You Drive Me Crazy!

I do believe Mike has found himself a "new" truck! He's been looking at Craigslist for something as close to what he had as he could find. Well, he didn't find a white one, but it's a beautiful blue one. It's a 1995 (his old one was 1993) and it has leather interior. He's SO excited! You can check out the craigslist post until it's gone. He's gonna have Lemon Busters check it out, just to make sure, but he most likely will be having a new truck in a day or two.

And, in other news...  I have been on pager this weekend and it has been a nightmare. I've gotten maybe 6 hours of sleep this entire weekend. At one point on Saturday, I see people logging into IM. I turn around and notice that, yes indeed, the sun had risen long ago. By this morning, I was a sniveling crying ninny. The phone wouldn't stop ringing and I just wanted to sleep and maybe actually eat a meal. Was that really so much to ask? Apparently, cuz it's just been non-friggin-stop. We always have a primary and a secondary pager person, but we had to call in a third cuz it was just getting unmanageable. See, with this type of crap, why can't they just hire an after hours/weekend person. It's insane.

While the storm settles for a bit, I think I might actually go try to take a nap.

Quick Update

I need to collect my thoughts and happenings so that I can post something worthwhile. Just some things that pop into my mind that I will talk about soon are monitor, mouse, new diet, work, and a sci-fi/fantasy/mystery book series. Until then...

The Search For The Perfect Sleeping Surface

Let me first provide a bit of background. I believe it was in late 2004, Michael and I bought a new queen mattress. We were still living in the condo, so had a bit of extra money to get something really snazzy. Up to this point, we'd had some seriously crappy mattresses or hand-me-downs (EW!), so it was kinda exciting. We went to a few stores, and I was trying to stay in the relatively cheap range. I wouldn't even lay on a nice looking one if it was expensive. Why torture myself, I thought. But not Mike, he tries just about everything. Nothing seems to be impressing him, so I don't worry, but I'm still not joining him in the random mattress mayhem. At one point I see him in the seriously expensive portion of the store, and get antsy, but still, let him do his thing. I then hear him say "Whoa" or "Wow" or something indicative of being impressed. He then proceeds to say stuff like "omg, it's so soft, it's so comfy"... etcetc. I still try to ignore him, but he doesn't get up from the bed. He maybe changes his position on the same bed, but he just keeps ooohhhing and aaahhhing over it. He then tells me that I must try it, just lay on it, "real quick". What could it really hurt, right? Well, it definitely didn't hurt. As a matter of fact, it was the softest loveliest feeling thing I'd ever experienced. So, I knew it was gonna be crazy essssspensive, but I still had to look.  MSRP $5000something, store sale price $3000ish. Oh, wow, you're gonna let me save a whole 2K?!?! How kind. Well, we finally get over that, and continue to move onto the more "in our range" types. Well, the salesman must have noticed all of Mike's elated jubilations, cuz he then comes to inform us that they do have a queen of that mattress in their "Clearance Center". I'm new to this world of purchasing sleeping mechanisms, so I ask for more info. This particular retailer has a 90-day comfort guarantee. That means, if you get a mattress home and it's not like you expected -- too firm, too soft, too too -- you can return it within 90-days and exchange it. Well, their clearance center is made up of any of those returned mattresses. There's nothing wrong with them, they aren't dirty or deformed, they've just been rejected like evil red-headed step-children. Mr. Salesman has my interest. What is the price of this rejected beauty? $1100. OMG, I calmly think, there is no way that I am NOT buying this bed. But, Mike does his Mike thing and says we'll keep looking but we'll let him know by the end of that day what we decide and hold it for us until then. We leave, and we actually do go to other places, but I'm so not caring, cuz I've found the best cloud in the world to sleep on. What could possibly even attempt competing? So, a few hours roll by... we eat, we shop, we kill time, and then we return to buy it. It is a Stearns & Foster Silver Dream. It only got better every night we had it. 

 

Fast forward a year-ish... we're in our new house, it goes up in flames, insurance tries to have said mattress cleaned, but it never really works. Nothing is wrong with the mattress, it's just kind of discolored. They pay us for it. Well, since we're gonna get a new bed, I decide I want a king bed. Seems like a good time for it, so why not? We go looking for a new mattress set as well as new furniture. What would be perfect is to find a king version of our Silver Dream with the same type of deal in price. As we go back to the store where we bought it, they inform us that S&F do not make the Silver Dream anymore. It was their best selling mattress ever, and they discontinue it. Cuz, yanno, that makes sense in some corporate marketing yuppy's brain. A couple of the main features of the mattress are that it's outer material is made from alpaca fur, making it ridiculously soft, and there are fine silver threads woven throughout the material. The silver is suppose to allow static electricity to be released from the body, aiding in relaxation while sleeping. Apparently, these particular selling points were the two least important to the consumers. So, they went back and tried to make a similar bed without these features, and IMO, they came up short. So, we didn't find another one, and bought a Sealy Body-Free mattress. In the store, it seemed pretty decent. It was still more expensive than our original Silver Dream, but not as expensive as any of the Stearns & Fosters wannabe Silver Dreams. We also ended up buying our furniture from the mattress shop. Shocker, I know, but this stuff was SO cheap and really great quality. We lucked out with the furniture for sure. However, we were not quite as lucky with the mattress.

Once we got it home, it seemed much firmer than in the store. But, it's a brand new mattress, so we were giving it time to get worn in. Two weeks passes, and we rotate it, and another two weeks goes by and it seems to get worse, not better. We go to the store and tell them that we  are unhappy and we want to try to find another mattress. We're thinking of going up one model from the one we bought. The salesman there tells us to wait another three or so weeks until they have their Labor Day sale so we can still switch it out, but get a bit better price on the difference. We like honest helpful salesmen, so we agree and come back for the sale. When we return we notice that the store has quite a number of empty spots where mattresses used to be. One of which was the model we were contemplating. Come to find out, the entire Sealy Body-Free line is being discontinued. It debuted in May, and is discontinued in August. Maybe we weren't nuts, and there was definitely a reason the mattress sucked. Good thing they had their Comfort Guarantee thing. Yeeeesh. So, we start to try to look for similar mattresses to the Silver Dream that are in their clearance inventory. Lo and behold - AaaahhhhHHHhhhhh (that's the sounds of the heavens opening up and angels singing) - they find a Stearns & Foster King Silver Dream in clearance inventory at a different location. There is an issue though. It has a stain on it. It was previously a display model and got coffee or dirt on it, and could not be completely cleaned. We calmly run over to the other location to check it out to make sure the stain is not too revolting. They pull it out for us, and we lay on it, and we say SOLD! Give it to us. So, I'm currently waiting for delivery of my lovely wonderful most magnificent mattress. I'm beyond excited. So, now I will have the older dirty-looking queen SD in the guest room, i gots some spoiled guests, and a newish-with-a-spot king SD. Gawd help us if we ever need to replace these things. I'm gonna be way too spoiled.

One Last Car Payment?

Well, this short work week started off with a bang, or should I say crash? About 5 minutes after Mike left for work this morning, he called me to tell me he had just run into a tree.  He didn't sound too terribly alarmed, so I was kinda like "huh?". He then said that a car in front of him was spinning out of control, so he slowed down to stay out of it's way. Instead of slowing down, his brakes locked up and since the road was freshly wet, skidded straight into a tree. We only have liability on the truck so it's all on us. Whether it is actually able to be fixed or if it's totaled, nothing is covered. In the future, I will always have collision insurance on a car regardless if we have to or not. It might be cheap without it, but it sure is a pain in the butt when you need it and don't have it. Mike's has a couple pics over at Picasa. It's hard to imagine that he walked away from that without a scratch. He's definitely gonna be sore tomorrow though. We'll find out either later tonight or tomorrow morning if it can be fixed at all, and if so, how much.

Oh, and we only have one more car payment left on the Pathfinder, which is the only one with payments. So, it's always been my experience that crap like this happens just as you're gonna have no car payments. I'm hoping they can just fix it. 

*SIGH* toodles