The House (improvements)

We like our new house very much. Structurally the house is just fine the way it is. There are a few things we changed within the first week. Holly’s Mom and Merlin came out right after we moved in to see the new house and help out with little things here and there.

Apparently there were more little things than I realized right away. I went to work one day and came home to find a new sink in the first floor bathroom and a new faucet in the upstairs bath. Then a new faucet appeared in the kitchen along with new lights in both bathrooms. I thought the home improvement fairy was stopping by bearing gifts until I realized we were paying for these things.

Then I got a lawnmower… It had been a long time since I had mowed a lawn. As a kid I hated mowing the lawn. The only positive thing that I could ever get out of mowing the lawn, other than it looking good, was that I could get a pretty good tan in the process. This, of course, was before all the concerns with skin cancers and the worries of other abnormalities.

We ended up with a great deal on a lawnmower from Home Depot.

Merlin and I arrived at Home Depot before the ladies and the kids. There was a line-up of slightly used lawn mowers. One's that had been used once or twice and then returned. They called them "refurbished".

We saw a Honda that looked pretty good. The Original price was $268. He said he'd take $68 off and make it an even $200. I called the Boss (Holly), who said go for it. I told him “ok”, he filled out the little work order told me to take it to checkout and bring the receipt back to pick up the mower. We met up with Holly and the rest of the clan in the store and picked up everything else that we needed.

As we went through the checkout I was off looking at hot tubs or something while they finished checking out. As they came up to me they had these wide eyed expressions that I couldn't at first read. They handed me the receipt and told me to run to get the mower before they changed their minds.

Apparently when Joe Home Depot wrote up my slip he wrote down the original price at $268 and the discount of $200 for the end price of $68.

When I got over to the mowers again there was this woman who spoke maybe three words of English who looked at the receipt, then the mower, then the receipt again… then once again the mower. Handed me the receipt and said "have good day". (those were the three words…)
I sped off with the mower like a bandit and threw it into the Blazer.

After we got home I found out from Holly and her Mom that they had tried to tell the cashier several times that this wasn't the correct price. But he said he had to ring it up the way it was written… This made me feel a little less guilty…

The mower runs great so far, we haven't had any problems with it.