Death By Shopping, also A Cute Doggie

[merimask]

You know what's impossible to find?  A good rocking chair! 

I looked everywhere yesterday, seriously.  I went to Raymour & Flannigan, Crawford Furniture(both outlets), Carolina Furniture, NewTrend Furniture, Rosa's, Ethan Allen, and a few others.  Nothing.  The only ones I found were HUGE and really ugly; very colonial-looking but in an over the top fakey way, with great big backboards covered with machined scrollwork and bald eagles and crap like that.   I'd rather sit on the floor than have something like that in my house.

So I gave up on rocking chairs & shifted my attention to hardwood occasional chairs (suitable for my Mom to sit in when she visits...had to be not too cushy with arms to push up from & a backrest) & OMG same thing.  They were either waaaay too expensive (I'm looking at you, Ethan Allen) or mushy as hell.  Wrong wrong McWrongo.

After half a day of fruitless chair shopping I was about to give up when I remembered "Hey...Pier One has furniture don't they?"  So I go there & RIGHT in the doorway, chairs stacked on top of each other.  They had so many they were all clearanced...Pier One was practically giving them away.  So many different designs, I had to sit in 'em all & imagine myself as a seventy-something with a bad hip...

So I settled on this one...

Which actually doesn't clash too badly with the rest of my furniture since it's casual/contemporary anyway.   I got a green pad for it & an extra pillow for the back.  With ginkgo leaves on it!

I'm pretty happy with it, & it cost hundreds less than the stuff at Ethan Allen's.  I've always liked the furniture at Pier One...can't help it.  Is that plebian of me?  I don't know, but I just like it.  It feels like "vacation furniture"...something you'd have in your cabana or your seaside summer home.

Anyway Mom tried it out last night when she came over for "Survivor" night & she loved it, so mission accomplished.
 

 

I renewed my membership at the gym yesterday, too.  In fact, I renewed it for two years!  Locked in at that $19 a month rate, yay me!  I also did my first full set in, well, a while.  You know...it's funny 'cause I thought I was whoa out of shape, but I was not too far off from my top weights on every machine.  My abs are a tad weaker than they used to be (I guess plain old ab crunches aren't as good for you as all those various Cybex machines & the Roman Chair) but still not too bad.  Oddly my worst dropoff was on the hip abductor machine.  I was a full 40 pounds weaker on the inner thigh crunch!  Wow!  I felt like a weak kitten.  A weak kitten with flabby thighs.  *sigh*  Oh well.  If I remember rightly, it took me no time at all to build up on that machine so, I'll just keep at it.

Nothing hurts today either, except of course my sad inner thighs.  Serves 'em right.
 

Also, I give you gratuitous doggie pictures, because it's been a while since Kiba showed his pretty face in my LJ.
 
I had the front door propped open while I was sweeping out the front hall, & he just stretched out at the door & watched the street.  People were walking their dogs (their little yappy dogs that yap yapped at Kiba) but he just lay there all unperturbed like he could care less.  Silly little soupdogs.  You gotta love huskies.  They have the most incredible personalities. 

It's a lovely day.  Lifting again later (I know it's tempting fate to go two days in a row but it felt so good yesterday) and then a bike ride.  *sigh*  Oh spring...don't you go teasing me again, you hear?

*smooch*  Love you all.  ^_^