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2003-07-04 - 11:13 p.m.

Independence

We celebrated Independence Day by going shopping in the Twin Cities. Our mission was twofold - to investigate dishwashers and to look for a chair and ottoman for the living room. We started with the furniture, at the Marshall Field's Home Store. We bought our purple/wine sofa there a year and they still had the fabric sample from it in the store so we could compare chair fabric samples directly (particularly good since I forgot to bring the throw pillow to use for comparison).

After wandering around the store sitting in chairs and feeling like Goldilocks (too big, too small, too hard, too soft, too bland, too funky) we found a couple of chair styles that we both liked. Of course, we preferred different ones as our top choice, but we decided we would be happy with either. By this time we had picked up a salesperson and he took us into the Room of Fabrics to start picking out fabric samples we liked.

[Digression: My brother didn't know that you could buy furniture with different fabric than the fabric that was on the item in the store. Is this a guy/girl thing?]

After spending 25 minutes with the salesperson debating the merits of various fabric samples, we picked out our favorite (and by "our" I mean "my"). Then we found out that our (my) fabric was $140 per yard. Per. Yard. This added hundreds of dollars to the already-not-cheap cost of the chair, ottoman, and two throw pillows for our sofa. The Scientist put his marital foot down and we walked out. Although I was disappointed to leave my Most Perfect Fabric in the World, I (eventually) agreed with him that it was too extravagant for us. I mean, if a kid spilled on the $140 fabric what would you do?

We left and went out for lunch. We discussed what we wanted over sandwiches and salad and then hit four more furniture stores in the next couple of hours. None of them had the perfect combination of style, comfort, and fabric. By this time we'd been shopping for hours without buying a single thing so we took a break to look at dishwashers.

One of the stores we wanted to go to for the dishwasher (a smaller locally-owned place) was closed on the 4th, so we went to Best Buy (which, The Scientist pointed out, is also "locally owned" since their headquarters are in Minnesota). We found a model with all the features we wanted, but decided to wait until we could check it out at the smaller store. We did buy an LG microwave, though, since we knew we needed a new microwave for the house. At last, a purchase!

In the end, we went back to the Marshall Field's and bought the chair The Scientist liked best in the fabric I liked best, chosen from the not-$140-per-yard selections (we just put away the expensive fabrics so they didn't depress us). I actually really like what we chose - the chair is very comfortable and the fabric goes with both our purple sofa and with the yellow walls in the living room. At least I hope it does. We won't actually get it for another 8-10 weeks.

stars

After all the shopping, we chilled at a BBQ with friends and ate (great food) and drank (cheap beer, but really good lemonade for me) and saw a few fireworks. On the 5th, my family all came back in town (aunt and uncle who's house we were staying at, my mom, and my middle brother) and it was family bonding for the rest of the weekend. Monday-Thursday I had class and work in my MN work location so The Scientist drove home without me Monday morning.

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