Moving slowly. Kids are playing another fucking video game. They seem as happy as clams.

Took me a while to get the charcoal lit last night, ate fairly late, the kids ate macaroni and cheese instead of steak and mashed potatoes. Delicious, worth the wait. Have some London Broil left over for sandwiches.

I'd like to sift through clutter in the filing cabinet and the tool chest today. Divide stuff up into keep, scan, file and trash piles. The Salvation Army picked up some clutter yesterday. Glad to see it go, as always.

Happy to see the large bedroom empty except for my futon, two lamps and the television stuff. I love an empty room. Hung up my clothes. Nice and neat.

Have the sprinklers connected to timers which appear to work. So the lawn will be watered while we go and visit. I may have to reseed parts of the lawn, coverage doesn't seem even, though I'd hand-cast seed in two passes. Fix it when possible. Get more grass seed and a broadcasting device and do it again. Do it over until it's correct.

Cleaned up by the side of the house the other day. Some "blondie" impatiens arrived from Burpee, live plants, which I'd like to plant today. I have some chicken manure and some topsoil to amend the bed near the kitchen door. Dismal, sour soil, needs work. A couple of the cheerful shady-area plants I'd planted a year or two ago have volunteered. Gave up on that area during the dog era.

No word from Diane. She may or may not materialize today to visit with the kids. It would be fine with me if she didn't.

Two more bootleg movies arrived from eBay yesterday, "The Giant Claw" and "This Island Earth," wonderful old bad movies from the 1950s that are not available on DVDs from studios. Real treasures, I love old science fiction movies.

Contacted the cable company yesterday about getting HDTV via cable including the Padres games (at least the nine games they play against the Dodgers) and it seemed fantastically expensive, just not worth the money. Why can't I get the games on satellite? I don't want a cable connection that's going to duplicate the satellite. The Padres games aren't available over the air with any kind of antenna, it's a cable-or-nothing situation. Not impressed with that at all.

Several football games are not available on satellite, you have to watch those from a "broadcast affiliate" which means crappy reception, non-HD reception. It seems like broadcast and cable have purchased politicians who are defending their little pieces of bandwidth and programming whether it makes sense or not. I just want to see the games, and ideally in high definition. I don't want to pay $50 or more a month for cable television, and that's WITHOUT any "premium" channels, not that I ever watch any "premium" channels. We used to get HBO because they had a good football show, "Inside The NFL," which was watered-down when they got rid of two of the older commentators and replaced them with morons like Dan Marino and some short little asshole from CBS golf -- the program was no longer worth watching, and HBO was nothing that we wanted otherwise. We subscribed to HBO for that one program!

I watch NFL Network a lot, I like to hear what's going on. This weekend is the NFL Draft, I'd like to watch part of that. I want to see where Mike Williams from USC ends up. I'd like to see the Rams rebuild their special teams, I'm not sure that's going to happen.

My left wrist hurts a lot all of a sudden. I've gotta scare up another wrist brace.

I need to take care of the aquariums today. Aquaria. I'd also like to clean up the front garden area, it's been neglected while I've been working on the lawn project. Two weeks since I seeded the lawn area.