Papa's Got A Brand New Bed

Mom and dad came down for a visit Friday night and the better part of Saturday. We did some running around while they were here as I have been mulling the purchase of a new mattress for a few months now. I always prefer to get input from both mom and dad on purchases of significant dollar amount on items with which I am unfamiliar. And this would be the first mattress that I've bought, ever.

We made the rounds to several furniture companies that I'd spotted previously and found a few likely candidates at each store. Then, we headed back to my house and dad picked up the phone book and started looking at furniture stores. That lead us to Bates Furniture in downtown Conway. Turns out they carry Dreamline mattresses, a brand that I had heard of before but was unfamiliar with. In talking with the salesman, we found out that the Dreamline mattresses are actually manufactured in Cabot, AR, less than 50 miles away. That was kinda the clincher for me as the mattress was just as comfortable as all but one of the others that I'd tried (that one being a $1400 model that I couldn't afford much less justify). The 25-year warrantee didn't hurt either. (Though the paperwork that came with the mattress says 20 years. Still better than the 5-10 year warrantees everywhere else.)

Long story short, the matress was delivered for free with a $10 fee to get rid of my old matress set. And mom got a free painting out of the deal (no thanks to Captain Observant, here). All told, it ended up setting me back a hair over $550. That's just less than the tires are gonna cost that I still need to get for the Tahoe. Good thing I've been getting overtime the last couple weeks.

I slept quite peacefully last night with only one instance of waking before my alarm went off. That's most unusual for me as I usually wake up 2-3 times a night. I think this is gonna work out just fine.