My neighbor, while showing me how to fly the drone I was borrowing from him, asked me casually, “Would you like the old plasma TV I’m Freecycling?”

Curious, I followed him out to the curb of his house, where a 42 inch Panasonic plasma sat waiting for someone to pick it up. He told me the HDMI wasn’t working but that the component inputs were all functional, so I figured I’d toy with it first and then Freecycle it if I couldn’t get it working. We hauled it back up the driveway and continued the drone lesson. Later, we heaved it into his van so that he could drive it over to the house. It’s just shy of 100 pounds, so it’s almost impossible to carry by oneself. I was leaving for Paraguay the following day, and Jen wanted it out of our hallway, so she and I hauled it upstairs and onto our dresser, where it sat like the Monolith in 2001.

When I got back from the trip, I hooked an HDMI cable up to it and confirmed that it wasn’t sensing input. Then I tried my XBox with component cables, and…there was no input. I haven’t gotten any farther than that, though I need to try a camera with a component cable, or maybe our ancient DVD player which predates HDMI to confirm. But I’m pretty sure it’s a 42″, 100 lb. brick that I need help hauling back down the stairs.

We have found a house in Delaware that will be our vacation hideout for 2017. It’s up the street from 2014’s rental, and this one is actually across the street from the beach, but there’s access within a short walk and the view from the porch looks beautiful. We’re taking two weeks this year to get our full rest on, and we’re sharing the house with friends to offset the cost and make sure Finn has playmates to hit the water with.