Here's what the living room looks like now:



As you can see, we still need a big piece of art on the wall above the monitor. Also in the pic is the painting that Adnan's wife, Snjezana, painted for Heather. The TV stand that the monitor is on will at some point be replaced with a smaller stand. For now it also contains my old (big) tuner, connected to my old (big) Cerwin Vega speakers. Both are circa 1988, and sound as good as when I first bought them, but in a 12' wide house, they take up a lot of space. At some point we'll replace those with something smaller, but for now it works. You can see the wireless keyboard and mouse (it's the white rectangles). The mouse is optical and doesn't work on the glass top of the coffee table. Unfortunately a couple days after I bought the mouse, Apple came out with their new trackpad, which would fix that problem.

The old TV used to be where the black armchair is now, and the black armchair was in the pathway from the front door. So now there's better flow through the room, because you don't have to dodge around the chair. You would be surprised at how often one can stub their toe in the dark checking that the front door is locked before heading upstairs for the night.

It's the Simcoe Day long weekend and the weather is beautiful.

So we've been cable-TV-free for the last couple weeks, and it's working out pretty good. Right now the HD antenna is upstairs in the office, and we get nine channels (all GTA-based). At some point I'll put the antenna on the roof, but then I need to worry about lightning and surge protection and all that, so for now the office it is.

The best part is that we got rid of my big old Sony Trinitron from the 90's, which allowed us to rearrange the living room furniture. The living room now has much better flow. Maybe even better feng shui, although I'm not that knowledgeable about feng shui.

I gave away the old TV for free on craigslist. The asking price for similar TVs was $1 to $200 (I don't know who would pay $200 for an old TV, when I bought a brand new 24" LCD monitor for less). We decided just to price it as free, to get rid of it. Within minutes I had five replies. I gave it to the first person to reply, who picked it up the next day. I also gave them Heather's old DVD player.

As part of the living room makeover, we also put up a collage of framed art from my travels that were sitting in boxes in the basement. On their own they were too small for our walls, but as a collage they work. It nicely fills in the wall between the front door and front window.

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For my 40th birthday, Heather made reservations at Ruby Watchco, a new-ish restaurant in Leslieville. We had both wanted to go there since it opened. They only have one set menu which changes every day (if you click on the link you'll see the menu for the current day). The interior design is really great, very much our style. We weren't as impressed with the food, it was really good, but too rich to our taste. I also felt the food too busy -- all the ingredients overpowered the main part of the course. Unfortunately on my birthday the main was chicken -- it was done perfectly, but I just can't get too excited about chicken (unless it's chicken wings after Ultimate). Overall none of the courses made us go "wow". But we were happy we checked the place out. We might go back, but it would depend on the menu being served that day.

Heather also bought me a t-shirt from Dorly Designs that says "Bacon makes me happy". We had dropped in to check out the new store in June, and I really liked the t-shirts.

The facelift of our Shoppers is moving along. They've expanded to take over most of the parking lot, and have added a 2nd floor. It fits in much better with the rest of the street now. Before, there was too much empty space and it broke up the continuity along Queen E. Already on Carlaw there's a new restaurant planning to open opposite the Shoppers. The Shoppers people also used brick on the exterior which again fits in nicely with the rest of the street.

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I went out golfing at Deerfield with Chris, Doaner and Craig on the day before my birthday. I left my driver in the bag (actually didn't even bother bringing it to the course), and just used my hybrid off the tee. (I need to take lessons before I use my driver on the course). Anyways, I had five straight pars on the front, a record for me, on holes 2-6; unfortunately double-bogeyed the other four holes, for a 42 and a bogey-free front. Ended up with a 92, one of my better rounds in a while. I also beat Doaner for the first time ever.

This Wednesday Craig and I are golfing at Lakeview with a couple guys from hockey, Scott and Marc. Hopefully I'll still be hitting my hybrid straight.

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With all the hot weather this summer, I've been looking at how to shade the sun coming in from the skylight. Eventually I want to get some sort of smart window but for now I'm going low-tech, with just a linen covering that can be put on hooks with a long pole:



It might make more sense to see it when it's completed.

Tonight we're having an experimental dinner. There was a bottle of wine at the LCBO that said it went well with chicken with olives, almonds and paprika. So I bought a couple chicken breasts, (bone-in with skin), and I'm going to stuff them with the olives etc and then barbecue. The side is a salad of navy beans and wilted spinach, with cured chorizo sausage. I think it the meal may be a bit on the dry side, so I may need a chicken broth-based sauce of some sort.

Well that's it for now.