Has it really been 30 YEARS since 1980?

Wow.

We're 30.

The big 3-0.

No more swinging twenties for us... LaDIFF is officially OLD.

Here's the tricky part... we're THIRTY, and yet we were born in 1980.
Doesn't that just sound WEIRD???
Wasn't 1980 only a few years ago?

Well... to show you just how long ago 1980 was, here's a quick summary of some of the 'stuff' that happened in 1980. You can decide if it reads like history or is part of your short term memory...

• The underdog U.S. hockey team surprises everyone - themselves included - with their gold medal win over the U.S.S.R. team (psst... that's "Russia" now) at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
• "Blues Brothers" movie with Dan Akwoyd and John Belushi opens
• U.S. President Jimmy Carter authorizes legislation giving $1.5 billion in loans to bail out the Chrysler Corporation (proving that history really does repeat itself).
• Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, killing 57 and causing US$3 billion in damage (hey! I remember studying about that in 8th grade science class when it happened!).
• In Australia, baby Azaria Chamberlain disappears from a campsite at Ayers Rock, reportedly taken by a dingo, (thereafter burning into our psyche's the phrase "The Dingo ate my baby." spoken in a thick Australian accent)
• Marlo Thomas (aka That Girl) and Phil Donohue get married.
• 21-year-old John McEnroe beat Bjorn Borg to win his 2nd straight US Open title. (many years before he was doing Amex commercials)
• IBM hires Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system for a new PC. The pair buy the rights to a simple operating system manufactured by Seattle Computer Products and use it as a template. IBM allows the two to keep the marketing rights to the operating system, called DOS.
• Atari becomes the first company to register a Copyright for two computer games "Asteroids" and "Lunar Landar" on June 17, 1980.
• Now 2-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks makes his television acting debut on a little show called Bosom Buddies, where he dresses in drag every night just to keep his apartment.
  
• Former governor of California and former actor & president of the Screen Actor's Guild Ronald Reagan defeats incumbent Jimmy Carter in the presidential election.
• Blondie's Call Me edges out Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to top the Billboard charts. Olivia Newton-John, Michael Jackson, and Captain & Tennille rounded out the top 5 (no, it wasn't Muskrat Love... although I loved that song when I was a tween).
• A gallon of gas (on average) is $1.19; average income is $19,170, and a new house costs $68,714. More importantly, most cars on the Price is Right still needed only 4 digits to guess the price (average was $7,200).
• Beatle John Lennon is shot & killed by deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, outside of his NYC apartment building, leaving millions of fans to mourn his talent.

And, to be fair, here's what had NOT happened (yet) by 1980...

• We all typed our papers on typewriters. If we made a mistake we either started the page over or used Wite-Out. Yes, there were a few word processors out there (that's what we called computers that let you hit a delete button to erase your mistakes!), but they were expensive! If we needed a copy of the paper, we used carbon paper between the sheets on the typewriter or our teacher let us borrow the 'mimeograph' machine (ah... smell the blue ink.....) "Xerox machines" were available at the library and the post office if you wanted to pay for a copy.
  
• When we called each other on the phone, we used phones connected to cords that went into the wall. Sometimes you had more than one line in the house if mom & dad didn't want to have to share with their kids. Car phones? only for the rich and famous.
• Want to walk around while listening to music? Simply record your favorite songs onto a Memorex cassette, pop it into your Sony Walkman, put on the headphones, and off you go... for about 45-60 minutes. (p.s. most of the time you recorded the songs directly off the radio, during Casey Kasem's Top 40)
• We had 4 television stations... including PBS (Shown on the UHF- Ultra High Frequency - channel). While Tuesdays belonged to ABC and Gary Marshall's hit shows Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, Friday night was all CBS: The Incredible Hulk (loved me some Bill Bixby), Dukes of Hazzard, and Dallas

Oh... and there was no LaDIFF in Richmond!
LaDiff was 'born' in Charlottesville in 1980. It wasn't until 1992 that we opened a store in Richmond!

Hope you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane.
If it's made you feel OLD, well, I can't say I'm that sorry, since I've been feeling that way for a long time now.

We'd love to hear what YOU remember about 1980 or about LaDiff when we were 'young'. Drop us a line or post a comment.

... and let the anniversary year celebrations begin!

Mr. Washington would WANT you to shop on his birthday.

Today, the United States is celebrating the birthday of the father of our country, the first president of our nation, the man as famous for his legendary-but-not-true tales of wooden teeth, cherry trees, and silver dollar tossing as for his crossing of the Delaware and leading the troops during frigid winters.

George Washington would be 278.
Well, not today actually... it would be NEXT Monday (Feb 22nd), according to the Gregorian calendar... but when Congress passed the federal law that recognizes Mr. Washington's birthday as a national holiday, and made it land on the 3rd Monday of February, no one did the math. The holiday will NEVER be on his actual birthday.

But, since his birthday was not originally Feb. 22, 1732, does it really matter? When Washington was born, the colonies were using the Julian calendar, established by the former Roman emperor, so baby George's recorded birth date was February 11, 1731... *sigh*.

So now we have Feb. 11th, Feb. 22nd, and a floating third Monday.

To make matters worse for the first commander-in-chief, most states, ignoring the federal 'ruling', call it Presidents Day. So now Mr. Washington has to share his day? Perhaps it refers to a joint celebration for Washington and Lincoln; after all Lincoln's birthday was Feb. 12, 1809. Some say it's to honor ALL of the 40+ presidents. Personally I like to think that it's for George & Abe. I'm not ready to have a holiday for Calvin Coolidge just yet (no offense).

Okay... so the holiday is set. The kids are gleeful because it's one more day without school (unless they have endured multiple snow days in the weeks preceding). Grownups without kids are gleeful if they work for federal organizations and the like who tell them they don't have to work that day.

And... retailers are gleeful because people go SHOPPING.

What? Shopping on Washington's Birthday?

What is the meaning of this unusual and possibly irreverent tradition?

Shouldn't we all be researching our history, visiting famous Washington monuments & memorials like the beautiful life-size marble created by Jean-Antoine Houdon that lives in the exquisite, classical Virginia State Capitol building right here in downtown Richmond? (We're rather smitten with Mr. Washington around here, since he is the first of the 8 presidents born in our beautiful state.)

Well, yes, probably...
But, instead, over the last several years, retailers have realized that they have a captive audience with a 3-day weekend. Unlike Memorial Day and Labor Day, the pools aren't open and the beaches are cold, so what's a federal employee to do?

SHOP!

The furniture industry took the marriage of Washington's birthday and selling furniture so seriously, they even founded the American Furniture Hall of Fame on his birthday (his, uh, Gregorian 'real' one: Feb. 22) in 1988.

I for one think Mr. Washington would want his citizens to shop on his birthday. It stimulates the economy. It helps your community. It builds a local tax base (when you shop locally, of course... and you do, right???). And that 'retail therapy' high you feel when find and buy something you love - well - that's gotta be good for America, right?

So, today, on this Washington's Birthday/Presidents/Presidents' Day, as a citizen of this fine country, of the beautiful state of Virginia where this important man was born, I ask you, I implore you, I beseech you to do your patriotic duty.

Get out there and SHOP! ...especially if you want some terrific modern or contemporary furniture that you can only find in a one-of-a-kind 3-story showroom in downtown Richmond...

p.s. LaDiff is open 11-5 today, just for Mr. Washington.

Home Entertainment... then & now

This Saturday, LaDiff is hosting our 7th annual Home Theater Event... except this year we've renamed it our Home Entertainment Event, because now we can 'entertain' ourselves electronically in any room of the house!

Ray Lepper from Home Media of Richmond is going to show us and you all kinds of gizmos and gadgets to bring us up to speed on what's available out there. He'll let us in on all the new secrets of wireless capability so that you can program, watch, enjoy, and be entertained anywhere and everywhere in your house.

Which got me to thinking...

The 'what' is really nothing new... it's the HOW that's the new part (the gizmos and gadgets, that is).

When I was a kid, my sister and I enjoyed 'home entertainment' all the time! When I think about it, our house was light years ahead of its time in terms of what was available... especially circa 1979.

You see, our dad was (and still is) a gadget freak. A nut. A junkie.

It all started with the trains. When little Jimmy was a boy, he liked trains. He liked Lionel trains, and he got new ones every year for his birthday and for Christmas (and he got upset if he did not get the one he asked for... yes, we have family video footage to prove this little temper tantrum to his grandchildren.) When I was a very small child, Jimmy's train village took up an entire room in our basement. Occasionally he would let my sister or me wear the conductor's hat, too. Now the trains are packed away... (we need to change that).

Then there were the phones. Jimmy worked for 'the phone company'. We had LOTS of phones. When most of our friends had 2-3 phones (1 in the kitchen, 1 in their parents' bedroom, and 1 in the study or den), we had... 17. Yes. We had 17 phones. Oh, and they ALL worked.

We had the expected princess styles in the bedrooms (and bathrooms), and then we had the novelty phones: Mickey Mouse, Celebrity, Stars & Stripes. When our friends came over, there were two distinct favorites: the switchboard and the phone booth. The switchboard had all of the wires and plugs, just like the kind Lily Tomlin used when she squawked "one ringy dingy, two ringy dingy" on Laugh-In. And it worked.

The phone booth was the real hit though. The payphone inside the booth really did require quarters to call out. ... which reminds me of the payphone episode in The Brady Bunch... a plan that went bust on poor Mike Brady... but I digress.

This was the kind of phone booth that helped Clark Kent become SuperMan, the kind that college students used to stuff themselves into for photo opps, the kind that my giant stuffed gorilla from a long ago boyfriend used to live in, after I left for college.

So, we've got the trains and the phones. We also had GAMES. Board games were a huge part of growing up for us. From Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, and Sorry, we moved onto Operation, Twister, Life, Trouble, and Clue. Of course we had the requisite Monopoly sets, multiple Scrabble boards, and, later, Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit.

And, of course, when 'video games' came out, my dad had to get the latest and greatest gadget of them all: PONG by Atari. For those of you too young to remember this early video game, you can click here for a PONG video version. Note the high skill and technical prowess required........ to stay awake while playing.

Thanks to my dad's gadget-habit, we girls also had great stereo systems, walkie-talkies, cb radios, early cell phones (the ones that actually came in a bag you kept in your car), and COMPUTERS!

So, I guess when I begrudge my daughter some screen time with the TV, Wii, DS, or computer, I really need to think back to the time I spent on 'Home Entertainment' growing up. Gadgets can make our lives simpler AND more complex. We love 'family game night' at our house, because it means we turn OFF the tv and play charades or a board game. We also love having teams and challenging each other to a bit of Wii bowling (my 9-year-old is darn good... and my Mii is cuter than I am, so it's a whole lot of fun!).

However you enjoy 'Home Entertainment' with your family and friends, we hope you'll visit LaDiff this Saturday, Feb. 6th, to get a glimpse at some of the NEW ways we can be 'entertained' at home.