I was supposed to fly to Denver early this morning but United canceled my flight.   So I found myself with a free day on the schedule.   I should have stayed put and gotten some work done on the Spring magazine, which is currently in layout, but instead we went out shopping for appliances.   What a nightmare.

I don’t even want to talk about the joys of shopping for the house.   Suffice to say that we visited a plumbing supply store, two big box stores, Sears, a window supply store, a “scratch and dent” appliance store, and a few miscellaneous places.   We looked at fixtures, sinks, refrigerators, dishwashers, cooktops, hoods, washers, dryers, laminates, vanities, and replacement windows. What did we buy?   Nothing. We ended up at 7 p.m. with a notepad full of scribbled model numbers, prices, rebates, delivery fees, colors, and confusion — but not a single sales receipt to show we’d actually accomplished something.

But hey, at least I bought two toilets online.   Can’t wait for that big box to arrive. “Oh look!   Quick! Everyone come round!   It’s the toilets!”   Then we’ll gleefully install them and stand, holding hands in a semi-circle, to watch the First Flush.   Such are the joys of a renovation.

Sorry if I’m too sarcastic.   I would prefer to wave a magic wand and have the house done.   How can it be that we can see 27 different dishwashers and still not find the “right” one?   Who is responsible for the dysfunctional design of gas cooktops that causes the ones with good flame control to be the hardest to clean?   Why was the highlight of our day the burritos at Nico’s?

The low point was when I reluctantly turned over my beloved Nikon to the repair shop for cleaning and repair.   It was almost emasculating.   I am like a gunslinger with no six-shooter now.   The world’s most interesting photo may pop up in front of me tomorrow, the equivalent of having the bad guys right in my sights, and I’ll be powerless to take a shot.   The Nikon won’t be back until late next week, due to the holiday, so for a while the blog will be somewhat devoid of photos.   I’ll borrow Eleanor’s camera for a few days to help bridge the gap, but it won’t be the same.

There’s one bright spot in the day.   My father sent me a Bose SoundDock for the iPod, so now we have tunes in the house.     If you’ve ever worked on a house, you know how essential it is to have a little music to work by.   It makes everything go faster.   Tomorrow, once I get a few things done for the magazine, I’ll be back on the floors again, so the SoundDock will get a good workout.   It’s also portable enough to travel with the Airstream, which is a major reason why I wanted something like this rather than a typical large stereo.

Notice a common thread to my ramblings lately?   It’s all about things now.   That’s what the house is doing to me.   I want to talk about experiences but instead my experiences seem to be related to the acquisition, disposition, or maintenance of things.   This is why the burritos were the more memorable   thing we did today — they were the only positive learning experience we had.   I learned that Nico’s makes a truly awesome al pastor burrito for $4. It’s a little thing but if that’s all the day yielded, I’ll take it.

12 days to our next Airstream trip …