This week's highlights: cabinets, carpeting, floors, heating oil, snow. Plus a funeral. The last few days have been especially stressful, as we rushed out of town on Saturday to attend my stepgrandfather's funeral leaving a bunch of things undone. Prior to jumping on a plane (which we had to do Saturday early to avoid the Blizzard of '06), we ran out to Home Depot to place our cabinet order (yes, we're back to Home Depot cabinets, more on that in another post). Of course, not an hour after we left HD did I regret the decision we made to order partial overlay cabinets, as I really don't like the look. Inevitably, as soon as we landed in Chicago on Saturday I called to cancel the cabinet order, and we spent the whole weekend measuring every kitchen we visited (four in total!) to make sure of our dimensions. We'll have to reorder this weekend if we're ever going to get them. Then, just before the funeral on Monday, Adam got a call from Aaron, who was working diligently in the house despite the 24" of snow. Apparently the heating oil company we supposedly contracted with had forgotten about us and we were out of heating oil! And - the heating contractor had just arrived to rework our ducts. So en route to the funeral home, Adam simultaneously shopped for a new oil company (who managed to get us oil in two hours!) and got a haircut. Meanwhile, Aaron was digging out the driveway so that he and the heating guy could pull in, as Yonkers doesn't allow cars on the street after a blizzard. Fortunately the neighbor kids we'd hired to shovel the sidewalk had gotten that part of the job done - I don't think they knew what they were in for when we hired them on Friday. So on Valentine's Day Adam and I arrived back in town, visited with Aaron to make some more decisions, and then went to buy carpeting for the 3rd floor. A very romantic Valentine's Day and gift, indeed: beige nylon berber carpeting, about $2k of it. Installing Friday. And, starting Tuesday, the floor guy will be sanding and sealing the floors on the 1st floor and the 2nd - LR and DR on the first floor, and master bedroom and hallway on the 2nd. All the flooring progress is fortunate, since I'm moving a week from next Monday. Which brings me to the next stress: movers. In all the commotion surrounding leaving town I completely forgot that I'd meant to hire a mover last week, and started calling yesterday to find that a number of movers were already booked for the 27th. I did manage to get a bunch of quotes, however, and chose one that was both reasonable and really, really responsive. I'm still not sure when I'm going to pack.... No wonder I've had a migraine for two days.