Jul. 15th, 2023

canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
When we went shopping for a new mattress three weeks ago, the store we bought from also had other furniture we liked. We considered buying a new dining room set (table and chairs) and bedroom set (frame, night stands, and chest of drawers) as well. Hawk was willing to buy all of the above, but I declined the dining set and bedroom set as they didn't solve a problem. The mattress I was ready to buy that day as we needed a new mattress. The old one was getting saggy and was difficult for Hawk to sleep on. Indeed, once our new mattress arrived Hawk started getting much better sleep. Problem solved.

While the new dining set and bedroom set we looked at were nice, they didn't solve a problem. They didn't fix anything that was broken. We have pretty decent furniture we bought 19 years ago.

Our old dining room table, after almost 19 years (Jul 2023)

Our dining room table is in pretty decent shape for being 19 years old. There are a few nicks in the lovely finish on the top, though most of what you see in the photo above is crud I simply didn't clean off well enough before snapping the picture. There are stains on the cream colored upholstery but not too bad... and it's only a cosmetic issue, and one you don't see once you're seated anyway. But... some of the chair legs are getting a bit wobbly (though I can tighten them up with a screwdriver occasionally as they're screwed in to the bases) and— main thing, actual problem— Hawk finds the chairs uncomfortable. She can't sit in them for more than brief periods.

Would a different table and be more comfortable? In theory, yes. In practice, almost none are. But as we looked around a few stores we found one— one table and chair set— that was actually comfortable to sit at. For both of us! So we bought it.

The dining area looks... bigger... without a table! (Jul 2023)

We bought the table last Sunday with delivery this past Thursday. Wednesday afternoon we cleared the old table and chairs out to make room for the new. Wow, our dining area looks so much bigger without a table in it!

Our new table comes in flat boxes; workmen put it together in the house (Jul 2023)

Thursday the table arrived. The movers showed up early, which kind of threw a wrench in my schedule, but ultimately it wasn't too bad. The whole set arrived in flat boxes. The delivery workers assembled it for us.

The table being packed flat, I totally expected. You unbox it, bolt on the legs, and set it on its feet. But the chairs came in flat boxes, too! The back and rear legs were one piece, the set another piece, and the front legs two more pieces. That surprised me. But at the same time it's kind of nifty because it gives me confidence that if/when the chairs start to become wobbly I can tighten all the bolts with simple tools.

New dining room table and chairs (Jul 2023)

Here's a pic of the new table in our dining room. Ultimately there were several things that sold us on it:

  • The chairs, as I already mentioned, are comfortable for both of us.

  • The bench (on the right) is nice for flexibility, and Hawk finds it really comfortable.

  • The table is slightly larger, by about 5" of length and 2" of width, than our old one...

  • ...Which means that without the expansion leaf it's a good size for us. The old one was too tight without the leaf in.

  • So with the leaf we have even more space than before.

  • And this table's leaf is a "butterfly" design that packs away inside the table when it's not in use.

It's that trick butterfly leaf that moved me from "Well, maybe..." to "Okay, let's buy it!" when the second salesman showed us.

canyonwalker: My other car is a pair of hiking boots (in beauty I walk)
It's been a busy Saturday. Hawk and I got up early today to go to the beach in Santa Cruz. We've been saying we'll do that for the past few weekends but it's never worked out. Either we say we'll get up early then sleep in 'til 9am or later, or the weather's looked too cold and cloudy over at the coast, or both. Today the weather forecast wasn't looking that amazing for Santa Cruz— while it was forecasting 88° and sunny here— but we decided to do it anyway.

Getting an early leave on for the beach was critical because traffic jams going over the mountains on Rt. 17 have been crazy the past many weeks. Last weekend traffic delays made a trip that would normally take about 45 minutes stretch to 2 hours. We noped out of that. Today we were rolling at 9am and even then traffic jams on Rt. 17 set us back 10-15 minutes. WTF is everyone going to the beach so early for? Especially on a day when the forecast there has it cold and foggy until noon?

Maybe, we figured, they're like us and want to beat the crowds. We worried that the hundreds of people driving with us on the mountain pass would be competing for scant parking in Santa Cruz near the beach... but alas, thankfully, they were not. Traffic all but disappeared by the time we got to our favorite parking spot on West Cliff Drive, with a rocky cliff 10' in front of us and the pounding waves 25' below that.

The fog was already burning off when we arrived. We started walking east from our parking spot, heading back toward downtown. We didn't walk that far, as it would have been several miles each way; just to the lighthouse and back. But still, that was a solid 3 miles round trip, maybe more.

After the walk we were ready for lunch. We found a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant downtown. It was... definitely hole-in-the-wall. And crazy popular. Like, with not much seating and 2x-3x as many customers as could fit. Our timing was good and we got a table.

The drive back over the mountain was free of traffic. Seeing the lines of cars laboring up the opposite direction we joked about "reverse commute direction" several times. But seriously, I'm glad we weren't stuck in that mess, creeping along uphill, with temperatures that reached as high as 93° in some spots. (Back at the beach it topped out at, like, 70°.) Oh, did I mention we did the drive in our convertible? Man, tooling along through a mountain pass with fir trees on all sides, a blue sky overhead, and lots of fresh air is exactly what convertibles were built for. ...Okay, that plus the above except with mountains-and-ocean vistas... which we also got today! 😂

Back at home we had a couple of our friends come over with their 10 year old son today to use the pool. It was definitely pool weather out, with temps in town climbing past 85°. We splashed around in the pool for quite a while, took a short dip in the hot tub, then dried off while relaxing in deck chairs.

Our friends suggested dinner together around 5:30, but by then we were spent from the day's double-header. We bid them goodbye and spent a while relaxing quietly indoors. I made a simple dinner of mac and cheese and garlic bread. Now we're taking it easy again. Maybe we'll be rested up for another day outdoors tomorrow!

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canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
canyonwalker

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