found lots of Johnny Bench baseball cards, though

Vacation. It's typically a treasured word. I'm in the middle of one right now; and yet, I barely care.

See, I got to a point at work where I hadn't taken any vacation time and was about to max out on my allotted amount of stored vacation hours. So, rather than simply work without getting any vacation time, I'm taking this week off so as to allow myself another week's worth of hour storage. There's no feeling of needing to decompress for a stressful period at work. There's no feeling of relaxation, freedom, and escapism. I'm just burning vacation hours. Woot.

So! My "vacation" so far? Totally focused on fixing up our apartment in preparation for the Housewarming Party we're having on Saturday. Manda and I have been hanging pictures, painting pictures, shopping for lighting and home accessories, etc.

Speaking of that, I spent two hours last night poking around online trying to find a nice bench we could put in our living room. I was shocked at how long it took and how difficult it was to find something. I've become so spoiled in the Google Era of the Information Age that I get frustrated if I can't find the information I'm looking for in under a minute. To search for something for two hours is nearly unheard of for me these days. I'm clearly not a research scientist.

Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Pier 1, Cost Plus, Macy*s, Sears, JC Penney, a dozen random online furniture stores, Scandinavian Designs, Craigslist, eBay, Ikea ::shudder:: - none of them had anything. It's not like we were looking for some ridiculous bench that no one else has. I just wanted to find a nice, simple black or dark wood bench, preferably with some storage, for about $200. Apparently, though, that isn't what sells, because the world has got some freakin' tacky taste in benches.

Take, for instance, Benches.com. All ugly. It's an entire website devoted to nothing but benches and I couldn't find a single, simple black bench. Am I nuts to expect that to exist?

None the less and frustration aside, Froogle eventually came through after two hours and a billion permutations of search terms and I discovered a cool modern furniture store that I didn't know about before. West Elm has the perfect storage bench that we wanted. Ry, you might be interested to know that the prices for their modern stuff are relatively reasonable and they have a store in Santa Monica.

So, today the house work continues. I'm headed up into Marin to pick up the bench and some other little things like a shower curtain and a floor lamp.

It's not the most fun vacation in the history of ever. But it's getting stuff done, so it's good.