Let's all take a timeout from today's bimbo eruption, and hop into the Jacuzzi, shall we?

Err, in other words, my latest newsletter for Electronic House magazine is online. It offers some tips on building a high-tech bathroom, using the remodel that my wife and I did on our master bath last year as an example. The editor asked for some photos, and chose to run a shot of the TV I installed above the Jacuzzi. To give you an idea of what the room as a whole looks like, I've uploaded a couple more shots here.

Unfortunately, space requirements caused one of my favorite parts of the newsletter to get jettisoned, something that was based on a Blog post from right around this time last year:

Did you ever read the John Cheever story, The Swimmer, or see the 1968 movie version, which starred a surprisingly buff Burt Lancaster as a middle-aged man reliving his life by swimming from pool to pool on a hot Sunday afternoon in his suburban neighborhood? If you didn't, I'm not surprised, but it's one of those offbeat 1960s films that Bravo reruns from time to time (the other is the Canadian film version of The Fox, with Keir Dullea, minus Gary Lockwood and HAL 9000). [Since this post was written, it's been released on DVD, hence the Amazon link to the right.]

I did my own version of The Swimmer today, and I didn't even get wet. As part of our remodeling project, my wife and I are planning to put in a tub-sized Jacuzzi when we renovate our primary bathroom. Because at 6'2", I'm several inches taller than my wife, and 2/3rds of it are legs, I must have sat in 25 different models in a showroom in Fremont, California today. We think we've found a couple of winners, but we'll need to consult with our plumber.

By the way, is this a great country, or what? Anyone making a middle class income can walk into a warehouse-sized operation filled with a hundred or so Jacuzzis, hot tubs, just plain tubs, and showers, and purchase whichever one strikes his fancy. Try doing that in Iraq, Afghanistan, China, or Cuba.