20 Year Old Resin Adirondak Chair

 

I was sitting outside enjoying my garden when I realized the resin Adirondack chair I was sitting on is 20 years old. I was hit with "wow this chair is really old". And then with "and I'm even older".

 

Outdoor furniture is an adult item that you buy when you are out your own with no intentions of moving back in with your parents. Many of us find it difficult to picture ourselves as real adults. It's strange to be old enough to own such an adult item for so long. I have been an adult for a long time. Weird. 

 

I bought these two chairs in 1990 or 1991. I got them at Carrefore, which is the Walmart of France. In the late 1980s, they attempted to colonize US retail, using the Philadelphia area as their entry point.

 

Carrefores are giant stores which supposed sell everything. Everything except for umbrellas for some reason. In effect Carrefore, was a super market with lousy selection, combined with a discount department store with lousy selection, all contained within a gigantic building. The employees wore roller skates to get around the store. Customers were forced to walk the whole thing. 

Carrefore gave up when the leases were up on the two stores. They are long gone from the USA, but I still have the chairs. 

 

I paid about $20 each in 1990 dollars for them. You can now buy resin Adirondack chairs for  $15 in 2012 dollars. Economics is a strange thing. Either way, I definitely got my money's worth.

I was really wowed with these chairs when I bought them. I placed them the back yard of my rowhouse in Frankford. Back in the early 90s, I even wrote a little song about my then contentment, which included owning resin Adirondack chairs. (I will have to find that). 

 

Eventually they moved to a small roof outside a window in my apartment above the Grey Lodge. That set-up looked really cool and urban, but in reality it was a pain to get out the kitchen window and onto the roof. Also black tar roofs are not very pleasant places.

Then they moved to house on Passmore Street, where for whatever reason I didn't sit outside much. Part of the reason was the chairs had become chalky. 

 

Finally these resin chairs have been here at ranch for the last 5 years, where they now get as much use as the ever did. 

While at Passmore Street, I bought two cheap wooden Adirondack chairs that were supposed to replace the plastic ones, as they were 1) chalky, 2) plastic. The wood chairs sat in the garage unassembled for several years. When I bought the ranch, I finally had the inclination to put the wood chairs together. I primed and painted the wood chairs to help them last. While I was painting the wood chairs,  I decided to put a coat of exterior paint on resin ones while I was at it. I thought if it didn't work,  I wasn't out much. I only painted the exposed sides, so it went very quickly. The effect of only painting the exposed sides worked out too; you don't notice. They take paint surprisingly well.

So there you have it, a lot more words than I would have thought possible for two $20 plastic chairs.

As to the wood chairs, they lasted two years after which they rotted out and had to get tossed.

Cozy Reading Knook, Net Cost: Zero

 

I greatly enjoy reading outside in the garden in my resin Adirondack chair. I was disappointed that I didn't have an equally cozy place to read indoors when the weather was cold and/or rainy.

 

 I have a reclining leather(ish) wing chair in my living room, which would be the ideal reading chair. But somehow the living room didn't feel like a cozy place to read. I thought it would probably take money to make a cozy place to read.

For the last 5 years, since we moved in, the chair has been perpendicular to the window bay, parallel with the two sofas. 

I turned the chair diagonal to the window bay, giving views of outside, also creating its own sort of space. It is now very cozy while also still being a potentially social part of the living room. 

Maureen and I now both find this a great place to read. 

Cost to turn the chair, zero. 

Win.

Reading Along

I finished my project to read all 79 novel length Agatha Christie books back in January. I still need to write about that. But not today.

After 2.3 years reading one author, I wanted to catch up on a some books by local authors who I have had the pleasure to meet.

First up was Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski . Duane's first novel, The Wheelman, is one of my favorite books. (I loaned it to someone, I forget who, who never gave it back :-(  If you have my copy, could you return it?). Duane is a really great writer. His prose is very concise, every word counts. He's also extremely funny and masterful story teller. Severance Package was too graphically bloody for my tastes in a few parts, but overall it was another great read.

Next up was Dope Thief by Dennis Tafoya. Dennis is one the authors who had a book selling/signing with us at the Grey Lodge. I ran into him after the very cool Retreat to Goodisville trek. I keep all my Philadelphia themed books in a separate bookcase. I try not read them all at once, leaving a few for new discoveries. Seeing Dennis reminded me I hadn't read either of his books, so I started off with his first. Dope Thief takes a few pages to set itself up, but then explodes into greatness. The farmhouse scene is really brilliant. I wound up enjoying it very much.

After reading two local books, I returned to our general fiction collection. Third up was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. This is sort of a mystery narrated in the first person by an autistic English teenager. It does a great job of putting you into the mind of an autistic teenager. It is so well written that I found myself thinking like the narrator, which may not be the best thing. I loved it at the beginning but found it a bit boring and repetitive after the mystery was solved half way through. Well worth a read.

I hadn't given much thought to what I was going read fourth. I have all of our fiction books lined up alphabetically by author, just like at the library. These books I have accumulated over 40 years. If I saw a cheaply priced book that looked interesting, I bought it and added it to the collection. Some are from thrift stores, some from used book sales at libraries, some from flea markets, some from half.com, some came when Maureen moved in, many came from the discount rack they used to have at Borders. Some I have read, but many I haven't... yet. 

Today I decided to begin work on a tiny subsection of our fiction collection, Adams, Douglas to Campbell, Robert. I pushed forward the ones I haven't read yet. All of the Adams, Douglas books stayed where they were. Some of the Auster, Paul books moved forward. All of the Austin, Jane books moved forward.

One of the miscellaneous books moved forward was A Morning for Flamingos, by Burke, James Lee. A stamp on the inside cover shows it passed through The Book Swap in Horsham PA at some point; I expect it had another stop between The Book Swap and me, though I have no idea what that might have been. Not being familiar with Burke, James Lee, I doubt I bought purposefully. I suspect it was probably part of a 4 books for $5 or similar deal somewhere.

Judging the book by the cover, I think it's a mystery that takes place in Florida. After a few rather "heavy" books, this sounds like it might be a little bit lighter. After marking it as Currently Reading on goodbooks.com, I noticed it has been rated 4 out of 5 stars. I suspect it will prove to be a good pick.

6 Days a Week

Six days a week, I get to start the day off from my home office, where I catch up on email, RSS feeds, and world, local and personal news online. I am usually up a little, sometimes a lot, before dawn.

I always keep the lights off and open the blinds. The computer screen and the street lights outside are the only illumination. As dawn breaks the room gets gradually brighter until it is full daylight.


Buses, cars, and pedestrians pass by outside, rushing to where they have to go. That's not me. Well that's me one day a week, but not today.

My day will have me out and about, doing things, working. This time right now is a nice bit of me time. Four days a week, usually just before I fix myself some breakfast, my wife comes in for a kiss before she heads off to work.

It's 6:22am. It's still dark, but that will change. It always does. It is about ninety minutes to a kiss. The kiss doesn't change.

Time to catch up on some news.

Brains!

Brains!... it's what's for dinner.

I went to Bells Market (link includes reviews from crazy people), a really great Russian super market here in Northeast Philadelphia, for their really great prepared salads and some produce. It's not too much of a detour when I'm driving home from Hop Angel.

Walking in, I noticed a big weekly special sign in the window advertising ground pork. The sign was quite effective in that I wound up buying ground pork, something that wasn't on my list. Score one for old school marketing. Take that Twitter!

It took me a few days to decide what to do the ground pork or maybe just to remember that I had it in the frig. I remembered that I liked making stuffed peppers, which usually use ground beef. This meant going to another closer by produce store to get some bell peppers.

I had some crazy wild rice that was in pantry for a couple of years, using that in place of white rice, which I don't keep in the house anyway. It cooked up black. That rice worked out really great in the peppers, adding a nice added texture to the meat stuffing. Next time I might try black beans instead of rice.

The nice thing about a popular dish like Stuffed Peppers is that there is no end of different recipes on line. I looked at quite a few, taking things I liked from each, such as cooking up onions with the ground meat.


I remembered how much I liked the cheese on top, but how it just putting it on top limited the amount of cheesy goodness for each pepper. I mixed a little cheese into the stuffing mixture. It was the right amount.

I paired it with some Brussels sprouts, that were cooked using a proven winning recipe. A very nice and hopefully healthy meal.

Idea for a New Website

I'm thinking of creating a new social media Website. The deal is we'll get insane people to review businesses. We won't pay them and consider the reviews our intellectual property.

"BAAHHHH NEEDS MORE CATS!"

"They had other customers there. "

And the hook is you really have a screw (or more) loose to do reviews.

Update: Someone told this site already exists. It's called Yelf or something like that.

Today's 3six5

The3six5 is a blog I have been following almost since it started. Basically it's 365 days, as told by 365 different people in less than 365 words each. This is only third year, so I don't know yet if they are skipping a day this year. We will have to wait until 28 Feb and see.

Anyway... I wrote today's post.

Marty and I were hanging out in the MGMT Bunker last night as I was finishing the post up, so I had him proofread it. He laughed once which was a good sign (I'll take all laughs whether with me or at me). Later after it was submitted and we were sitting at the bar, I showed the final published version to him on my phone. He told me that I shouldn't be angry at those people that ask me that question. Great timing buddy! The point I should have made better is that nobody who asks me that knows how I feel, since I always smile, appreciate the kind thoughts behind the question, and answer politely and sincerely.