Miscellaneous Updates

Here's a bunch of stuff:

A couple of weekends ago, Todd and I trudged to Ikea and got, among other items, a lovely bed frame. As always, I was in charge of furniture assembly. Todd, for his part, had the unsavory job of obtaining the rental SUV, since we have a tiny car. We made the mistake of thinking it might be worth the $40 of savings over the cost of Ikea delivery to get the car from the airport. We were very wrong. It took forever and generally sucked. And then Todd had to drive that stupid SUV (I needed to save myself for assembly, of course). Next time -- and there always is a next time for us and Ikea -- we do delivery.

Here are some pictures of the bed in progress:

Body parts strewn about: Oh, the horror.

Malm takes shape.

The artist collapses, exhausted.

The parts of the overall assembly experience that these pictures leave out are me dropping the footboard on my big toe and my loud cursing at several points. Good thing those windows were open! And for those of you who might be wondering about funny camera tricks, wonder no longer: Our bedroom really is that small. Cozy, if you will. And now you know why our previous (sleigh) bed would not work.

In other news, we've lately been enjoying a weekly delivery of organic produce, courtesy of Boston Organics. When we lived in the 'burbs, we had wanted to get this service, but we were so distant from Boston that the trucks didn't come out to our area. Which tells you something about the lameness of our former town. This weekly delivery, combined with our propensity for recycling, the fact that every light bulb in our apartment is a compact fluorescent, and my rampant vegetarianism, makes me feel very good about myself (look, I need to have something). In addition to my increased self-esteem, I get the added benefit of the element of surprise when I open the box o' produce every week, not knowing what might lie within. Ahh, the drama of it all!

And finally, it is less than 2 weeks until the half-marathon that Dr. Bombay and I are running. (Our third runner, Dr. Shoe, has sustained a knee injury and will not be joining us). And I am happy to report that, barring any dramatic injury, we will be able to outrun the loser van that comes to pick off runners who are taking too long or otherwise don't look like they can finish. Avoiding humiliation is priority number one! And don't worry kids -- we will be signing autographs after the race!