Things from the braaiiin

Where I am my own electrician

So we needed a new outlet installed in our basement for a new freezer we've been eyeing. Santa promised to send us the freezer if we could find just the right spot for it.

Problem was that there wasn't an outlet anywhere near the spot where it needed to go in the unfinished section of our basement. There was, however, a line running between outlets that face the finished section (our basement is basically divided in half - finished for fun and unfinished for storage).

Being the project-minded chick I am (oh, and cheap), I decided to figure out how to ad an outlet for myself.

I consulted with J3r3 - my go-to-guy for all things home repair - and checked out the instructions/diagrams/pictures in my Hom3-Despot "How-to" guide. J3r3 sent me a wonderfully detailed shopping list and instructions. All I had to do was overcome my own fear of splicing into my home's electrical system.

I'll admit that I checked over everything more than a few times to make sure it was all done right and not going to fry my house (knock wood). I also picked up a set of outlet meters to have a fancy electronic device tell me it's all working right, so that helped a lot - especially when I was trying to figure out just which breaker turned off everything before I started working. (Mudge appreciated that part)

Well, long story short, it went great! I even used a shiny faceplate to make it look fancy.

We ordered the freezer from L0we's last night and they delivered it this afternoon (you gotta love free delivery - especially if it's next day)! They plugged it in and the outlet is in the perfect position for the freezer's cord. The beautiful new appliance is humming along sweetly in its new home. Ahhh home owner-ship.

Am I getting old?

Well, really I mean am I getting too old to enjoy most horror movies?

I think these days I need something more suspenseful and actually scary. Gory is just soooooo overdone these days. After watching the best of Italian Giallo (horror) year ago and sifting through the new wave of American gore flicks and torture porn, long drawn out movies with just lots of gross-out effects for the sake of gross-out is ... well, boring.

Last night Mudge and I watched Sam Raimi's "Drag Me To Hell." We've both long been fans of Raimi's "Evil Dead" and "Army of Darkness." To his credit, he probably inspired the gross-out in a lot of American horror films. That said, though, "Drag Me" was seriously a draaaag.

It wasn't scary. You didn't care about any of the people. And the gross parts were so over the top, both Mudge and I were like "Really? This is what you're gonna go with?" Sure, there were some parts that had the "Evil Dead/Army of Darkness" feel, but the rest of the movie wasn't funny enough to carry it to any satisfying end. There was no Bruce Campbell in this flick! The "twist" at the end was so predictable that it was almost painful.

The extra annoyance was that we'd had this stupid movie for weeks, just waiting for us to watch it. Our Netflix queue was totally stymied by it, but we both wanted to watch it since it was Raimi.

Sigh.

I think I really need something more of a story with suspense and/or real frights to interest me these days. I don't have a lot of time to waste on the D and C list horror fodder that I used to. I need more bang (or rawr) for my buck. Sure, you could also say that I've seen SO MANY horror movies that your standard ones are just too redundant for me. I can tell what's going to happen 5 mins into a film. I need something NEW!

I'm super keen on seeing "Paranormal Activity." Of course, finding the time to get to a theater is tricky. Maybe by the time we find a babysitter, it'll be in the bargain movies. Of course, there's always DVD (it'll be released just after Xmas). The best horror is better seen in a theater, though.