You'll win at Home Furnishing!

So now that I have acquired my last item of furniture (a mattress for the new futon frame) I have officially won at home furnishing.

I can currently host 9 overnight guests before I need to start having people sleep on the floor, I have seating for 7 in my living room, a TV room with seating for 4 and enough floor pillows to scale that number to 8 (I keep about 20 pillows of various sizes in the TV/Sun room at all times).

I have a dining room table that seats 6 currently, and can scale to 10 if needed. I have 2 porches, one with patio seating for five and another with seating for 9, six around a table. Now I just need to finish unpacking, put things away in the back bedroom, and get cracking on the middle bedroom (the so called Versailles room), and fix my master bedroom sink, of course.

It's been a busy six weeks, but I love my new home a lot.

Hopefully each of you will get the chance to fall in love with it yourselves soon. Keep an eye out for upcoming parties and events (Nightmare Before Christmas Halloween Party 25th of October, Quantum of Solace party the 14th of Nov, Christmas meet-and-greet/housewarming/lessons and carols party the 6th of December).

To add context to the title, you should probably see this youtube video. Powerthirst will change your life forever (400 babies will do that to a person).

Currently listening:
I Saw The Bright Shinies by The Octopus Project

Monday, October 20, 2008

Yard Sale. . . Mexican Standoff?

So I went hunting for furniture today.

I did this by using Google Maps (which is AWESOME, by the way) to create a map of middle Georgia Yard Sale listings and hit up almost a dozen in one morning.

I'm not sure if that was a good choice.

I'll let you see for yourself. On the left is the list of items I went looking for. On the right is the set of items I bought.


  • A patio table
  • Dining room chairs
  • Floor cushions
  • Living room furniture (side tables, chairs, sofa/loveseat/futon)
  • A rattan patio loveseat/chair/footstool set
  • A humidifier
  • A small knife
  • A poker case with chips and cards
  • A Fondue pot¹
  • A glass jar
  • three CDs, including Harry Connick Jr.'s classic "Red Light, Blue Light"
  • A foldable felt poker/blackjack table top.



After this. . . fight to a draw (I guess that's what you'd call it?) I threw up my hands and, already halfway there due to the route I had taken, drove to Forsyth. There I bought.
  • a patio table
  • A desk to serve as console table for my mudroom
  • 12 floor pillows


Total damage for the day: 108.77.

1. Seriously? It was three dollars. I couldn't afford NOT to buy it.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Lessons learned.

I own a house now.

So here are some statements about the joys of homeownership.

1) I own an entire KITCHEN. This is the single most awesome possession I own.

2) I come home to a house that is unquestionably empty. This is amazing and comforting and wonderful.

3) I'm still not unpacked. This is disheartening.

4) One of the 6 hearths in my house doesn't seal correctly, which, if I were a more paranoid person, might lead me to lie awake in bed at night and wait for a brave squirrel to break into my house and jump on my face while I sleep. No, I don't carefully lock myself into my bedroom each night before bed, why do you ask?

5) All expenses are mine to bear alone. I have mixed feelings about this.

6) I have an entire room dedicated to the display, storage, and consumption of liquor. This is wicked awesome.

7) My fridge is bigger than I should ever need, and if I ever fill it while living alone I'm not living right.

8) I need a blender.

9) OMGoodness Toaster Oven! Yay!

10) I made my own screen to put in my bedroom window yesterday. This made me feel handy.

11) My dryer is possessed by a demon.

I do not say this lightly.

For one, whenever I run the first cycle of a laundry day, a noise emanates from it. This noise is difficult to emulate textually but I'll try. "EeeeeEEEEeeeee. . . eeeEEEEeeeEEEEE. . . .eeeEEEEEeeeee. . . " It sounds like a bad low volume recording of half a dozen souls being fed slowly into some sort of ethereal shredder.

Secondly. . . my dryer has a turny-button* labeled "signal". If this button is turned to "signal" it should make a noise when the dryer cycle finishes. This button is mislabeled. Foghorn would be closer to an appropriate except that Foghorns aren't as loud as this fucker. Maybe

ALARM

would work.

Our neighbors know when my laundry is done. And I live alone, so when I say our neighbors, I mean us as a country. MEXICO AND CANADA know when my shirts are dry. If you were outside yesterday and heard something that sounded like a cross between the "wrong!" buzzer from an old Nickelodeon game show and a tornado siren, that was just my dryer.

Seriously, there is ONE ROOM in my entire house from which the noise is only startling as opposed to shit-yourself-then-hide-in-a-closet terrifying, and that's my Sunroom on the complete other end of the house.

12) Lowe's and Home Depot are going to wind up with the deed to my firstborn if I'm not careful.

13) I like being a homeowner.

That is all.

*and as we know. All Turny-buttons lie. Thanks Eddie.

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Monday, October 06, 2008

None of the Above.

I briefly considered sending it to the editor of the local events paper as a submission for an editorial, but I decided against it. Unlike the entire population of Macon however, you, dear reader, will not be spared. -ed

I once saw an old Richard Pryor flick called Brewster's Millions. In it the main character, in a desperate bid to spend 30 million dollars in 30 days (it's complicated) runs a political campaign AGAINST all of the current candidates for Mayor of New York City. He uses a massive advertising budget to encourage write-ins for "None of the Above."

Facing one of the most disappointing elections of my life, I am tempted to do just that.

Over the past 16 years of White House action we've had perjury, extortion, philandering and war mongering. We've had horribly negative smear campaigns, we've had dishonesty and corruption.

In 8 years under Clinton it seemed we had a president more interested in pussy than politics. His most memorable contributions to America seem to be an endorsement for jogging to McDonald's (great message for America's fat-ass youth there Bill!) and encouraging everyone to buy their own home (how'd that work out for us?).

But in 8 years under Bush, things got worse. Our "common man" turned out to have an unfortunate obsession with keeping rich people rich, and in starting un-winnable wars against ideas instead of concrete enemies. A world that once perceived us as philandering and consumer-goods-obsessed now sees us as paranoid, violent, and petulant on the global stage. We've squandered money, destroyed civil liberties, and ignored the coming financial and ecological crisis until everything is stressed to the breaking point.

We had a Senate congratulate themselves on "saving the country from a financial crisis" (by wasting 850 billion of our tax dollars) but they wouldn't even come back from a non-federal holiday to vote on the issue early!

And we're probably going to re-elect some of those fuckers!

But the real crisis of re-election is our current (non)-choice. McCain can't remember how many houses he owns, and the 10% down payment on Obama's current residence is the entire value of my house. Obama thinks trapping children in school desks for an additional month out of the year will help them out, and McCain thinks that he helped save the economy by getting Republicans to pass one of the most frivolous bills in the history of American politics. I've read Obama's book, and I found his statements on the Democratic Convention important and depressing: he feels he's sold us out in order to reach his current level of success. Meanwhile McCain wouldn't recognize a working class stiff like me if I bit him on the leg.

And yet, because we've been trained by mud slinging campaigns over the past 100 years to always vote against the guy we hate and fear, the majority of America is only going to vote for one of these two people, even though we've all learned enough about them to realize that neither of them are ideal candidates for the job!

I say we vote against either of them. Vote for your favorite third pary candidate. Vote for a dead person. Vote for Senator Palpatine [(R) Naboo].

I believe in personal freedom, government accountability, and legalized marijuana. On most years that would mean I'd be voting for the libertarian candidate. But this time around, the Libs have stolent a page from Obama's playbook on choosing a vice president and used it as their guiding light. The recipe is this: Dig up the creepiest Capitol Hill sleazebag you can find and prop him up with a painted-on smile and a promise to help save the country. Seriously, fellas, Bob "lifetime politician and onetime front man for the war on drugs" Barr? I'd rather vote for Timothy Leary--and he's dead! And Crazy!

So good luck making up your minds at the poles this year everybody. The choice between the sellout and the clone is a tough one. I'm probably writing in "None of the Above."

Saturday, October 04, 2008