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PrintableIt's been a pretty quiet Labor Day weekend. Debbi has spent the last week laboring under a nasty cold, which moved into the bad-cough stage shortly before the weekend. So that was a bummer. I suspect I contracted either it or some other illness going around, as I was lethargic and had some muscle soreness over the weekend, which is usually a sign that I'm fighting something off. But I didn't have any overt symptoms. Happily, she is feeling much better today. Friday night I was at work late-ish, and dashed to the grocery store and then home to make dinner for her when she arrived. I also decided to make mocha chip ice cream, and had just gotten that going and sat down to prepare the hamburger meat when she pulled up. Darn, if I'd just left work at six as I'd planned... oh, well. I had to run around for about 15 minutes putting everything together, but it all worked out.
 Saturday I stopped dithering and went to Fry's to buy a printer. I'd been without a printer since I bought my G5 last year, as my old Personal Laserwriter NTR didn't have an Ethernet port, and getting a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet adaptor seemed like a losing proposition, as they cost a significant fraction of just getting a new printer. Since I'm not exactly poor, it's pretty silly that I've put off buying a low-cost commodity like a printer for so long, so off we went. I'd done some research, and ended up buying an HP Photosmart 8450. My price range was at the low end - it appeared that there are many good printers in the $150-$300 range, and I wanted something that could print photos, but which would also be good at printing black-and-white text. Naturally, at the low end all printers have some sort of drawback, or at least cause to have second thoughts. I ultimately decided on this one mainly due to the MacWorld review. Naturally, since I'm running Tiger on my Mac, the drivers which came with the printer didn't really cut it, so I ended up downloading the latest drivers. Boy am I glad I updated my DSL service, since that package is about 127 Mb! But once I got that installed, it seems to work great. I haven't put it through the paces yet, but I'll get there. Considering what a nightmare drivers for Tiger could be, it's actually been pretty smooth: These drivers, the drivers for my scanner, just download and install (and maybe reboot), and it just works. Nifty! Next I guess I get to experience the joys of replacing ink cartridges. You know, I used less than 2 cartridges in my Laserwriter in 11 years of ownership...
This was also cleaning weekend, as my Mom is coming to visit me soon. I'm very excited! My Dad's visited me twice in California, but this will be her first visit here. I'm looking forward to her meeting my cats - and Debbi's - as well! I cleaned both bathrooms, including the guest bathroom while Debbi was out cold on the couch. She said she'd been willing to pitch in by cleaning it, but I'd done it without her! She ended up sweeping and mopping the tile floors instead (I hate mopping - she doesn't much care for it, either). I also cleaned the sink faucets all over the house - you wouldn't believe how much crap gets caught in them over a couple of years. They always work better after I clean them. And of course I cleaned my study - which doubles as the guest bedroom. It was reasonably clean already, since Karen's visit a couple of weeks ago, but I did make space on my shelves for my new printer, which had the side benefit of getting a lot of the crap organized which had been accumulating there.
And we had a relaxing Labor Day. Debbi went off to do some scrapbooking with her friends, while I stayed home, puttered around, read, petted the cats, and watched baseball. We sat around for the afternoon, finished watching our Muppet Show DVDs (mmm... Mummenschanz, the Blue Man Group of the 70s), and cooked dinner. A pretty busy weekend all around, I suppose, although it was also fairly restful. Not that I feel quite ready to go back to work tomorrow...
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