If it ain't broke

I mentioned on Monday that part of the previous weekend was dedicated to furniture acquisition, which was true enough but also left some room for elaboration. The shopping trip itself took us to IKEA because, after all analysis of the situation had been duly performed, it was determined that the old, inadvertently destroyed couch was really great in terms of the durability of its upholstery, not to mention the color was exactly right for the den (granted, the tint of the paint on the walls of the den had been chosen for the way it went with the old couch, so of course the old couch made for the best color compliment to the walls of the den – Design By Ouroboros and all that). So the optimal course of action turned out to be replacing the couch with another version of itself, albeit possibly a bigger sectional sofa version.


Which version IKEA not only had in stock but was able to deliver to our house that very same day! Of course it arrived in five different boxes (you may remember my recent celebration of finally buying furniture I did not have to assemble myself, but clearly that is a highly permeable bi-directional membrane) and there was an agreed-upon deadline of Tuesday night for assembling the sectional, if for no other reason than to make sure all the cardboard boxes went out with the Tuesday night recycling rather than taking up space for weeks on end. Therefore, last night was a late one. I started slicing plastic tarps and unpacking boxes as soon as I got the little guy down to sleep for the night and had progressed from laying out components to actual assembly by the time my wife got home. She soon joined in and in relatively short order the whole piece was standing in its designated place, cushions zipped in their appropriate slipcovers (which might very well have been the most frustrating part of all, since all those covers look very similar deflated but of course the various seat cushions are different lengths …) and everything good to go. And once again I was unspeakably grateful for the fact that I am married to someone with whom I can engage in an inherently stressful chore like furniture assembly and no one ends up screaming, crying, or otherwise resentful.

The much larger new sectional will make it significantly easier to have more than a couple of adults over to our house, gather everyone in the den, and make sure everyone has a place to sit. Of course, my immediate thoughts were of the impact on comfort-levels this would have specifically on game nights, which my friends continue to graciously allow me to host while my wife is doing her late evening shifts at work and I am electronically audio-monitoring the sleeping little guy. What can I say, I know that the immediate future holds many more game nights in store than cocktail parties. (Though we do have both a baby shower and ultimately extended family Christmas on the horizon, so there’s that.)

OK, honestly, I’m just trying to tie in the most recent news – put together a colossal sofa! – with the fact that today is nominally geekday on the blog. The truth is I haven’t done a ton of geek consumption lately. Recently I was thinking about how nice it would be to have a job that somehow involved pop culture commentary, and then I came up against the realization that in order to do that it’s generally assumed that the commentator is reasonably current in terms of pop culture output. I haven’t been to the comics store in a while, or read a best-seller in hardback, or been to the movies all year, or gotten a new video game since last Christmas … there’s a lot to be said for catching up on the classics, which I’ve been doing, but about the only things I’ve been reliably plugged into this year are pro sports and Thursday night comedies on NBC. Of course I suppose if I actually had a paying gig that relied on trafficking in new releases of any given medium, I would make time to become conversant, but I don’t, so I don’t, and wow we’re right back to tail-chasing dragons again.