Miserable...but in a good way...
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Saturday, October 15, 2005 at 05:03 PM [GMT-6]

If there's a task that's less enjoyable during the doing of it but more satisfying after it's done than running speaker wire through your attic to connect some new satellite boxes to make the 3.1 system into a long-delayed 5.1 system, I don't know what it is.

I felt like that Chinese acrobat in "Ocean's 11," winding and twisting my way over and under the ceiling supports in the attic (I'm sure there's a construction term for those things), while carefully planning each new footplant (having learned previously that stepping through the sheetrock is not conducive to one's sense of calm). At one point, I was slithering like a snake -- a very sweaty snake, to be sure -- through an insulation-lined, cobweb-draped ("Arachnophobia," anyone?) crevasse to reach the ends of the wires which were poking through a hole at that tiny angle where the roof meets the [insert another construction term (wall?)]. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring with me one of those grabby tools...you know, the one with the long shaft and you press on one end and from the other end a claw opens up and you can extend your reach about three feet. The grabby tool.

I also made good use of my nerd glasses...the black frames with the tiny LEDs built into each temple piece. I always feel like I'm in "Weird Science" (or was it "Sixteen Candles"?) when I wear them.

Anyway, the speakers are connected but the task is far from completed, as my receiver is actually four shelves down in the built-in cabinets, so I've got to route the wires through those shelves somehow and then hope that my system for remembering which wire goes to which speaker works, and further that I can remember the polarity. (OK, that last part isn't that hard, but getting my eyes to focus up close and well enough to discern that I'm connecting the right wire to the right terminal is a challenge.)

I tell you, the excitement around here never ends.