Your first furniture in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Calling them mean SOBs is just being too kind. The bastards got me twice.

First time, I was hacking back some wisteria in the back yard and I stepped on the entrance to their den. They swarmed out and flew up my baggy shorts and oversized t-shirt, stinging all the way. I was ripping off the shirt as I ran for the garage. The next night, RAID took care of them.

The second time, I was mowing and drove over the den that they’d managed to construct within the week or so since I’d last mowed. I escaped with minimal stings since I knew what they were and what they wanted. And that night, FCD flooded the den with more RAID. Nasty bastards. Since then, they’ve not returned to our yard. I guess word got out…

22

And post-first meal greetings to all. Have consumed my Jersey Mike’s #3, some Pringles and a banana so body is happy with me. Have an appointment tomorrow with the HVAC folks to see if they can diagnose my thermostat or if I need to get a new one. Gas tank has been filled, 32.32mpg for this month, so along with $2.30/gallon savings on the Kroger card, a pretty good deal.

Interesting stories from everyone about your first furniture, but try as I might I just don’t remember. I know it was in Indianapolis, and I had moved from a furnished apartment to a 1-bedroom place so it was probably a bed and some basic living room stuff, but the picture is just too dim anymore.

Taters, well, at least Mexico has been knocked out of the World Cup, so it should be quieter (or at least only the usual annoying noise levels).

shoe, you can order toilet paper from Amazon? And it’s price-competitive that way?

boo fae, I had never heard of ‘slutty brownies’ before but after googling them I need to try them.

FCM, if you finally run out of weeds, I have a few you can get at… :wink:

lily, good luck in the removal of the yellowjackets. I get a few around my mailbox about this time of the year, but never real close to the house.

52, a robot vacuum that mops…may have to look into that.

And will shortly pack my gym bag and do what has become a recurring habit, exercise while watching the World Cup game. It’s at 2pm today so want to leave here about 1pm. Take care all.

23

Good morning, all. This weekend went well. My sister came in for the weekend. I smoked some ribs on Saturday, which turned out well. I served them with baked beans and corn on the cob. Sunday involved hanging out and doing not much at all, except reading, while Mrs Magill and Fang drove down to Texas. Much to her disappointment, The Duke, Sam Peckinpaugh, John Cassavetes, and Lee Marvin didn’t join them with a case of whiskey.

My sister just left a few hours ago. She’s taking the drive home easy and will visit a friend in Asheville tonight.

I brought Fang on board on Saturday. Mrs Magill was getting irritated that I kept putting it off. He was like, “Yeah - okay. Whatever.” He did ask a few follow-up questions unprompted in front of his mother, so she knows we’ve talked.

I’ve got an appointment at the wig shop for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll send my sister pictures, so she may share her opinion. I’m kinda excited to have new hair for my counselling session on Wednesday and the meeting Saturday. I’m also meeting someone tonight to talk about how they were able to keep their marriage together after coming out.

My first furniture that I bought… I think that would be a TV stand for my apartment in college.

Coppertone - good luck on the interview.

taters - I had four years of German in High School. By the time I graduated, I would occasionally have dreams in German, and I was told by a native that I had a good, Munich accent. I then took German 101 & 102 in college for the easy A, and I have not spoken it since. I can still mostly understand it. My high school teacher was a hardass with very high standards, but thanks to him, I knew how to work hard in college. I consider my high school German experience as “Type II Fun” - not fun at the time, but I’m glad I did it after the fact.

Lily, 52, & FCM - Yellowjackets are frickin’ evil little buggers. When I was eleven, I was riding my dirt bike through the woods, and somehow found a swarm with my face. My mother counted twelve stings. Then at seventeen, I was hiking on a mountain with some friends. One was having trouble getting down a steep bit, so I was helping him. When he got down, I took a step backwards into a nest. The paramedic counted forty-two stings on my leg. Forty-two. My last encounter was about sixteen years ago - I was transplanting a rosemary bush which had a nest under it - six stings on my foot. I hate them almost as much as I hate the Tarheels.

24

I googled as far as “slutt-” and was bombarded with brownie recipes.

The internet has changed.

Yes to the first Q. Their “basic” line is, we’ll say, affordable. Paper towels, Q-tips, that sort of thing. Not fancy, but serviceable.

It’s lazy-competitive that way, to the second Q.

Unpaid time, personal energy, gas to drive to & fro the Gettin’ Sto’ while I could be doing other things, all factors in.

So my last interaction with **S.M.** last night as we were all clocking out, gathering phones/chargers/purses/spare shoes etc. was me saying, as calmly as possible, “Uh, ma’am? You have a bug on your boob.”

She starts swatting at herself, and I had to say, out loud, to my boss, “Other boob.” Then after she was decontaminated, we shut off the lights & left, after a tiring holiday weekend.

Minus one boob bug.

25

Not a fan of the flying assholes either. My dad carries an epi-pen due to an allergy discovered in the 80s. Sometime in the same decade, my now-hubby ran over a nest with the riding mower and ended up jumping in the pool to get away from them.

I remember going with my parents to the unfinished furniture place and picking out a bookshelf for my bedroom, but I didn’t pay for that. I think I was about 10?

Sophomore year in college I didn’t have much storage space, so then-boyfriend/now-hubby and I took some remnants from his dad’s collection and built some simple shelves. The following year I bought a papasan chair for my dorm room. Can’t remember what happened to the shelves - they may not have even survived sophomore year. The papasan chair stayed with us until we moved internationally. We didn’t keep any of our furniture.

Helped hubby pick out what became our first marital bed - we got ourselves a 4 poster waterbed. Not sure we were supposed to have a waterbed in our apartment - never asked.

Another week, another heat dome. :hot_face: Watering the shrubs at the side of the house. They get watered individually as they are in the middle of the grass which only gets sky water. So far we don’t have watering restrictions for households, but they will probably come. I cut back a bunch of lilac suckers - they don’t need to be sucking up the water that the trees need.

26

Re the OP: I honestly have no idea. I must have furnished my first place somehow, but I have little recollection of it. It helped that my first residence away from home was a fully-furnished off-campus dorm, then later joined an existing gang sharing an already-furnished townhouse when one of the roomies left.

One very, very old purchase that I do remember was a classical Scandinavian teak coffee table that I still have, though it’s now down in the basement relegated to the Place of Retired Old Furniture.

Our first marital bed was one I already had – fortunately queen-sized. I must have been on a Scandinavian furniture kick for a while because it was in that same Scandinavian style that would have been the pride of any fashionable Swede – a slat bed with a heavy foam mattress that I had custom made, only the bed was made of light oak rather than teak.

27

After that first apartment, I put my things in storage and worked in another country for a year. Those apartments, also nice, were small and furnished, so I don’t think I bought any furniture. Back in the US, IKEA had become a thing, so in the next apartment, I bought a basic couch, armchair, coffee table, and bookcases. In the one after that, some occasional furniture and bookcases. Then more bookcases. Then I put most stuff in storage for the year and probably bought a new futon. Then I moved across the country to a tiny apartment and bought a twin futon for the tiny bedroom and a new futon for the sofa bed. Then I housesat here and there. Then I moved in with my future lovely wife and bought more bookcases. Then we bought a house and I don’t remember what we bought first, but probably bookcases. Then we moved and donated or junked most of our furniture; the first item purchased at our current place was a folding twin bedframe to use whenever one of us was here getting the house set up. Since then, much replacement furniture and, of course, fresh, matching bookcases.

28

The Kirkland Charmin equivalent comes in packs of 30 rolls.

29

The very first furniture I bought for myself after college and starting my Big Boy Job was either a mattress and box spring set (from Barker Brothers in Long Beach, CA), or the dinette set consisting of a table, four side chairs and two arm chairs. ISTR I bought them both the same day, but for the life of me I have no idea how I got them back to the apartment, since my car at the time was a ‘62 VW bug. Those purchases joined a bed frame I already had and a lot of milk crates, bricks and boards from my college apartment. Priorities being what they were, my then-GF (now wife - celebrated 40 years yesterday!) needed a place to eat and to…uh…copulate. Eventually, I hauled some surplus furniture 400 miles from my parents’ place to round everything out. I had a dresser that had originally been a wedding present for my uncle when he’d gotten married 30 years earlier but it was never moved out of his parents’ place, and my parents brought it to their place when my grandparents passed. It was 30 years old, but had never been used!

30

I started a spreadsheet this morning to catalog our artwork and attempt to attach some valuation to it. Luckily, we kept most of our receipts and a couple of artists have responded with current valuations. So anyway, I was looking at the four Alaska Native dolls that we have. These are top quality figurines, not the slop you find on eBay, are by known Alaskan artists, and are made from materials like cottonwood, baleen and animal fur. Anyway, I’m looking them over closely for information and I see: A FUCKING MOTH! Sonova. . .! I dug out my box of moth repellent sachets and spread a bunch around them. Die, you fuckers!

31

Howdy Y’all! As foretold, today has been a day of high RDOS sloth. OYKW has watched a lot of the crime stuff he likes, while I have read and messed about on teh intartoobz. We had a suppunch of leftovers from Sattidy’s feast. We also achieved nappage and day drinkin’. Go Us! Now I think I shall go watch stoopid stuff on the teevee for a while.

:: Clasps pearls; falls onto faintin’ couch ::

BooFae glad the festival was fun and the trip home was mostly uneventful. That’s cats for ya. “Oh, the hooman servants are back. Very well, carry on!”

Lily I agree yellow jackets must be exterminated. As a UGA gradjooate I am anti yellow jackets. Jawja Tech is known as the Yellow Jackets. Also the NATS (North Avenue Trade School cause GT is located along North Avenue in Etlanner.)

MetalMouse hope the HVAC folks can figure out the problem.

Mollie glad you had a good visit with sis and that your talk with Fang went well.

shoe “Boob Bug” would be a great death metal band name!

32

Posting in the MMP on a Monday! Woot! Working from home has its privileges. :slight_smile:

At 3:43pm it’s only 88°F, but sunny and humid; the heat index is 96. Still, it’s supposed to stay in the 80s all week so this morning I decided to hang the expense and change the thermostat setting from 75 to 73. Hopefully those two degrees won’t bankrupt me when the bill comes!

As for the OP, all of my apartments contained a mix of hand-me-downs and cheap particleboard furniture (from K-Mart or similar, and almost definitely financed by one parent or the other). When I quit living in apartments and moved into my first townhouse in 2003 I suddenly needed a dining room table, and bought my first piece of “real” furniture all by myself: an octagonal light-wood-and-black-metal table with four matching chairs, from a local discount furniture place.

(Ignore the random stuff on it in this picture: I’d just rearranged the living room, and that’s what I was photographing.)

I loved that set; both its style and the table’s size/shape. The chairs were actually comfy, too! It moved with me a few times, including to my ex’s place when I moved in, but when I decided to downsize from townhouses to small single-family homes in 2013 it no longer fit anywhere and I reluctantly sold it. Now I’m back in a townhouse, and I’ve never seen another set that I like as much (and the store no longer exists). I’d buy it again today if I could.

In Lego news, last night I finished the Shelby Cobra – but it was late and I was distracted by still needing to put the laundry away, and I completely forgot to take a picture. :woman_facepalming: I’ll take one sometime this week and add it to my “completed sets” photo album. In just a few weeks I’ve gone from 6 unassembled sets to 1: this weekend I’ll start the last one, Diagon Alley Wizarding Shops. Soon I’ll have to start thinking about what’s next…but maybe I’ll wait until I see my electric bill. :grin:

Tomorrow I’ll need to get up and out of the house on the early side: my first meeting is at 8am, and before it starts I want to hang a “happy workiversary” banner in one of my employees’ cubicles. It’s his 1-year anniversary both on the program and with the company, and banners have somehow become what I do for those!

Thanks. Glad I wasn’t completely deluded (about that, anyway). :slight_smile:

Excellent!

If you don’t mind me asking, who else significant in your life still needs to be…onboarded?

(If you do mind me asking, ignore away! :grin:)

33

I still need to talk to my father and brother.

34

Alright I’m in love with my robot - not only does it vacuum up scattered cat litter, the mopping performance was far better than I ever hoped. It missed a few spots while avoiding rugs or other obstacles, but the floor is (literally) squeaky clean with no streaks. I don’t think I’ll need to use my “real” vacuum more than once a month and mop maybe every other month.

It even cleans the mop pads with hot water and now is blowing air to dry them. Why did I wait so long to buy one of these things?!

Metal Mouse if you look into one, definitely get one with the spinning pads and not a little cloth it drags around.

Mollie Great news about Fang! Good luck with your dad and brother - I assume you’ve delayed that expecting it might be a little harder. Does Mrs Magill’s family know, or are you leaving that to her to handle as she wishes?

shoe I laughed over the boob bug.

cookie What an amazing doll! I hope you found the moths before they could do any damage.

35

I like the idea of a table with more sides very much. That looks like a nice one.

36

Another pleasant day here by most standards. Started off with a lovely 59Ferrets, currently 83F and supposed to top out at 87F. Not bad. I got my outdoor tasks done early, so preserved my cool demeanor today.

Hope the job interview goes well, coppertone.

swampy, I meant to mention in the last MMP that I am in awe of anyone who can make lemon meringue pies sans shrinking and/or weeping meringues. They are tricky, and I admire you for being able to do it!

taters, glad you had fun with your son down south, but sorry you found things in such a state at home. Hopefully this fireworks nonsense is nearly at an end, now.

BooFae, I couldn’t resist looking up Slutty Brownies, either. Good god.

Lily, another vote from me for unaliving your yellow jackets. I’m still traumatized by their attack on me last fall. And I think you need some bookcases. :wink:

I just saw a robot window washer! I could get behind that, especially if I can figure out how to get it to do skylights… Which floor robot did you get, by the way? If you mentioned the name, I missed it.

shoe, loved the boob bug story. Your S. M. is so awesome! (And you, too, of course!)

First furniture… that’s an easy one for me. Though I’d lived away from my parents since I was 15, I wasn’t entirely on my own until age 19, when I needed to acquire furnishings. The first item was a California King water bed. At the time, I worked at a parts department in a dealership for Ford, Lancia and British Leyland. We had a set of high performance heads for an MG displayed at our counter. A guy who had a water bed store wanted those heads so bad! We engineered a trade: I bought the heads with my employee discount (dealer cost plus 10%), and I traded them for the bed. I still have that bed frame and sleep in it every night, though the water bed portion is now replaced with a Sleep Number mattress. That bed frame and pedestal have been all over the Western United States.

Still slowly working my way around the house up and down the ladder to clean gutters. Should finish in a couple more days. I needed to move some water hoses around, so took walks down to the barn and out to the hen house. Did some cleanup in the wood shed, and then it got hotter than I like for working outside.

I had a hearty breakfast of ground beef, peppers, onions and mushrooms sauteed and scrambled with eggs, topped with cheese. It was a lot, so I may forego dinner. But if I get peckish, I’ll do a little pesto pizza with cheese, chicken, onions, artichoke hearts and olives. Two pieces will be more than enough.

That’s all the news that anyone could want! My best to all.

37

We had a couple of very loud, very wet t-boomers come thru this afternoon. One crack of thunder was really close! But power stayed on thru both episodes and temps dropped into the 70s (with humidity in the 80s or 90s!) rain is forecast on and off tomorrow - we’ll see if I can get much weeding done. I walked thru the landscaping with the plan, trying to identify all the plants, since some were unfamiliar to me. I think I found everything, tho some of the coneflowers seem to be overwhelmed, so I’ll weed around them first thing next time out.

If I had any motivation, I’d go out now for an hour or so. But I don’t so I won’t. So there!

Back to the topic, sorta. When FCD and I got married, I had plenty of furniture, having bought 2 houses before meeting him. So I think the first furniture he and I bought together was Daughter’s crib! Over the last 40+ years, we’ve bought a variety of furniture, some cheap crap, some decent used, some brand new. But we’re still using the bedroom pieces (minus the headboard since it’s a queen and we have a king) that I bought before we met. And the oldest piece of his is a clock that he built as a teen. He keeps wanting to get rid of it, but I like it! It stands in the basement - maybe 4’ tall? I need to give it a good cleaning and polishing, then maybe offer it to the grands.

OK, my recliner is singing its siren song…

38

I went with a Roborock Qrevo S Pro (keep in mind I didn’t pay near that much due to Amazon Prime Day sales). As I researched the damn things, it was quickly apparent that none of them works great for every situation. I chose this one due to the high suction power and side sweeper that meant it would perform well picking up cat litter from hardwood floors. It does okay with pet hair (I have two cats) but gets mixed reviews for people that are dealing with dogs that are heavy shedders.

If you have mostly carpets or lots of animal fur or a lot of dirt tracked inside, it really changes what robot will work best for your situation.

But I can highly recommend the mop functionality!

39

I’d need a larger house or a wife who doesn’t want just a little wall space to hang art. I’m continuing the purge by doing a shelf read every quarter and donating or selling books I realistically will never read (or will never read again). I hate it very much.

There are the equivalent of 24 bookcases around the house. That’s having liberated about 2000 books already.

40

We’ve got one of those lingering around in the shop. It’s called “the stupid chair.”

Does building something count as first furniture? My first off-campus apartment, I got the little room, like it was barely big enough for my bed, which admittedly was a king size waterbed (parents got sick of it and I got it). So I built a loft where I put a desk and chair and some shelves for my stuff. That was the unfortunate house that became almost a frat. I may have told this story before, but one night I got back from the library and there was a rager going on. Some dude at the door tried to charge me $5 to get in. I took the wad of cash off him and used it to pay the oil bill.

First real furniture I bought was an unfinished dining table and some chairs that had once been used by operators at Ma-Bell, so…old. I just gave the last of those to my brother to use as a dining chair when his daughter comes to live with him for grad school next year.