Chippendale furniture

 MJ has a lot of needs, and one of those needs is for more furniture. I, being the minimalist who wants less of everything, has opposed expanding too much furniture, but I do like walking through the IKEA showrooms to imagine what a room could look like! Cabinets are key.... they store a bunch of the odds and ends that end up on our tables and leave less room to walk and eat (we probably need more or larger tables too). Furniture is kind of like personal fashion.....at some point I should probably expand past business casual or bust: dress pants, or just wearing shorts and t-shirt around the house when I'm not at the office. There's really no in-between. Furniture also needs branching out, and one type that Jeopardy writes about is Chippendale furniture, a style originating from the 18th century London furniture maker Chippendale maker. Yes, of course there's the joke about the male strippers in Vegas, and then there's also the animorphic chipmunks called Chip N' Dale. But yea, apparently my parents own Chippendale style furniture without even knowing it....I believe they just went to a showroom back in the day called Haynes Furniture or something (I remember a lot of furniture stores back in the 1990s that just aren't around anymore, kind of like Kmart or Sears department stores. Sad) Chippendale is apparently characterized by having cabriolet legs, that bend in an S-curve in an artistic way to achieve some elegance instead of just a block. Of course, those curves got traded in later and MJ now prefers the more solid sleek rectangle design without any frills, so Chippendale is out (and if it's out for MJ, it's out for Bobby). Next up: learning more about kitchen appliances! 

Today I turned down one of the best food offers in all the world. It took all the strength in my body to do it, and I knew if I just clicked one button and spent a negligible amount of money (literally the same amount that I spent in 1997 for the same item at Cass Junior High cafeteria), I would in a few short minutes be enjoying the sweet delicious taste of a......Costco Hot Dog. Plus drink for $1.50! A better deal does not exist in America. Seriously, what can you buy for a $1 nowadays? A little girl with her leather-jacket wearing mom pushing her around to attract sympathy on the train took me for $2 for a pack of gum on the subway a few weeks ago. A newspaper is $4.00! (not even the special Sunday Times edition). I sent in my expired CA Fasttrack transponder (a light device you stick on your car) through USPS and it cost me $6.00! Lunches used to have a baseline of $5, now you can't get away with spending less than $10.00/ $12.00 to get full as an adult male. $1.50 is just nothing in this world, and yet I have to remember sometimes that when it comes to food, the best deal for my wallet is not necessarily the best deal for my body, and that's where I drew the line. (Plus, MJ also had a face that said, "You can get it but I don't really want you to get it." It's the opposite of when we got to the furniture store and she says not to get it, but her face says she does want to get it). Regardless, buy Costco stock. I've been handsomely rewarded since 5 years ago, the profits could go towards buying hundreds (maybe thousands?) of those $1.50 plus drink hot dogs. 

Of all the things I could be watching right now with all the subscriptions available to me (Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and who knows what other subscriptions I forgot to cancel that are charging me much more than $1.50 a month) PLUS my co-worker endorsing "The King and I" as his favorite musical because there are so many syllogisms in the songs, that I could be consuming, I'm watching a 2015 HBO show called "Togetherness" with Mark Duplass and Amanda Pett and Melanie Lynskey. It's just so realistic of a show, the arguments that they get into on that show almost mirror exactly the "disagreements" MJ and I get into. They also do couples therapy and make it seem funny, which in real life it's probably not but definitely something to look into.