Sooooooo……

I skipped dinner with the team on Thursday night in favor an ice cream and a diet Dr. Pepper in my hotel room.  Much of 9/12 was filled with emotional discussions among our executive ranks. I was grateful to get to the airport where I snarfed down a chicken sandwich anticipating a brief layover in Charlotte.  It was not to be.  While my flight left and arrived on time, I wore a blister on my right foot from not wearing socks with my clogs – while doing the 10 min gauntlet from B terminal to E terminal at CLT.  Of course, once there, a massive thunderstorm settled over Charlotte and in the end, my 8:01 flight didn’t take off until after 10pm.  I got home sometime around 11:30pm and finally to sleep at 12:30am.  Not my usual routine.

Anticipating the arrival of our ridiculously expensive Tempur Pedic bed today, I started on the laundry shortly after I got up at 7:30am (sleeping in for me).  I bypassed the cleaning in favor of sorting through 4 days of mail and packages. Mattress guys arrived just as I was falling asleep on the sofa for a nap at 2:30pm.  First, there was confusion about disposal of our 14 year old existing mattress and box springs (resolved – they were removed).  Then came our realization that we  weren’t really getting a king-sized bed:  rather, 2 twins with separate mechanisms that would be placed side-by-side.  Ok, fine. Then we realized that one of the two bases was cracked and damaged.  Fine.  Call to the distributor was made, base was returned to the truck with the promise of a new one tomorrow.  Then I realized that one of the two Tempur-pedic mattresses had a red stain on it – from being packaged in plastic in the head with some red colored promotional materials inside.  Well, since the one thing that voids a TP mattress warranty is a stain, I had to reject it.  Fine – they took it out to the truck and headed to the next delivery.  About an hour later we heard from Alan, who announced that there were no more mattresses available and I would have to wait 2 weeks for another one.  No, no, no.  You are not bringing me a new base and not a mattress.  You are not making me wait 2 weeks, bring me damaged goods, then announce that you need 2 more weeks to provide a replacement – not for $8000 worth of product which I can now clearly see is a particle board base with a hefty motor, and two twin TP mattresses.  About 8 calls later, the plan now is to return the red stained one with a plan to replace it with an undamaged one asap.  Of course 2 weeks from now is my anniversary weekend, so the last thing we want to do is to spend it sitting here at the house waiting on a mattress delivery.  Meh.

I’m not sure this is going to work for us anyway.  I mean two twins means a big seam in the middle – not conducive to cuddling.  It will be good that each of us can control the head and foot elevation, but the actual mattress is in no way a king.

Good thing is that when we saw our old mattress out in the driveway, it became apparent why we have back pain.  It was really sagging.  Pity these things are so stupidly expensive.

Hopefully tomorrow’s delivery won’t be too disruptive.

Also accomplished today was the setup of Apple TV, though I haven’t figured out how to make it just stream the mac desktop to the TV.  We are, however, now more easily watching Netflix from the den television and that is a win.

Not sure what to do about the stress and conflict at work.  I know that when I push folks, it gets worse, but when I don’t see the productivity I need from some people, I’m not sure what else to do.

In other news, ISIS has now decapitated an innocent aid worker.  2 journalists and an aid worker down, more in the lineup.  So many of the worst situations in my life and apparently in world history have been precipitated by folks who are just hell bent to pick a fight….