burnaby t wallace

So I was listening to the radio and I thought–whoa, Pearl Jam is coming out with a new album.

No…

It was Bruce Springsteen.

How weird. He sounded just like Eddie Vedder, maybe in my early morning disorient.

Pearl Jam should come out with a new album.

So the World Series is over.
Now tacos for everyone. Taco Bell always seems to be giving away something. Now, since a base was stolen during the World Series (yay! Red Sox!), everyone who stops by a Taco Bell on Tuesday between 2-5pm will get a free crunchy taco.

Not that they are two years old (they’re not), but apparently the style is. My boxers are no longer fashionable, according to the little tab that is sticking out from beneath the label.

However, right after the ceremony, you know I had to change to my special wedding Crocs.

While walking down the hall this morning, trying to find where the clinking sound on my body was originating from, I came upon this weird conclusion.

I am walking storage.

Nevermind the cargo pants, or my symbolic “build” (yes, I know I’m fat), the brain’s capacity, or the Timbuktu messenger bag. I mean, while looking for the source of the clinking sound, I reached down to my left pocket to feel my keys, then to my right pocket to feel my cell phone, then looked down at my lanyard hanging from my neck–all looking for the source of that metal/glass clinking sound.

While reaching for these various locations, it hit me–everything I reached for had a digital storage capacity of some sort.

So, without carrying any hard drives, on a typical day, I will have the 8GB iPhone in one pocket, usually with my other cell phone with 1GB of memory, my house and car keys, with 4GB on a thumb drive, and my work badge, with an additional 4GB in a memory vial. That’s a total of 17 GB of rated flash storage on my body on any typical day.

My wife has a 16GB iPod Touch and a phone with memory. She’s probably walking around with almost 20GB of storage.

So pause for a moment and add up your total memory. How does it stack?

Now, wouldn’t it be cool if some scientist somewhere was working on a USB port to the brain so we could make backups and stuff? I’ll be first in line.

So I had all of Wednesday off. I got to sleep in until about 8:45, which was nice. I picked up the trusty phone, casually checked my email, sipped on the V8, and read the news for a little bit. I called my wife at work and said hello. It was a nice start to the day. However, I didn’t get Wednesday off just to hang out at home and watch television.

Today, goodies were arriving.

However, 27 year old Spencer would be disappointed as to why 29 year old Spencer would consider these goodies. You see, I was waiting for a new front loading washer and a spattering of missed FedEx and UPS deliveries, as well as an electrician to wire up the shed. What was weird was it didn’t even hit me how excited I was to be getting all these things, versus the toys that I would have been equally enthused about just 2 years ago, until I was driving to Home Depot to buy a ceiling fan and a porch light.

What younger Spencer would have been excited about was a new video card or processor or car stereo. Now, none if those would have the same effect as a new deck, windows, or even a cabinet to store the wood working equipment and paint. Wow, things have changed.

But when did all this happen? I know exactly when.

At the beginning of summer 2006. I just bought the house and I just proposed to my girlfriend of a few years. Now I am married to her.Can you say that my priorities have changed? No…not really my priority is to my family, which right now is my wife (and even by brother). And since the house, plumbing, electrical, etc., all support my priorities, then it’s what I am doing right now.

However, if I needed to play video games to support my family…

This weekend went by much faster than it should have. To add, it was longer than the typical weekend–being nearly four days long. Of course, I was sick through the whole thing, but still.

Anyhow, let me begin by saying that washers aren’t what they used to be. Our little Kenmore, still fairly new (it still had the protective sticker covering the control panel), would no longer power up to clean the clothes. Unfortunately, we have a ton of clothes needing wash as we just got back from the nearly month long vacation. So we set out to buy a new washer.

After researching, we finally decided on a washer from LG. A beautiful front loading washer, it’s LG’s top of the line, and also has this cool networking ability to tell the user how much time is left of cleaning (or drying, if used with the dryer) through a device plugged into any outlet in the house. And you know that’s how a gadget freak like me rolls. Plus, Consumer Reports really likes it. And it’s got an LCD screen.

Unfortunately, on the drive down from purchasing the washer (which is going to be delivered in a few days), we spoke about how it no longer matches the dryer.

So, we bought the corresponding top of the line dryer, too.

Uhm, let’s see, what else, what else?

Oh yeah, installed a new faucet by Kohler. Looks good, and has what appears to be a shower option. Thanks to the wife, we installed it in under four hours.

We also got a new shed. This one’s a little bit interesting in that we almost didn’t get the shed installed. The installers came and said that our ground wasn’t level enough to put it in (it’s big, too–8 x 15). However, the sales person said that we could–he even had a laser level and everything. For weeks, Trisha and I had imagined a cleaner house with less clutter because it would all be in the shed in the backyard. We didn’t want our dreams to be postponed any longer. So in front of them, we grabbed a shovel and a pick (yes, we don’t have a wrench that’ll go larger than an inch and only a few months ago did I finally get a wire stripper, but YES, we have a pick). We started leveling out the ground in what the contractor originally would take another contractor a day, then whittled it down to three hours, but we finished in about 15 minutes. We hurt for several days after, but the hyper gardening we did paid off, and they were able to move forward and install the shed.

Unfortunately, we were too sore and tired to really fill it up and as such, one of our vehicles is still sitting outside of the garage with no room to bring it in.

Something tech? Let me speak briefly about the last iPhone update. It includes the WiFi iTunes feature–I can almost see my money get sucked away through my router. Buying is so easy through the phone–and buying is what we’ve been doing through our little connected iPods. Sheesh, Apple.

Also, only about an hour with the Wii.

So there you have it. That’s where the weekend went.