Movie Night #3: Technical Difficulties...Please Stand By

The first day of July began cloudy and humid, after a night of storms and heavy rains, but by mid-day it had turned sunny and warm. I had held out hope that the forecast posted earlier in the week would hold up and that we'd all be able to enjoy another movie night tonight. The skies looked clear but it was humid and still warm as heck! By the time all the set-up was completed, I was pretty much sweated through.

The selection for tonight: the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from 1971. It's such a fun film, but of course my brain had completely blocked out that it had singing numbers in it, which I can do without, thank you very much.

We were all settled in, some pre-movie tunes were playing from the iPod, and the crowd on hand patiently waited while I fired up the projector. And we waited. And we waited. And, finally, the "projector bulb" warning light appeared. Uh oh!

Look: I bought that projector back in 2007 and it's been great. I've taken it on the road a few times for conference presentations but it's pretty much just been an outdoor home theatre device otherwise. To me, even though it's not been used for 3000 hours (or whatever the promise is), I'd say nearly a decade of service is a fine testament to it.

And thank goodness the third floor/attic rehab created a great TV-watching area, because the 10 of us trooped right on up there and watched the movie in that cool comfort. And before we got all the way through it, a storm and downpour moved in. So the busted projector did us all a pretty huge favor, really!