Happy Valentines Day!

Mike set his phone alarm to secretly wake up early and make me breakfast. Presumably it was supposed to be breakfast in bed, but the smoke alarm went off when the bacon was cooking, and that kind of gave everything away! That's ok, though because I had been planning to make him Valentine's breakfast, too, and I was baffled to find that he had beaten me to the punch! So, I woke up and jumped in to help. Actually all that was left for me to do was to toast bread and then use the cookie cutters to cut them into little heart shapes. Ohhh.. cute. Afton, the robot looks on protectively, as always. In other news: The TV of Death is Dead!!!

It actually happened a few days ago, while Mike was out studying for a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad anatomy exam. I was watching some BBC program that I rented from the library, when the TV picture got all squirmy and stretchy and then POP! It went blank. I realized that in this moment my archenemy, the television that haunted my dreams, had given up the ghost and passed on to a calmer, Amanda-free existence.

I decided to wait to tell Mike until his test was over, as the shock of it might have been just too much for him at the time. Long story short, we decided that as a token of our true and everlasting love, we would give each other the wonderful Valentine's day present of a new tv. Probably not the best financial decision, but, what can we say, everyone has a guilty pleasure. Media, in all its wonderful and varied forms, is ours.

I'll spare you the details, but we spent all day cruisin around looking for that perfect new "tube" (although that's not really a very appropriate name these days, is it?), and Mike ended up finding us the perfect TV at Costco -- and even getting an extra super discount from a manager. It was a Valentine's Day miracle!!!

This is me, territorially, protectively crouched near our new baby. Next came the thrilling, and yet, daunting task of getting rid of the poor, sad carcass of the dead TV of death. Knowing from nasty personal experience how heavy this old tv was, and how nearly impossible it is to get said tv up or down the narrow, historical, beautiful stairwell between our apartment and the front door... Mike set about the cathartic (I imagine) task of breaking the mass down into little, itty bitty peices.

We used a blanket and a sled-like plastic box top to "toboggan" the biggest piece down the stairs, and then we "cartwheeled" the left over mass across the front lawn, so we could lift it into our car, never to be seen or heard from again. Actually, it's still in our car. Now we have to figure out what to do with it.