Home Theater

Today was my great-aunt's birthday party up in Milwaukee. It was really fun, the food was great and Grace had a wonderful time too. The strawberry shortcake was to-die-for. As I mentioned yesterday, we were going to stop on the way home at different furniture stores to look for new furniture for the family room. It looks like our first stop was our best stop. They had exactly what we were looking for and for a pretty reasonable price. We can't afford to buy all of it right now, but at least we know what we want and where to get it. I spent some time looking online tonight to see if I could find it cheaper. I did find it cheaper, but by the time you factor in shipping and tax, that first store is really hard to beat. Plus if we wait a few weeks, they are having a good sale where we could save a pretty good amount too. Just maybe they'll have special financing where we won't really have to pay for it for a year or two with no interest.

What I did do online tonight was order a sample of the leather so we can take that and use it to help us determine the wall colors for the family room. That's what we REALLY want to do. As I mentioned yesterday, we already know the ceiling colors as long as we like what we've selected after I paint the sample. And I mentioned already that we know the fabric for the drapes and for the valences and I didn't mention that we've already selected the carpeting we want as well. So one of the few remaining things is the wall color which is how we started this whole mess out anyway. Funny how it works out that you want a new wall color and end up changing the entire room. That is what we wanted to do, it's just interesting how the order of all the selections has worked out so that the wall color is one of the last things we're determining. Now if I could only convince Julie that we need that new plasma TV...

The other thing we were reminded of today was lighting--OK, Julie asked me. We don't really have any lighting in the family room except for a couple of lamps and ideally I wanted to put in recessed lighting. I think now is the time to get that estimate and see if it's worth doing it before we start painting everything. It would really stink to get everything done and realize we can't see and have to tear it all up to put in lighting.

The Ford dealer called today and said that our new car was finally "Submitted to Plant" which means they will be building it soon! Yea! Here are the various stages of status as they build a new car at an assembly plant.

1. Clean and Unscheduled
2. Submitted to Plant
3. Scheduled
4. Locked In (no changes to order allowed)
5. Bucked (vehicle is on assembly line and production has begun)
6. Produced
7. Released from Plant
8. Released to Convoy

Ours was "Clean and Unscheduled" for seven weeks. Supposedly now it will be another 4-5 weeks before it's delivered to the dealer. I hope not more than 4 weeks because that's when we leave for Colorado and we're planning to take this car on the trip!