Recently, I have become aquainted with a very interesting person. This guy works in the same office as my roommate and is about 65 years old. What makes this guy interesting is that he knows where and when to get the deals on EVERYTHING! Allow me to explain...
We were over his house. Ed has a lovely home and greeted us with a "Hey Guys," spoken with a distinguishable Boston accent- he lived there for quite some time. The reason we were at a 65 year-old guy's house was to look at some couches that he was selling. My roommate's (Ben) parents were thinking of buying them, so we would get to use them in our bare apartment (it's not so bare anymore, I'll explain later). After taking a few pictures to send to Ben's parents so they could decide upon the purchase, we sat down and chatted with him about our futures at NASA, graduate programs where NASA pays for graduate school, and just shot the breeze. It was a fun time and we found it quite humorous that we were spending our weekend there. We later laughed at the thought of us turning down offers from our fellow co-ops to instead hang out with Ed.
We later returned to his house to retrieve some dishes, silverware, a toaster oven and a kettle (which is probably one of the most ingenious inventions). In the meantime, we helped him hang up some of his pictures and just chatted some more. I was telling him that I was thinking about getting some tinting on my car, to prevent the interior from fading from the extreme sunlight here. He said, "Oh yeah? Well, my son hangs out with a guy that does it for a living. He's good. He does all the banks and does a quality job. I was thinking about getting my car tinted. If we go in together, we could get a deal." So I said okay. Tomorrow I'm going to get my car windows tinted.
We were over his house for a third time helping him install his newly bought surround speaker system. For our efforts, he provided a nice lunch for my roommate and I. While at the table, I asked Ben what time it was then noticed that my watch was about 30 minutes behind. This wasn't the first time that I noticed this; four days before, I had changed my watch to the correct time. Apparently my battery was going bad. Ed pipes up and says that he knows a guy (Jim) in Cocoa Beach who will replace the watch battery. Usually he would charge $10 but if I tell Jim that I work with Ed, he will take off $5. I'm going to get my watch fixed sometime this week.
My roommate was telling me a story about how they were in a meeting and it came time for a safety and health guy to give a shpeal. During the talk, the health guy stated that to stay in good health, it's good to walk up 80 steps daily. Ed piped up during the meeting and said that there were only 44 steps up to the 3rd floor of the building (where everyone at the meeting works). Needless to say, everyone in the meeting busted out laughing- not at Ed, and not at the fact that he knows that there are 44 steps (because they expect that from him), but because Ed was making fun of the health guy.
So I'm in his office today and I had an interesting question for him; I wanted to test his knowledge. I asked Ed which bathroom in the building provided the most privacy. He knew and showed me. Amazing- there's no stumping this guy.
He does stuff like this all the time. Recently he informed us of a free spread (buffet) in the Air Force base between 14:00 and 16:00 on Friday. I think that I'm going to try it this Friday.
Ohh, so our not-so-bare apartment. Ben and I went shopping for some furniture for "the square" (our living room). (It became "the square" after we noticed that it is just a bare square.) So we went to the local Goodwill and found two full reclining chair for $4 a piece! ROCK ON! One chair is yellow and looks like furniture that my grandparents own, and the other is a colorful pinstripe with a durable material and looks like a Lay-Z-Boy that my parents would have owned in the early 80s. They are awesome and I christened one of them the other day by taking a nap on it. So now that we have 2 fully reclining chairs, one reclined foldable camp chair and another rocking foldable camp chair, the living room is not so bare- we still call it the square for good times sake. Meanwhile, I still sleep on a gradually deflating air mattress and have my computer on a desk built of boxes (no, there are no drawers, although that would be awesome!).