Elevator Chargers: Where Lay the Roots of Impatience?

Since relocating to the big city, a predominant trend has become increasingly bothersome to me – elevator chargers. I’m totally at a loss as to why waiting for the elevator to clear before entering seems to be conceptual thinking for a great many people in this city. I realize we live in a “go go” world, but to me this is a little bit much. I firmly believe it’s only a matter of time before I get a torso full of hot coffee as a result of simply vacating the elevator in an orderly, logical manner.

I have to say this tendency annoys me to no end. The very second the door opens it’s head down and forward, full bore. What gives? Are you really in that much of a hurry to get to the office? The two-to-three second delay you’ll give up to allow the passengers to exit is going to inconvenience you that much? Sometimes I think these are the same people who’d pull a Costanza when a “fire” breaks out at a child’s birthday party...

What is at the root of such disdainful behavior? I’ve given it some thought and I’m at something of a loss. As a result, I’m going to speculate that some of them may have experienced a painfully-recent home furnishings shortcoming, and if so I recommend online shopping at cymaxstores.com as a means of developing necessary social graces.

Perhaps he or she is running late due to their being unable to find the car keys that morning. Could it be that a Home Star Nesting Table, perfectly situated next to the door with those elusive keys and a comforting photo of the family, is a suitably stylish solution? Very reasonably priced for a pair in a fine hardwood finish, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more affordable means of adding quality-made character to the common areas of your home. A Home Star Corner Curio would serve the same purpose with similarly excellent value.

Maybe it’s an inclement weather day and one of the cattle is in a bit of a foul mood from being unable to find their raincoat in a cluttered foyer closet. Wouldn’t be enough to drive me to abandon all manner of civility, but I’ll refrain from ranting. An inexpensive Home Star Coat Rack would likely have meant a quick and easy procurement of the necessary garment and an umbrella to boot. Enough to prevent bowling over the elderly to get a seat on the Skytrain? Don’t know about that, but it’s worth a try.

The incomparable value of a Nexeria Allegria Mirror would allow any of the stampeders to take stock of their impeccable appearance each morning, and might inspire a little more relaxed strutting across the lobby so that others may admire the view; not to mention some of that coffee will likely end up on you as well. Perhaps Mr. or Mrs. Self-Absorbed were at a loss to find the right necktie or accessory belt that A.M. The value of a visibly attractive South Shore Drawer Chest in allowing you to be a more well-mannered member of society would be so much more than its clear dollars-and-cents appeal.

Pure speculation I admit – But what’s a guy to do when he’s at a loss to find any explanation for such reproachable behavior.

Slow down folks

Inflexible Walls

There is something of basic human nature in the need for many of us to make use of every last piece of space available to us, just the same way as it is for others to discern the value of openness in relation to optimum efficiency and general well-being. For business owners in today’s increasingly-impinged office spaces, finding a happy medium between the two is a challenging necessity.

I’m reminded of an ongoing issue in my own family, and likely many others. My mother is more of a pack rat while my father is every bit a ruthless purger. Her solution to any and all items that do not fit into being located somewhere specific in the home is that they be placed in the garage, with the logic “that’s what the garage is for.” This is decidedly to the chagrin of my father, who sees it as his automotive / yard works sanctum with an ordered chaos to it that needs be understood by he and he alone.

Similarly, it is quite likely that the interests of productivity and work climate in the office may come to be at odds with each other as concerns space management; particularly as a host of factors make the modern office smaller and smaller all the time. Add to the conflict the fact that employees are more frequently wearing more than one hat and need greater technology-thus-space at their disposal, and owners or managers are obligated to give more thought to office layout than they likely ever have before.

In much the same way Rubbermaid (tm) tubs and stackable plastic shelving have created harmony between Ma and Pa, modular office desks and workstations from Cymax Stores are an ideal means to ensure finding that balance. Further, the convenience of online shopping at Cymax means you can re-coordinate your office without leaving it should you so choose.

Impressive advances in modular design mean it is easier than ever to combine office desks with a Bush hutch and / or a peninsula desk or return bridge to accommodate employees’ ever-growing need for more work surface space. Built to be sturdy, durable and a quality hybrid of function, style and ergonomics, Bush office products are sure to meet your every criterion.

Similarly, a corner desk or corner office suite is an optimum means of utilizing space in a most efficient manor. Adding a corner hutch adds vertical storage / filing capacities, and although most offices today are striving for at least some semblance of the open office concept, cubicle panels are another office staple to be found at Cymax Stores.

As much as the Christmas decorations will be a fixture of my father’s garage for 55 weeks of the year, an

ever-increasing quantity of office workstations and related items are sure to be an inevitability of your office. As your business grows, so will your office. However, your office space will most certainly not and the inflexibility of those walls will dictate you either move to one more spacious or make the best of what you’ve got.

For those who would choose the latter, a visit to cymaxstores.com may well be in your future.

Cymax Hits the Great Outdoors

Summer is finally showing face around here. My flip-flops are out of storage, I’ve switched out my sweaters for tank tops and my pants for shorts in my dresser, and I’ve come to the conclusion that slowly, and not too surely, I am turning into my mother.

My mother’s garden is spectacular. She’s got everything from roses to irises to gladioli and about a hundred more flowers with names that I can’t pronounce. In the summer, she lives in the garden, watering each morning, pulling weeds, and trimming plants. When I still lived at home, I’d watch from inside, with my morning coffee, wanting none of it. When my parents went away when I was a teenager, I was put in charge of the plants, but the only thing I was good at was eating her cherry tomatoes off the vine. On her return, my mother toured her garden with a frown, assessing the damage. Remarkably, she had a knack for bringing back to life the plants I thought I’d slain for good. But regardless of my mother’s healing touch, I was the black thumb of the family.

Over a decade has passed since I’ve lived at my parents’ house, but this is the first summer I will be spending in a new home that I’ve only been living in since the fall. Impressed by the size of the deck, my mother called a few months ago to say she had a “few pots” for the new place. A few pots turned out to be about twenty five, and now the deck looks nothing short of a forest. A forest, full of annuals and perennials (I had to look up the difference between the two), that I have to keep alive.

So far, so good, I’m pleased to say. With the exception of a few snap dragons that are not living up to their strong, fierce name, and blue violets that have chosen to turn black, I’ve done pretty well. Well enough to show them off, even. But the plastic pots looked cheap and all the plants were positioned on the same level, so before I invited over any company, I gave my deck a make-over.

Cymax has brand new products for the outdoors, which suited my deck to a tee. With the convenience of online shopping, I was able to bring even more life to my patio. Without killing a thing, I uprooted and replanted my forest into quality H Potter Sonoma Planters, which are made of stunning stainless steel with a rustic copper finish that highlights my plants beautifully. Now, my flowers are displayed using different levels on artistic Alfresco Home Round Mosaic Plant Stands, which come in sets of two or three, and also on a multi-level Pangaea Victorian Iron Plant Stand. I even bought a garden wall trellis by Rustic Natural Cedar Co. for my honeysuckle, and to add that last touch of blissful summery ambience to my now favorite place in my home, I have a ceramic glazed water fountain.

My plants are thriving and I am very proud to say that I haven’t used an ounce of chemical fertilizer in my soil, but I have added 100% organic and biodegradable CocoLite Bricks, which are a natural alternative to peat moss. Although not a fertilizer, these bricks can be added to any potting soil to help retain moisture and nutrients in plants. I’d like to think the healthy state of my plants is solely a result of my newly obtained green thumb, but I know the soil has every bit as much to do with their success as I do.

So, the ambience of the deck is taken care of on a botanical level. It’s the rest of the deck that now needs work. In order to show off my floral successes, my next purchases will be more new products from Cymax, like a Pangaea Garden Torch to light up the deck for dinner parties, and patio furniture so that my guests can eat, drink, and relax in style. And because summer weather around here can be temperamental, and the evenings still get chilly, maybe even a patio heater.

But the most important part of a garden party? Food and drinks, of course. Cymax now sells outdoor grills, like the Napoleon Grills Prestige, that make summer cooking fun and easy, as you can spend your time with guests instead of running back and forth from the kitchen to your outdoor space. To complete your garden of bliss by keeping those summer ales cold, add the finishing touch of a beverage cooler, and I assure you, your guests will be satiated and delighted.

I am going away on vacation in a few days and have asked my mother to care for my plants while I’m gone. After her initial shock that my plants are still alive, she agreed. I wish I could be there to see her expression when she walks out on the deck. I have a feeling that she will be very, very pleased with me.

Miscellaneous Musings about Backyards, Hammocks and Dads

Now that my father is in his ninth decade, my sister and I try to show a little more attentiveness (translation: respect) whenever my Dad mentions his Father’s Day hammock, but in the past, since we have heard the story so many times, we have fallen into the bad habit of rolling our eyes, scrunching up our noses or crinkling our eyes in a gentle form of silent ribbing. Our father, as he likes to remind us, has never ever not once ever lain in the hammock that we gave him one Father’s Day many years ago.

I remember when my dad assembled the infamous hammock in the back yard, perfectly centered in the shade of our tallest crabapple tree. It came with an optional frame so that it could be hung in the traditional manner between two objects or on the frame itself so that it could be moved around like a lawn chair. And afterwards I remember spending many lazy summer days of book reading or cloud shape guessing in the hammock. My sister would take tanning breaks, lying in its comforting folds, swinging gently from side to side. Even mother would take a break—albeit a quick one as though she didn’t want to be caught slacking—from hanging the wash or weeding her favorite flower bed. What I don’t remember is my dad ever taking the hammock for a spin.

I must confess though, I do find it hard to believe that after he had spent the time putting it together, that he didn’t sit in it, lie back, test it out, just once to make sure that it wouldn’t collapse in a spectacular heap when one of his precious daughters was using it. But knowing my dad, the claim that he never used the hammock could be entirely true.

There’s a good reason that I am unable to visualize our dad in the hammock. For my father, the backyard was not a place to relax; for it to be the haven it was for the rest of us, for my dad it was a place of work. When he wasn’t mowing the lawn, he was trimming trees or planting flowers or working on some current project, like the summer he repainted the patio furniture. It seemed that he was always busy doing something: potting plants in the garage at his workbench, fixing something (toasters, bikes, the family car) or painting—indoor and out. Even when we were relaxing on the patio as a family, it was dad who fired up the barbecue, dad who cooked the burgers and dad who cleaned the grill.

My sister and I have heard my father tell the story of how he received a hammock for a present one Father’s Day that he never got to use so many times that I think we missed the point. We made funny faces while he told the story because we thought he was guilt-tripping us. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe he was bragging—the beautiful place my sister and I grew up and felt safe in was the direct result of his constant planning, vigilance and effort.

There is a saying that “A woman’s work is never done.” But I don’t think a dad’s is ever done either.

Happy Father’s Day from all of us at Cymax Stores.

Kitchen Furniture and the Human Heart

E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web, once said that “on days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it.”

Kitchens are the hub of the home, the place where families and friends get together not only to eat, but to create meals and memories together. Kitchens are where ingredients are turned into nourishment for the belly, the heart, and the soul. Kitchens are where sense memories start: the smell of rhubarb and strawberries cooking in the pie my mother made on special occasions will always stay with me. I agree with E.B. White: Kitchens really do warm the human heart.

Unfortunately, kitchens can also be expensive to furnish and decorate. It is perhaps one of the most costly rooms in the house, especially for people who live in the kitchen, endlessly cooking and baking and nourishing their loved ones. But it doesn’t have to be that way. At Cymax, our online shopping makes shopping easy and inexpensive. In fact, keeping all the essentials in mind, we have ideas for your kitchen budget.

No matter how big your kitchen is, it always seems as though you need more space. If you are going for a natural, down-to-earth look, Cymax has a deal for you. These following three products are essentials and will make cooking all the more fun and accessible. With so many features, your kitchen will have everything you need… all for $690.97.

• The Home Styles Natural Wood Cart with Stainless Steel Top: $194.99 (save $105.01 from original price)
• The Home Styles Corner Buffet and Hutch with Plexiglass Doors in Natural: $295.99 (save $142.68 from original price)
• The Home Styles Baker’s Rack with Solid Wood Top in Natural: $199.99 (save $118.01 from original price)

With a cumulative saving of $365.70, Cymax offers you the kitchen of your dreams at almost half the cost of what you would pay on the original price – and definitely cheaper than shopping elsewhere! Add free ground shipping to that deal, and you will have a kitchen that is sure to warm your heart... and all of the hearts that you cook for.

What Lies Beneath

At the age of seven, my younger sister and I joined my parents in moving from our old townhouse to our first house. This was Suburbia at its finest, a cul-de-sac even. No more co-operative housing for our flock, we were a single family dwelling family (?) now. Cue the Jeffersons theme music ... movin’ on up...

I remember becoming quite enamored with the thick brown shag carpeting of our living room – quite par for a house built in the late ‘1970s. To me it was “shaggily” inviting and had a texture that pleased my bare feet very much. Had I been more discerning for my age, I might have thought it went well with Mom and Dad’s floral print sofa set, but I digress.

Accordingly, you can imagine my dismay when after only a few short months I became aware of their intention to do away with the “floor fur”, as my sister similarly endearingly referred to it, and replace it with parquet flooring. What on earth were they thinking? Where was the appeal in spending next Christmas morning pajama-bottomed on imitation wood squares rather than all that fluffy brown carpet goodness?

Their reasoning was equal parts completely logical and utterly nonsensical to a seven-year-old. Keeping this carpet clean was quite an ordeal, and Mom spoke of “ickies” (direct quote) that lodged themselves deep in the roots of the shag fibers and out of the reach of our 10-kilo green tank of an Electrolux vacuum. Protests were futile and a short time later the floor fur was torn out and discarded – the first of many home improvement projects Dad would embark on over the course of the next 5 years or so.

Today, I’d be embarrassed to admit I had a fondness for shag carpet at one time. However, I am aware of there being individuals who have a deeply-seated enthusiasm for recreating all things 1970s. I couldn’t help but think of them when I recently came across the selection of new home vacuums from Cymax Stores Online. It’s quite likely the appeal of shag carpet will not be as easily overruled by the “icky” factor considering the deep-cleaning suction power of a Dirt Devil vacuum or Kalorik vacuum.

In addition, the vacuums of today make the “tank” I referred to earlier seem even more onerous than it did those twenty-some years ago. Handheld vacuums and rechargeable vacuums make carpet and / or upholstery cleaning a lightweight breeze, and are just as easily perused at cymaxstores.com with the wondrous convenience of online shopping.

Heck, if I could have sat my Mom down in front of a PC way back then and sold her on the merits of a steamer vacuum, I might just have had more time to relish that floor fur my sister and I liked so much.

At the least the floral print couch lasted until the late ‘80s

Office Waiting Rooms and Ice Cream Cravings

I absolutely hate the dentist. Like would-rather-scrape-my-eyes out hate. Like would-choose-to-stick-my-hand-in-a-tank-of-scorpions hate. But after avoiding the dentist for five years, it came to a point where it was too painful to eat ice cream, so I finally decided I had to go. Because really, who can live a happy life without ice cream?

So with a referral from a friend, I had an appointment. From outside the office, I peeked through the windows to search for torture devices (the windows were tinted, so I was unsuccessful and I’m sure my face, cupped in my hands and pressed against the glass was a treat for everyone inside). The receptionist had asked me to arrive early to fill out some forms, so with twenty minutes until my date with the devil, I anxiously entered the office.

I walked into bliss. I kid you not. This waiting room was incredible. I checked again to see if I had the right address, but was soon greeted by name and asked to take a seat. And what a seat! A wrap around black leather sectional sofa opened up the whole room; it gleamed at me and invited me to fall back into it. With plenty of room to spread out, relax, and convince myself that only a successful (and therefore good) dentist could have a couch like this in his waiting room, I felt better already. In front of me, a modern styled table that would emphasize any room made me feel as comfortable as I would be in my own home. After filling out my papers, I picked up a Time Magazine from a very chic contemporary magazine rack. And then my mantra started: This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad.

Although a nice enough guy, with his mask on, the dentist bore an uncanny resemblance to the infamous cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. But as he came at me with drills and picks and all things horrible, I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I had a pair of headphones on, watching the comedy network on a TV, fixed above me on the ceiling by a TV mount. Escapism by means of Seinfeld… a perfect way to transform a dental-phobic into one of the easiest patients in the world. This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad. This isn’t so bad.

I left with a follow-up appointment to fill my (seven) cavities and a new appreciation for office waiting rooms. It got me thinking about other waiting rooms or lobbies that I’ve spent some time in: Doctors offices, real estate offices, my friends’ offices where I wait for them to get off work for coffee or dinner dates. Office waiting rooms should be inviting, comfortable, and relaxing; after all, people spend a lot of time in waiting rooms over the course of their life.

Deck out your office waiting room in furniture that makes your customers, clients, potential future employees, and anyone else who makes a visit feel at ease. At Cymax, shop online for chairs and sofas, tables and magazine racks, lighting, coat racks, and accessories that will make any office guest feel as serene as they would in their own living room. If they are comfortable in the waiting room, they will be easier to please once they pass through your office door. A happy guest equals happy business.

So is it the prospect of being able to eat ice cream again or the TV and couch combo that is making me return to have my cavities filled? I think it is a combination of both. My only suggestion to improve the dentist’s office: Free ice cream on the way out. That isn’t so bad. That isn’t so bad. That isn’t so bad at all.