I should mention before anything else that the BeOS machine died last week. Andrew's unfortunate initial conclusion was that the motherboard got fried.
This past weekend was an extended one, for Andrew, at least - I'm still on winter break. Andrew had worked sufficient hours to take Friday off completely. He spent a large portion of his day off stripping the useful parts, which included the hard drive, CD burner/DVD-ROM (he expressed some interest in getting cases for these two components and using them for backup), as well as the memory (which Andrew later unwittingly dropped into the Windows XP box, but I'll get around to discussing that later) from the BeOS machine and with a degree of sadness, tossed the remnants. He decided that he wanted to rearrange the gateway, move the iBook, and a attach a few of the peripherals from the deceased PC to it. When it became clear that wiring would be a nightmare we went and did a little shopping. We started at Target with the intention of getting a strip that would better accomodate all of the bricks and assorted plugs Andrew would have to contend with. I used the opportunity to shop for Andrew's anniversary gifts: a 128MB USB thumb drive, a set of red nesting KitchenAid prep bowls with lids, a white KitchenAid crock for all of his random KitchenAid utensils. Hey, it's what he specifically asked for, lol. As a side note, I've received nothing yet, but the pretty little pink sapphire ring Andrew had picked out for me was ordered on Saturday morning and should be here before the week is out.
After that we went to The Container Store in Clarendon Market Commons for velcro strips and cable turtles. Then, Andrew and I walked across the street to The Cheesecake Factory. Dinner was followed by more fun in the office.
On Saturday, Andrew's friend from work, Roger, came over and we drove out to Maryland. We took a slight detour through the District and many of the roads were closed due to the practice inauguration. There, we visited the Baltimore Aquarium (finally - it was only one of my goals from over the previous summer, lol.) We wandered around there a bit and saw the dolphin show. Then, we went over to a nearby Barnes and Noble. It was located in an old industrial building, complete with smokestacks. After picking up yet another book, titled Introducing Semiotics by Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz and ingesting some caffeinated drinks we returned home. The afternoon had to be abbreviated because both Andrew and I were low on sleep.
On Sunday we just read the paper and continued dicking around in the office.
Monday was a federal holiday (Martin Luther King day) and so Andrew had the day off from work. We did some more running around (in other words, shopping). We started out at the IKEA in Woodbridge. Initially, we just wanted to make some returns and pick up another bamboo blind, this one to go in my room, but I ended up also getting sheer curtains to go with it. Andrew found green curtains (he has a bamboo blind already hanging in his room) that coordinated with his relatively new green bedding, also from IKEA. Then we went to The Home Depot for a network cable, a molly guard, and a 15' roll of grey Corduct. It took going to four different Targets to find what we were looking for there (have I mentioned that I hate the phrase "inventory may vary from store to store?"); fortunately, they were all on the way back to Arlington and anyway, Andrew and I enjoyed the adventure. The hard-to-find item was a black chinese 9-drawer wood cabinet (that ended up in the livingroom), from Target's new Global Bazaar line, but along the way we found that and much more: a tea set (to adorn the top of the cabinet), a lantern, a small chest, and another Buddha. Then on to Pentagon City Mall to stop in Victoria's Secret and Champs for a pair of pink and black New Balance sneakers that I wanted to get before school starts. They were running a special, so Andrew ended up with a grey pair, too.
I should mention here that the Windows XP machine died not long after having had what turned out to be bad RAM, in turn, dropped into it.
I had a doctor's appointment scheduled for Tuesday and Andrew took off from work early to accompany me to it, being the good boyfriend, err fiance, that he is. My blood pressure was great and everything else seemed to check out okay. I expressed some concern about being a little pudgy, but my doctor assured me that I'm tall and thin and if anything, a little underweight. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced :(. After that, still more fun in the office. Again with the stripping of useful parts (this time only the hard drive and CD burner/DVD-ROM were scavenged) and Andrew laid the Windows XP machine to rest. (Knights, half-heartedly: Yeay!)
It was an incredibly looooong weekend, and I'm now exhausted and my shoulders hurt from having just revisited it.
-- CrystalShiloh @ 02:32 PM