For two months at the end of 2003, Jane and I were living in an extended-stay hotel in Monrovia, California (near Pasadena), while we sold our home in Marin County and looked for a new home near Jane's new job at JPL.
The Homestead Studio Suites wasn't a bad place to spend a couple of months. All our "stuff" was in storage. Our two cats adapted fairly well to the small space for a while. And I had packed just a few essentials for enjoying a little home theater: an old Panasonic DVD player, a Denon mini-stereo, and our Optoma presentation projector that we used for astronomy presentations on the road, and an ancient school-style portable screen with decades of wear.
Of course the biggest pain of this set-up was setting it up and tearing it down, but it was absolutely essential to put it all away in the limited space we had. The screen stashed neatly under the bed, the stereo back to its space on the little kitchenette counter, and the rest of the electronics bundled with cables on a closet shelf.
Now I have a theater in progress in our new home living room in Monrovia.
| I used a stack of books to get the speakers up a little. The screen came in handy; there really wasn't wall space to project on. | |
| The projector sat on the bedside table. The viewing position wasn't perfect, but it had its good points. | |
| The cats always enjoyed watching movies with us back home. Movie crashes and explosions never seemed to phase them. Luckily the hotel rooms were very well sound-insulated as well. | |