Purchases
Monday, 08.12.02

Quote of the Day:
�This warranty does not cover damage or defects caused by or resulting from improper use, abuse, accidents, acts of God, alterations, or commercial use.�

I didn�t expect God to be included on the warranty for my suitcase. I don�t know if it is common practice to include �acts of God� on the lifetime warranty for a $60 piece of luggage, but it seemed rather strange to me. Especially since it is the ugliest suitcase I have ever seen.

The suitcase is the first purchase I made that I figured would help me in graduate school. Living several thousand miles from my parents will required more airline trips than I usually make. (Considering that, before March of this year, I hadn�t flown since June 1997 when I went to Europe.) Unfortunately a suitcase isn�t the only thing I need for my UCLA experience. I made several lists, on my Handspring and in a notebook, and they haven�t stopped growing yet. Fortunately I have made some progress in marking off the items needed. The lease on my new apartment starts Wednesday, August 14. That was the biggest �purchase� I had to make, but filling it isn�t going to be easy.

My goal for the weekend was to buy a bed. I drove up to the Westwood area on Saturday morning, figuring it made more sense to go to a mattress store near my new apartment rather than one in Orange County. I still think my reasoning was sound, but the execution needed some work. First, there was no exit for Pico Blvd on the 405 North. I improvised by using the Santa Monica Blvd exit and then taking Sepulveda Blvd south to Pico. Second, the neighborhood wasn�t what I expected. Being so close to Beverly Hills should count for something, right? Run down looking shops and parallel parking on the street were what I found along Pico Blvd. I drove several blocks, seeing the mattress and futon stores I had found in the online yellow pages on the wrong side of the street for me to visit them. None of them looked too savory either. After an illegal u-turn, parallel parking panic, and a failed attempt to use a public metered lot I pulled into a mall garage. Third, I made about five wrong turns trying to navigate the parking garage with my sunglasses on. Those are probably the biggest difficulties I had before I drove home because things got better after I got inside the mall. I bought a mattress, box spring, and frame from Robinsons-May for $450, including delivery which will take place next Saturday. That was my next biggest purchase and it had been taken care of.

When I got home I took a closer look at the receipt for my newest acquisition. Suddenly one word jumped out at me. Twin. The salesperson had sold me twin bed! I frantically called the phone number she had given me in case there was a problem (and there was). Fortunately she quickly realized her mistake and changed my order to a full-sized bed instead. Since it was the same price as a twin bed there wasn�t any problem doing that. Even though I told her I was in the market for a full-sized bed when I arrived at the mattress section of Robinsons-May, I�m sure she figured, �This college student wants a twin bed.� I can only imagine what would have happened if I hadn�t noticed the error and a twin bed had arrived at my new apartment on Saturday. Yikes.

When my Discover card didn�t work at Wal-Mart on Saturday afternoon I wasn�t too worried. That little piece of plastic is three years old and it wasn�t the first time there was a problem with it. I already have a new card waiting for me in Tallahassee. Anyway, I used my debit card instead to pay for the pillows and mattress pad for my newly-purchased full-sized bed. Later that afternoon my mom told me that Discover had called to �verify recent account activity.� Apparently they figured that a $450 purchase might indicate that my card had been stolen. A hold was placed on my account after I used it at Robinsons-May and that is why it wouldn�t work at Wal-Mart. So even though I pay my $650/month rent at Oakwood on my Discover card, and last month I bought a $400 plane ticket to Tallahassee, purchasing a bed must mean that someone other than myself was using it. How annoying.

I went to Wal-Mart on Saturday looking for a quilt. Nothing there appealed to me. Then I went to Target and Bed Bath and Beyond, but I couldn�t find anything I liked there either. I have three problems with the quilts I saw today. 1) Call me unpatriotic, but I don�t particularly want bedding covered in stars and stripes. Some of the ones I saw even had little American flags all over them. My goal was to find something classic and I can�t imagine that degree of national devotion will be the preferred style of bedding in ten years. 2) Pastels were everywhere. If I found a design I liked it invariably was composed purely of pastel colors. Again this doesn�t seem like a classic style to me. Even though my favorite color is pink I have no desire to decorate my apartment in that color. Give me bold colors. 3) Guys will never appreciate an intricate floral design. Feminine is not always the way to go. While I liked some of the fancy quilts with embroidered flowers that wasn�t what I was looking for. Maybe it is unrealistic, but I am hoping that the things I buy for my apartment will be transferred into a house someday. And since I am hoping to get married someday, I don�t want home furnishings that will offend a male occupant. Perhaps my objections to the quilts I saw on Saturday are a bit silly, but I do have control over how I spend my money, even if I don�t have control over the bedding produced for the American public.

Robinsons-May turned out to be my savior once again. On Sunday I found a quilt and sheets for my new bed at the Westminster Mall. I had my eye on the 275 thread count sheets, but no full-sized off-white ones were available. Instead I got 240 thread count sheets and they were a little cheaper. (At Bed Bath and Beyond I make the mistake of touching the 700 thread count sheets. So luxurious! And so expensive.) Now I have just about everything I need for a good night�s sleep: a bed, sheets, a quilt, a mattress pad, and pillows. I still need a blanket, though. Hmm.

Now if you�ll excuse me, I have to get my new sheets for my new full-sized bed out of the dryer.

-Lauren Gleason