3rd Most Expensive

Emily and I are in the new house. I don't have pictures to post yet, because we've still got a lot to do. Yesterday was a marathon shopping day to cash in on the furniture and home improvement sales going on. Although we won't be paying for everything right now, it turned out to be the 3rd most expensive day of my life, after the Wedding (2nd) and the day we bought the house (1st). Paying taxes out of one's paycheck aside, I think the top 5 most expensive days of my life equal about 50% of all the money I've spent since I graduated college. That's crazy.

Emily and I wanted some form of a sleigh bed. We went through the store and each made a top-5 list. When we decided on our favorite bed, we both agreed the matching set items were not very good (looked straight out of the 80's). So we were trying to see if we could mix and match with better drawers, but the sales associate kindly pointed out that mixing and matching is really only worthwhile if you've already got an antique _____ and you're trying to match to that, not when starting from scratch. She suggested taking the whole set in as a whole and not focusing on one piece. I think we had been staring at furniture for too long, developing a case of analysis paralysis because suddenly Emily then tried to pull a coup. She starting looking at some set that neither of us had originally ranked in our Top 5 and tried to talk me into buying it. After pulling away from the situation for a few minutes, we realized that, taking all the pieces into account, we'd forgotten about the set below, which we got.


The dining room set was another piece we picked up (with 6 chairs and a leaf, not shown). It's a high table with chairs that sit really high - we both liked it a lot and feel it will fit in with our open floor plan and modern first floor really well. This table is also really well suited for board games, which is an important part of our lifestyle.

It was actually a really good price (it's "fox leather" as one patron described it when she walked past, clueless of what "faux" really means). The antique dining room set Emily has from her great grandmother will became a craft table in the guest bedroom.

After all that, we went shopping for a new comforter for the bed (didn't see any good ones at Macy's or JCPenney where we had coupons, but we'll get something from Linens and Things here shortly). Then, after a Labor Day bbq, it was off to Lowe's, where we got our washer and dryer and our blinds for 2 and a half dozen windows. We had also picked up the remaining pieces from our closet organizers, which I'm about to start working on here today. What a day. The house is coming along quickly!

More on the Presidential Scholarship

The Fels website has posted an article about me. Looking back through my blog, I realized I never even posted the story about how this came about. In April, I went to the United Nations for a summit focusing on technology in global organizations. I've got a few pictures from inside the UN below. There were a couple hundred participants from around the world and we spent half of the conference in teams working on policy papers and business models based upon the panelist discussions. It was a great time and we even took some time out to sing some John Lennon while in one of the UN conference rooms (not the main conference room, but a minor one that still had all the microphones and earpieces - very cool). Our group jumped around on a few topics before focusing in depth on marketing strategies for microfinancing organizations. I think we hit on some innovative ideas and since the conclusion of the conference I've gotten some contact information for some KIVA representatives.