Leahs Cafe

The Taiwanese woman we met at the international cafe invited me to join the quilting class on Friday. The ladies are mostly the spouses of International students who study at the University in this small town. They meet regularly at a house near the university. Since the house is not within walking distance, I planned to take a commuter bus to go there.

However, T found out his father would be running errands in the morning and could give me a lift, so I didn’t get a chance to take the bus yet. These buses are not as big  or as comfortable as the JFK Airport Shuttle. But, the bus stop is right in front of our house and it’s pretty convenient to take a bus to go downtown or the university.

There were about eight of us there, three other Asian women are from Taiwan, China and Indonesia. The Indonesian woman was very happy to learn that an American woman and I can speak Indonesian/Malay. She wanted to teach us cooking some Indonesian dishes!

We spent time chatting and getting to know each other while our hands were busy with the quilting. Actually, we were doing the cheater quilt. We sew on the pre printed quilt instead of starting from fabric pieces. :-)

We got a pair of used washer and dryer for a steal but ended up have to resell the dryer due to it being a gas dryer and we have only electric hook up in the laundry room at the basement. It’s necessary to get a dryer as we won’t be able to dry the laundry on the lines when the weather turns cold.

They are many people in the opposite situation i.e. moved into a place that has gas hook up and try to get rid of the electric dryer. So, we have been looking at craiglist.com for a reliable ,less than two years old used electric dryer for a couple weeks. We did find some very good deals. But T was concerned about hauling it home and bring it down to the basement, and it’s not worth hurting our backs doing that.

We finally decided to get a new one from the store today, so we don’t have to worry about delivery and installation! We went to Sears to check out the GE dryer that we saw online. It was priced at about $750 on sears.com.(not including all the taxes and delivery charges, which will be about $100+)

But then we saw a LG dryer that in the same price range, has the same functions and a larger capacity, but was on clearance due to a scratch on the top of the dryer. We don’t mind the scratch as it ’s hardly visible and saving of $200 is a substantial amount of money for us who are just starting out.

So, we decided to buy the LG dryer instead. They are going to deliver the dryer on Tuesday morning and I am looking forward to clear the laundry piles.:-)

In this economy, the appliances and furniture stores are not doing that well, so if you shop around, you can really get some good bargains on discount furniture and appliances, especially if you pay cash!

We went down town to shop for warm clothes and household stuffs after dinner. We wanted to check out the dryers at Sears but it was closed when we reached there at 7.15 p.m. In this small town, most stores close at 9.00 p.m and some close at 7.00 p.m!

We first went to TJMax, a discounted store, it’s quite small, thus the selection is quite limited. Found a few trousers that I like, but could not find the “short” ones, the “normal” and “long” ones were too long for me. Bought a pair of jeans that has the “short” version and two pairs of tights. Also went to JCPenny, which’s just a few blocks away, bought half a dozen of warm socks and a pair of chenille gloves with the $10 coupon we got in the mail!

Then, we went to Target, bought some hand towels and wash clothes. These were on sale  for  $1.58 per pack, four wash cloths in one pack and two hand towel in one pack. They are not the plush and soft type, but I prefer the thinner ones, they are easier to dry and save on energy. :-)

Though we do have enough hand towels and wash cloths, they are all in brown color and got mixed up a lot. So, we got them in two colors, beige for him and green for me, so they don’t get mixed!

We also checked out the clothes drying rack. We saw one selling for $29.99 on target.com, but it’s not available at the store. Drying racks are probably not very popular here as most people just dry their clothes in the dryer. We wanted a rack to hang the almost dry and some of the sweaters as dryer tends to shrink them.

Actually, this chrome metal drying rack is quite small and won’t be able to hold too many clothes., but it’s the better built one that we can find. We actually found one wooden drying rack almost the same size  of this metal one at the garage sale and paid $2 for it.

It’s quite light and was blew off from the balcony on second floor to the lawn few days ago!  Despite falling from 12 feet height, it’s still in tact and nothing is broken. It might look flimsy, but it’s surprisingly well built!!