Money for nothing and your cabinets for free

I at least earned the awful back pain I'm enjoying at the moment. On Saturday night, or Sunday morning, around four in the morning, whilst stumbling home quite drunk and very smoked, we saw a cabinet somebody had dumped on the curb that, after refinishing and hinge replacement, would be perfect for putting the plants under our window. We carried it home, and it was either straining myself with that or apparently sleeping on my fucking head or something; now I'm in crashing pain. Oh well. Look (it's nice to be able to post photos again - thank you, beautiful new computer):


That's taken after the F-word did the initial sanding, and hinge replacement on these doors:


Okay, it's not the most beautiful piece of furniture in the world, and while the doors show some nice dovetailing and accents, parts of the body of the unit is made out of pressboard, and it's been chewed on, as far as we could tell while refinishing it. This is the colour we're refinishing it, by the way:

Yep. Pinky-orange. That's because my boyfriend rocks.

I was surprised somebody had dumped something that's cleaning up so nicely, and that in Canada would probably still fetch money. But not very surprised, because people dump nice things on the curb here all the time, especially furniture. We've walked past nicer furniture people had dumped that wasn't going to be appropriate for our flat before. You head to any of the flea markets here, which Brussels are known for, and you realize this place has an inexhaustible stream of pseudo-antiquarian crap. That's what you get for 30 years of wild Congo-raping prosperity at around the turn of the century.

And a couple of weeks ago, we found a curbed Deuter backpack, barely used, that the F-word had priced at north of Euro 90 a couple of months ago. I was sure it would have to be too disgusting to consider taking, like, someone must have died in it or something, or stored rotting food in it, or used it as a very impractical handkerchief. But from what we can tell it had been used to carry two clean pairs of socks and some sunscreen. I did bring it home, and washed the fuck out of it, and was baffled - absolutely no wear and tear or stinkiness or signs of life at all. Why the fuck had it been dumped? I couldn't think of a single reason - except that new models have been coming out in the shops here since January.

I'm happy to have the pretty new travel pack, obviously, especially since I ascribe some of my back grief to the one I've been using for the last 12 years, but to be honest I was sort of pissed off someone had dumped something so quality so quickly after purchasing it. At least they left it on the curb, and not in a pile of garbage where scavengers wouldn't take it. But if this is really the sort of consumption that the functioning of our economic system requires, I'll just happily warm my hands over the nice hot meltdown, please and thank you.

Also pissing me off this weekend was the F-word's computer. It's been dicky, as I mentioned, and we found out awhile ago he needed to replace the hard drive. We took it to the Mac shop in town to find out how much it would cost: Euro 69 for the part, Euro 180 for two hours labour. What? I'd looked at PowerBook Medic during a lull at work a few days previous and there was no way in hell it was going to take someone two hours to pop the fucker open and stick in a new hard drive. Let alone a professional worth Euro 90 a fucking hour.

Not only that, though: the Mac shop lady gave him the perfect sort of sell on a whole new computer: the PowerBook G4 is a million years old, Apple isn't making the other parts for it anymore, you can replace the hard drive but then the next time something breaks down you're fucked; just buy a new one, you know you want to anyways (and he does on a certain level; I mean, this beautiful purring machine I'm typing on now is enough to give the most anti-consumerist young man a hard-on, which is what Apple, that asshole, really flogs in its marketing; how can such a corporate institution manage to maintain this illusion of being above it all? Anyways.).

He was nearly persuaded, and rather down about it all, because he hates spending money as much as I do. But it pissed me off, because he'd gone to the fucking repair shop, not the new fucking computer shop. I persuaded him to just buy the part and see if he could change it himself - he'd only be Euro 69 out of pocket but he stood to save a kabillion times that - and if he can hold off on getting a new computer until the summer I could get one in Canada for about half the price it would run here. And guess what? It took about 10 minutes to change the fucker. And it's working perfectly now. What bullshit. Another illusion Apple has somehow managed to create is that you need to bring their machines to their own magical repair shops to be serviced by an army of experts, but it's coming clear that Apple can't afford an army of mental giants - nobody can - so maybe it's not so hard to do some things oneself.

Anyways. A little frustrating but the F-word is pleased as punch he took care of the problem himself and, for once, being all appreciative of the outcome of my nagging. Ahhhhh. Nothing like a good nag recognized.