For the first time since the memory of personkind runneth not to the contrary, I have nothing pressing to do today! With current spate of paying work lobbed back into the client’s court, I feel totally uninclined to restart the unpaying work — have to do an index for the writing book…for the third time.
Thinking Our Merrie Groupe was not meeting today (it being nearly New Year’s), I failed to go to the Scottsdale Business Assn meeting. B-a-a-ad human! They did meet. And I missed last week’s shindig because I decided I did not want to drive to Scottsdale through rush-hour traffic in the pouring rain.
And of course, last Thursday we did indeed have a shitload of paying work on hand…
Normally I would visit two or three grocery stores on the way home, making Thursday a weekly Shopping Day. That plus the early a.m. meeting occupies half the day…it’s 11 a.m. or later by the time I get back to the Funny Farm.
So this is all unaccustomed free time. I don’t know what to do with it!
Candidates:
• Walk the dogs
• Drive the dogs to a mountain park and walk them in the desert
• Write & mail belated thank-you cards
• Get New Year’s gift for my friends who are having me over for NY Eve
• Backwash and shock-treat pool
• Enter charges for December budget tracking
• Move basil plants back outside; water
• Prune roses
• Remove frost coverings from plants
• Clean bathrooms
• Buy mattress & box spring set
• Clean refrigerator
• Buy food
• Prepare food
• Write neglected index
• Draft new piece of terrible fiction
• Revisit idea of joining Toastmasters
• Clean floors
Hmmm… Doesn’t appear that there’s really NOTHING to do. It’s just that with one exception none of it is very urgent or very interesting.
Macy’s is having a sale on mattresses and box springs: $249 with supposed free delivery. Unclear whether it includes the metal stand thingie that cheap mattresses go on. Might be worth driving over to see what they have.
Not feeling very trusting of the mattress stores in town. At least one of them — whose name I no longer recall because I failed to write it down while cruising the Web — is selling discounted “new” mattress sets that actually are used. Yuch!!
Macy’s at least is a known quantity. Also they sell decent bedding, and I believe there’s a Target in or near that shopping center. Actually, the shopping center that houses the Macy’s that carries furniture (most of them don’t, here) has a Penny’s, I think, where I could probably get some twin-sized bedding relatively cheap.
Et voila! That may be the Project of the Day.
Certainly better than launching a third try on a mind-numbing indexing job…
Image: DepositPhotos, ©Serggn
Speaking of mattresses….A while back I met a guy ….IMHO….a VERY smart guy who made a business out of old mattresses. At the time, there was a lot of concern about old mattresses being “dumped” and being the perfect breeding ground for rats. THIS guy would pick up old mattresses…for a fee….from bedding companies, municipalities, landlords and private citizens. He would then take these mattresses to a warehouse location in a tough part of town. He would strip the mattress of it’s textiles, repair and sanitize the frames. And then re-cover the metal or wooden frame with new textile that came in a large roll. There was no waste….he bailed the soiled textile and sold that….he saved the metal fasteners and sold that for scrap. The guys re-doing these things were just short of amazing how fast they worked. And when those “re-conditioned” mattresses were finished and wrapped in protective plastic….one would never suspect a week before they had been lying along side the road. It was never made clear whether these mattresses were sold as new OR re-conditioned. Smart guy with a good business plan…..IMHO,
Apparently that’s a business model for mattress retailing. On Yelp, you can find a whole string of reports from people who bought mattresses from a store right down the street from my son’s house, supposedly at “bargain” prices. After they got the things set up in their homes, they noticed a smell that they all describe as “funk.”
Each person discovered, in different ways, that the mattresses were neither new, or, beneath the outer covering, clean. One guy took a knife to his and found it was filthy and stinky inside.
That specifically is why I wanted to buy at Macy’s…another FAIL, for reasons to be explained after I have time to fix lunch/dinner and a drinkee-poo.
I’ll tell ya…From what I could see, my guy was “legit”. I saw them lay out about 50 metal fames and a guy with some sort of “sanitizing solution” power washed the frames, let them dry and then followed that with some sort of oil based disinfectant to keep the metal from rusting. It seemed profitable to me….Queen size mattresses around here go for $500-600. Macy’s???