FIRST, A SMALL ADDENDUM that properly belongs, I suppose, in the HouseAccording blog.  A close friend gave me a TV stand in poor repair and painted an exciting black.  Having taken it apart prior to rebuilding it, it occurred to me that it could do with a more suitable paint job.  So here it is, in the colors of the living room area.  Of course, I could not stand it being about idle and unused.

So off I went to the local big electronics store (no free advertisements here) and acquired a nice 42 inch latest LED TV monitor, a special router for streaming video, and a sound system.

Plus a very effective wireless headphone set, not seen in this picture.  It is truly amazing how sharp are the pictures I now can see, and I love the headphones with their noise cancelling capacity.  In defense of this expenditure, I can only say that, were I to run the set five hours per day every day of the year, the cost would be about $14.  I reckon my cost will not exceed more than a third of that amount.

I love to watch movies and documentaries off the Internet on my computer.

The chair is ex-Wendy's restaurant, picked up for me for nix, along with three others by a good friend who is a celebrated scrounge artist.
 
This is the prelude to populating my home with necessary furniture.  I went off to Ithaca (home to Cornell University) to buy some Swedish style pieces, three for this room and two for my bedroom and these will turn up in a couple of weeks or so.  I have a list of stuff to buy and stuff to build, so this TV stand is the first of things that I will either build or rejuvenate.  Another dramatic step in the 'turn this house into my home' evolution is my outdoor clothes line so now, on a fine day with even the slightest breeze, my washing dries in a jiffy.

A significant event for me at the end of July was the 50th anniversary of the beginning of my first career, my ordination into the pastoral ministry of Baptist Churches in Australia; a status I still  possess.  A bit odd, you might think, if you are a reader of my latest blog.

In the garden, one might remark that this is the best season ever for crabgrass.  On the other hand, my tomatoes are going great guns.  I have a continual running war with crabgrass and appear to be winning as a result of random pulling up of the wretched stuff as I wander about the re-grassed areas in the back yard.