Surrounded

The photo's completely pointless, by the way. I'm not even going to try to tie it in at all.

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For the first time in my life I own a subwoofer.

Actually, I now own a whole whack of speakers.

It's an odd feeling, really. For my entire adult life I've managed with cheap bookshelf stereos and was ok with it. What the tinny speakers lacked I could generally make up for with my own imagination. The voices in my head are pretty good at carrying a tune, you know.

Well, the father figure decided that it was time I had a grown-up stereo, so you're now looking at (erm... figure of speech. Please tell me you're not really looking at me. After all, I would have worn something nicer if you were) the proud owner of an actual, honest-to-whomever home theatre system. Five disc changer, even.

And a subwoofer.

I have a subwoofer.

The ironic thing about the subwoofer (you had to know I was obsessing about it for a reason) is that for years I've been grumbling about the idiots in the apartment next door who occasionally enjoy sharing their music with me at odd hours of the night. I believe I even stated at one time that subwoofers should be banned from apartment buildings.

And now I have a subwoofer.

I like it. It's fun.

What wasn't fun was setting the whole thing up. That's where I was yesterday, if you wondered (you did wonder, right?). I was surrounded by cables, wires, and piles of assorted junk that I had to move out of the t.v. stand in order to route the aforementioned cables and wires.

You see, I have a one-room apartment. When you have a one-room apartment you get pretty good at squirreling things away in every available corner. Superficially the place may not look too cluttered, but dig below the surface and you find carefully managed chaos.

Then... just try adding something to the chaos. Go ahead. I dare you.

Setting up this system wasn't merely a matter of plugging things in, oh no. It was more a matter of completely disrupting my life. Things had to be hauled out, other things moved in, interesting physical contortions had to be made to get everything hooked up and in position (and yes, I'm currently feeling muscles I didn't realise I had), and new places had to be found for all the displaced crap treasures that no longer fit where they used to.

Um...

Ok, so that last part hasn't really happened yet. I have, however, got everything piled on my table.

Hey, at least I'm not having to step over the mess.

Yesterday the Toronto office kindly suggested that I should make sure I have my glasses on in the morning until I got everything sorted out (meaning the cables and wires, mostly. I don't think she could possibly have known how many other piles I was dodging at that point). I told her I had no choice but to get it sorted out yesterday because otherwise I'd have to sleep on the floor.

I couldn't unfold the bed because of the piles o' stuff in front of it, you see.

Anyway, the wires have been strung, the cables have been connected, the garbage on the table will be figured out at some time or other, and with one minor no-hurry exception that I'll fix when I feel like fiddling, everything works.

Yay me.

Not bad for someone with almost no audio experience, you know. Just don't tell Wheat that I managed it on my own. It'll make it that much harder to play the helpless femme when it comes to the system here at work.

I think I'm blathered out now. Time to go back home and spend some quality time with my toys. Or at least figure out where to put my toys...