Shots

These shot glasses were a gift, for Christmas, I think, some years ago from friends who now live in Budapest.

It was only last week that they got taken out of their box for the first time. Not only are they rather nice in their own right, but they also have the added attraction of reminding me of my friends in Hungary.

A few shots of these shot glasses were all that made it to the camera today. For starters there was the problem the previous night with the microwave giving up the ghost, and then today my downstairs sound system developed a fault which made it sound really dreadful. Ironically, I was looking forward to the music gang helping me make a decision when they gather here on Saturday. I've been testing my mate Derek's really up-market DAC (digital to analogue converter to the uninitiated) and had been very, very impressed with it. I was hoping for Saturday's gathering to say something without prompting which would help me decided whether to invest in this or not, but hearing how dreadful the sound system was made the whole thing pretty pointless.

And then I had a thought: if the sound system is on the blink, why not do a switch and bring down an alternative from upstairs? That seemed like a good idea to begin with, but putting it into action proved much more complicated and frustrating than I was prepared for. The first amplifier I tried out displayed a disturbing and distracting hum through the speakers (which also had to come downstairs), and it had already taken an inordinately long time to struggle with the heavy-duty speaker cables and get that am set up in the first place. So that had to go back up and my valve amp had to come down in its stead. That sounded okay when I tried it, so, fairly exhausted and frustrated and hungry, I took a break with the living room in a bit of a mess and lots of work still to be done to get things ship-shape for tomorrow's music session.

Phew! It's good to look back at these glasses and calm down again.