random thoughts – Day 1,936 – (Saturday) – wonder and bluster

Confusion continues to reign. What day is it? Seriously, what day is this? I’m going to need to start X-ing off days on a wall calendar like a prisoner in a cartoon.

Some packing was done this morning. Artwork came off the walls and was packed into padded silver bags saved from the ice cream and frozen food items delivered during the Pandemic from Whole Foods when deliveries were free for Amazon Prime members. Pack rat tendencies sometimes pay off in surprising ways.

It feels like it’s time to start putting bigger furniture pieces into the cube. Bookcases can be managed solo, so that seems like a good start. It would be great to get as much done as possible before calling in reinforcements for the buffet and dressers.

Fish in a furniture store pond.

In-store furniture browsing continued today. The day's targeted retailers were Bob’s Discount Furniture and Bernie and Phyl’s, down the street from each other (and Jordan's Furniture) in Nashua. 

Each purveyor of home furnishings was a multilevel wonder. I wondered if the white fish sitting motionless on the bottom of the pond inside Bob’s Discount was resting, sleeping, or deceased. I wondered why they had a fish pond in there at all, unless they really wanted a reason to have to post signs telling people not to throw coins in the pond and not to walk on the edge of it. It felt like they were trying to look high end, despite the word “Discount” in their name and the cartoon character mascot. I also wondered why they had almost no furniture I liked, save for a mid-century modern styled sofa that comes in teal or olive.

Down the road at Bernie & Phyl’s, it wasn’t much better. I didn’t see a sofa I liked, but they had some nice looking Amish built bedroom sets that caught my eye. There was no fish pond to admire from the staircase at Bernie & Phyl’s. Mostly, the furniture at both stores looked the same, which reminded me of car shopping a few years ago where the car lots were vast seas of sameness.

The third place visited is a consignment store with a lot of furniture. It felt the most crowded of all the stores visited, but maybe it was just because it’s the smallest store. It was next to impossible to walk down an aisle thanks to shoppers who had little to no awareness of other people being in the store. There was a sofa plus a sofa table and some kitchen stools I like, just not quite enough to open the wallet.

Big boom, and a blob of smoke.

Tonight, the neighborhood fireworks continue, beginning before it was dark (again). There were a couple loud booms from one street over and I went to the porch to watch the fireworks. I stood there with the camera ready, hoping for an airborne bloom. There were three big noises, each one followed by a disappointing blob of black smoke. Basically, it was a whole lot of annoying noise followed by a bunch of nothingness, like some people I have known.