Everyone knows that you’re supposed to walk some 10,000 steps in a day. For those of us who have jobs that require us to sit in one spot in front of a computer all day, that number can be hard to reach. Well, last week I took some 75,550 steps (according to my pedometer). I’ve been recording my steps for the last three or four years (can’t remember exactly), but the most that I’ve ever had in a week before is something like 72,000+ and that generally happens when I go to Nashville and walk around the city. So you can see, this is pretty good progress.

Again, even though I don’t want to make a regular routine out of this, I’m looking forward to getting up early tomorrow to get my workout in before I go to work. Not only are there not that many people at the gym, but I get to do a lot of reading while I’m on the treadmill (look for some more book reviews coming soon). Stay tuned for the latest and the greatest gym stories as they occur…

By the way, speaking of landmark achievements – Mother’s Day marked 14 days in a row that my Mom has gone without smoking. Unbelievable! My brothers and I are so incredibly proud of her. The last time that she didn’t smoke for 14 straight days was before she started smoking as a young girl. Amazing achievement, Mom! Good work!

I’ve had the greatest cloth covered chair for the last seven or eight years. The pump on it broke about two years ago, though, so every time I sit on it I just sort of sink down to the bottom. It’s really bad for your posture and it makes sitting at my desk a real pain in the back (literally).

On Saturday I went into Office Depot to find a new chair since they have dozens of nice looking chairs out on display at all times. They had a little section of “floor models for sale” which I found intriguing because I had never seen this area before. I saw a nice pleather (plastic + leather = pleather) chair with a high back which was originally $99, but was on sale for $79 since it was a floor model. Immediately I knew I was going to buy this chair, but I thought it would be good to take a look around at some other models.

Over in the regular chair area I saw a pleather chair that looked strikingly similar to the one I wanted to buy. After doing a few quick takes between the two chairs I was convinced that the only difference between the two were the prices. The floor model for sale was $79 and the new one that I was looking at sold for $149. With that, I asked one of the employees why the floor model was for sale and he said that the previous owner bought it a few days ago, but it turns out that his daughter was allergic to the pleather used so they bought it back a few hours before I saw it. I told him to ring it up.

He rang up the price tag on the floor model ($79) and as he was typing it in he mentioned that this was a good price because the original was $99. But when he typed in the model number, the machine told him that the original was $149. You know what that means? They marked the tag on the returned floor model wrong! It should have been $99 marked down to $79 – it should have been $149 marked down to $129! So…I purchased a $149 chair for $79. How awesome is that? Plus I bought a plastic floor mat to protect my rug in my bedroom and the floor mat came with a one year warranty for the chair.

I win, Office Depot loses. However, I’ll be back at Office Depot – they’ve done me well!