the everyday adventures of sabrina

so yesterday, all day, i was doing the next best thing to actually stalking a meterologist from the national weather service: i was obsessively checking the forecast and, especially, the radar. because, you see, they had said it was going to rain… and that the rain would be a part of thunderstorms, caused by a cold front moving in and colliding with the OH MY GOD IT’S HOT weather conditions that were torturing us all since last week. so “rain” meant “cool,” and so you can see why i was obsessed.

i carried my umbrella to work, because, by god, the national weather service said it was going to be storming by 4PM and if i was ever an optimist about anything i was definitely going to be an optimist about it raining yesterday. i wanted that rain. so all day at work i was checking the weather every hour (more frequently as we grew closer to the predicted storm-time, and i grew more and more frustrated by the clear blue skies outside and the clean radar inside) and cheering the storm front on. after work me and my miscreant cohorts were sitting on IRC urging each little yellow- or red-colored blob on the radar to grow and be strong. i cheered out loud when it finally started raining and laughed at my cats when they ran like hell the first time we got a good thunderclap. of course, that was when i was delivered the just desserts of sitting around demanding to know why i had not yet been granted the “SEVERE!” thunderstorm we had been promised: i was in the middle of watching a CSI: Miami rerun and THUNDER! scared the cats out of the room, which is always great fun because kiyoshi has never figured out that claws do not help him run faster on hardwood flooring. so i paused the tivo and wandered over to the bedroom to try and console the cats that the world was not, in fact, ending. lightning continued flashing and thunder continued crashing and while tiger was willing to be petted and calmed (so long as you came to him, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to you) kiyoshi was under the bed and staying there, and so eventually i decided the cats were as well consoled as they were gonna get, so i fetched a glass of water and went back out to finish watching the show. (it was just at the part where the internal affairs weenie was busting Delko for smoking weed, and Mr. Wolfe (rowr) was looking guilty, and David Caruso was being all David Caruso with the sunglasses and did i mention i really just watch this show for all the terribly, terribly pretty people? because i do!), and so you can see how it was right in the middle of something and i wanted to see how it ended because i haven’t seen this episode before…) i hit the ‘pause’ button and the video playback resumed… with no sound. what? no, there was a little bit of sound. i turned the stereo up. and up and up and up and up. and up and up some more. i could hear the faintest little bit of audio, as the pretty people bickered, no doubt frustrated by their inability to make themselves heard. i figured it was the tivo — after all, my other tivo lost its ability to output sound, and i was not pleased at the idea that my other one had too, but it was at least the most likely suspect — and rebooted it. when it came back up … no dice. i tried the other inputs on the receiver: phono, tape deck, dvd player… all the same: only the faintest of sound at very high volumes. i stepped back to think (and, okay, maybe sulk just a little bit). and then i … thought i heard talking. with the (broken) audio input set to a turned-off component, it couldn’t be the stereo receiver. or could it? it turns out that not only does the stereo receiver not output sound cleanly, or at normal amplification anymore … it no longer distinguishes between the audio input channels. what is the sound of “cacophony”? it’s the sound of what happens when sabrina is given a broken stereo receiver and in the name of testing to see exactly how broken it is, plays back an episode of “House” from the TiVo, a movie from the DVD player, an INXS cassette from the tape deck, and a Who record on the phonograph simultaneously through the same speakers, turned up loud and with ample loud bursts of static. (i could have turned on the CD player as well, but crossing the room to fetch a disc and load it into the changer was far more effort than i was willing to make, as i was slowly coming to the unhappy realization that the price of all this audio-channel-congruence entertainment was the fact that my only-three-years-old!! rather nice (and not particularly cheap, though not terribly expensive either) stereo receiver was fried and i didn’t then and still don’t particularly want to go out and drop four or five hundred bucks on a new one at the moment, and so really i just could not be arsed to try and add the CD player to the noise.) oh, and at the same time, my laptop — shiny, my three+ year old 17″ powerbook — overheated and shut itself off before it melted down, because its dying fan apparently finally died. so not only was my stereo receiver hosed, meaning i couldn’t listen to any music or finish watching the damn CSI: Miami i was still in the middle of, but i couldn’t even go online and bitch about it all on IRC because my laptop was so damned hot it refused to turn on. so unfair! so, i decided to go shopping. (nowhere fun, i’m afraid. i just made a run to the petsmart for cat food; i just liked the “oh my god, you’re such a giiiiirl” implications of saying i went shopping. and hey, with a dead stereo system and no way to blog about it, i have to take my entertainment where i can.) now, i’m just sending emails around to various places trying to investigate having the stereo repaired. i hate being without it! it sucks! fortunately, i do still have my ancient sansui receiver which i can use to hook up the phono and mac, and i can rewire the tivos and dvd player to go directly to the television, so i’m not completely hosed. and the weather’s actually cooled off enough so i won’t mind scrunching down behind all my gear (as it exhausts hot air into my face) to work on doing all of that!