So, Little Natasha had six kittens two weeks ago (August 10). I have a bunch of photos and a few videos that I need to sort to upload to my photo album and share here. Being a kitten gramma has sure been a learning experience for me. Hopefully I'll be able to focus enough to do that today. The heat we've been having does affect my concentration, for sure.
I finally got my Lawn Fawn products organized. Stamps, dies and stencils. I redid everything I started to do earlier this year. I hit a few bumps along the way, most with the printer in the office I have set up with a print server so I can access it wirelessly. And I misplaced one of the dies, one I'd used last month and I spent WAY too much time looking for something I could replace for eight bucks, but I found it. I wasted half of the morning, but gosh darn it, I found it.
We're finally getting a home theater of sorts. I've always thought it would be fun to have a room dedicated to home theater. But that's just a dream, this house isn't set up for anything like that. But...
An outdoor theater! For years I had projectors on my Amazon wish list and earlier this year, removed them. It just wasn't practical. Well, this year, I started to think how fun it would be to sit outside in the evening and watch movies. With climate change, the house gets so warm during the day and we try to keep it cool without running the air conditioner, because that's just so expensive to do. So, we're spending more time outside in the evening. Once the sun sets, it's definitely much more comfortable.
I've been researching it off and on for years, you know, because it's something that's always interested me. But there were some things I kept in mind when thinking of how we could do it. Where would we put it? We don't want the screen to be where the neighbors can see it. There are young kids in the house behind us and some of the movies we like wouldn't be fit for children. Language and violence (think Hitman's Bodyguard). And we didn't want the neighbors to hear the sound, obviously we'd need to wear headphones. Which isn't a problem at all. But where would we put it?
I checked out screens and there were three kinds. A pull down screen like we used to have in classrooms back in the dark ages, a screen that has a stand, and a screen that attaches to a wall. Nothing practical, to be honest. Since this was a major part of a movie theater setting, it most likely wouldn't happen here. Not in this house.
So, yesterday morning, I'm eating my cereal at my desk and Bobby wouldn't leave me alone. I got up and went outside to sit at the patio table to be able to eat in peace. As I sat there, I looked around the patio. And I looked toward the office. And it hit me.
A drop down screen would work there. It would cover the sliding door when pulled down, but that's no big deal. When rolled up, it would be under the eaves and out of the weather. If we had wind or breeze, it wouldn't affect the screen, since it would be against a wall. It would be available year round, no set up needed everytime we wanted to watch a movie outside. I asked Brian what he thought. He liked the idea.
His thing was that the neighbors wouldn't be able to see it. Our house is H shaped. The patio is enclosed on three sides. Office on the left, living room at the bottom, kitchen/laundry room on the right and the backyard at the open part of the H. He said "go for it'. So, I ordered a dropdown screen, a projector, an adapter for the headphone jack on the projector so we can use bluetooth headsets (which we already have) and a new Roku stick. So, for around $300.00, we have a new set up.
Brian did ask that I look for a new light fixture for the patio wall outside of the office, since the one that's there sticks out. I found a fairly flat one, only sticks out about two inches and he believes he can get that one to work.
So, that's something else to look forward to.
Oh, I'm not really clear on if we're keeping the kittens or not. The vet's office will help to rehome them if we decide to go that way. Brian is adamant that if we keep one, we keep them all. We don't speak of this. But every once in a while, he'll say something that leads me to believe he's leaning towards keeping them.
Just so much going on, yet our lives are still the most boring ones I know of. Like Mike Bryce says in "the Hitman's Bodyguard" - "boring is best".
And speaking of movies, we have a bunch of streaming services. My first was from Walmart. You would take DVDs (there was a list of disks that they would work with) to a brick and mortar location and they would convert them to streaming and you could watch using the service "UltraViolet" and some sort of media streaming device, like a Roku. Well, along the line the streaming service Vudu started. I used my same email to login to Ultraviolet and Vudu. Ultraviolet stopped and was rebranded (something along those lines) as "Vudu". Coming to find out, that Vudu was actually owned by
Walmart.
So, I had two Vudu service logins. Walmart Vudu and Vudu Vudu. Then Roku starts carrying a movie and television service, Fandangonow. I signed up for that with my same email address. The thing about the different streaming services is that each one has licensing for their platforms with certain distributors. And they don't share all of the movies you purchase across all platforms. Most movies do share across platforms (Google movies, Amazon prime, Vudu, Movies Anywhere, Vudu, etc), but not all. For instance, I bought the complete James Bond collection of 24 high def movies for $100 on Fandangonow, that we could only watch on Fandangonow.
Earlier this year, the news came out that Fandangonow and Vudu were merging. This came into effect at the beginning of this month. Customers had to set up the move themselves, but it should be pretty easy to do. When I realized the 30% discount for one service after merging accounts wasn't showing up, I contacted Vudu. It took two weeks to resolve. It took three levels of their customer service to get it done.
First I was told that the system didn't know which Vudu to move my account to. The Walmart Vudu or the Vudu Vudu. Second level technical service cancelled the Walmart Vudu account (which I was under the impression had happened a while back). I still couldn't merge the accounts. The phone support no longer worked correctly. They weren't answering the support forms filled out on their website. I left a message on their Facebook DMs with no response. I left message on their Twitter support account. And that's who finally helped me out.
I was escalated to tier three support. And last week I was told the problem was they couldn't locate a Fandangonow account with my email address. Just my luck, this level doesn't work on the weekends, so I had time to research when I bought movies from them, the last four digits of the credit card on my account, and a screen shot of the email I got after purchasing a movie from them.
And yesterday? I got an email that my Fandangonow account had been verified. I merged the accounts. Used my 30% discount to get the UHD version of "The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard".
First world problems, am I right?
outdoor theater
craftstuff
catstuff
