Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Empty stores and overflowing boxes

OK, a few years ago I was driving around town and a new furniture place was opening up and I said to myself, said I, “Self! How the heck many furniture stores do we NEED around here?!”

There were five that I was aware of, plus about three that I vaguely remembered but never drove past.

Today, I loaded up Captain Adventure to go in search of {dramatic music} furniture.

There are now two (2) games in town.

And one is going out of business, liquidating inventory and calling it quits, after fourteen years in that (gosh-awful) location, and they have precisely nothing left I would be interested in.

Even though the manager of that store had told me all about how they had hoped, given that stores 1, 2, 3…7 had all folded, that their business would pick up due to the utter lack of competition, well, it hadn’t…there then followed a highly amusing little drive around town while Captain Adventure pounded back a chocolate milk and Snickerdoodle, and I sucked down a peppermint mocha while muttering, “Wait, wasn’t there a furniture store in here? I’d swear there was…didn’t we get a dresser there once?”

Gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Whoa.

The surviving store, alas, specializes in modern-transitional…we’re going for more of a traditional thing (delusions of English manor house abound), and while I found their stuff interesting, amusing, kewl and otherwise groovy…I don’t actually want it.

**sigh**

I’m going to have to make a pilgrimage to Modesto.

To shop for furniture.

In other news, I asked my husband if he had found the camera yet. When he got done laughing, he said, “I can’t believe you’re even asking me about that!”

You see the kind of support I get around here?! He obviously does not understand that taking pictures of this is critical for the health and well-being of my blog. Also I need to take pictures of the shawl, which is behaving itself nicely and knitting rather quickly (although it is one of those deceitful little beggars, which starts with a bland, “Cast on 74 stitches…” and ends up at 11,072,761 stitches which you are then commanded to “bind off loosely”, as if having just knit a final row of 11,072,761 stitches you are going to have any possibility of binding off in any fashion not involving wild-eyed desperation and extreme tightness).

But I digress.

Upshot being, I still owe you pictures. And somewhere in all this, is a camera.

Somewhere.

I’m dying to show you. But first, I have to get off my butt, get through the boxes, and find the danged camera.

Right. I think we all know what I need to do.

To the liquor cabinet! To the boxes!! HO!!!!

4 comments:

buffi said...

You know Big Lots sells furniture. And it comes in sets! I can't guarantee that it will still be around this time next year, but it's there. And it's cheap! And by cheap, I mean it costs very little and you get what you pay for.

Enjoy your pie/squash. And perhaps a mai tai.

Science PhD Mom said...

Mmmmmmmm...mai tai...

Hmmm? Oh yes, your blog! Yes! Yay for new furniture! Good luck finding it...perhaps Levitz? They have a good selection of "traditional" furniture...the Broyhill stuff is nice, not that I own any. No, we are still firmly entrenched in the hand-me-down and coffee-table-remade-into-ottoman phase. I imagine we will reach the "new matching set" level in about, oh, twenty seven years, give or take. Enjoy it for me, will ya? :)

Anonymous said...

Gads, I hate furniture shopping. The idea is fun but the reality is oh-so-stressful. Try IKEA, maybe? At least for the bedroom chair - I have two of the "Poang" chairs and I love them for reading, knitting, etc. Just a thought! And hey, nothing wrong with enjoying your new storage solutions. You earned it!

Yarnhog said...

Just another sign of the times, I guess. Foreclosures are up 30% over last quarter (over 690,000 foreclosures in the U.S. in the last three months!), so what do people need furniture for?

Boy, that was more of a downer than I meant it to be. I've got to stop watching the news and start watching more uplifting shows. Like CSI.