Saturday started out interesting, and went on from there.
Rachel dragged me off to the gym at some ungodly hour. Actually, it was 7am -- they open late on the weekends. I stumbled in, got changed, showered, and clumped down to the pool area. There I found the doors closed and a couple of guys waiting to go in. An employee came along to open the doors, and as he unlocked them, he said he could let us into the jacuzzi, but not into the pool because they didn't have a lifeguard that morning.
I protested, explaining that I didn't need a lifeguard, that I had trained under Charlie Sava, and that most of the time, the lifeguards didn't even pay attention to the pool anyway. He said he understood, and all, but he couldn't let me in. So then I told him "I'm going to be sorely pissed if my wife dragged my fat carcass out of bed this early in the morning and I don't get to swim." I don't know if it was the general tone or the gramatical complexity of my statement that got to him, but he relented. So I got into the pool.
For a while, I was the only one in the pool, which was nice -- I didn't have to deal wiht the likes of SplashBoy or ArrogantMan. I swam for nearly an hour, then sat in the hot tub for a bit. After that, I showered, dressed, and headed downstairs to find Rachel rather vexed at having to wait an hour for me in the lobby. She had apparently thought that I swam for half an hour then came right out, so she rode the exercycle for half an hour and sat down to wait for me.
Rachel hadn't showered or anything, so I took her home to do that while I went to return a video and pick up some coffee. When I got back, I was turning into the yard when I noticed the coffee was spilling. Trying to deal with that distracted me from my turn enough that I cut it too close and wrapped Rachel's fancy Intrigue around the pole Mike planted right in the middle of the backyard.
You see, Mike claimed he was going to build a fence across the back of the yard, and that was one of the fenceposts. Of course the only reason he said he was going to build a fence was to justify his putting up a terrace sort of thing on one side of the yard. Now, we had talked about that, but never really agreed to anything. Mike, however, needed the terrace because he needed someplace to dump the dirt and cement he was digging out of the basement next door.
If Mike had actually finished the fence, or if it had been our dirt and cement coming from under our house, it would have made sense to build the terrace, and to start work on the fence. But it wasn't our dirt or our cement, and we didn't ask Mike to build us a fence (not that he has, mind you, he just stuck a big 4x4 pole in the middle of the yard that's supposed to be the start of a fence.
So that got the day off to a good start. Once I had calmed down a bit, and wasn't cursing Mike as much, we took off to buy a fridge. Or, more accurately, to buy another fridge. You see, Friday morning saw Rachel and I up at the crack of dawn (aka, some ungodly hour) to -- get this -- hit the day-after-thanksgiving sales.
One of our stops was Sears where we picked out a new refrigerator and took advantage of the 15 months of interest-free financing. The old icebox was a refurb we had bought my folks about eight years ago. It was about the right size for my Mom and Dad by themselves, but with six people in the house now, it's way to small. It's also not the most efficient.
So we looked at a model that had 30 cubic feet of space, and one with only 25 cubic feet. The larger one held more, of course, but was not as energy-efficient. It was pretty much at the top of the scale. The other was smaller, but was energy-star certified and had a few other advantages. Both models had ice makers and water dispensers and could not be ordered without them -- we don't have water hook-ups by the fridge, so we would rather have the space they take up. Still, the smaller model had a nice removable ice bucket, and the filter for the water dispenser was much easier to change. The shelvers were about the same, but the doors on the smaller model are able to hold a one gallon milk jug.
The smaller model was a Kenmore, OEM'ed by Whirlpool, which I like better than GE, who made the other. It was also cheaper, of course, and most importantly, Rachel liked the smaller one better. So we bought the smaller one. Now keep in mind that smaller is a relative term -- 25 cubic feet is a lot of groceries. So we signed up for Sears charge card to get the interest-free financing for a little over a year. Look at it this way -- we get the use of the fridge, but we don't have to pay for it right away, and we don't pay anything for the priviledge.
Friday night, however, Dad and I had stopped for dinner on the way back from the Auto Show, and I spotted a Sears ad for the next day offering a 10% discount, free delivery (we were charged $50), and 6 months of free financing. Needless to say, this was a much better deal than what we had gotten. So I slipped the ad in my pocket to show Rachel later. She agreed that we ought to go back and get the better deal -- it saved us over $220.
So Saturday morning found us in Sears again, looking for the same salesman. He was late, so another woman asked if she could help, and we showed here the ad our paperwork. She said no problem and started backing out the previous sale and doing a new one. The fridge still arrives on Wednesday, and we save a noticable amount of money. We do have to pay it off quicker, but we couldn't earn as much on the money as we saved, so that's okay.
We also stopped at Price Club and Mollie Stone's to buy groceries for the Thanksgiving dinner that evening. At Costco, we picked up a set of three cheap chafing dishes for $20 that actually worked out pretty well -- sort of.
You see, as the evening was coming to a close, I decided to put out the sterno. Rather than take a chance on burning myself by trying to put the lids on the sterno cans in situ, I decided to removed them from under the pans. To accomplish this, I enlisted the aid of a pair of tongs.
Unfortunately, the tongs were not big enough to adequately grasp the round, perfectly smooth metal canisters. I did, however, manage to push the fish can off of the rack, onto the table. On it's side. With burning sterno spilling out onto the table. And burning. With an audible gasp, I pulled the chafing dish off the table and called for a kitchen towel.
Rachel brought a towel which I covered the burning fuel with. My intent was to smother, and thus extinguish, the flames. Alas, what happened is that the towel absorved the gelatinous fuel and promptly joined in the flammatory fun. This time I called for the lid to the large roaster which was big enough to cover the entire towel. I covered the whole flaming mess with it and put pressure on it, in an attempt to starve the fire of oxygen. Luckily, it worked, and the emergency was over.
This left us with a completely ruined tablecloth and a somewhat ruined table. Dave then demonstrated that it is possible to cover the sterno cans without having to remove them, and without burning oneself.
That was about the extent of the excitement for the day, not including the party itself. We had a fair number of folks -- in addition to us, Craig, Diane and my Dad were there. Daniel and Julia stopped by, with two of the kids, as did one of the teachers from Rachel's school, with her husband. Including the kids, we had 15 people show up. Not enough to eat all the food, but enough to make it interesting.