We can haz new TV

We had been considering getting a new TV set, since the old one would occasionally show stripes.

We had been looking at a couple of sets on Amazon.com, when we saw that Aldi had a 22-inch LCD TV on offer this week, so we decided to wait for that instead.

And the offer came just in time, because around last Wednesday, the set started failing even more, and would only display primary colours (red, green, blue), and was pretty dark all around. Looked kind of odd.

Stella didn't mind since she often crocheted while watching television so she listened more than she watched anyway, and Amy was fine, too.

This morning, I set off to Aldi. I thought I needn't get there too early because they should have enough, but I was there about ten minutes before opening and was the third in the queue... probably just as well, because by the time I got to the back of the shop where the TV sets were, I got the third box. I put it into my shopping trolley and had a brief look at it, saw a couple of dents in the box, and wanted to exchange it, but just then somebody took the last one there. There were probably about six or seven there originally and they were all gone within the first two minutes of the place's being open.

Ah well. I brought it back home, took Amy, and we set off for kindergarten. Meanwhile, Stella set up the TV set, and when I called her for something unrelated she said that it seemed to work all right. (Even had a built-in DVB-T tuner, so we can get rid of the set-top box we had bought for that purpose. Still need the indoor aerial, though, since we haven't fixed the rooftop one yet.) Now she wants to check the DVD-playing capabilities (it has a built-in player).

The things you learn: alveolar

So, apparently I've been pronouncing "alveolar" wrong all my life. Which is not so useful if you're talking about phonetics, since it's a fairly common word in that context.

I've been pronouncing it "al-vee-OH-ler" (just as I pronounce the alveoli in your longs "al-vee-OH-lie"), but apparently it's "al-VEE-a-ler, al-VEE-a-lie". Whodathunkit.

I was enlightened after reading the comments on this blog entry of John Wells's, especially those of Amy Stoller and Sili.

(And slightly relatedly, I keep having to remind myself that "rhotic" is not "rot-ic" but "rho-tic".)