Furniture Store Vultures

Saturday afternoon, The Warden and I went out looking for a dining room table. We hit quite a few different furniture stores, discovered all furniture stores are not created equal, and that some furniture salesmen are much worse than the stereotypical used car salesman.

FURNITURE STORES WITH UNACCEPTABLY PUSHY SALESMEN:
The Room Store
Rooms to Go
Lacks

FURNITURE STORES WITH NO PUSHY SALESMEN:
Bassett Home Furnishings
Star Furniture
Dillards
Copenhagen Imports

We walked into one of the pushyfuckingsalesman stores and gave them the usual, “We’re just going to look around. We’ll come and find you if we need anything” when rushed. The salesman responded by saying, “Are you aware of our pricing? Let me tell you how it works.” The Warden gave a very short, “Okay, make it quick,” folded her arms, and waited like a mother waits for a kid to get done spewing a pack of lies about doing something they ought not to have done. The salesman started to give us his pitch, apparently thought better of it, pouted, and decided to let us make our rounds. We spent a total of about 10 minutes looking at their doo-doo before leaving.

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Sunday was a nice Fathers Day. So nice, in fact, that I thought about taking Monday off in celebration of such a wonderfully lazy day. Sunday afternoon we went and looked at some more dining room tables (Huh? I thought this was Fathers Day!) and then the familia took me to lunch at a Mongolian barbecue joint. Excellent food. The last time I'd been to one of thse places was back in 1989 in Austin.

My gift? A new car stereo and speakers. The stereo is nice. It handles CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs. It plays MP3s and WMA (Windows Media Audio), and is IPod/Satellite ready. I'm taking Friday off to have it installed. It sounds great in the store. The salesman assured me it would sound equally good in the car.

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Memory Du Jour:
6:00 a.m., Monday, June 20th, 2006, here at home
The Girl’s alarm went off at 6:00am (she’s going to a month-long academic program). As I usually do, I walked down the hall and to her door.
“Mornin’ little mama.”
“Hi Dad.”
“Have a good day today.”
“I will.”
“See you this afternoon.”
“Okay.”

Then I blew her a kiss and walked back down the hall to the living room on my way to the garage and the carriage that would cart me to work.

I stopped in the living room to turn off the TV. When I turned around to click, The Girl was there. She’d been following me silently down the hall. She reached out her arms to me. We embraced: “I love you Dad.” “I love you too girl.” And I kissed her on the forehead with tears welling up in my eyes.

Graphic of the Day:



















Quote of the Day:
"Finally, the desk, where we'll have our picture taken in front of—is nine other Presidents used it. This was given to us by Queen Victoria in the 1870s, I think it was. President Roosevelt put the door in so people would not know he was in a wheelchair. John Kennedy put his head out the door." — George W. Bush, Showing German newspaper reporter Kai Diekmann the Oval Office, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006

Cj Note: I want some of what he’s smoking!