When my family was visiting back around Christmas, I whined a bit about the previous year’s gift of a full set of large, heavy dishes to replace the lightweight, indestructible Corelle Ware that I was quite fond of. Not just because I didn’t need more dishes, but because I was already low on storage, and my brother had finally sent me my grandfather’s full set of monogrammed bar glassware. I said “what I really need is a good sideboard”, and twenty minutes later Mom called me over to show off several options she’d found on Wayfair.

The Parisot Ethan 6-footer was the one that fit best into the style and color of the rest of my kitchen, and they said it would be in stock on January 9th. So I figured that a few weeks into the new year, I’d have a place for my stuff.

Then the in-stock date got pushed back a few weeks. Then a few more. Then a few more. Finally, at 11:40am on April 1st, I received an in-stock email from Wayfair. At 7pm, I noticed the notice, placed the order, and was told it would ship on the 5th and arrive on the 12th. On the 5th, the ship date was revised to 5/16. On 5/17, the ship date was revised to 5/31. Mind you, I was billed on 4/1.

On the morning of 6/6, FedEx rang the bell and dropped off two large boxes containing a flat-packed sideboard and a small assembly pamphlet. (fortunately, Wayfair had a PDF of the assembly doc online, so the extent of the work required was not a surprise)

The “open first” box contained the instructions and a bag of parts. After carefully sorting and counting, I confirmed that they’d gotten it right:

(not pictured: drawer sliders, glue, and actual furniture components)

I did have to run out for replacement wood glue, though. The bottle I had was really old, and one of the two little tubes they shipped was punctured by a screw. Note to Parisot: next time, put the pointy things and the liquids in different baggies.

They estimate two hours, but I suspect they don’t include unpacking and sorting in that…

[Update: and done! Except for leveling the doors and drawers. And moving the bookshelf full of cookbooks that’s sitting where it needs to go. Etc, etc.]

October 31st, the one day a year that Hello!Project costumes are not scary:

Don’t worry, tomorrow they’ll be back to normal:

Meanwhile, I’ve got the promise of a cloudless sky for tonight’s candy-grab, so I stopped at Costco and picked up 75 pounds of supplies. I’m kind of bummed that this year’s non-chocolate assortment has replaced a lot of the standard goodies with things like Haribo, Hot Tamales, and Swedish Fish, though; I blame multiculturalism.

On the bright side, I’ll eat less of it. Or just eat from the chocolates, anyway…

[Update: 65 pounds out the door, last batch of little monsters at just after 9pm. A surprisingly traditional assortment this year, including one group of quite lovely young Japanese girls. In Japan, they’d be old enough for bikini DVDs, but since we have no U-12 idol industry, they went with the more American witch and princess looks.]

A few Iron Men and Captains America, zombies male and female (including an undead prom queen), a pirate girl who could have been quite sexy if she’d been old enough for her taste in clothing, a lovely princess a few years shy of kissing her first frog, a teen witch who bought her stockings and heels at Fredericks of Hollywood and the rest of her costume at Toys R Us, and the usual assortment of ghosts, vampires, dinosaurs, ninjas, bears, cats, hungry teenagers, etc, many of them barely old enough to lisp out a “thank you”. The youngest were invariably accompanied by rather attractive mothers dressed up as Suburban MILFs.

[young teen girls with black-framed glasses in relatively normal clothing was a big thing this year; they looked to be dressed up as something, but beyond “cute nerd girl”, I couldn’t guess]

Since the neighbors at the end of the street started putting on a haunted house a few years ago, I’ve bumped up my candy supply. I give out large handfuls, so I figured 40 pounds wasn’t going to cut it this year, and bought 11 five-plus-pound bags at Costco. I had maybe a bag and a half left at 8:30. If they’d kept coming for another half-hour, I’d have been out.

… but I have uncled. Matthew Marion Greely was born this morning, making my brother Mike and his wife Polina into very happy, very tired, parents.

Welcome to Earth, little guy. You share a birthday with Poul Anderson, Ricardo Montalbán, Joe DiMaggio, Andrew Carnegie, Amy Grant, and the Bush twins, so we expect great things from you.

It’s 10pm on a Friday night. When I open my windows to cool the place down, what do you suppose I hear?

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So I’ve been sick for about two weeks now, with whatever cold/flu/sinus bug is going around, and most likely I’m getting reinfected whenever I feel well enough to get out of the house and go into public. This is in addition to the problem I’ve been dealing with since June, where a combination of sinuses and “silent heartburn” conspired to wreck my voice.

And, of course, getting sick again made that problem even worse, to the point where I was in a conference call early Thursday morning dealing with the fallout from a power outage, and people could barely understand the frog-like sounds that came from my throat.

Off to the ENT again this afternoon. Hopefully he’ll have something better than “try taking Prilosec for three months”, which helped a little, but not enough.

[Update: …and the word for the day is “endoscopic fundoplication”; something to investigate when I get back from my upcoming vacation]

In the mailbox: a hearts-and-flowers promotional mailer from my car dealership, offering a sweetheart savings on… replacing the cabin air filter.

In email: a web-bug-filled promo from Asus that says: “Spread the Love. Give the Eee PC. “

If I open my front door, will I find a door tag from the local pest-control company, telling me that the best way to show my love is to get sprayed?

On Saturday, the city informed me that my street will be “slurry sealed” on Tuesday, blocking all traffic in and out between 7am and 5pm. We’ve also been asked not to water lawns or wash cars that day. I have two predictions.

1. some cars won’t get moved because their owners took Thanksgiving week off and are already out of town.

2. the sealing work will look awful and have to be redone, because if runoff from sprinklers can affect it, the 11 hours of rain that’s currently predicted will really wreck the job.

No doubt this planning was done by the same genius responsible for taking a 40 MPH corner that went around a vacant lot and converting it into a 15 MPH corner that goes around a major shopping center. And the frequent damage to the new guardrail demonstrates that they’re not kidding about the 15 MPH.

I’ll be staying at a motel tonight. The alternative is over-sleeping by ten minutes and being forced to skip class and work from home. Given the logistics of the thing, they’ll start with circles and dead-end streets, so even if they quit early because of rain, they’ll be doing my block first.