The math of buying wood

[jcblitz]

So my parents decided they're going to buy me firewood for christmas, which is awesome because I burn a lot of it. I live in an apartment so I don't have much room to store it so I just run to Lowes and buy 3/4 CF bundles @ $4.50 a piece (They use to be $3.80 last year but that's another story). I usually buy 4 at a time which lasts me from about 6pm to 11:30pm give or take. So I'm trying to figure out how much wood I can store, I think 1/2 cord is really pushing it since it's against my lease to store things outside or on my balcony, so I'm going to have to go with 1/4 cord (and store it only balcony anyway). Now a full cord is 128 CF (generally 4x4x8 stack), 1/2 64 CF and 1/4 32 CF. Well the guy wants $80 for a 1/4 cord and mathematically that works out well. Lowes @ $189 (32 cf = 3/4cf * 42bundles) and this dude at $80 for the same size. Now my parents don't have the same rational, they keep saying "well how many pieces is that". In my world, I don't give a shit, numbers are numbers. But my mom kept saying "But how many pieces is that?" So I tried to explain that trees are different sizes, there is no unit of measurement called "piece of wood size" so you can't think like that, they just have to fill a certain volume. So she said "yeah, but how many pieces is that". So I hung up the phone. That was 3 hours ago, I wonder if shes outside measuring trees.