After our late night/early morning escapades on Friday and Saturday, all i wanted Sunday morning was to sleep in for a good long while. We had an appointment to have DirecTV installed between 8am and 12pm, but how often do they show up on time? Famous last words ... the installer was ringing our doorbell at 7:50am. It took him two hours to install two new receivers in the house (one bearing Tivo) and hook them up to the existing dish on the roof, then to place a new dish on the garage and wire a receiver in our rumpus room. So far DirecTV looks sweet, especially the local channels that were previously received in analog on our cable hookup. We ordered the HBOs and the sports pack, among which i've discovered Gol TV. I spent my lunchtime yesterday watching the first leg of the relegation battle between Serie A rivals Parma and Bologna. We moved our existing Tivo to the bedroom and put the DirecTV Tivo receiver in the living room, so we're now a multi-Tivo household. The DirecTV Tivo is nice as it uses two connections to the satellite dish, allowing you to record on one channel and watch another.

waking up and getting up has never been easy

I picked up the long-awaited new album Circling the Sun by the Orange Peels today. I love all things Allen Clapp, although his last solo album Available Light, while certainly worthwhile, was a bit too AM radio for my tastes. I had fears about the band's latest effort given that founding member and former Mummy Larry Winthers had left the fold. I was way off ... the Peels are highly addictive once again, even after one listen to the album. Allen has worked more magic in his Redwood City studio, this time giving fantastic atmosphere to drum and guitar sounds in songs like opener "Something In You". More sweet pop sounds, just in time for summer. The band is playing a record release party at Bottom of the Hill tomorrow, i'm toying with the idea of popping by. Especially now that i've caught the Orange Peels bug again.