MondayLunchCrew

After ambiguous co-ordination of delivery of the bed, it was delivered and set-up in the bed room. Looks great. What's not great? Just need to get some wood cut up so we can put in on top of the slats so we can put the mattress on a platform. Should have been simple task, but we went to TWO hardware stores and didn't walk out with wood since both their saws were broken. What the hell? G's pissed about the whole thing. I was surprisingly relaxed as he puts it. True. I figure, we'll get it figure out tomorrow at least. Honestly wasn't like me to be so not upset! As I type, G's out scouting hardware stores while I'm at home. I was so cramping his style at the lumber section. I was so out of my element it was so much worst than at the bike store. Let's say at some point in the walk around at Home Depot, G had to explain what a two by four is. I was stumped by MDF at the store and I had to look that up just now. For your reference, MDF stands for Medium Density Fibreboard. While in second hardware store, I pick up more paint so I can finish up the trim in the living room. At least I know paint. Since delivery of 18 boxes, we've got all the Ikea assembled and are ready to put things in them, but they are not in proper position yet. Just a little painting left to go and we'll get there. Now that the bed's delivered, the last of the bedroom painting can be done as well. Looking forward to that work tomorrow. Furniture realization of the night. Our best furniture is in the bedroom. And we went and picked up my bike today. Love it. It's so pretty and shiny but bound to get banged up soon enough. I got a helmet that G says makes me look really sporty, but I think I just look like a dork. Pictures soon of the whole get up. My favourite feature of my new bike? The basket. Okay, I'm so girlie. At least it's not a straw basket. I can't wait to put a baguette in it. But for now, the truth is that I'm extremely wobbly on it. G keeps suggesting I shift gears to try it out and I've never done that before, just seems scary to me. So, looks like a lot of parking lot practice for me before I get enough confidence to really go out on it. But for now, it's nice to think about all the places we can go on it. G's called to say that he's got the lumber, and I'll have to go meet him downstairs to bring them up. Off to work I go.

We got bikes! G's is home with us today and tomorrow, we go pick up mine. Scary.... but exciting. More to come.

Labels: General

You waited at home all day yesterday for deliveries to be made. 1. If you are told to wait at home all day, you'll want to go out, even though you would have wanted to stay at home due to the 40ºC weather otherwise. 2. It's not customer service to not call a waiting client all week because a piece of furniture in delivery list is damaged and they are having a new one delivered. When you've hounded them down to demand to know why your furniture is not being delivered, they tell you bed is being delivered sometime next week. Curses! 3. Your place is in chaos, but having 18 boxes delivered from Ikea to be assembled in this mess while a little overwhelming, it's still progress. Except that you cannot manoeuvre any of the bigger boxes on your own. 4. Having two left legs of a file cabinet base will not help you assemble furniture. You must wait until boyfriend comes home so you can go to Ikea to get it exchanged. He tells you if you had a bike you could have biked there during the day. You laugh your head off at the suggestion. In 40 degrees? Please! He calls his Dad to ask about funny sounds the car A/C is making. Dad suggests not using the A/C. Boyfriend laughs his head off at the suggestion. In 40 degrees? Please! 5. Mattress is delivered 15 minutes shy of promised delivery time and they manage to scuff up a newly painted wall in the progress. You had to twist their arm to get the mattress out of the box like that's too much to ask. You wanted to ask them to take it out of the plastic too, but figured you'd have a better time doing it on your own since they are incompetent. They looked shocked when you expected them to bring mattress into the bedroom when they arrived at your door with mattress in box. [Boyfriend editing reminds you to tell the world that the bedroom was also empty, which makes the scuffing all the more ridiculous, or still expected as they are incompetent.] 6. Happy day it is to discover that the new sheets are deep enough that they do fit the queen bed. 7. Delivery people call and ask if they accidentally deliver a King to your place. He asks if you still have the box, and you told him no nicely when you wanted to say "Fuck no!". You had to measure and read him measurements to convince him you don't have the King while you stare at your queen sheets on your queen mattress. You will not recap frustrations from previous the day when you tried to arrange for the delivery, when this sentence could not be understood: "Hello, My name is May and I'm calling on behalf of [insert boyfriend's name here] to arrange for delivery of a mattress he has ordered." 8. You go grocery shopping, while on the one hand, it's the first time you've got good baguettes as they were freshly delivered and you think things are looking up. You go to the meat section and ask the non-butcher entity to freeze pack your selections, he doesn't understand the concept. You sob silently inside desperately missing Agata and Citarella. You openly sob on boyfriend shoulder after walking 20 feet away from the butcher guy. You lament again about the fact that you can't find the spiral cut ham that all your friends rave about. Your boyfriend ignores you and walks away to get cereal. You vow to track down such a product so he doesn't think you're crazy. 9. You and boyfriend assembled the file cabinet after return from Ikea and grocery shopping. Can you love a piece of furniture? Think so! 10. After having slept on the carpeted floor for the past 5 days, sleeping on new mattress feels like heaven. You have extra trouble getting out of bed the next day. (Okay, you are just lazy and have this trouble every day, but the mattress is heavenly.) 11. You will now go have lunch and tell yourself to attempt to assemble another piece of furniture before boyfriend comes home.

Labels: General

G and I take a road trip to drive down to the States for my friend Jocelyn's wedding. I've also got the honour of being a part of the bridal party as I'm a bridesmaid. The wedding is in Bergen County New Jersey and we'll need a car in the area. So, to save some money (prudent given my current Lady of Leisure role), we decide to do a road trip and combine this weekend with some additional vacation days. Sadly G had to do some work on trip, I bring the PowerBook. I can't complain too much. I know what that's like. I can only be happy that I don't have to did not have to do it as well myself. Road Trip: We start out Wednesday night and stay outside of Syracuse for the night. Hoboken. Get my haircut in time for the wedding in NYC. Wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner in NJ. Wedding!!!! Relax for a bit before starting driving again. Head to Boston Area to visit my friends Mark and Jeff on the way back home. Drive home. Highlights by area: Overall: G letting me take our trip on a slight detour so that we can go to a cross stitch shop in Arlington so I can stash a little. First buying of cross stitch in person in ages. And it was delightful to see Nicole's Valentine Stitchery charts in the shop. G doing the driving. However, I did navigate and I have to say that I am the best navigator and passenger a boyfriend can as for. That's until my job is replaced by GPS and truck monkey, which wouldn't be too bad for me, as I'll be able to sleep the whole way. Hoboken: Dave's condo is beautiful and comfortable and so much bigger than ours, it was so nice to stay at his place. Having a parking spot made our lives so much better too. He's even got the style of facets in the guest bath that I want to get, what more can one ask for. Heading into NYC with such ease and getting my hair cut done. Manhattan: My last hair cut with my wonderful stylist Vita at Artista Salon for a while. Eating at Olive Garden. Getting to spend a little time with Terry and Liz before heading back to Chez Dave. Bergen County: The wedding reception was hands down the best one I've been at or participated in, and well, I've been in too many to count. Florentine Gardens really know what they were doing and that made all the difference. They were well choreographed and professional, service oriented and really helped make the even seamless. Extremely impressed! Of course, the bride was beautiful and it was a beautiful day. Getting to see my friends at the wedding!Cheesecake factory, eating desserts after trying to be good for so long to make sure I can fit into my dress. Actually doing some of the cross stitch on Jocelyn's wedding piece at the hotel after the wedding. It's the first stitching I've done in ages. It was nice to relax and stitch instead of doing house stuff. King Size bed at the Hotel! Boston: Mama Maria. Dinner started out with J getting half a glass of Champagne poured down the back of his shirt, the wait-staff being totally confused as to who should serve us, and thus, not serving us for 15 to 20 minutes. But once that was straightened out, they really did manage to make it up to us. Service much improved and a good bottle of complimentary wine was super. The food was great all around from drinks to dessert and it's still the best Osso Buco I've ever had anywhere. I'm hungry just thinking about it. Cambridge :Hotel @ MIT was fun. King size bed, again, was great. The decor had all the geek things one would love. The bed scarf even had equations on it. I'm so tempted to get one of my own! At least I wasn't geeky enough to read the equations carefully to check if they were correct or what topic it was. Spending time with M and J. J making us all a great breakfast. Finally walking around the Harvard campus after so many visits and not seeing it. A beautiful spring like day so we didn't bake in the heat like the previous day. Disappointments:Not getting to visit Nicole this time around. Not having enough time with my friends whom I haven't seen for a while. Not getting in more cross stitch store visits. Okay, somehow that's never enough.

Labels: Cross-Stitch

So, Living room walls are mostly painted now. We've been painting with latex and it's been pretty fume free. Tonight however, we painted even though it was raining outside and it was a bad idea. No wonder they say if you paint on rainny days it traps the moisture in the paint. The Paint fumes was really smelly and gave me a headache. We had to get out after that, and we went to watch a movie. Came back and assembled our Elfa hall reach-in closet, the components of which we purchased yesterday. It was relatively easy to put together and all the hanging components are completed. We had to stop and get dinner after that since we were starved, which leaves me to build the rolling cart tomorrow. It's looking well and with some minor adjustments, we'll have so much more effective storage in the hall closet. The apartment has entered new states of chaos but pockets are gaining sanity. I'll take what I can get as I stand at my computer typing at the kitchen counter as currently there are no chairs nor other appropriate typing surface. Horray for wireless networking and powerbooks. Oh a technology frown note, I had a scare last night. I went and borrowed a USB CF card reader from my friends to transfer the road trip photos onto the computer and the 1GB card said no photos!!! That was the one with all the photos from the wedding, so that was NOT GOOD. Luckily, the software the came with the card to do "Image Rescue" did work and I did recover all the photos. Thank goodness!! So, I'm currently working on fixing up the images so I can up load them for all who are waiting for them. Here's a quick pic of me walking down the aisle at church in my bridesmaid dress taken by G:

Labels: General

As you've seen, I've been out of commission on entries for a while now. Almost a month. So here's what's been going on. First of all, there's a New York Closing out apt trip summary; Redecorating activities summary, and finally road trip summary. So all of that to come and that should get us more caught up. Decorating Activities summary: While I was busy in New York Closing up the other apartment, G was at home starting the painting of the bed room. He did a great job and got all the walls and ceiling done while I was away. Granted, I was away longer than we expected. The walls still needs touch ups, but the colours turned out nicer than he expected and fully met my expectations. We came to decision on the trim colour when I got back and I went to work on painting the trim and closet doors. Last coat of the trim paint on the floors was put down today and only the entrance trim and door remains. However, given that I've got furniture to move in and out, we're doing that afterwards to save the trouble from possible scuffles. The Living room painting has started. One wall is done but took many coats due to the colour transparency but it's turned out great. We both love the colour more and more as we look at it. It was painful to paint but the results were well worth it. We'll be starting on the rest of the walls in the living room space this weekend. During the few days between US trips, we also put most of the bathroom furniture together. Yes, I went with Ikea for the cost and it was easy to put together. I was disappointed that one of the wall units could not be put up due to poor measuring on my part. So, we'll have to return that piece. We are still waiting for one more unit to come into stock. But no phone call yet. I'm much happier that we've got the bathroom better organized and the space is better used. It's not quite what I wanted yet, but it's really getting there, which makes me happy. We're pretty impressed with the new Ikea furniture. The engineering geeks in us were really impressed with the new design joints and pieces. It made it all the more fun to assemble I guess. However, it was still surprisingly tiring to assemble and install. I'm sad to report that the condo really has cheap construction. The drywall is much thinner than I expected! Next week, we should be getting the new mattress and bedroom frame delivered so, we've got to move out the existing furniture. So, not only is it a pain for us to get a cargo van, reserve elevator space, but we'll need muscle. Sadly, G's only got a few possible friends to help. Sadly, my muscles won't be enough to help and well, I've no muscle here. He did manage to get a friend to help out tomorrow which was great. Tomorrow, we'll be moving out the current bed and mattress and we'll have to sleep on the floor for days. Then, more painting in the living room area and I hope to get the living room layout done. We may feel productive enough to try to get one of the closets set up. G's been saying he wants to try the hall closet first. I'll be happy with either bedroom closet or hall closet, any progress is good. We've got the first credit card bill with the furniture on it this week as well. It's so much that G got his credit limit increased. Ouch. Trip summaries to come..

Labels: General