Adventures in Home Improvement

This situation could have gone one of two ways: cranky or funny. I decided to go with funny.

Last night at about 7:30, Josh and I, for lack of anything better to do, decided to make our weekly trip to Lowes to pick up paint, this time for the hallway we are painting this weekend. A couple of months ago during one of our trips, we stumbled upon a free-standing yard swing that we really liked, but at $150 decided to hold off for a sale. So, we've been checking on this swing week after week for two months, and last week we found it on sale for $80. Halleluia!

It was sold out.

Josh had them call the other stores. No luck. So this week, defeated but hopefull, we checked lawn and garden one more time on the off-chance that some had been shipped in or one had been returned. No swings, but a different treasure awaited us. Before us sat a stack of patio chairs at 50% off, less than $10 a piece, and a patio table, again 50% off, for $35. Coincidently, we had eaten our first meal outside this past week on the patio set that came with the house. The rust had practically flaked into our food as we ate. So we decided that $75 for a table and 4 chairs was a fantastic deal and loaded them onto a cart (or "buggy" as the South Carolineans call it).

A little after 8:00, we picked up our paint, visited the register and headed toward the car.

Hm. The car.

People who are truly handy own handy things and have handy ways of transporting their handy items. For example, my dad has a large truck with a hydrolic lift on the bed. He also has a trailor, a mini-van, and a tractor to use as he needs them for his handy endevors. We own an Eclipse and a Civic. We are not handy. And we left all of our handy family and friends in Illinois, so we're not even handy by association anymore.

We spent a decent amount of time studying the car (Eclipse), imagining possible scenarios for this furniture to fit, like those tests in grade school where they made you flip shapes around in your head. Josh swore up and down that it wasn't going to fit in his little car. I knew that it all was, so we started with the table and he humored me. To his surprise, after adjusting the seats and such, the table squeezed in. Hooray! The chairs, however, would never fit with the table. No problem. I'd wait for him with the chairs while he took the table home and got my car, which is bigger. Good deal. I pulled my "buggy" full of chairs over to an empty pallate in the outdoor garden and had a seat. To kill time I called my sister, who also needed to kill a little time as she was holed up in her hotel room in Maine (she's a pilot for those of you not in-the-know).

We waxed philosophical for a while until Josh returned with my car. Back to our puzzle. Now, you would think that with my car being bigger, the stuff would fit better. However, after another 20 minutes of jamming chair legs into places they don't belong (including out the sunroof), we knew that the Civic was not going to work. The openings were too small. Exasperated, Josh drove off again, this time to unload the table by himself from his car and bring the Eclipse back. I became very disappointed at the thought that we might just have to return the chairs. Then realized that this would not be an option tonight, as Lowes had just closed. It was 9:00. Then I panicked a little. We might have to leave the chairs for dead! And since I had long removed the chairs from the "buggy" to try and load them up, the buggy was gone. So I sat alone for another 20 minutes in the middle of the Lowes parking lot under a streetlight in my new patio chairs and called Ashley again.

Here came Josh and the Eclipse, this time armed with plenty of twine to tie down his hatchback in case it wouldn't close. And, thankfully, after another 10 minutes of maneuvering, we got the chairs to fit! We were even able to close the hatchback, sans twine. There was, however, a catch: Because we had to fold the passenger seat all the way forward, the only way I was getting home last night was to curl up behind the chairs in the "trunk." I felt like an idiot climbing back there as all of the Lowes employees vacated the store for the evening. To make matters worse, Josh closed the lid and then snapped a picture through the window.

We made it home a little after 9:30, people and items in one piece, having identified the exact location of a mysterious grinding over his right rear wheel. And, having ridden as a passenger in my husband's trunk, he may never comment on the condition of my car's interior again. I was FILTHY getting out of that car, thank you very much. But, it was all worth it to be able to relax with a tastey meal in the great outdoors of our backyard without having to worry about contracting tetanus.

You are what you drive?

Getting your car registered here in South Carolina is much more of a process than in Illinois. Just having to deal with the DMV and their limited hours was traumatic enough. But here, not only do you have to register your car, you have to pay property tax on it, plus you have to have all sorts of documentation to prove that you are who you are. I was able to get as far as paying the property tax within the week or two after I moved. But in order to get a SC driver's license I needed a copy of my birth certificate, and, lo and behold, that document evaporated in the move. So, because there is only one driver's license facility open on Saturdays in the entire county of Greenville, I decided to wait until I got my birth certificate in the mail to go back and get both my plate and my license, thus killing the proverbial two birds with one stone.

No big deal, right? But then there's the state of Illinois, from whom I had to request the copy of my birth certificate. To pay for it on line with a credit card, it would have been at my doorstep in about a week - for a total of about $40. But to snail mail a check and a hand-written form would only cost me $10, and I'd have it in 5 weeks. Makes no sense to me why the easier option for everyone is 3 times more expensive, but as I had just purchased a new house, I decided to take the $10 option and wait. This, my friends, is why I have been here for two-and-a-half months and just got my license and plate.

To have special plates made here is extremely expensive, unlike in Illinois where you get to make a request and as long as there's at least one number it's no different than getting regular plates. Therefore, as sad as I was to give them up, I sacrificed my ICTUS1 plates for the pre-printed South Carolina plates. In fact, they hand you your plate right at the counter from the top of a stack of ready-made plates, the numbers painted on instead of stamped in (looks kind of cheap, but whatever). So we got home and Josh excitedly replaced my old plates with my new one, making me an official South Carolinean.

So I've had the plate for a couple of weeks now, and it wasn't until the other night when we were out getting some ice cream that Josh commented on it:

"Hey, is that last letter a "d" or an "o?" he asked.

"I think it's a "d," I replied. "Why?"

And then I took the time to actually pay attention to the ID number that the State of South Carolina bestowed unto me:


Ha, ha. Very funny.

Commandments

Josh and his chorus (Palmetto Statesmen) went to a special combined rehearsal with the Ashville Chorus the other night. As many barbershop choruses do, the Ashville Chorus rehearses in a church. Josh saw this sign in their parking lot and thought it might be blog-worthy. I agreed:

Oh, this is even better.

Okay. I promise I do not sit around in my free time waiting in front of the TV with a camera for the next greatest blog to show up. I also promise that "abc family" is not amongst my top ten most watched channels. But, there is the occasional Saturday morning when flipping through the channels I find an episode of "Full House" on "abc family" and decide to check it out. (It's like a moth to a flame. I know I'll be cringing the whole time at the corney jokes and bad dialogue, but I can't help myself.) Anyway, there I was Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m (traditionally cartoon time for the kiddies) engrossed in the sibling rivalry of D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle, and an ad for the new season of "abc family" original series "Greek" flashed before children's eyes everywhere:


Not only are they promoting frat life, they've made the show's logo none other than the Big Red Beer Cup! That's right, kids. Your new kind of family is your frat buddies. Drink up!

I'm Lovin' It!

Alright...this one's a little naughty, so make sure the kids are out of the room.

Josh has many friends at work, but his closest buddy would be a guy named "Bobby." (We don't want to embarrass him, so we'll just call him "Bobby.") "Bobby" is a super friendly guy in his mid-thirties. He's kind of quiet, and willing to do anything for anyone. He's a newbie to Greenville, just like us, and he's a little shy. Most of his friends are at work, and because he spends most of his time at work, he doesn't socialize much outside of work, and thus, has no girlfriend and hasn't for a while.

Anywho..."Bobby" popped out of the office to grab his lunch today and returned to the office red-faced. Apparently, he walked into McDonald's to find a very attractive woman behind the counter. He placed his order, she rang it up, he patiently waited, and she handed him his bag full of food. And then, upon accepting his bag-o-food, he politely thanked her and told her to "Have a nice lay!" He said he didn't know what he was thinking about or where it came from, but he was too stunned with himself to say anything. He just turned and ran out the door.