Sometimes you can't even give it away

Craiglist provides a fantastic service: it's free, relatively easy to use, and reaches a much wider audience than many free classified ad services. The problem is that it attracts an absolutely bizarre clientele.

I've been wanting to get a new mattress, and the move provided me with a good excuse to make the switch: rather than shipping my old one back across the country I could get rid of it here and buy new once I'm back East. An 8 year old mattress isn't worth a whole lot, so I posted it on Craigslist as being free for whoever wanted to pick it up. I got a response pretty quickly, and we agreed she would come last weekend.

Nothing.

So I re-posted the ad on Monday figuring that I had just found one of the flakey people who cruise CL. On Tuesday I got an email from the girl apologizing for not checking her messages and telling me she still wanted the mattress. I responded that she needed to come on Wednesday night, and she agreed.

Until Wednesday, when I got a text message (really, her only method of communication) saying she wasn't sure if she could come by. Specifically, she said this:

Hey! I haven't checked messages yet, wast sure if u called! im at a police station now or wld call u bk! how late can I get it?

Now, I'm not an expert, but I think that being at a police station indicates something is "up". Especially when this is the followup message:

I dont know how long i am going to have to be here since i am helping a friend report something. is there any possible way that time tomorrow i cld get it?

Dicey. So I decided to donate the mattress rather than dealing with the CL flakes (probably the most connected flakey population on earth). I called the Salvation Army, and they promised to stop by on Thursday morning. Which they did, only to tell me that my mattress doesn't meet their standards. If you have ever felt ashamed by a piece of furniture try having the Salvation Army tell you that your mattress can't even be given away.

At the end of the day I had to call 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which is a pricey but good service. Unfortunately they do not have employees who understand geometry, and so coaching them on how to get my box spring into the elevator was, to say the least, a chore. At one point they decided to try and break the box spring in half rather than backing out and putting it in the way that it would fit.

After all that I got a text message from police girl asking if it was cool to get the mattress next week. Idiots.

My favorite Christmas present

It's tough to rank Christmas presents, because they are all wonderful in their own way. But I would say the best thing I got this year is my laser rangefinder. Ostensibly it is for the golf course (it's actually called "The Pinseeker"), but since it's been too cold to play golf this year I've had to find alternative uses. Which means "stand out on my balcony and measure the distance to things." Here's what I've discovered:



The boat's mast is 576 yards away. Even down hill it's a 3-shot par five. The edge of the water on the left side of the photo is 408 yards.

The red brick apartment in the dead center of the photo is 266 yards. The yellow apartment to the left of center is 607 yards. The apartment building in the foreground is 62 yards. The Space Needle? I thought that would be just a touch out of range... but it's just at the edge. 1332 yards. Just over 3/4 miles away.

New to the 403

We've got some new additions to Apartment 403. First, I greened up the place on Saturday by purchasing a pygmy date palm at Home Depot (which is just blocks from both the Starbucks headquarters and a Krispy Kreme). (And the answer is two glazed.) (And if you're really dumb, the question was "Did you get any donuts.")



I have a very mixed track record with plants: either they live forever, or die within two weeks. My Aunt Linda once bought me a plant for Christmas. She described it as "indestructible." It didn't even see February. If the pygmy date palm can make it to the Derby I feel it's in the clear. (There will be an upcoming post as to why the apartment is perfect for warm weather plants. It will also explain why I'm already missing A/C.)

The second addition is the dining set I bought online a couple weeks ago. It finally showed up this morning. First, look at this picture and try to spot what's wrong:


You probably don't see anything other than styrofoam. Well, that's the whole problem. That's just packing material for two chairs and the table (less the table box, which I threw out before taking the photo). There are still four more chairs to unpack, each with more styrofoam and cardboard. I'm pretty sure the two delivery guys could have pushed the boxes to the apartment and not worn through the various layers. I'm astounded by how much packing material there is, especially considering this isn't high end furniture. This would be less annoying, but our building/city is psycho about recycling.