Another short night. What am I doing wrong? I really want to sleep...

Hmmm... thoughtus interuptus occurred. It's now 18:33, and it's been a long day, and an expensive one.

Shortly after I got up, about 06:00, and had had several cups of tea, I decided to do some work on the sheetrock. I got the window trim done on one of the three windows before Karen got up, and we talked briefly about how much we were going to get done. She was going to sand, and I was going to mud.

Now I need to back up a little bit. Before xmas, she had mentioned that she wanted to get me a nice chair for the computer room. I told her that we would wait until after xmas. Ever since then, I've grown to hate my $10 garage sale chair. It was pretty well worn out when I got it, and that was more than ten years ago.

I've spent a lot of hours in that chair. A lot of hours.

And it's never been comfortable.

Well, there were some sales today, as there is every Sunday, and several places had chairs on sale.

So... we decided to go out and spend some money instead of working. Go figger.

And we looked at a number of places, and sat in a lot of chairs. But... although the ones on sale were better than my old chair, they were only slightly better. Now, the ones that cost $350 were very much better... but I wasn't about to spend that much on a chair. $200 was my upper limit.

Discouraged, we went to Sam's Club, I kinda remembered them having some office chairs... and sure enough, they had a high-backed leather executive chair with arms for $92. I figgered that it'd be more uncomfortable than the $125 ones that were on sale at other places... but it wasn't. It wasn't as comfortable as the $350 ones, but it was as comfortable as the $200 ones. So we got it.

Well, while we were there, and going to have to write a check anyway, we thought that we'd pick up some other stuff.

Well, again, I'm going to have to back up a little. On December 19th, I mentioned that Karen had seen some overpriced bar stools. Pier One also had a matching baker's rack that Karen loved. The bar stools were $125 each, and the rack was $325 or so.

During our travels, we stopped by Pier One, just to see if the stuff was on sale. It wasn't, and we continued on our mission.

O'yeah, it was very cold today, and the north wind was fierce. Wind chill way below zero.

OK, back to today. We were tooling around Sams, and came upon a baker's rack, antiqued wrought iron with beautiful cherry wood shelves. It was $200, and I really liked it too.

So... to make a long story short, we bought it. But we had some trouble locating one that was boxed up, so Karen and I split up to look for some help.

And I just so happened to run into an old friend, a girl that used to work with me. She gave me a big hug and we chatted for a minute and I met her new family... she recently re-married... and she hugged me goodby.

Well, of course that's a turkey on my head!

And Karen, of course, witnessed the hugs from a coupla aisles away, or at least the last one. And I forgot to mention that this girl is very pretty...

Karen has got to be the most understanding woman I know. And I know a lot of women...

We got the stuff loaded up in the wagon, had to leave the rear door open and tie it with some twine, the rack came in a box four foot wide and seven foot long. And it's a heavy son-of-a-bitch, too. We got home and I put together the chair, and it's just about perfect. I shoulda never sat in that $350 chair, though.

I had in the back of my mind that I would go out tomorrow and get those damned bar stools, in spite of the fact that I didn't like them really all that much and that they were way overpriced. But Karen was looking so wistful as I was putting the rack together that I told her to go on out and get them. Surprised the hell out of her, I did.

So now she's perfectly happy, or as happy as one can be with purchased goods.

And our kitchen is getting less and less room in it.

The list of things that I wanted to get done and didn't is much longer than the list of the things that I actually did today. Luckily, I don't pay no nevermind to lists...

I kinda miss having a counter on this page, kinda like having an itch on a severed limb... a phantom itch... impossible to scratch. But I'll get over it. I do have access to the server logs, and I'm finding out some interesting things... someone has been reading my poetry and some of my essays and other stuff. Which is really weird, 'cause nobody ever goes there. Maybe making it easier to get there through the mainmenu has opened up some new avenues for my regular readers...

Anyway, it's been a long day, and I'm gonna relax some and probably hit the sack early, since I seem to get up so damned early every day. Maybe I can get in eight hours one of these days...

More tomorrow...