One more gate?

I’m going to try and blog at least once a week. Things have certainly become more routine with the dog and being on a schedule. Time sure seems precious.

We did manage a 25k ride on the weekend. Just railtrail, but we managed a decent pace (for us) at around 20km/h. The weekend was pretty much a busy work blur, yardwork, cooking, laundry, more cooking, groceries. After the housework is done there isn’t much time left over unless I stay up late which then results in zombiehood. I did make a Sheppard’s Pie which I’m eager to try as it was a lot of random winging it going on.

After a decade of loyal service I’ve retired my Yamaha Receiver to the Great Room. I debated about switching brands, maybe to a Denon or Onkyo but decided to stick with what I know and got a sweeeet deal on a receiver from Yamaha’s top line. The new box is the Yamaha RX-A880. Things have come a long way in a decade! Yamaha has a lot of faith in this unit with an incredible 4 year warranty. The best I found on other units was 2. This unit wasn’t my initial choice but you are already in for a base cost for a decent receiver so add a few hundred and you get more and more… I paid around my max for sure but I think i’ll have a unit to enjoy for another decade and quibbling about 100 or 200 didn’t make any sense on something that is going to drive my entertainment for a long, long time. Yes it sounds great. It is probably more *power* than I need in an amp but the *quality* is impressive. The upscaling, the smoothing of the sound, the dynamic improvement… and I’ve just done a basic configuration. I still need to go through the massive manual. I love how connected it is to my online music apps (even if Yamaha’s apps are woefully disappointing).

Frustrations with work continue with simply trying to book holidays. After repeatedly sending the date over and over (4x now!) – I still have no clarity and now it is pretty much too late so… yeah, that is not putting me in a good place.

The monster continues to rage.