Retractable Awning vs. Market Umbrella

Choice is an wonderful thing. Being able to choose is also wonderful. Our country is based on the freedom of choices, where we can go to church, where we can get together, what we can say and how.
Deciding would seem to be the same as choosing. But it's not.
Deciding, the act of making a decision, can be wonderful, if you can do it.
Our recent purchase of first, a retractable awning, then second, a market umbrella, to shade our deck, illustrates the difficulties some people have with choice and decision. We certainly had difficulties.
After moving to our new house, our first project was to build a deck on the back of the house so we could enjoy outdoor living in our large back yard.
The back of our house faces east, and the sun beats down on it until 2 or 3 p.m. The deck roasts. It burns feet if they are not shod. And forget about eating breakfast or lunch there. The umbrella in our deck table doesn't cast much shade. And it had gotten ripped up in some storms.
It was time to get a new umbrella ... or was it?
Michael, my husband, had called an 800 number from a TV ad about retractable awnings. When his package, complete with informational DVD, arrived in the mail, he was as excited as a kid was when they received their sea monkey kit 30 years ago. He popped it into the DVD player and viewed it while he ate lunch. He had the measuring tape out before his sandwich was finished.
So, for the next month, he measured, re-measured, and measured again. He had me outside at 10 p.m. in 30-some degrees measuring every dimension on every outside wall and the deck that he could think of.
The main problem? This brand of awning had lengths only up to 14 feet. Now, our deck is large. Thirty-three feet long by 16 feet wide. If only Michael could get a longer awning.
Plus, every the spendthrift, Michael didn't want to pay their prices. Surely, he could find another awning company that was less expensive.
He visited all the home improvement/builders warehouse type stores he could think of, with the whole family in tow. All of these places proved as expensive, if not more so, than the awning company from which he had received information.
The Internet was the answer! He trawled the World Wide Web for another 3 weeks. Finally, he found an awning manufacturer that sold, gasp!, 16-foot-long retractable awnings.
Again, he measured every dimension possible.
By this time, spring was nearing, and many stores were putting up their garden and patio displays.
Marsh Supermarkets once again had these giant, 10x10 foot market umbrellas with an offset stand. These babies are so big that the stand has to be bolted down or weighed down concrete blocks so they won't tip over.
Last year, when I saw them, I was intrigued, but I was put off by the need to bolt or otherwise permanently afix the umbrellas to your deck or patio. But a friend of ours has one, and they love it. This year, as I looked at them and compared their features to regular market umbrellas, I decided I would rather have one of these.
Michael, however, wasn't convinced. He had visions of a 16-foot-long rolling shade for his deck.
I argued that 16 feet really was too long. It would hit the eaves. (We just put it up higher and drill into the siding.)
I argued the merits of price. While the larger retractable awning he had found would cost nearly $900 to ship to us, these large market umbrellas were only $99.99, plus they could be moved if we wanted. I reminded him that earlier, he had tried to convince that a 10x10 retractable awning would be just fine. As a point, however, I told him then that we should get the larger 14-foot- size to shade more area, because I felt we would be dissatisfied with that choice, despite the cost. (This was before he found the less expensive manufacturer of greater dimensions online.)
Against my advice, I actually threw in the towel and said, "do whatever you want to", he bought the retractable awning and awaited its arrival.
There was much joy that day.
Then came the reading of the instructions at least a hundred times.
Then, out came the measuring tape, again.
The 16-foot-awning was too big. Yes, too big for the area we had to put it up in, even raising where we would drill into the siding instead of the brick first floor.
"I told you so."
After much anguish, he decided to sell it. The intricacies of shipping it back included payment of the first, waived, shipping costs, in addition to the new shipping costs, both about $250 since semis had to be used.
By this time, however, the only models of the offset market umbrellas left in town were the display models, and those 2 had suffered damage. So, last weekend, it was off on a whirlwind visit to a nearby shopping mecca to see what those stores had left.
After much searching, we realized there wasn't much left.
Several stores had gazebos, with the umbrellalike tops above a 4-sided room structure. Several had mosquito netting on them. Quite a few of these were on sale.
We debated the idea of setting one of these on our deck, not sure if it would look too goofy. A neighbor of ours had one other their deck, which was of concrete, and it fit into its spot perfectly. We were afraid ours would look odd, stuck out a bit away from the house to be nearer the edge of the deck.
After a couple of hours of looking, we decided a gazebo would probably be OK.
But, one store had one offset market umbrella left, AND it had mosquito netting around it.
By this time I was enamored of the mosquito netting. One of my friends has mosquito netting on metal runners that slide around to enclose her porch, and they work very well.
One problem: The offset market umbrella cost $200, twice what I originally wanted to pay. However, this was basically the same price as all the other gazebos, whether or not they had mosquito netting.
More thinking. More waffling.
The choices, oh! the choices!
"Maybe we should just go with a regular, larger umbrella," Michael asked.
"No," I said. "This is what we had decided we wanted before we came up here. It's a bonus that it has the netting. I want it. Let's get it."
We took the slip from the sales associate and went to the front of the store to pay. Halfway there, Michael says, "I don't think we should get this. I'm turning around! We should get the regular umbrella."
I nearly screamed, but I didn't. I just forcefully reminded him this was what we wanted at the beginning of the spring anyway, until the idea of a retractable awning seduced him away from that decision.
Later that evening, we had the offset market umbrella up and the mosquito netting down. We enjoyed our supper overlooking our back yard.
Finally, the choice, and the decision, as difficult as they were to make and stick to, were made.

Harry Potter and the Hairdos

While double scheduling the evening of July 14th -- nephew's engagement party and Girl Scout Mother-Daughter Swim, both at 7 p.m. -- my eye slid to July 11, also doubled scheduled, uniform sale at Our Lady of Greenwood, 1 to 6 p.m., and the day that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" arrives in theaters.
Getting to both events on the 14th will be impossible.
Attending OOTP and the uniform sale won't.
I am eagerly awaiting author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter No. 7 later in July, too. (It's on order at my local bookstore.)
The movies are awesome.
But mostly I'm glad to see Hogwarts finally has a barber.
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was marred by way too much hair, way too long.
Long hair is part and parcel of being a witch or wizard. The adult actors wear their locks longer and carry it off, from Headmaster Dumbledore to Potions Professor Snape, though a bit greasily in his case. But the young teens peering from behind their waves of hair irritated me to the point that it nearly distracted me from the action.
Am I carrying this peeve too far?
The angst and self-consciousness common to the early teens is captured and portrayed in part by these hairdos.
Hermione finally finds out how to tame her tresses that threatened to make her look like a mushroom in the early movies. Pulling it back from her face, with tendrils softening the edges, made Hermione look older, more mature, wiser, more appealing, especially to the older love-interest character, Viktor. Each of these traits was important for her to convey since they are developed more fully in the book, GoF.
Harry's poufy hair still had to look untameable and try to stick up as described in the book. The cut reinforced the youth that Harry had to fight, being a much-younger boy in a magical contest for adult-age wizards.
But the hair on the Weasley actors heads! Argh!
Fred and George looked perfectly fine. Their straight hair hung much like older teens hair should. The cuts emphasized their malleable mugs on the jokesters.
Ginny Weasley's 'do I despair of. It was thin and unkempt, the length doing nothing to help the mousy air about her. Comparing the actress to Emma Watson, it's really hard to see how Ginny will metamorphosize into a young girl that could turn Harry's head. In OOTP, Ginny is compared several times to a cat, sleek and tossing her long hair in ways that a tigress might. I haven't seen much of the trailers, but it doesn't seem that the directors have helped that metamorphosis along.
But it was Ronald Weasley's (Rupert Grint) hair that drove me crazy. His wavy auburn locks are exactly the kind of hairdo that actress playing his sister needs.
But seeing him peer, sullen, angry and one-eyed, from the wall of hair, with its one wave that seemed to be a solid mass, made me want to scream.
We all know or have seen kids like that. Their hair is a curtain protecting them from the world, a place where they can hide and think their dark thoughts.
This is probably exactly the image the directors wanted to convey. GoF did drive a deep wedge between Harry and Ronald. But their reconciliation on screen didn't take away that awful head of hair Ron had.
From a couple of trailers I have seen, the warriors against evil seem to have visited the barber or hair stylist a couple of times.
Shorter hair make fighting the Death Eaters easier, I'm sure. All that exertion and running around makes you sweat, and you don't want heavy, sweaty hair hanging in your eyes and plastered to your neck making you hot and uncomfortable. Avoiding a hex or jinx is harder when you have to push your long hair out of your eyes.
Longer hair for the young teens will still be in evidence somewhere. There is a lot of angry and angst in OOTP to be communicated. Rowling used sentences in all upper case to convey the anger and yelling, most of it by Harry. Yelling is easier to do in the movies, though.
I can't wait until July 11th. Seeing the book brought to like on screen is a double-edged sword. There are things that will pop up, like all that long hair in the previous movie, that readers may not even considering when "seeing" the story in their minds.
Maybe I'll try to find a midnight screening, to avoid the double-scheduling.

My Brother Made Me Do It!

My brother, Matt, has been telling me that I need to have a blog for some time now, so I took the plunge tonight.
I have 5 minutes before the kids come inside for bed. Of course, they won't settle down quickly since my husband just set off 6 fireworks, the kind that have the soldier with a parachute. Three fell like rocks when their 'chutes didn't open, but the others floated a way so the kids gave chase.
This also woke up Daisy, the Boxer puppy, we have. This afternoon she hid under the bed when Mike and the kids set off a few fireworks. However, she was safe in her crate tonight, so she didn't seem too upset.
On our walk around Country Club, hence the name of my blog, we found out that a neighbor's dog is frightened of fireworks and thunder. A kind neighbor told us this, and my 10-year-old promptly confessed, "That was us." This dog was rescued from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and I felt bad to add to its distress. Louie, the poor thing, is going to have a tough time. My husband refers to a closet in the garage where his fireworks are stored as "The Ammo Dump."
It's bedtime now, so it's time to say goodbye. I promise to enlighten you with my thoughts and observations on all different subjects, which I hope you will find interesting, enlightening, thought-provoking or humorous.
Becky C.