The Silence Of The Cabinets

The new kitchen cabinets arrived exactly a week ago. In that time, they have taken up a lot of space in my living room and done nothing for the storage/organizational potential of my kitchen. Although Lowe’s promised a ‘cradle-to-grave’ sort of project management, I have had to chase them around at each stage and make literally dozens of phone calls each week. No one ever calls you back and when you call them, you can expect to be on-hold for hours. Courtesy is not the hallmark of the construction industry and its associated building services.

One cabinet was built incorrectly and somehow got past Quality Control. Another cabinet and a piece of toekick molding did not show up at all. I now have to wait another week for those to show up before they will even schedule my install. Want to re-do a home? Here is my advice. Save yourself a lot of trouble and worry — Never renovate anything! Just buy something functional that you can afford. Otherwise you may wind up with more problems than you’ve got time to solve.

Lonely Appliances

The folks at Lowe’s said I had to have all the appliances on-site so that the cabinet installers could make sure things fit properly. For the past few weeks, I’ve had these sad, lonely appliances sitting around going unused. A gas range that can’t cook. A dishwasher that can’t clean. A sink that doesn’t exist. And a refrigerator that can’t produce filtered water & ice (because it needs the sink installed first).

Kitchen Cabinet Sonata No. 1

I am walking on Cloud 9 today because I finally got to order my new kitchen cabinets and countertops!! And it only took two weeks of going to Lowe’s every day for hours at a time to get this done!! When I walked out of the store after having put in my final orders for everything, I was radiant with joy. Then I got in the car and my iPod was playing one of the pieces from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. So there I was driving home, beaming and bouncing my head from side-to-side as if I were directing the orchestra with my head movements. It was rad!

A functional kitchen here someday will be!

Last Chance For This Year

So, this is the last opportunity to say something for the year 2006. Last chance to lament, skewer or trivialize. Last moment to praise, investigate or champion. One last second to brag, complain or spew.

Ha ha ha, grasshoppa. No time for any of those things because the moment is too late. The new year is here and we’ve got things to do. Get off the internet and do it!!

Best wishes to you and yours in the coming year!

June! Sunburn!! Birkenstock Shoes!!!

June is here and so is the warm weather. Most people I’m bumping into are complaining that it is “too hot.” I don’t know what the hell is wrong with these people, but it is definitely not hot yet. Wait ’til August and then tell me about hot.

Regardless, it has been really beautiful around the Triad lately. In less than an hour of sunning (without SPF – duh) I was able to turn myself into a giant lobster today. It just felt too good to soak up some rays for a while to have to think about getting out of the sun’s harmful way. And sun tan lotion is frickin’ gross, okay? So basically I won’t be able to go in the sun for the rest of the week.

Let me share some advice if you are in the market for any shoes from Birkenstock — Order one European size larger than you normally would.

For example, if you are normally wear Euro size 42 in a Birkenstock sandal, then you would want to order this pair of red brown Winslow walking shoes in Euro size 43. And when I say “Birkenstock shoes” I am not exclusively talking about their full shoe models. The issue seems to be more all-encompassing than that. In fact, this seems to effect all Birkenstock models with a fully closed toe.

Say you wanted to get this beige Oklahoma fur-lined clog and you were naturally thinking “I’ll just order a Euro size 46 pair, like I always do.” Sorry, but you would find that the foot-bed is somehow magically shortened by closing the toe and that your feet would not fit comfortably. You will have to pay for shipping to send those bitches back and then order another pair. Trust me. This sort of injustice happens every day.

So what is the moral of this story, kids?   Don’t get sunburn and don’t order your Birki-shoes one size too small by mistake.

Last Call

Well, May is ending and I’ve yet to post a thing. What can I say? I’ve been busy.

So what has been keeping me occupied? I took advantage of my expiring lease to move out to the country. I am taking a computer nerd class at UNC. My friends the Lampshades came to visit for a few days with their month-old baby. My neice graduated high school last weekend, which meant I had to leave my house at 7:00 AM on a Saturday to make it to North Raleigh by 9:00 AM. Wow, dude. I hadn’t been up at that time of the morning in years. It was truly a shock to the system. And then I slept the remainder of the Memorial Day holiday.

I so need to get a body double to sit in for me at work. If I did that then I would have an extra five hours a day to workout and study for my class. Damn, why do dopplegangers have to be so hard to find?

Chances are good that I won’t be posting a lot between now and August. Chances are also good that any posting done between now and then may be in hexadecimal.

Send me something funny. Thanks!

I Wish I Could Call Bill Murray On The Phone

I wish I could call Bill Murray on the phone. I wish I could meet Bill Murray at the local pub and share a few laughs and a few beers. I wish Bill Murray and I were tight like that.

Out of all the people I could dream up to meet and spend some time with, Bill Murray has got to be the one I would select out of that bunch. It is not just because he got to make out with the hottest woman on the planet last year. It is also not just because he has one of the best and most interesting careers in all of Hollywood. And it is not just because he happens to be in most of my favorite films.

No, instead it is simply because I believe he would be a really wonderful person to have for a friend. Mr. Murray seems like a really smart, down-to-Earth and genuinely funny person. He seems like the person I would want to go to for advice or to help me drown my sorrows. He also seems like the kind of guy who could really put things into perspective for you. And that is what I could use a lot more of these days — Bill Murray’s perspective.

After Ghostbuster’s, it looked like his career was taking a downturn while all the other actors of his era were hitting astronomical heights. Dan Akroyd and others chose the route of glitzy, crowd-pleasing Big Hollywood garbage while Bill seemed to be stalled on the on-ramp to greater success. Bill Murray took some time off from “the scene” to make one of my favorite films, the confusing and heart-breaking The Razor’s Edge. No one thought he could smoothly pivot from being the Guffaws Guy to doing “serious acting.”

This was definitely a big risk for his career and the film was not exactly a blockbuster. However, it was one of the first defining moments in the stellar rise of his star status in Glamour Town. He probably had no idea that it would work out so well, but now all those superstar contemporaries can barely get a cameo in the Summer Shlockfest and Bill Murray is now perhaps the most sought after actor of his vintage.

I would really appreciate having access to the wisdom of Bill Murray right now. I have more than a few things I’d like to run by him.

One From The Road

Hello Readers!

I offer blase and ungenuine apologies for my several months absence. There are quite a few posts in the queue, waiting for finalization, but many more pressing and important things absorbed the time needed to complete them. One of those “pressing and important things” was planning a vacation to temporarily escape Winter.

I am currently visiting sunny Melbourne, Australia where Summer has been a tad unpredictable. When I first arrived, it was rather cool for the season, however that didn’t last long. I’m not sure why I’m taking the time to write while on holiday, but presumably it is to give my eyes a break from all the reading I’ve been catching up on. (What grand irony.)

So, here I am — absolutely roasting in a tiny $500,000 house with neither air conditioning (they don’t believe in it here) nor a dishwasher (the same) and wondering (quite pointlessly) how the “average” Australian can afford to live in this city. Dude, I am not employing hyperbole when I state that every-frickin-thing here costs between two and three times what a similar/same item might run in the States. I know, I know — cost does not always equate to much and the All American drive to have cheaper goods and services is destroying the globe at large.

That is all well and good for a nice, academic discussion about Third World labor issues and economies of scale, but it still doesn’t do shit for those earning a basic wage trying to cover simple cost of living expenses. I guess I can ponder the same thing for the States, but at least they’ve got a Wal*Mart on every corner to defray the costs of shampoo and underwear.

Anyway, enough of my cultural comparisons and economic inequality screed. Heh. I can’t even honestly call it a screed, seeing how it was so half-hearted. More of an observation, really. Or perhaps a casual aside. Quite possibly a slight to people who make such issues their life’s work. But at least I’m thinking about it.

Okay, back to my Fall 2005 edition of the Griffith Review — my new favorite publication and truly one of the most well-written and fascinating things I’ve ever picked up in my life. (More on that later). Until then, why don’t you entertain yourself with the photos from my Aussie trip last Fall…

Merry Christmas And All That

Me and Alva Dog are all like “We’re here! We’ve got holiday cheer! Get used to it!!”

So, whatever ceremony you choose to celebrate, “We hope you have a spectacular season!”

Oh, and Happy New Year, too!

Too Much Going On

Rocktober has whisked by and all I’ve got to show for it is a box of junk. Okay, well — several boxes of junk. Seems that I’ve got a bit of the TMGO Syndrome (Too Much Going On) and it ain’t showin’ no signs that its gonna quit.

I’ve got busybody activities booking me up until mid-December and by then it will be the mad dash to prepare for another Christmas holiday. So, altho I’d love to sit around and type up funny stuff for y’all to read, it may be a bit longer before I have the time to spare. I don’t really feel that guilty, however. As I look around the blogosphere I see that a lot of sites are sitting untouched. I wonder if this will be like the neglected real estate market for our times. A bazillion blogs waiting to be updated by people busy with their lives; out there tryin’ to get that paper.

Well, play on players. May the moneyman visit you soon. If you see him, send me some.