Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Back Rack Stack Flack…




(This was written yesterday - but we HAD to get pictures!)




Let me start with one word… OUCH!

Okay, now that we’re done with that, let me tell you about my weekend.

Obviously, it was better than it might have been. My dad got out of the hospital and appears to be doing fine. Good! So, I spent my Saturday, not in Arizona but in a movie theater. I saw Hot Fuzz and, folks, if you liked Shawn of the Dead you will love this. They’ve gone and done the same kind of homage, tribute, extreme parody with cop films. Fantastic! And an amazing critique on society as well! (Mind you, part of all this love might have something to do with the fact that I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in easily a year!) (For all her fine points, you try getting my wife to sit down for two hours – NOT HAPPENING!)

If Saturday was my day to relax, well, Sunday…. wasn’t.

Vicky got this brilliant idea of heading down to Tom’s Farm (a kind of Knott’s Berry Farm without the rides or the admission price) and picking up some produce for a big salad. Great! I’m all over that! But we’d forgotten all about breakfast so, by the time we finally got there around 11am, we were starving! We grabbed some grub from one of their grub establishments… hmmmmm…. grubs….

What we didn’t anticipate is that the huge furniture store they have would be in the midst of a giant sale. Sale? Being the consumer whores that we are, we couldn’t resist. Anyway, their furniture store is so huge, it’s fun just to walk around in to see what coolness they have. (And any coolness was inside – Corona isn’t exactly a cool place!) We didn’t go inside with the intention of buying anything… honestly.

But then, we saw it. Vicky and I had wanted a really cool wine rack for a long time but this was REALLY COOL! I thought, “It’s perfect,” and Vicky exclaimed, “It’s perfect!”

And here it is... um... somewhere. (When are they going to made this easy for us idiots to understand?)

Standing at about six feet tall and weighing nearly 200 pounds, it is filled with perfectiness:
The “kitsch” factor
The height
The hanging glasses
The space for our booze
All the slots for wine
And it’s red!



It’s filled with character and coolness and, well, booze, right?

As soon as we got it, of course, we had a problem… how to get it home? We quickly learned it wouldn’t fit inside Vicky’s SUV. This was a job for BROTHERINLAWMAN! We gave Mike a call and had him come down with his truck. So, he had to get out of bed, had to get dressed, had to drive all the way down to meet us… and it didn’t fit in his truck, either. Not to be deterred, we used twine, bungee cords, crazy glue, and a stern talking to, which we figured would keep the piece in his truck bed long enough to get it home.

Here was the plan, Mike and I would carry the piece up into the house – did I mention it weighed nearly 200 pounds? – while Vicky… Oy, she had to clean the place where it would go. Oh well, that’s one reason why I love her. (It falls way down at the bottom of the list but…) So, she cleaned it and we hauled it in. Mike’s this big, buffed cop and I was really worried about, literally, being able to carry my half, but we moved it in pretty easily together and I was relieved when he was the first to say, “This is heavy.”

Now, the “Where to put it” question was a problem. After all, our place isn’t exactly what you’d call “big”. Actually, it’s exactly what you’d call “fucking small”. So, we had to decide what to move. We had been storing all of our boozeglasses (wineglasses, shotglasses, etc… glasses) in a microwave cart Cindy had given me way back when, and had conveniently stored our microwave on top. We knew we could put the boozeglasses in the new winerack… and we still had a smaller microwave from Vicky’s old place that would fit on our counter. And did I mention that Rosa had given me that microwave? So, out went to pieces from my past and in came one big piece of my future (and midwife to future hangovers)!

I’d done so well helping move in the winerack, I picked up the microwave to put it in Vicky’s car so we could donate that later. Now, you know those cement blocks they put at the end of parking spots? Walking to our spot, where Vicky was parked… I tripped over one! I danced for several steps, trying to regain my footing, and stopped myself from falling – without dropping the microwave! (And the crowd went wild: yeah…) Vicky and I both laughed about it – how could you NOT? – but it was clear I’d hurt my back.

… so I kept moving stuff, bringing out the second microwave oven, moving some boxes around (one of which was the thousand pound box filled with all my old – and several of Tim’s old – D&D books)(hey, I might play again some day)(in the old folks home)(you never know), until, with all the certainty of a bad Adam Sandler film, my back told me to fuck off… which, as far as I’m concerned, just ain’t nice.

When Vicky was through setting up the new wine rack – I was busy with more important things… like moaning in agony – I noticed there were still a few empty spots. And, Vicky decided she wanted to hold on to our old rack for “overflow”.

… it seems we like wine.

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