Oh, give me a home, where the Moose roam…….

Ok, so now we have a place to live, a TV and a nuclear weapon….ok, ok, Dianne would not let me get the last one, but I sure put up a good fight for it. In getting said place to live, we were required to jump through more hoops, show more id, and prove that we had more money than any homeless person should ever have to endure. Once we were able to secure our new residence, what is the first thing one must do to prove they live there??? That’s right – go shopping for a new bed. Now shopping for a bed is always good fun when you know the town you are living in, but when you are getting a bed in a town you have no idea about, it takes the fun to a whole new level. Anchorage has roughly, oh say, 200 mattress stores. Out of those, about half we were able to find. Of the half we were able to find about half had beds that were in our price range (less than $10,000 – they really do have beds out there that are that expensive….). Of those, only a handful were staffed by people that were qualified to be selling anything, much less a bed. I did however like the sales associate that explained that he was formerly homeless, but had turned his life around….. We did not buy our bed from that store. After visiting many stores and lying on more beds that I will ever want to lay on again, we decided to go back to the very first store we visited. After much arm wrestling and some good body blows, Dianne convinced me that we really did need a bed. So I gave in…. I let her pick the mattress she wanted. The problem was that the one she wanted was $239,884.99. I was beat, I had laid on more beds than Pamela Anderson and I really did not care anymore. I told her that she could get the bed if we could stay in Anchorage for another 847 years just to make sure we got good use out of the mattress. She agreed. So off we went to our happy and jubilant sales rep. His eyes lit up and he started drooling when we told him what we wanted. I tried to run, but Dianne tripped me. I just laid there like a slug. I waited for the rep to go tell his boss how he could now afford the new Corvette that he had been wanting, but when he came back, something was wrong – very wrong. He looked different, sad. Like someone had just stolen his first born and was putting it up for bidding on eBay. He walked over and told us that he had some good news and some bad news. We opted for the good news first. The good news was that he did not have the mattress in stock, but he could order it and get it in right away. I asked what the bad news was…. Well, he went on to explain that in Alaska when something is ordered “right away”, it could take up to 4 weeks to arrive. I was filled with glee and happiness, yet at the same time wanted to cry. We had fought for the entire day, and finally decided on the “perfect” mattress, and now it could take 4 weeks to arrive. I asked Dianne if she wanted to wait. The look that I received did not need words. It was much the same sensation that one gets when looking directly into a laser or at the sun for extended periods of time. I knew that we must find a mattress today, or die trying. So off we went to every mattress store that had the brand that we wanted. There were none to be found. Dianne and I were dejected. There was no way that we were going to sleep on the floor or in sleeping bags for an entire month. So what did we do? Well, I had a little ace up my sleeve. We went back to the original mattress store and I had Dianne lie down on a bed that was just like the one that we wanted, but required proof of income to lie down on. It was ridiculously expensive, but is had several things going for it. First, it was just like the bed we wanted, but Dianne liked it more. Second, it was in stock. Third, it was in stock. Since it was in stock and would be delivered be small elves wearing gold and green dresses throwing pixie dust, I decided to buy it. The Sales rep was happy, Dianne was happy, and I was happy. I would now never have to buy a mattress again. Not because I did not want to, but because I could not afford to. I asked Dianne to have the mattress buried with me, but I don’t think she heard me.

In the spirit of spending all my money in one day, I decided it would be a great idea to get a new TV, a TV stand, and a computer desk. Dianne thought that I had been smoking something that they sell on corners here and drinking heavily. Actually I knew that only the TV would be expensive. The other two items could be had for less than $100!!! I had been doing some undercover shopping while she was not looking, and found some really good deals. So off we went to get the whole lot. It took less than half a day to acquire all the necessary item to make a livable house. I figured that getting a TV would be a great distraction for me and perhaps help me forget about the million dollar bed….. The TV stand was a great place to put the TV, and the computer desk was a great place to….well….er….do computer like things. Plus, it looked really nice on the box….. Yea, that is how I saved lots of money on the stand and desk. You see, they are real wood, or at least real wood pieces, and look really nice once put together. The problem is that, “some assemble required”. I now know how they get there kicks in China. What they do is make really nice, cheap furniture, and send it over here. The joke is that in the instructions they say that the “estimated” assembly time is only 2.5 hours. Yea, right. I worked on the desk for over 5 hours and was only half done. They should have said, “The reason this is so cheap is due to the fact that you will have to spend more time putting it together than you will working on it…” That’s ok, I was done at only 2:30am and the sun was just setting, but that’s a whole other story.