Driving, OmniMax, Windows and Furniture

As mentioned in my last post, we headed down to St. Louis  on Saturday to, among other things, see the OmniMax presentation of Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon.  We left springfield at about 10 ’til 8 in the morning and were parked at the Science Center at around 9:30, with tickets to the 10am showing.

The show was awesome, it looked amazing.  For the first 15 minutes that is.  That’s when the fabled Howerter Curse kicked in and the projector broke!  We couldn’t believe it, we just sat in our seats almost dumbfounded as they were announcing the refunds/vouchers.  We were able to get our money back, and spent the rest of the morning walking through the Science Center.

For lunch we brought sandwich-making materials and had a nice picnic in Forest Park.  The temperature in the shade felt about 15 degrees cooler than the blistering heat (for this time of year) we felt whenever we left the car – that combined with a good breeze made for an enjoyable lunch.

Just as we were done packing up and ready to head to the Galleria, Ana tried rolling up her window in the car.  And the window just sat there.  And then it slid all the way down on its own and made a nice clunk at the bottom.  Not wanting to leave my car wide open in a parking lot, it need to be “fixed”.  Katherine was able to get her fingers down inside the door enough so Jay could pull the window up and Ana could shove some paper towels between the door and window.  Luckily the paper towels provided just enough pressure  to keep the window rolled up most of the time (small adjustments were needed throughout the day).  The car is now at the dealership.

Sunday was a fun day at my relatives in Troy, IL.  My grandfather made steak for everyone and we ended up having a rather quick tournament of Bocce Ball in his backyard.  Ana and I didn’t win, it was a shame.

Now for yesterday, Memorial Day.  We heard through the grapevine that a furniture store called Cohen’s was not going to reopen their Springfield store (damaged badly in this spring’s tornadoes), and they were closing their Jacksonville store.  A perfect time to go check out some much needed furniture (formal dining room, living room and master bedroom all need furniture still).  We decided we’d look for either bedroom furniture or a pair of chairs for the living room (the room with the piano and a pair of crappy chairs right now).  We weren’t able to find the chair anywhere.  We spent all day sitting on furniture at about 5 stores.  Alot of them were really nice, but we’re being very particular about what we want: if anyone’s familiar with Granger Library in Champaign, we want chairs as comfortable as the ones there with the ottoman.

With our chair hunt being unsuccessful, we also looked for bedroom furniture.  Oh we found a set.  And ordered it.  It’ll be here in August (I can’t believe I ordered furniture that has to be shipped in.. ugh).  The good thing is that it’ll give us plenty of time to get the bedroom painted so we won’t have to move the new furniture out of the way to do so later.  The pieces are so large and heavy that I don’t expect them to get moved much through their lifetime, and definitely not by me!