This week's pasttime was painting our bedroom. I wish I could call it something a little more complicated, but it was just a whole bunch of putting paint on a wall.

If you've ever done a whole bunch of work on a house, you know that Home Depot is for nuts and bolts, and Lowe's is for color nuances and other fru-frus.

We talked for ages about painting the bedroom. David wanted a romantic retreat. "What color should it be?" Red is energetic. Blue is peaceful. Yellow is sunny or something. Green is calming. Neutral is good when you sell.

So I got a boatload of paint samples at Lowe's.

Did you know that paint samples have really stupid names? There are too many colors out there to have a really decent name for each of them. Here are some examples, none of which should tell you a damned thing about the color:

Filoli Yew , Twilight Jungle, Winter Delta, Lyndhurst Mushroom, Caraway Shield, Magic Lamp, Hot-Crossed Bun, Rolling Prairie, Sweet Annie, Muddy River...

Don't get me into the home improvement crap marketed to kids.  Nickolodeon shades, such as Spongebob anycolor really aren't an option for grown ups. All those Dora the Explorer and other "character-inspired" paint samples are just primary colors with a hefty price tag. Think Roy G. Biv, your buddy from high school science, and multiply the price by three.

Just so you know, we settled upon Caraway Shield. While you won't find out what the heck it means via Google, we can tell you that it is olive-ish green. We can also tell you that it looks a lot different in a large room than on a 1" x 2" piece of cardboard.

Lowe's and Home Depot used to guarantee that you'd like the paint you bought from them. Doesn't that seem kind of stupid? It isn't like you can scrape your custom-mixed paint back off the wall without cutting the tag off, and return it so that they can sell it to someone else. Instead, a bunch of deadbeats likely ruined it for everyone else by getting their money back on a room they loved.

David has a good point though. If you aren't going to guarantee the paint, at least hand out a two foot by three foot paint sample so we can see what the heck we are really buying!