Things I accomplished this weekend:

• Had one beer in the tiny taproom of the Yazoo Brewing Company, a relatively new microbrewery in the back corner of the old Marathon plant. It's not really in the best part of town, but it's convenient to work, the beer seemed pretty good, and you can get refillable growlers "to go." Definitely worth a return visit.

• Considered FedExing yappy mop-dog next door to these folks. If they like dogs so much, let them listen to six hours of barking late on a Friday night.

• Went to the grocery store. On a Saturday afternoon. On Valentine's day. When they think perhaps there could be a bit of snow. When the cash registers are flaking out. Bad idea.

• Ran to CompUSA to buy RJ-45 heads after the local Radio Shack proved deficient. Ended up also buying a 160 GB drive ($75ish after rebate) and an external firewire enclosure.

• Using said parts, got my new ReplayTV up and running on my home network. This involved some amount of mucking about in the dirt pit under the house to get a network cable over to the living room. But now that the thing is working, I'm totally loving it. I can program it to record shows, then pull them over to my PC for archiving or viewing using DVarchive and VideoLan. Now I'm debating if I want to void the warranty by trying to install a bigger internal hard drive.

  I've already used it to catch part of a nifty PBS documentary that I otherwise would have missed entirely. (It's now set to snap up the second half next week.)

• Did laundry. Didn't fold it. Cat slept on it. Of course.

• Excavated my computer table. Paid lots of bills, did my taxes, and went through tons of mail that built up while I was in DC. Filed all sorts of stuff. (Stayed motivated by streaming the Simpsons to my PC.)

• Made ham and bean soup. The HoneyBaked people will sell you the ham/hambone, beans, and a bunch of spices for around $5 if you catch them when they're having a 2-for-1 deal. Add in some celery, onions, canned tomatoes, garlic, and more spices, and you get tons of great soup for relatively little dough.

  In the process, I tried out my Christmas food processor. I wanted my onions diced, but I ended up with something more along the lines of julienned. The soup didn't seem to care, and I saved some to put on sandwiches later in the week. But I think perhaps I am in need of remedial Cuisinart training.

• Talked to my brother, whose job search doesn't seem to be going real well. Anyone need a mechanical engineer?

• Did some schoolwork, but didn't do the staff evaluations I told my boss I'd try to finish over the weekend. (gak.) Oh, well... Guess I'll scramble on that tomorrow.