Tool Time

It was a gorgeous day Sunday, so instead of staying inside and working, J and I went off in search of hardware stores. A co-worker of J's had told him there was a place that had "every tool" but it was sort of hard to find--the co-worker had orginally thought it was on Butterfield Road, so we had looked around there on Friday, found a Games Workshop (and Purity Seal, a competitor to Mr Super Clear, with the warnings in English...haha, I would have handled MSC with even more respect if I could have read the warnings--they are in Japanese on the MSC cans). Anyway, after getting the actual name of the mystery hardware store...

... J found it on Google and we went to see. Like many places in Chicago, it was closed on Sunday, but it was large and looked promising, in spite of the fact that the AND in the sign was sagging outward. If only there was some tool for that.

So we went on to Harbor Freight Tools. Harbor Freight is set up a little like the "As Seen on TV" or the "Holloween Adventure" stores, where they rent an inexpensive storefront, pop up a sign, and unload a truck in back. It's very bare bones, the stock is maybe 90% Chinese-made, and the prices are indeed low. We bought a few things; some gloves, some Chinese scissors and pruners (they were both nicely made, not super cheap but a good value) and the SD sized toolbox above. They also have a lot of moving blankets, including some camo pattern ones in case you want to hide that sofa on your porch. They are just tools, not a lumberyard, btw.

After that, we went down to Naperville to look for a pasta machine for J, and I found a Chemex, the "real" way to make coffee. (My current setup is a ghetto version of a Chemex). Even better, it was exactly the same price that I paid for the one I ordered over the web at www.chemex.com. My old one got shoved off the stove around the time we were renovating the New Jersey house, and I didn't want to buy another one just to move it around the country. So here it is:

And here is the gray cat come to sample this morning's coffee and smell the tiny shoes.