Obsessed (and Rooms to Go!)

I finally ordered this online stuff I've been dithering about for a while. Just several silly little things that have been on my list but it's a relief to finally get them taken care of. Plus now I'll have the fun of packages coming.

I've been investigating furniture stores online because we were thinking of buying a new chair I saw advertised in the paper. My family has never really bought furniture because of the overwhelming load of inherited stuff passed down from both sides of the family. That is both a blessing and a curse. But now that I'm looking into the furniture business, it seems more like a blessing. After reading hundreds of people's experiences with furniture companies it seems like a large, well-organized scam. Very cheaply made, knocked-around-in-the warehouse, not-as-good-as-the-showroom furniture delivered erratically by careless and overworked delivery people. The theme seems to be, once they have your money, you're screwed. The store is nice to you only up until that point. There was story after story of store managers getting ugly and defensive with people who complained about the problems they were having with their furniture. Warranties seem to guarantee nothing. ("That only covers ball point pen and drink spills.") If your job is to sell a substandard product, you would start to get defensive. It got me so rattled I started looking on craigslist instead.

I had a good experience a few years ago getting a small wooden filing cabinet from a furniture store, but that was a kind of upscale Scandinavian furniture place which was not a chain. Plus, I was not buying a big set of something so there was not too much to go wrong. It sounds like getting an older chair reupholstered would be a much better deal, if you can find something well-made.

William worked all weekend long. He got a lot done but he was exhausted. The only breaks he took were to go with me to a movie on Saturday night and to birth class on Sunday. The movie was Obsessed, which I wanted to see and which I also wanted to walk out of about halfway through. I love corny psychological thrillers but this one irritated me with some uninventive stereotyping. I got past it and I'm kind of glad we stayed to the end to at least follow the expected outcome through. The male lead was very charismatic, with a nice Cary Grant way about him. Beyonce was Beyonce. The obsessed temp was pretty well-played by that other blonde woman from Heroes. One of the highlights: "Some single women see the workplace as their hunting ground. And she's got you in her sights." Yeah, you have to watch out for those single women in the workplace. They're always hunting down innocent married men for their own manipulative ends. The Beyonce character reminds her husband in the beginning that he agreed not to have a female personal assistant (she was his previous personal assistant). He can't be trusted with a woman in proximity, you know. Not sure what his wife was going to do about all the other women in the office. "You promised not to sit next to another woman in a meeting." Fatal Attraction did the whole thing much better. This film is busting some new ground, though, by having two black stars yet not being marketed to a primarily black audience. Race is not brought up as an issue at all, which is refreshing in a movie not concerned with that, but the director did capture some interesting overtones showing the helplessness of a larger black man trying to fend off a smaller white woman who's attempting to physically coerce him in a public place, in one scene. How can he defend himself when she will probably be given the benefit of the doubt by strangers, given the racism bubbling under the surface of our society? It made me think about how it would feel to be a physically imposing man, who intimidates people by just walking down the street. I remember when I tripped in the dark once and hit under my eye on the corner of a bookcase. My boyfriend (who was of another race) and I went to the mall, me with my black eye. I felt a weird kind of vibe from people as we walked around. Would that have been the case if he were white? I really don't know.