2011...So Far ,It's Rotten

Deadly Twisters in the Mid-West, a flood in Australia, Church bombings in Nigeria and Egypt, make what I'm going through at the moment seem seriously trivial, but nobody should have to nonetheless.  Saturday morning when I woke up, the usual routine of washing my hands, starting a cup of Tea and filling  Rainbow's water bowl was interrupted by a little glitch. Nothing came out of the tap.. That bill is covered by the rent, so here's a problem for either maintenance or public works to tackle. Right? Well apparently not. Numerous calls to both have resulted in zippity doo. So, here I sit, in an apartment that has all the amenities of a cardboard box in Mumbai. Haven't been able to wash dishes, cook anything or shower.  My trip to work on Saturday morning was unbelievable fun. Unwashed, P.O.ed and hating the world in general, I managed to fall flat on my face, right in the middle of a crosswalk through a busy intersection that our imbecilic road department did a lousy job of de-icing.  Then there were the steady streams of completely obnoxious customers once I managed to drag myself  through the BACK door. (Someone graciously forgot to open the front.)   My shift ended a little early when a wildly indignant patron decided to lecture me when I pushed a chair closer to one of the restaurant tables. His take on it was that he had attended a class where they taught him, he claimed and I'm not making this up: "The kilobytes of sound produced by moving a chair can seriously damage  the earlobes."  That was about all I could handle for the day. Clocked out, walked out and trudged home. I had already suffered six hours of similar crap and couldn't stomach one  more.   A hot bath and a stiff drink would have made me feel a lot better afterward. That's if I could actually find some water to fill the tub.

Le Chaise Orange...Or Is It "La"?

I usually look for my MCM fixes at second-hand shops, but found this particular chair, at Big Lots of all places, for the princely sum of $20.  I remember seeing nearly identical ones around the late '60's, early '70's, but have no idea who the designer was. (Help me out here Dana!)   It's interesting to see that the lower-end furniture market has popped up with quite a few revivals of these styles lately. Perusing the other aisles at Big Lots, I found myself staring at mod inspired pillows and some lighting accessories that wouldn't look out of place in a 1967 MOE catalogue.  The experience almost gave me flashbacks to the halcyon days of The Akron stores when I was a little kid, walking around, bedazzled by all the groovy wares they had on offer.