Skip to main content

Favorite Chair

Up until last week I had a leather chair that was my go to chair for relaxing. Fifteen years I had that chair.

Originally purchased at Pottery Barn before their products went to crap in the late 1990s, it was far and away the most comfortable and restful sitting place I have experienced. Through the entire X Files series, Firefly, Denver Bronco games (two Superbowls), Sharks hockey, Dog Whisperer, sci-fi channel, and on and on.

It even make cracking sound as the leather cushion expanded back to its original shape after you got out of it. It sounded like the chair was breathing a sigh of relief.

As I look at the chair for the last time I see where my activator has stained a Rorschach imprint resembling my head or as my one of my friends said,

“Dude, looks like ghost in a bell jar.”

Okay, puff, puff, pass.

On the leather surface there is almost no place safe from the miles of wear and tear on the chair, food stains to numerous to classify, wine stains from an array of varietals, ink and marker pen stains from young nieces and nephews, paint marks, oil from skin, dog drool, kid spittle, BBQ (I mention this as it is one of the higher value stains on the chair), beer, and bug juice. All soaked too deep in the dark amber hide to effectively clean. And why clean it? These are the waypoints of my life in the chair. Some even evoke memories of the event, others, rage (pen marks), mystery stains but all intrinsically making the chair a living road map of its and my life.

Can I clean it? Apparently not, as the dye on the leather also comes off. And I tried all kinds of commercial and home remedies for getting stains out of leather. Reader’s note; when they say test a leaning product n a small area to determine if it is color safe, they know what they are talking about. So it sat idle more and more, as I aged and went onto a new sitting place. The new place was comfortable and not far away. Over the course of time the chair became cold from lack of attention. It needed a new home and a new owner who appreciated its place in its life span. Ideally it would be someone who knew it and would reacquaint it with the warmth of the human body.

As I watched my friend K take the chair, she assured me should would die in it as she loved it so much. And I thought to myself, “Huh, I wonder how to get that stain out?”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

“Girls like guys with skills.” - Napoleon Dynamite

Truer words one will most likely never hear. Girls like guys with skills. All types of skills. Since the Agents are reaching the age where the opposite sex is becoming interesting I decided to give them some skills, and bragging rights with an overnight backpacking trip. So the Supreme Commander set up a trip in the Cascades in Washington. It was to be an overnight survival skills building trip. As I explained it, “Agents, after this trip you will make Bear Grylls look like a hand model.” Agent Hotkoffee used another word involving hand to describe the Bear, again this is a family blog. Agent Hofkoffee thought it was a great idea and she volunteered to assist with the training. Since she is more than qualified I asked her along. Figured I needed it in case the agents went off the rails. Okay, more like when the agents go off the rails. The trip was scheduled for one night in the woods off Boulder Creek Trail in the Darrington National Forest. The hike into the campsite is a moderate hi...

Yosemite’s Most Passive Aggressive Couple

This is true. On a road trip back from Colorado with my brother who I will call; my brother, we had planned stops in Zion National Park, Tehachapi CA, lunch in Fresno, and Yosemite. I will skip the initial portion of the road trip and move right to the arrival at Yosemite. This is in the late February 2008. The skies were angry that day my friends. Actually we had missed the big snow the week before and were entering Yosemite from the Highway 41 side as it winds, and it does wind, its way to Yosemite. The staff at the park’s entrance was it usual proud self but they look was a bit different. The winter staff had a visual edge to them, almost a Sci-Fi channel original movie look. Not undead, but not Fit TV either. Anyhow I digress. After a quick awkward howdy and, “Hey is the park beautiful this time of year?” type banter we checked out the Sequoia grove hike and it was too late in the day to muster the two mile hike in the snow to see the giants of the cellulose world. So we pulled out...

Pigeon-holing the Team

For lack of better phraseology pigeon-holing is the process whereby incoming executives, and employees are automatically placed into skill set buckets based on what their perceived role has been in the company. Newly hired executives quickly place personnel in functional buckets to more quickly define roles and responsibilities as they move their preferred players into roles throughout the organization. This has a two pronged effect. First it is easy for the new executives to pigeon–hole existing employees as a time saver to move their quickly to their agenda. By tagging an employee with a “sales guy” or an “operational guy” label the employees can then be rapidly slotted into the new organization. This allows for the quickest implementation of the new model and clears the transition path for the newly hired executive employees. So all of our employees get secretly (or in some cases not so secretly) voted into pigeon-holes to allow new execs to set a foundation organizational hierarchy...