How to travel with big furniture and tiny cars

Today on the freeway I passed a mustang convertible, top down, with about 6 patio chairs crammed in the backseat at odd angles. The driver who, for some reason in all his 50+ years of living did not have a better solution, must’ve figured that his wife holding on to the legs of one of the chairs counted adequately in place of a tie-down strap.

I will say that one thing I’ve taken for granted since meeting Chris is the convenience of a pickup truck. Between him and his friends, there is always someone with some way to move lots of stuff from point A to point B.

Back in my single days, this wasn’t always the case. I did have a hatchback car which I took full advantage of, but a hatchback car is still a car, and therefore has its limitations. Like the time I decided I needed a new TV.

I had just graduated college, packed up all my things, and moved to Los Angeles. No job, no prospects for a job, no plan, and only a tiny savings to keep me fed, clothed, and housed until I found employment. Because the old TV was one of the sacrifices I made in the move, I decided a new TV was in order.

I found one at Wal-Mart for about $300. Keep in mind, this was before the flat-screen era, so this baby was 42” of cathode ray tube-style fun:

(This is not the actual TV)

Seeing as how I had just moved, I had no friends or contacts in the city. I happily let the nice Wal-mart salespeople load up the TV on to my cart, paid for my purchase (hello credit card), and sauntered out to my Mitsubishi Eclipse GS and popped open the hatchback. I realized at once I had a problem:

I couldn’t lift the TV out of the cart to place it in my vehicle. 

I managed to overcome this problem by standing there for a bit, looking sad and lost and confused, until finally one of the skinny teenaged boys that are forever running around collecting the shopping carts came over and the two of us heaved it into the back of my car. I realized that I now had another problem:

The TV was so big that I couldn’t shut my hatchback closed. 

The pimply-faced teenager was looking around, like some bungee cords were going to magically appear. They didn’t. I took pity on him and explained that I wasn’t going very far, so “I would just drive slow” and the kid left to go corral more shopping carts. I managed to sort of keep the hatchback closed by tying it down with a contraption made of elastic hair bands and a plastic shopping bag. I figured it would do for the 8 or so blocks that I had to travel.

I made it to my new apartment without incident, but was again faced with another problem:

How to get the TV out of my car and into my apartment.  By myself, now.

I couldn’t carry it – it was far too heavy. Thankfully I was on the ground floor, so I didn't have to manage any stairs, I just had to navigate from my parking space in the back of the building around to the front door.  In the back alley, there was still a stack of empty boxes that I had recently set out there after unpacking my things. I grabbed a box, broke it down to a flat piece of cardboard, and set it behind my car. I very carefully (re: a lot of grunting and heaving) rolled the TV out of the back of my car and on to the cardboard. Somehow managing not to have it come crashing down on to the pavement.  The cardboard then became a “sled” upon which I dragged the TV all the way around the building and into the front door of my apartment.

It was a successful move. Idiotic, but successful.

Although I must say that story pales in comparison to the time we moved a whole bed – mattress, boxspring and all – using only my friend’s Honda Civic and some ingenuity. But we’ll save that story for another day.

Incidentally, here is a photo of the actual TV, in that very apartment.  We won't comment on the VCR or cassette-tape player stereo system or the Nintendo DS, all of which were already on the verge of being outdated when the photo was taken.

Nor will we make mention of the fact that I owned an actual candelabra and a cat-shaped fan-pull.  The beer mirror that I picked up on a sidewalk sale in downtown Seattle should at least earn me back some coolness points.

Valentine’s Day, PART 2

The one that all the food servers will appreciate.

Part 3 of this story, “Dinner and an improv show,” is really the best part.  I will give you a little bit of foreshadowing when I say that our dinner cruise involved unlimited champagne and some people have no self-censorship when it comes to free booze.

So based on some free-champagne antics of our dining neighbors, one of the waitresses told us this story.

“You know, people do crazy things.  This one time I had a couple, and I kept noticing throughout the night that their wine glasses were always full.  I thought, ‘that’s a little weird, but they must be getting their drinks at the bar.’  However, every single time I approached their table, the glasses were full.  And I saw them drinking out of them.

Well, finally I noticed that they had brought in several bottles of wine and hidden them under the table.  They were pouring themselves wine from under the table when they didn’t think I was looking.

So, I decided to play a little trick on them.

I went and found the biggest, meanest-looking bouncer that we had (he’s actually a big sweetheart).  And I had him approach their table and tell them that we caught them on security camera (we don’t have cameras).  And he told them that if they didn’t pay the corkage fee, we would call the coast guard and have them arrested.  A group of us were hiding in the kitchen and watching this exchange through the window.  You should’ve seen their faces.  It was fantastic.

And they paid the corkage fee.

Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, and the Mayor

A few weekends ago, The Husband and I went to an outdoor country music festival known as “Country Thunder” located in the nearby town of Florence, AZ. The headliners for the night were Willie Nelson and Kid Rock. We did the usual giant-outdoor-music-festival activities, which included:

• Browsing the sales booths with the trashy t-shirts
• Spending 20 minutes trying to guess how many food/drinks you will eat/drink so you don’t have leftover food and beverage “tickets” and yet you don’t have to stand in line again
• Spending an insane amount of money on “tickets” for food and beverages
• Playing the beanbag toss and winning a free radio station t-shirt (if you’re me)
• Playing the beanbag toss and not winning (if you’re the husband)
• Getting your picture taken by one of the program sponsors
• Stuffing your face with food and drinks so that you don’t waste any of those no-cash-value tickets
• People-watching
• Oh, yeah, and maybe also listening to some country music artists singing

At the end of the night, as we were leaving the Kid Rock concert, we left the gate behind a sweet older lady who looked like she should be baking cookies or knitting, not attending a Kid Rock concert until 11pm on a Saturday.

“Hey, look at that kick-ass grandma in front of us!” one of my friends said. “That’s so cool she went to Kid Rock. I’ve got to get my picture with her!”

“Excuse me,” we said, “would you mind taking a picture with us?”

“Oh hello,” she said, smiling, “I’m the Mayor of Florence!”

So it turns out we got our photo taken with the Mayor.

But no story is complete without some pictures. I mentioned earlier that the group of us got our photo taken by one of the program sponsors, Cricket Wireless. While I was online searching for my picture, I browsed through some of the other yahoos that had their picture taken. I’ve picked some of the winners and posted them here. Enjoy.


Um, NO. No, thanks.



Three guesses (and the first two don’t count) on which headliner this guy came to see.




Hey look! It’s Kid Rock and Pam Anderson… oh, wait, nevermind.



Excuse me, sir? I believe you may be accidentally wearing your girlfriend’s cast.



Only slightly more fantastic than if he had been wearing one of those t-shirt tuxedos.



These fine ladies are demonstrating the versitilty of the Jack Daniel’s bandana. Now they just need one more lady in need of a miniskirt, and they’d have a complete set.



Their parents don’t let them out of the house much.

So if she’s a “playboy bunny” then he’s a… what is that thing… an armadillo?

I really have no explanation for this one.

This lady’s outfit just screams “class.” Or, something like that.

The $500 Chair

A little story of two companies, one chair, and a clerical error…

The company that I work for has a lot of temporary project sites, for which we establish mobile offices. We often furnish our mobile offices with rented furniture.

This past month, we closed up one of our mobile offices, and called the furniture rental company to come pick up their desks and chairs.  Well, when they came to pick up the rented chairs, they had a surprise in store: an extra chair.  A few days later my boss received the following message:

"During our scheduled pickup, we retreived 5 chairs from your location.  Since our records had only indicated that your company was renting 4 chairs, we have submitted the following invoice for the rental fees for the 5th chair, dating back to the start of the rental contract...."

The rental fee, back-dated two years, came out to slightly more than $500.  Now, let's just take a moment to reflect on this:

a) we weren't actively trying to cheat the system.  It's a big enough company we honestly didn't realize they should have been billing us for 5 chairs.

b) had we not done the right thing by returning the chair and, instead, just kept it -- not only would they not have been able to try and bill us for the rental but they would have been out a chair, too.

c) we rented a lot of stuff.  In the grand scheme of things, they shouldn't jeopardize their business reputation and the loss of a client over one chair.

d) that chair is not worth anywhere near $500.  At this point we've more than bought the darn thing.  Twice.

With these things in mind, my boss responded in kind:

"Although we regret that a clerical error on your part has resulted in the loss of rental income for this one chair, we feel that the good faith effort of returning your chair should suffice as payment in full."

There was a bit of haggling back and forth after this.  They countered and said, "How about half the cost of the back rental fees?" To which we responded, "No thanks.  You can still have your chair back though."  This went on for a few emails and phone calls until finally, they said, "Okay, when can we pick up the chair?"

At this point, you would think that's the end of the story.  Oh, no, it couldn't be that simple.  Because as it turns out, when the rental company came to pick up the extra chair (which we have now dubbed, "the five-hundred dollar chair") they couldn't find it.  We had set it aside so it wouldn't be mixed in with the regular office furniture, and when a different moving company came to pick up our mobile office they took everything - including the five-hundred dollar chair which had been carefully positioned inside that office.

After many phone calls and much disbelief on the part of the mobile office movers ("We always make sure the offices are empty before we move them") we managed to retreive the chair.  Only now we have to figure out how to deliver it to the rental company, becuase they won't come out again to pick it up.  (Of course, they won't just let us keep it, either).  So it sits in our main office, hanging out with a sign on it that essentially reads, "DO NOT SIT on the $500 chair."

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

I thought we were having an earthquake today. I was sitting at the stoplight waiting for the green, when I heard a loud rumbling noise and the air freshener hanging from my rearview mirror started to sway.

It was not an earthquake.

It was a young-ish "gentleman" driving something resembling a 1987 Cadillac with ridiculously large rims, the windows rolled down and – apparently – a stereo system juiced enough to make the dash on my half-ton pickup rattle.

I’d bet $20 bucks it has hydraulics, too.