Post Christmas installation blues

It used to be batteries - you never had enough for all the things you bought, no matter how carefully you checked the packaging. There would always be a remote or something that needed still more batteries. Even if you only bought teddy bears, they needed batteries. Or something.

Now it's more complicated, but there are fewer tears. We spent about 45 minutes setting up the new router - dual band, or something, so when we watch YouTube videos we don't get the spinning thing while the video decides if it should progress past the 1:03 mark. I can now spend more time watching the Muppets and Monty Python sketches.

We also set up the wireless wheel. Which has a mess of wires - only wireless if you add 65 batteries or so. See paragraph 1 above. Child #3 is loving the steering wheel game, and has bought and crashed one corvette. May his real life driving prove more cautious.

Then we attacked the PVR. The instructions lie. You have to call Rogers and convince them that you are a legitimate customer. Then they try to sell you stuff you already have. Then read out serial numbers, several times. It's been a few hours, but mostly that's because my husband - who bought the PVR - was over at his dad's chipping ice off his Cadillac for the last 2 hours. Ah, holiday ice storms. If the sun comes out, it will be spectacular.

All told, we had a very nice Christmas. The kids are happy with their gifts and seem to think we got them more than enough loot. We went sledding on Christmas day, and it was fun. The driving was fine, as the freezing rain didn't start till we were back. I got booze and chocolate, in quantity, so expect to see me in the New Year as a fat alcoholic.