I thought of calling this entry "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Surround Sound System Again." It all started when we put the addition on our house over ten years ago. We added a living room. I had started hearing about something called "surround sound" and, being interested in movies, thought I should wire the living room in anticipation of installing a surround sound system. So before the wallboard went up I buried thick speaker cable in all the walls so that I could put four surround speakers in the walls. I terminated the wires where I thought the TV would sit and covered up everything.

By the time I got around to buying a large TV and a surround sound system (thanks to a large tax return) I had forgotten where I put the wires -- and the TV ended up on the other side of the room. I buried the wires from the TV and DVD player to the Yamaha receiver in the wall behind the TV, but the speaker wires being nowhere to be found, and the decision made not to go with in-wall speakers, I drilled holes through the floor and ran the wires along the basement ceiling below. Problem solved, albeit inelegantly.

So last week my wife says, "Lets re-arrange the furniture in the living room." I said, "Sure," thinking to myself, "Oh, no, I have to re-wire the basement."

What I hadn't counted on was that I now had a digital cable box in addition to a DVD player (never mind the VCR now collecting dust) and I had forgotten how to re-connect everything once I'd moved it from one corner of the room to the other.

It took me three nights to restring the wire and re-connect everything including all six speakers to my satisfaction.

My wife now says, "I don't like the room arranged like this."