Friday Night Date!

I take 'em where I can get 'em. And if I want to call a trip to Five Guys a date because we ate there and didn't do take-out then I darn well will!

Of course, the evening started out differently. It can never be easy, can it? In few words, our trip to L*wes for the supplies we needed to get an early start on "Project: Replace/Repair Deck Rail" was derailed (oh, sorry, no pun intended there) by a huge (mammoth, gigantic) jerk in the paint department.

A couple years back we had tried to get the project started with the purchase of stain instead of paint. We had to have it matched because for whatever reason (copyright issues?, pig-headed stupidity?) L*wes does not have access to the codes necessary to tint to the Duron colors our builder used. The paint guy at the time told me to keep the lid if we needed more because of the custom color. So, I kept the lid, and prior to our departure did a sweeping search of every possible location to find that damn lid, expecting that it would be smooth sailing.

No such luck. As DH went to gather some other supplies, I went to the paint counter. I don't know if the guy was just a misogynist or had one hell of a crappy day and decided to take it out on me, but was an ass about not being able to use stain codes to tint paint, and refused to offer any other suggestions as to how we could match the paint that evening with the lid (or the color on the lid - apparently there wasn't enough on the dot for the magic matching machine to read and the paint covered underside of the lid would be spoiled by the gray tint of the lid).

Since I was about to blow my stack and DH had a coupon for "x" off "y" amount, and without the paint we wouldn't reach "y", we did one of those really annoying things where you leave a half-full cart in an aisle and decided to head to dinner.

I'd had a craving for a really good burger and since we hadn't been to the new Five Guys yet, decided to give it a try. And the verdict: eh. Better than the fast-food chains but not the best burger I've eaten. But much better customer service than L*wes when we realized after a couple of bites that the bacon had been left off of our bacon cheeseburgers - the offer of completely new burgers if we wanted. Unfortunately even after stuffing myself with the burger and fries, I was still left craving a good burger. So in that respect, not so much of a success.

(For those who couldn't survive without Five Guys, not a reflection on you, just not what I was craving.)

And if you are interested, our trip to L*wes Saturday morning was much more successful with a paint guy who tried (unsuccessfully) to match the piece of post we had brought in (not his fault, even after a good cleaning there was probably too much mold/mildew to get a clean color) and then suggested that we'd have to do it the old fashioned way and match to an existing paint chip. So simple, it took us about 5 minutes to pin down a chip that was close-enough to satisfy (and by close-enough I mean it was so close the difference isn't going to be noticeable). Now why couldn't the guy Friday night have made that suggestion?

And no, as usual, the weekend only allowed us a portion of the time needed to complete the project so our house looks seriously unloved with half the deck rail missing. Even better, we decided to start the project on the HOTTEST weekend of the summer. Oh yeah.

So, how was your weekend?