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1:15 p.m. - 2002-11-17
Groovy green chair
I wouldn't live in Cullman county if you gave me a million dollars and a free house. There's always severe weather going through there, and as those of you who've been reading this journal for awhile know, severe weather equals tornadoes.

Bruce and I went through there yesterday on our way into Birmingham and happened upon some of the damage from last weeks weather version of hell on earth. As we were coming up onto an overpass bridge I notice that the trees going off to the side were flattened. They looked like they had been stepped on by Godzilla.

"Damn clearcutting lumber companies!" I thought. "Why do they have to take the biggest trees?" And then I realised that the trees hadn't been cut. They had been torn up by their roots, and some of them were snapped into pieces. I'm not talking about small trees here. I'm talking about full grown, old growth, humongous trees, laying about like they'd been smashed by a wrecking ball.

The swath went on for a mile or more. Scary. Very, very scary.

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On a more pleasant and happy note, I bought a groovy chair yesterday. We went to Birmingham to generally get me out of the house because I've been working on this installation for 14 hours a day and I'm getting positively buggy. So we decided to do some Christmas and house shopping in Alabama's version of the big city.

I love Birmingham. I desperately wish Bruce had gotten a job at UAB instead of UAH, because Birmingham is just such a fabulous place. It's like Boston in the early to mid 1980's, with lots of art and music and weird scenes bubbling under the surface. And cheap housing and wonderful architecture. Oh, I can't go on enough about it.

We went to Bare Hands, of course. And we went to a killer place called Parkside which has very upscale architectural salvage. The kind I could never afford but I can sit around drooling over for hours, until Bruce finally starts heaving great sighs and I have to pull myself away.

And we went to Mazer's, which is salvage of a different sort. Mazer's is like Building 19 after the Apocalypse. It's several large warehouses of....oh, God, total and unmitigated junk, as well as flooring, plumbing supplies, screen doors, Ralph Lauren sheets, spoon rests, photo albums, nails, patio chairs, Barbie dolls and sleeping bags.

We found two beautiful massage tables for $125 each. I was seriously tempted, since Bruce is a massage junkie and in a pinch it'd be another guest bed if we had way too much company. My inner skinflint took over though. No massage table.

But we did buy this groovy chair! They had a couple dozen of these really weird chairs. They were bent wood chairs, but instead of having rattan caning, they were plaited with a plastic like the gimp we used to make bracelets out of in girl scouts. They fit into an interior decorating style that can best be described as "Tacky African".

There was a whole set of four that had purple and white caning that I went bizerk for. They were truly startling. Unfortunately Bruce couldn't stomach them, and since Bruce is usually quite tolerant they must have been truly appalling. And besides, as he pointed out, a whole set of them would incite the cats to a scratch fest riot, as the plaited gimp is exactly the kind of thing they like to sink their claws into.

When you have four cats, you have to consider these things. Sigh. There goes my eye-popping dining room.

We compromised on a green and white one that matches the guest room "Fresh Grass" paint job. For $12.50 I got just the most wonderful chair!


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