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We've been in our house now for five and a half years. Over the course of those five and a half years, we've half-heartedly attempted to find some bar stools for our kitchen that a) we both liked, b) were sturdy enough to hold people, c) went with our funky decor, and d) weren't horribly expensive. We never had much luck. I finally decided about a month and a half ago that I'd had enough of searching, and that there had to be a bar stool out there somewhere that met our needs. I scoured the internet and came up with about forty that I liked, which we eventually narrowed down to one. We had no idea if it would be comfortable or sturdy, but after successfully living without bar stools for so long, we decided that it probably didn't matter, as they really weren't necessary for our survival.
We ended up ordering four stools about a month ago, and they finally arrived this week. We assembled them and were pleased to discover that they were both comfortable and sturdy, and that they went reasonably well with the rest of our great room. Now we just need to have someone over to watch us cook so they can be useful for something other than terrorizing Errol.
We took last Friday off work to drive up to Kansas City and pick up Jeff's new car. He ordered it back in December, and it finally showed up last week, just in time because his old car comes off lease in a couple of weeks. We were originally planning to pick it up on Saturday, but then we learned that the entire state of Kansas was expecting a massive blizzard that day, hence the vacation day off work.
We got a slow start to the day, mostly because I insisted on getting my car washed on the way out of town so I didn't have to show up at the BMW dealership in a very dirty BMW. Unfortunately, my best efforts to keep the car clean were foiled when we got stuck behind a de-icing truck on the turnpike. We were only stuck there for a minute or two, but my car was covered in the fluid.
We arrived in KC at lunch time, and headed over to Sweet Tomatoes, a soup and salad buffet, for lunch, after which we washed my car again. :) Then it was off to the dealership to take delivery of Jeff's new car.
We took it for a quick test drive to make sure we liked it. BMW wagons are a bit hard to come by around here (here being the USA in general), and we had never actually been in one before we ordered it. We had driven a regular 3 series sedan with the same engine, and had seen a 5 series wagon, so we were reasonably confident that it would be fine, and it was.
The car delivery took about three hours. After that we headed farther into town to visit one of our favorite wine shops. One of the guys that works at the shop is really helpful when it comes to the Rhone and Burgundy wines that we're trying to explore, and we lucked out because he was there that day. He helped us pick out a few bottles, and we were on our way again.
We had to stop at Crate and Barrel in Leawood because we ALWAYS have to stop at Crate and Barrel when we're in KC. We managed to find a few things there that we couldn't live without, as we usually do (it's my obsession to cover my kitchen and pantry shelves with beautiful glassware and dinnerware, whether we use it or not, which is ridiculous, so anyone who wants to come over and have dinner with us, please do).
After that we hit the road back towards home. By this time, the weather had already turned quite cold and windy, and it was getting a bit spitty, too. We didn't run into any real trouble until we hit Emporia, where we found driving sleet and very sharp winds. We stopped for dinner there, experienced the worst gas getting moment ever in the driving sleet, and then hopped on the turnpike for the last part of the drive home. Our hop on the turnpike quickly turned into being parked at a standstill on the turnpike due to a wreck. Thankfully it only took about ten minutes for it to get moved to the side, and we were on our way again.
The weather continually worsened through the rest of our drive home. We had sleet, rain, ice, snow, and finally blizzard to contend with. We saw several people that had spun off, but we didn't seem to find any icy patches ourselves. The last bit of the drive was the worst - there were a few moments where the blizzarding snow was flying right in our faces and it sort of gave us a weird vertigo feeling. After that, the snow started falling in HUGE chunks, and we both experienced what could best be described as spatial disorientation. That's kind of a pilot term, but it's all I can think of to explain the feeling we had. We knew our cars were moving, but our bodies had no ability to comprehend it at the time. It was weird. We both breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled our cars into the garage, got out, and gave each other a big hug.
