RSS findIndex trimsentences createcard

gridCSS

AdCode

createItems and other JavaScript code

Item Render Code


Friday, December 10, 2021

A Sale of Two Settees

Water! Having water was great. Having water was a luxury. Having water was butt changing. We were well on our way to living a civilized Floridian lifestyle.

I mean, on our first full day, our life choices, had included lying on an air mattress, sitting on a plastic chair, or eating dirty Hormel chili out of cans with our dirty fingers.

With water, our options expanded to flushing regularly (and saving tons of money on Perrier), and cleaning.

Fortunately, the place had been left in pretty good shape. Most of the trailers manufactured homes that change hands here in the Greacey Palms Senior Trailer Putt Putt Park (IT'S A RETIREMENT COMMUNITY) come fully furnished with whatever broken down La-Z-Boys the previous owner found abandoned on the side of I-75.

In a way it was nice to be moving into an empty place. It would be a lot easier to vacuum (if we had one), and we'd get to choose our furniture.

Back in Georgia, when it looked like we would really make it to the Greacey Palms, I'd put in an order with Casper for one of their original mattresses. Little did I know how quickly it would get old sleeping on the bottom 3/4 of an air mattress, and this turned out to be a smart move. It would have been smarter if I'd gambled and ordered it before we left.

The Quad Queen got to cleaning, starting with the kitchen, and I got to fucking with the built-in whole home music system (Is it (a)live, or is it Memorex? ).

It's alive! This unit, at one time, had a CD drawer that stayed closed on its own.


Yes, I'd bought a bent T-Fal pan. I managed a decent breakfast.


Cleaning time, bitches!

The built-in music system was capable of blasting ear shattering hyper-compressed staticky AM radio throughout the trailer manufactured home. Even now, some weeks later, I take great delight in randomly and unexpectedly turning the system on full blast for approximately 1.9384 seconds at a time, and thus giving the Quad Queen her 17th, 18th and 19th nervous breakdowns.

I make up for it by yelling, "SORRY! THAT WAS ME."

As the day went on, we noticed the place was getting warmer. And warmer. And warmer.

The thermostat was in a coma. I used my cell as a hotspot (appropriately) and figured out that there were batteries in it. And learned how to open the battery hatch (not obvious).

In the battery compartment, I found two AA cells. Old. Dead. Leaking. They'd corroded the little metal battery prongs such that one of them fell off completely, rusted out.

What to do? Get some tinfoil, that's what. I chewed up 9 pieces of Juicy Fruit, just to get enough foil to fashion a wad that would sit between the battery and what was left of the prong. It took a few tries, and 3 more pieces of Juicy Fruit, but I got it going again. I was pretty proud of that fix, but never said anything to the Quad Queen about it, my mouth being full of gum to the point of asphyxiation.

The first day ended and we both slept pretty well, considering. The second day was more of the same, and the third, and we fell into a rhythm of triaging what needed to be done next, shopping, eating, and then realizing at the end of the day we were no closer to having anything resembling furniture than we were the day before.

Bootstrapping a house from nothing is a busy bit of business!

Sam's Club had a $45 rebate offer for joining, but we ran into a problem. And as a Canadian in the USA, we have run into a few snags here and there, mostly with websites. I filled in the 95 forms, but the billing address for my credit card would take my country as Canada, but insisted on me picking from a list of 50 states. (Who knew there were that many?!) The form wouldn't go through.

We went in in person and got set up, but no rebate offer. FUCKERS. Online only. Fuck you, Sam! Regardless, we signed up for the Plus membership and got like $10 off at the cash on our first order. We completely caved to Sam and his swingin' club.

On the way out, I discovered the Sam's Club snack bar and their pizza. It was OMG good and I wondered if I'd just run into a pizza anomaly and if it was always this good.

Basically, two bucks for this pizza. Great deal!

A couple of days later, I went back to fill up with gas - they have a good price on fuel. The only problem is everyone else thinks so too and it was a 20 minutes wait until I got to the pump. And that's when I found out that my card wouldn't work.

I stormed into the main building and found out that the twit that sold us our membership hadn't activated my card. He also got our address wrong.

Back home, I got on a support chat and whined about all of this and 'David' said he'd open a ticket and surely they would do something about the $45 gift card rebate.

Fast forward 2 weeks and I've heard nothing back. I've just filled out another feedback form citing all of the above and so far it's a big Sam's Fail except for the pizza. Generally, the shopping is fine as well, I just like to get what's coming to me and more, if I can. Jury is out but leaning towards conviction of Sam as being a punk ass bitch with nothing but great $2 pizza.


What are you Americans thinking??? I can only hope the fact that there are a lot of these red eggs means nobody is buying them.

Approved.

Cheaper than gas, and just as effective.

After four or five days, a miracle occurred. My Casper mattress arrived, but the mattress wasn't the best part of it. The best part of it was it arrived encased in a coffee table!


We started find time to make the rounds of the furniture places. We'd go out and hit one of them and then hit Walmart or Home Depot or wherever else we needed to go.

It went like this:
  • Walk in the front door.
  • Get verbally assaulted and accosted by clipboard-wielding salesperson. "Blah blah this is over there, that is over here, are you looking to spend money today, our blah blah is way over there, if you need blah blah my name is Amanda/Anika/Anna/Amelia/Ammonia/Armenian/Aladdin and I'll be surreptitiously watching your every move and occasionally pounce as if from nowhere to see if you have the faintest interest in buying anything.
  • Rack up 5,500 steps wandering aimlessly and sitting down for 2.98382 seconds on each sofa, love seat and comfy chair, only to find it decidedly uncomfy.
  • Head for the exit in disappointment, only to be verbally assaulted and accosted by business card wielding AnikaAnnaAmelia saying blah blah blah blah blah.


Amazingly, at the fourth or fifth store, we actually found some chairs we liked! We called over Azimuth, and she said, 'let me diddle at the computer' and came back and said yes, you can have them, in six to twelve weeks.

We were learning about the supply chain and it's broken furniture links. Fuck it, we ordered them. But when we went home, we still had no place to sit except the $10 Rubbermaid chairs.

At the last place we went to, we found the perfect furniture set for the Lanai. Ancillary diddled at the computer and came back and said, yes, you can have them.

In June.

We walked.

Back home, as the sun set, The Quad Queen noticed a posting in the Greacey Palms park mailing list.

"Flushie?"

"Yes?"

"Guy's sellin' a sofa. And love seat. Hello, I have a sofa and loveseat sitting under the carport. In great condition. Striped beige, it says."

"What's he askin?"

"$150 for both."

"Tell him he's dreamin'."

"No - I'm contacting him. We'll take it."

And just like that, after days of searching and being disappointed - we had furniture.


Not only did we have furniture, but we'd offered $100 and he took it. And then, he added a huge comfy chair and ottoman, and two lamps, for $50 more!

Ripper!


That's enough for this post - I think I've written the dickens out of it.





    8 comments:

    1. how are you liking the casper mattress?

      ReplyDelete
    2. It's pretty good! I sleep well on it, kinda wish it was a bit firmer, but overall 8/10.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Is the story of The Winter in Florida complete? No more postings? Happy New Year.

      ReplyDelete
    4. Patiently waiting for the next update. I sure hope there is one.

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. Funny you should mention that.

        https://www.royalflushervegas.com/2022/02/ruby-tiger-osceola-slot-machines-are.html

        Delete

    Leave a message for Royal Flusher!