Memorial Day Weekend

First off, here's a belated thanks to all current and former members of our military, who dedicate themselves to the defense of our country and ideals, and especially so to those who have given their lives for that noble endeavor.

Concise version of the weekend's activities: move crap out of garage, return TV, move crap back into garage, organize crap.

We didn't do anything specific to Memorial Day over the weekend; instead we took the extra day off and cleaned and organized our garage. We threw out and donated a whole bunch of stuff, and our garage is much less cluttered now, which is awesome.

On Saturday we realized that what we thought was a grease smudge on the screen of our TV was actually a permanent scuff. Our 30-day unconditional guarantee on the TV had just expired earlier that week, so I wasn't sure if we'd just have to live with the scuff. I called Best Buy and talked to a manager, and ended up returning the TV for store credit. According to the manager (and the head tech of that store) the scuff was probably caused by Best Buy packaging up the TV, which was an open box display model, with bubble wrap before it had properly cooled. So right now we're back to our old TV until Best Buy has a TV deal we consider worthy. I feel like I have to squint at the TV now! Hopefully we find a good deal soon.

An interesting note about donations...I tried to take a bunch of our stuff we don't use anymore to Goodwill on Tuesday night. They declined a bunch of it, which surprised me. Apparently they can't take Christmas stuff out of season, they can't take small appliances like our humidifier, and they can't take metal bed frames. Strange. They did take a bunch of my computer science textbooks from college, and a bunch of my old fantasy paperbacks. It killed me to get rid of my first paperback Lord of the Rings trilogy, but they weren't in great shape, and I've got a really nice hardcover version, so it was past time for them to go.