my husband the genius

No, I'm not being a smartass. He really is quite smart.

My "baby" sister had her 30th birthday shortly after Christmas. Being as it was so close to the holidays, and as my family doesn't know how to NOT do the holidays to the extreme, there was limited fundage and energy to do anything spectacular for her. Which made me sad. So I called her up to ask her what she really wanted, hoping to help her ring in 30 with style.

She said she didn't want to do anything really. Mom was making some of her favorite foods for dinner, and she wanted to just stay home and hang out with us. "But, can you bring your Wii? We can bowl, and make Dad bowl too, and it will be fun." Okay, easy enough.

So we get to the house, and DH goes to set up the Wii, and realizes he left the sensor bar at home. This is the component that sits on top of the TV and sends out IR signals so the controllers know where they are in space, so you can use them to point at the screen, bowl, golf, fight evil monsters in the land of twilight, etc.

My mom calls Toys-R-Us, but of course they don't even answer the phone. They try Radio Shack, and they don't have them. Sis is looking sad, but holding tough and saying "It's okay, don't worry about it." I, on the other hand, was about to have him drive back home for the sensor. After all, this was the ONLY thing she wanted to do to celebrate her 30th birthday!

Here's the genius part. DH sits and thinks for a minute, then out of the blue asks Sis if she has three pillar candles. Confused, she says yes and goes to get them. He sets them on top of the TV, hooks up the Wii, turns out the lights, and *bam* - the controllers work!

As it turns out, candles emit IR light. Go figure! So having three candles on the TV worked about as well as having an electronic doohicky with three IR lights in it. We had to play in the dark - as my sister said, "Just like in the olden days!" ;-) And we had to stand a little closer to the TV. But it worked, Sis got her birthday wish, and everyone was happy.

My husband. Freakin' brilliant.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
By the way, this is my 100th post on this blog.