This evening I'm going to continue my discussion of furniture and all the effort that goes into making your home look like a pleasant, inviting place. This is not an easy task. A few days ago I talked about the rigors of "rugging." Tonight I'm going to explore the concept of "desking."
As most of you know, I have been "between jobs" now for almost five months. Most of that time I have spent goofing off and enjoying myself, but recently I decided it was time to get serious about finding a new gig that will pay enough to allow us to continue to live in the style in which we have become accustomed over the last 30 years or so. Part of any good job search involves making appointments and keeping good records of the people you bother, so that you won't bother them any more often than is necessary. To keep good records one needs a good desk. At our house we have one good desk. This is the desk upon which the computer, printer, etc. reside. Between Vicki and me this single desk sometimes gets a little crowded. As a result of this situation we decided that another desk would be a good idea. So, we went desk shopping.
After several weeks of looking around we were able to find only one desk that met the space restrictions in our master bedroom. This desk was located at Star Furniture, and of course was wildly over-priced. However, based on the fact that it was our only option we were more of less forced to take it. Vicki found a $100 off coupon and we opted to pick up the desk ourselves rather than have it delivered, which saved us another $100. Can you believe that they charge $100 to deliver an item that they've already marked up about 500% (don't get me started)? We showed up bright and early on Friday morning at the Star Furniture warehouse/showroom at the Park Ten exit of the Katy Freeway. We checked in, and although they knew we were coming, we waited about a half-hour before they brought out the desk, which as we expected was in a box (some assembly required). I asked the warehouse guy if he'd open up the box so we could check for any damage. His reply was, "Just take it home and if you find anything wrong with it you can bring it back." I had two problems with his plan. Number one, we live about 30 miles from the warehouse, so a return trip to bring back damaged furniture would be a slight inconvenience. Number two, there was a big sign on the loading dock wall that said something like "All customers must inspect merchandise for damage before loading. Damaged items may not be returned." Based on these facts I requested the warehouse guy to open up the box. When he opened it we discovered that, lo and behold, the corner of the desk was broken. No problem, I said, because our salesperson back in the Greatwood Star store had mentioned that there were seven desks in stock. Just bring out another desk. Desk number two arrived at the dock, and guess what? It too had a broken corner. Desk number three was summoned, which unbelievably was also damaged. At his point I said something brilliant, like "Three down, four to go." To which the warehouse guy said "We don't have time to check all seven of these. We'll just have our 'furniture technician' fix the damage." To which I said "Hey, no problem. We don't mind overpaying for a new desk and then taking one that's damaged." Note: I was being facetious. We finally talked to the warehouse supervisor who promised us free delivery of a brand new, undamaged desk on Wednesday. Hopefully they won't try to pull a fast one on us with damaged goods that the furniture technician has fixed up.
My latest home project is converting the blue four-drawer dresser in the laundry room into a distressed black dresser for the living room. Along the way I'll strip and refinish the top of the dresser and convert it from a blond finish to a darker finish. I'm now on day two of this project, and it looks like it will end up being a little more difficult and more time-consuming than I anticipated (now there's a real surprise).
I spent most of the day of Thursday up at the church building working on the set for the Joseph show. You need to buy a ticket for the show just to see this thing. It's basically two sets of semi-spiral staircases connected by a catwalk that hangs ten feet above the stage. Because at times during the show there will be up to twelve people standing (and dancing) on it, it has been over-engineered like you wouldn't believe. There's enough wood in this thing to rebuild Surfside after Hurricane Ike. It weighs about a ton and will require most of the congregation to move it onto the stage.
This evening we went over to the Wattersons for food, fun and games. The games included a Seinfeld trivia game. If you ever play this game make sure to go with the "easy questions" instead of the "difficult questions", otherwise you'll be playing it the for the rest of your life. I noticed that the majority of the difficult questions asked for the name of one of Jerry's girlfriends, of which there were were about 150 over the show's nine year run. The easy questions are more typically about things that happened on the show, like "Why did Elaine throw Jerry's $20 bill out the window of his apartment?" and "Who invented Festivus?"
My last item for this evening is yet another movie review. Tonight's movie is All About Steve, starring Sandra Bullock and some guy I've never heard. This movie was mildly entertaining, with a few fairly funny spots. I can't comment on the entire movie because I had two complete zone-outs (that I'm aware of) where my mind was so totally divorced from my body that I totally missed at least twenty minutes of the show. As with a lot of movies I've seen lately, this would have made a good made for TV movie (do they still make made for TV movies?), but it was definitely not worth the price of admission, even if it was a matinee. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that ever since Sandra got her facial features rearranged to make her look like a guppy her movies have been going downhill. The next time you want to see a Sandra Bullock movie do yourself a favor and rent Hope Floats or Speed.
Tomorrow is Labor Day, which will be the third holiday that I've observed since my untimely demise from Transocean. As I've mentioned before, a three-day weekend loses most of its impact when every weekend is a three-day weekend. I'm hoping that by Thanksgiving holidays will again hold some allure.
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