7 February 2002

It's one of those days. Not one of those days - at least, not yet, and I'm continuing to hold out hope that it won't be. But... one of those days. Cold. Grey. Rainy.

The kind of day where I want to stay in bed and doze until noon. The kind of day where, when I finally do get out of bed, I want to just lounge around in my pyjamas and bathrobe for most of the afternoon. The kind of day where I don't really want to eat so much as slurp hot liquids from a mug - tea, hot chocolate, soup...

And failing all of that... It's the kind of day where I'm actually kind of grateful that my office at work doesn't have any windows.

I had a good evening. I left work and drove straight down to Newport News, because I knew if I went home and sat down, I'd just stay there until it was time to go to K.T.'s. I drove around quite a bit, because I couldn't remember exactly where the store was that I'd wanted to go to. I stopped at another store first, and looked around.

I hate furniture shopping. You walk into the store, and three sales people swoop down on you with clipboards and professionally enormous smiles. "How are you today? Can I help you find something in particular?" And then I have to try to convince them that I'm just looking and I don't want any help and I don't want to tell them what features I'm interested in and that I just want them to go away and lurk over on the side of the room with their cronies so that in case I do have any questions or need any assistance, I can wave them over.

So I shooed away the very eager gentleman who started to ask me questions about what materials I wanted my coffee table made out of, and wandered around the showroom for a while. I saw a few tables that I liked, and just as I was leaving found one I really liked, with matching end tables... $500 each for the end tables, and $600 for the coffee table. Yeah, I guess I did like it. Though that wasn't the most expensive set I'd seen.

I hung a mental tag on it, then left the store and drove around for a while, eventually finding the other store I'd wanted to check out, and after being cut off in the parking lot and then stealing the good parking space from the same asshole who'd cut me off, I went inside.

Furniture stores are always enormous, but this one was huge. Literally - I got lost and couldn't find the exit. I had an hour or more to kill anyway, and there were lots of neat displays to look at, so I just wandered around. I must have been in the store wandering from room to room for at least twenty minutes before I wandered into a room I'd already been in.

So once again, I found several table sets that I liked, and one or two that I really liked. These were, for the most part, less expensive than the first store, which was good.

I debated whether I actually wanted to buy anything from this store - I've heard some bad things about the installation crews for this store, and from several sources. On the other hand, it's a coffee table. And maybe a couple of end tables. It's not something that's going to require assembly; just delivery.

So when Matt's home this weekend or next, I'll take him back and hope I can find the pieces I liked. (It was a big frikking store.) And hopefully we'll reach a decision, and then when my parents are back from Germany, we'll buy it, and we'll have some more living room furniture that actually matches.

After I finished that, I still had a good half hour before I could call K.T. and Kevin, and I was terribly thirsty. So I drove over to Target and wandered around, picking up some blank VCR tapes and some drinks, and then I called and went over to K.T. and Kevin's.

We went to Outback for dinner. Dinner was good, and was improved (for K.T. and I, anyway) by the fact that our waiter was very cute. (Kevin rolled his eyes a lot.)

The Outback in Newport News always has at least a half hour wait, even during the week, and we'd had both appetizers and dessert in addition to our meals, so by the time we got back to their apartment, it was after nine. We decided to leave the movie until next week, and just sat around talking for an hour or so, until I started yawning and decided it was time to head home.

Matt was online when I got home, so I sat up for a bit to talk to him. He logged out a little after eleven, and I went to bed only a little bit later.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening.

--Liz