 2 hours and six minutes, averaging a 9:38 pace per mile. It was sleeting and raining for the first part of his run. There was even snow on the ground at the start point. Fortunately, he wore layers.
His parents and I tried to follow him on the course, but we ended up being just behind him for all but the first checkpoint. He was too fast for us!
His parents and I braved the cold. We huddled under an overpass while waiting on him to run by.
Here is DH zooming past the Ticket and Transportation Center!
We tried to catch him at the Magic Kingdom, but we were too slow. But, the castle was really pretty, and the crowd was energetic and cheerful for the racers.
DH is all done! Next, we raced to the car to get warm.
Smallworld continues to be a favorite, though I still think of it as Vinci Lite. Pillars would have hit the table, but we didn’t want to play it six player. Through The Ages continues to be a tough one to get played, mainly because of the steep learning curve and long playtime. We had a really good group, with a nice mix of gamers and non-gamers. We also had a ton of delicious alcoholic beverages, thanks to our bartender, B*. The five of us that were staying the night got quite snockered. We set up the second XBox for L4D2 so that three of us could play online at once. That was really fun. It’s nice to play L4D2 with people I know instead of just random strangers.
For the rest of the weekend, I’m doing some random home projects.
Today was a beautiful winter day. This post on the Enjoy Illinois Blog caught my attention early in the day and got me investigating cross-country skiing (you know, because regular skiing isn’t exhausting enough for me ). So, that put me in a winter mood. I decided to take a long lunch break to run an errand out in McHenry, IL (about a half hour from my office or home). While I am working today (and tomorrow!), there’s so few people here that I can really work at my own schedule, which I LOVE. I got spoiled to having my own schedule for the 5 years or so I worked prior to this most recent job, and having a manager who believes in having you in the office from 8am to 6pm and knowing exactly where you are when you aren’t is really grating on me. I mean, seriously, this is the most monitoring I’ve ever had, and this is the most senior I’ve been…how ironic is that? At any rate, having a return to my previous self-management has been a welcome change.
From 1pm to 3pm, I went out and got to enjoy a surprisingly warm day (I should note…warm in this context = 29 degrees, which means that I don’t really have to put on a coat to run from office to car or car to shopping). There was a light dusting of snow in progress. It wasn’t floaty, fluffy snow…more like a smattering of frozen raindrops that are too light to be hail. Still, it was nice. Driving to McHenry was lovely, because most of what is between here and there is farmland (horse farms, corn farms, etc.). I drove past a large lake that had lots of ice-fishing huts. You know, I want to walk out on a frozen lake at some point. I’ve never done that..and the ones that are thick enough for trucks and fishing huts are my best bet for safety.
After my errand was done (returns/exchanges at what is now my closest available Lane Bryant…I swear, I love their bras and pants, but between the outrageous prices, arbitrary coupons/sales, and the fact that they’re at least 30 minutes away from me, I’ve taken most of my business to online shops…the only reason LB gets any business from me now is because they do at least have in-store returns for online purchases), I grabbed lunch from Steak & Shake during their 2-4pm happy hour promotion…1/2 price shakes and beverages! I had a peppermint chocolate chip shake that I could only finish half of, but it was delicious.
As for now, I’m still at work, but I’m headed out soon. I’m hoping the car wash will still be open, as Victory needs some attention.
