No Picture

I think this is a first - a blog post without a picture!

I had a day of running errands today. J was leaving on a trip, my sister is coming into town on a red-eye with a day layover tomorrow, and we are having guests this weekend (yay! T&M!) so all that added up to a day of needing to run errands and get stuff done. Mostly, it's motivation to do some of the stuff we should have done 3 months ago when we moved in; like hang pictures on the wall and clean up the office so people can sleep there.

You may have read about our guitar hanging adventure on J's blog. So, that meant a trip to the hardware store. I hated the hardware store in New York (Tarzian's). It had nothing you needed, was 3 times too expensive, and the people who worked there were as disgruntled as Duane Reade employees. By contrast, the hardware store here is AWESOME (like everything here). The guy who owns it has everything, it's reasonably priced, he knows what he's talking about and the best part is - he never condescends to me! He talks to me like a real person, who has some DIY skills, and is not stupid, helpless, or otherwise incapable of using power tools! That's so awesome. I still haven't managed to hang the damn guitars on the wall though so all those "skilz" remain to be proven.

I also drove around getting estimates on repairing my little wooden desk chair that the movers practically destroyed! I got this chair in 2001 for free, by accident, when I moved into my 2nd Boston apartment and it was the only thing in the house, just sitting there waiting for me. It's not worth anything at all but it has sentimental value. Now it is missing two pieces and has a broken leg. :( I know that woodworking and furniture repair is an awesome talent and, done right, my chair would look awesome and, better yet, be able to hold my weight, but DAMN is it expensive! To fix one little chair! Jeez! So I gotta sleep on this one for a while. With these estimates for a little wooden chair - I am too afraid to find out the cost to reupholster my big comfy chair, ottoman, and the orange sofa.

I also got my car washed! The cool thing about this errand was that the guys working at the car wash were really polite and friendly, seemed to value my business, seemed to enjoy their jobs and on top of all that did a good job. It's crazy the stuff that used to pass for customer service in my life - just crazy! When I lived in NY I had a feeling that not everything in life had to be so damn hard...but you stay there so long you forget that things are like this in the outside world. Simply, friendly, nice, easy.

When J and I were waiting for his cab to arrive to take him to the airport, we waited on the corner for a few minutes (the cab was lost) and some neighbors down the street (people we have never seen before) asked if everything was ok with us, came over to chat for a minute, and offered to let us come in and call another cab if ours didn't show up. It's like the nice version of the Twilight Zone here.