"Why don't I ever learn?  It's never as easy as you think it's going to be."

That was Greg this morning at Home Depot.  We had a few simple plans--to return some unused copper wiring (that stuff is expensive!), to buy some wood, and to buy some jacks.  We failed on the first and last--we didn't have the right receipt for the copper, and the jacks weren't the right size.  We did get the wood, though.  This is Greg trying to get it into the basement:

We decided to bring the copper back to New Jersey, look again for the receipt, and return it to the Home Depot there.  We also loaded up the car with all the scrap copper we had accumulated during the plumbing work, and which we are going to take to a junkyard and try to get some cash for.

The bundle of really thin pieces represent quite a bit of painstaking labor--I removed them all from scraps of leftover wire by cutting through the plastic sheathing.

Here's Greg digging through the many Lowe's and Home Depot receipts.  We did eventually manage to return it for store credit, which was good.  We're not sure what to do about the jacks, though.  We need them to prop up a joist in the basement, which is only six feet high, but the smallest size we can find is 6'6".