March 29, 2009

[Nathan] Wow, my wife has been doing great at adding the updates! Go Mary! I love you! Anyways, I thought I'd add just a quick update, not that I really have much to say, but that I haven't added much recently. I have to thank my wife for graciously allowing me to get our new TV (See the last photo in the previous post for a picture), I have wanted a High-Definition TV for awhile, and I have always wanted a big screen. Mary says it's almost too big for our front room. She has to sit as far back as she can or she says she feels like she is going to get sick. Makes me wonder. Before I met my lovely wife back when I bought the townhouse we're in, I bought it before it was all built, and was able to go do a bunch of custom stuff to it. For instance I was able to add all sorts of extra insulation for energy and soundproofing reasons, ran Cat-5e (high-speed internet/computer networking cable) and speaker wire throughout the place to allow for internet and music in just about any room, and also I setup the front room to allow for future installation of a projector. The problem I run into is that the 1080p (full High Def) projectors are still around $3,000 - $5,000 or more, and you also have to worry about if the room is dark enough. Now I add another concern. Yes, I would have had a lot more screen real estate (around 80-100+ inches instead of 52), but if it is hard to see a 52 inch TV in that room because you can't get far enough back, what would a projector have involved? Maybe I can put one in a house in future. Hmm.... ;} But I did manage to convince my wife that a bigger TV is fun. She didn't seem to care a whole lot about it when we first got it, but then when I brought our computer down from the upstairs bedroom and hooked it in to the TV (yes, it has a VGA input for those of you who speak computer geek, and now we connect it via HDMI :) ) and let her play Sims 2 in 52 inches! She enjoys it to the point that earlier this week when I asked her if she wanted me to take it back upstairs so it wasn't on the floor when we had our home teacher come, she told me to leave it at least until the weekend! I'm sure that when Sims 3 comes out this summer, she'll want to try it in 52 inch high definition! :) Anyways, for you who speak geek, just a little about the TV. It's a Samsung, 52 inch LCD tv, runs full 1080p with the 120hz capability (120 frames per second capable to help eliminate the motion blur that LCDs are prone to). It has 3 HDMI inputs, a VGA input, 2 component inputs, and even still has a S-Video and composite input on the side! (Man, I remember when S-video was top of the line!)
Well, other than the TV, we had a fairly decent weekend. We rented Twilight on Blu-Ray now that we have both read the first book (and I hope Mary keeps reading fast on the second one!). Good movie. We spent Saturday in Idaho Falls, where Mary's mom and our niece Alexis watched Natalie while we went to the temple and did a sealing session, then we went to the Titantic exhibit at the Museum of Idaho which was pretty neat. Natalie fell asleep in my arms in a rather awkward position part way through and then slept on my shoulder the rest of the way. When we were in the gift shop at the end, I was worried that people were going to ask why she had a mark on her face (from laying up against me and my shirt collar). We visited Mary's sister Rebecca, who is getting rather close to having her twins. We're praying that all goes well there, it will be sometime in the upcoming weeks! And all this and no pictures. Well, we couldn't take any in the Museum or the Temple obviously. Anyways, this has turned into the regular letter length stuff I write, and I really haven't had a whole lot to write about this time, so I'll sign off here. Until next post!