On a very happy note, we’re recognizing two birthdays today. Jaelene and her husband Scott both were born on January 29th. They’ve been out east helping Daryl celebrate his thirtieth birthday, so they’re probably not doing any celebrating today! Happy, happy birthday to both of you.

Dad is home and having a lot of trouble with his TV / Home Entertainment equipment. There are too many buttons on the remote control. Dad’s fine motor control is poor (giving it a huge benefit of the doubt), so he’s forever pushing the wrong buttons. He has to use headphones to listen to the sound and has managed to catch the headphone cord when standing up and broken that cord. Things are just not quite what he needs.

So, the headphone thing can be taken care of by going with wireless / infrared headphones that have no cords. I think I’ll go buy a universal remote control. I’ll take it over to Soda Springs and program the on / off button, the volume up and down buttons, and the channel up and down buttons. Then I’ll take it apart and disable all the other buttons. That way he can push all the buttons he wishes, but doesn’t then have to call someone to figure out what’s the matter with the TV! There might be something to this idea of a primitive remote control that provides very limited functionality. Remember, you heard it here first!

My cold is still “growing” and hopefully will peak real soon now. I’m not looking forward to flying to Belgium on Saturday sporting this cold! It seems to be settling in my chest with lots of coughing. I came home from work at noon and slept the rest of the afternoon. With any luck I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep tonight and maybe tomorrow the cold will start getting better?? It’d sure be nice.