Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Chippin' Away at the Man Cave--July 26, 2010

Woke up at 7:30.  Felt pretty good!  So nice to get a good night's rest.  Ate breakfast, took a shower, set up a meeting with the FAA for Wednesday, then headed out to the garage.  And that's basically where I spent most of the day.  I hauled out the cabinets I had picked up yesterday and just smashed 'em flat.  They were worthless.  I took those over to a dumpster at my dad's work.  Good riddance.

Came back and just started cleaning more out of the garage!  I tell you, it is just downright difficult to get a garage to look clean!  It seriously takes quite a bit to "hide" everything!  But I kept on hauling stuff OUT of the garage.  And it isn't going back.  My sister came over around 11:00 to help me lift the countertop to take to her house.  She ended up stayin' 'til 12:30 or so when we decided to make a McDonald's run.  I was so hungry!

After eating, we came back towards my house.  But we took a slight detour to check out an industrial park just across from my subdivision.  And you know what happens when you get off the beaten path...loads of fun!!!  We drove around and checked out all of the unknown-about and yet pretty high-name places.  Pease's Candy, Aramark, Bekins Moving, Dept. of Human Services, Caterpillar, and Bemco!  We saw tons more, too.  And we just drove around slowly, having fun checking out all of the various treasures!  A gunsmith here, a shooting range there, a moving company here, a candy company there.  Kind of neat.  We even saw a warehouse full of FANCY high-end cars.  They do custom work on 'em back there (who knew?!).  And from what I could see, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of vehicles in there.  So crazy!!!  After driving by the mattress factory, my sister made the comment that it would be sweet to see how a mattress is made.  So I jumped on that opportunity!

I had her pull in to the parking lot of Bemco Mattress, and I hopped out, went inside, and asked for a tour!  The guy said they never really do that, but I asked if they would be willing!  He agreed.  ha!  So we literally got a personal tour of the entire place.  And I'm not goin' to lie, it was pretty sweet!  They literally do EVERYTHING start to finish...all by hand.  There was a guy in the corner hammering the frames together, women in front of sewing machines putting fabric together, men with fancy side-ways sewing machines putting the trim and pieces together.  There was a couple of men putting the mattresses in plastic.  A guy making the box springs.  It was sooooo interesting!  And just downright fun!  We had to wear safety goggles as we walked through!  ha!

I learned that EVERY mattress made in America is basically put together by a human (or several).  Even the big-name companies like Serta and Sealy have to use people.  They have tried to automate it again and again, but they just can't get it right.  How interesting!  No wonder mattresses are so expensive!  And my sister and I were absolutely shocked when we heard how many mattresses they make a day.  He took us to the very back of the production line...a room just full of mattresses.  And he said they would all be gone my morning.  WHAT?!  Yup, these were made today, and they are all spoken for.  He said that the 30 employees make between 200 and 300 mattresses a day.  I was just blown away.  I couldn't believe it!  But sure enough, the entire time we were there, they just kept working steadily.  I LOVE GOOD, SOLID WORK!!!  A fun day, for sure!

After this excitement, we then went to Pease's Candy factory to try out a tour!  But the door was locked.  :(

After that, Boogs drove me back to my place, and then I drove the countertop over to Boogs' house.  I helped her arrange the garage for the upcoming garage sale, and I priced some of my items over there.  I headed back home, picked up another load, and came right back.  Let's get rid of stuff!!!

Cleaned up my garage some more after I came back.  It is just barely starting to look decent.  I can start to see the shape of the Man Cave, but I still have quite a bit of work to do.  I worked all the way up until about 7:00 when I started cleaning up for a friend coming over tonight.

She showed up around 8:00, and we went and grabbed a pizza, then came back and watched (the very strange, somewhat funny, and just different!) "Madea's Family Reunion."  And then we started ANOTHER movie after that.  We only got about 1/3 of the way through it, though, before Alyssa had to leave around 11:40.  I opted to not continue watching it!  Probably for the better!  Tried to get to bed somewhat early.

Ended up finally making it to bed at 12:45 A.M.  After applying at a flying job.  In Africa.

Might as well throw more applications into black holes.

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