Friday, July 27, 2007

Random bullets: Getting set up

- Yesterday my new furniture - sofa and chair that I mentioned way back - arrived. I am, quite frankly, in love with them. The colour I chose goes so beautifully with this place and the way I'm decorating it. And, again, the delivery people were wonderfully sweet and friendly...what is it with people here?

- Holy smokes, it's hot here. Ohmigod. It's the sun...I don't know how it's so much freaking hotter and more intense. It's like I'm living on the Equator.

- Oh, IKEA, you know that I have a deep appreciation for the very fact of your existence. However. When it is 35 degrees, and I am bent over with a screwdriver to gouge at and widen your little prefab, connect-here holes in the four dining chairs I have to set up? Because they don't line up, or they are half the size they are supposed to be? Not loving you so much. Update: Also not loving you when I have bought four of said chairs and one of them CANNOT go together, because the not-lining-up issue involves a metal piece, which I cannot simply gouge at with a screwdriver...and so it appears that the chair is unusable, and I have a set of three dining chairs, hundreds of miles away from an IKEA - and this is a discontinued item, anyway. No. Not loving you. Not at all. Too angry even to know what to do with myself. Okay, well, it appears I can sort of provisionally put it together, but it's missing many of its bolts because of the not-lining-up issue. I won't want anyone sitting on it!

- Today I had a little lunch date. Turns out Joan, a friend from Home City, is in Scary City caring for her older brother, who is recovering from a bad accident on his Harley. His wife had to go to Home City for a funeral, and he couldn't be left alone. So Joan and her healing brother and I had lunch at a downtown cafe. She really wanted me to meet her brother, as a Scary City connection. It was so wonderful and surprising to see her here - she really is one of the loveliest people I know. And her brother and his wife will call me up next time they go to the Sunday night blues jam at a nearby bar. Not really my scene, normally - but hell, I'm up for anything right now. And it will be good to check it out because it will be my mother's scene, oh yes it certainly will, and I can take her there when she comes to visit me in a couple of months...

- Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to the farmer's market. Those who know me in real life know how deeply I love markets. Quite honestly, they are one of my favourite things to do. Give me a choice between a blues jam and a farmer's market, and I'll pick the market every time. I look forward to this one, for many reasons...

- Saw my close colleague yesterday for an hour or so - she popped by and admired the apartment and we talked about the upcoming year. And tomorrow night, am going to her place for dinner. I am not sure why I was so reticent about her, at first - I was, after my interview - because she has turned out to be just a wonderful, wonderful person. She was who I stayed with when I was apartment-hunting last month, and I just felt so completely at home with her even then, after having met her only at the interview. And now it feels as if we are actually good friends already. That is a wonderful thing.

- Went swimming tonight to cool off - hurrah!

3 comments:

medieval woman said...

That's so wonderful to hear about the new friends you're making! And the farmer's market sounds fabulous. IKEA does suck sometimes if you get a bad apple - the Dutchman and I had to make sure we brought a drill for these little problems, although when it's in metal...

Happy Housewarming!

heu mihi said...

It sounds like Scary City might shape up to be not-so-Scary! A city is (mostly) what you make of it, after all, and having a few good people + a few good things to do can make a place more than livable. And it sounds like you're having good luck, even at the level of delivery people--a positive sign!

Hilaire said...

JB (and Psychgrad, who commented the same thing on my previous post), I am really feeling that you're right about a city being what you make it. I went to the market today, and I went swimming last night, and am about to go again - to cool myself off after Ikea assembly hijinks. If I can only remember to do these things all the time - after all, they are two of the very best things about this place - then I will really will be making this city my own.