• Bookshelves: buying vs building?

    We concluded last week with a stop at a furniture store, to browse through all of the furniture we couldn’t afford. We began this week with a furniture purchase. This week’s aguish is brought to you by Barewood Outlet. Why pay less for a finished bookshelf when you could pay more for the hassle of finishing the bookshelf yourself? This was the question we asked ourselves this week, and we failed the test. To be fair on ourselves, the bookshelf we bought at Barewood was bigger than the one we saw for less at Haverty’s, so we weren’t comparing oranges and oranges. What we got was another kind of citrus – think tart. Throw in a case of Polyurethane fume overdose, a family room that still smells four days later, and a clothes dryer that now converts clean smelling, damp clothes into burnt polyurethane finish smelling dry clothes and you’ve got yourself one hell of a weekend. Hell Cheryl, for an encore let’s go set fire to the kitchen table! No, the real encore will be the do-it-yourself Pergo installation next weekend. Look ma, I’m holding my breath.

  • Helping those who want to see the light

    We had an unexpected visitor on Friday, a little boy who lives down the street. Beth was just tickled to have someone over to play at her house again. Later, when the boy’s father came over to pick him up, he was bathed in the glow of our tech savy. Sitting in the corner was our old bondi blue iMac and our new iBook. “Youv’e got to talk to my wife”, the boy’s father exclaimed. Later that week, the boy’s mother (who works with Cheryl), began a conversation with the words, “after spending time with YOUR HUSBAND….” I knew instantly what was comming next. The boy’s newly emboldened father gave his family the gift of tech enlightenment, a trip to the Apple store. They didn’t walk out with a new computer, but I feel some sense of accomplishment. The war is not over, but a small battle has been won.

  • Working backlogs @ work.

    Is there anything more fun than accumulating a backlog of work at the office? Sure there is…working through that backlog. That has been my chosen task this week, and it can be a little mind numbing – sort of like a lobotomy without the surgery. On Monday we welcomed a new person to our little family on the third floor, whom I will be training over the next few weeks. It’s hard to get a handle on someone in a few hours, but the initial signs are positive.