New furniture and lots more

Prepare for extremely long post. So, it appears I need to get back in the habit of posting. Apparently once a week is all I can manage right now. It'll just have to be good enough, so deal with it people. If you want to know what's happening in between posts, pick up a phone. Now, on to news.

We FINALLY received our entertainment center that we ordered in July. Thank goodness it wasn't damaged too. (See older post about living room tables for Part I of the Mauk Family Furniture Saga.) We are still waiting on the replacement parts for the living room tables but they are functional for right now so we're not complaining. But here's what the entertainment center looks like.

You may notice the new, large, flat-screen TV sitting on the console. No, we did not have that before and the story behind it constitutes Part II of the MFFS. When we were shopping for this furniture, we were well aware of what type of TV we owned and how large it was. For this reason, we made sure to ask Jim Bob (I swear that's really his name - printed on his nametag, no less) if the center panel on the entertainment center was removeable. He assured us it was. He even went so far as to consult a booklet (we innocently assumed it actually pertained to our potential furniture) to be positive that the panel could be removed to accomodate an "old fashioned tube TV". So when the set arrived yesterday we confidently asked the delivery gents (DG) to remove the panel for us.

DG-I'm sorry ma'am, that doesn't come out.

Me-Oh, yes it does, the salesman told us it would.

DG-Begging your pardon ma'am but if he told you that then he doesn't know what the sam hill he's talking about. If we take out that panel, the entire upper hutch would be unstable. Not to mention, you'd have some pretty unsightly holes in your unit.

Me-Then by all means, leave it where it is.

Then I proceeded to have a "Back to the Future" moment in which all I could do was repeat the following:
-Damn. Damn, damn.

After the DGs left, Andy & I spent a good 1/2 hour trying different configurations of furniture + TV to make it work. It didn't work. Our 2 options were leave the old TV hanging 6 inches off the front of the new console where the blow-by from our running pre-schooler might send it crashing to the floor while the hutch balanced precariously between the TV and the wall OR buy a new TV. Now, for those of you not privvy to our current TV situation let me update you. We currently own 3 TVs, 2 of which we were using. The 3rd is still in the moving box in the mine field/baby's room. Our living room TV is temperamental at best. Currently, viewing time is 15+ minutes from the time you actually turn it on. The sound works immediately but the picture feels the need to surprise us with it's arrival. Then, while watching, it sometimes decides that it's time for everything to be viewed through rose-colored glasses or that watching Dora in greyscale would be best. So, it was decided after much swearing and vowing that we would never buy anything from Turner's Furniture again, that we would buy a new TV.

Andy did very well. We were only at Best Buy for an hour. Besides we were under a time constraint - the Razorbacks were on TV last night and we had to have the new TV purchased, home and working by game time. (I don't even want to talk about the game so don't bring it up. Why Felix Jones was on the sideline for the last drive, I don't pretend to understand. Why we passed the ball on 3rd down instead of running the ball to burn time, is a mystery to me.) The English instructions were mysteriously missing so Andy had to make do with the pictures on the Spanish instructions. So, now we have a 40" LCD flat-screen TV and it's marvelous! We'll be paying it off for a while and I'm pretty sure that constitutes mine and Andy's Christmas gift to one another, but it's freakin' awesome. Scott and anyone else who is interested, you can email Andy for the details.

Now that we have some place to put things, we were able to get rid of most of the remaining boxes. The baby's room is still a mine field but no one really goes in there right now except the cats, and they like all the hidey holes. And this is what my house looks like without boxes in the main living areas. Of course the baby's room is still a mine field but we're not tackling that until Christmas break. I also have some pics from Labory Day in Destin but I'll post those later. Gotta go play Disney Trivia with E. She's wicked good at it - it'll be hard to beat her. Hope you're all well.