The great desk adventure
News ·Sunday May 21, 2006 @ 21:50 EDT (link)
Back garden
Today at the Lord's Supper at Northgate Gospel Chapel I was remembering another assembly that I used to attend: Cowley Road Gospel Hall, in Uxbridge, England; it would be nice to go back and visit sometime. I remember the large text over the platform at the front: "Jesus Christ is Lord"; the worn chairs, the cupboard for the hymnbooks at the back, the dark brown carpet, the drafty entryway; the wall around the outside, and the sign outside advertising services. My dad has a wedding picture of him and my mother outside it.
Dr. Who was on again Friday night at midnight (Saturday morning if you want to be picky about it); another excellent episode, I'm really getting into it. It's only the second episode I've seen; I know it's a British tradition and I've heard of it all my life, so it is indeed surprising it's taken so long for me to catch a show. During commercials I tidied up most of the remaining items we had sitting in a pile in the basement; deciding where things go and putting them in their proper places can be very relaxing (but only the first time!)
We had a drawer fall apart in the move from Boston, and I took a serious look at repairing it Saturday morning, but no go. It looks like Grebel (the movers) tried to repair it themselves with a nailgun, some random pieces of wood and acetylene plastic, and a complete lack of finesse, and did rather poorly. If I had the tools it might be possible (I need to be able to cut a groove), but we'll probably just do without it and keep the telephone there.
I've been wanting a decent (large) desk for a while—the one my parents gave me when I moved to Memphis is great, but somewhat small—so now that I have an office to put it in I lined up a few promising candidate desks on the Micronews Classified Ads, and even made an offer on one, but it wasn't the highest; most required hauling or were more than I wanted to pay, so we headed to the local Ikea store to make a selection from the Galant collection.
From Ikea's side, the store is great; it forces you to walk past absolutely everything, but that's very unhelpful when you're looking for a particular set. It didn't take long to decide on a combination (one matching one of the demos: corner table, extension, and a curved end, but without the hanging computer cage which looked somewhat flimsy).
The new desk
When it came to load the car—Honey's VW Golf—we found that the largest piece didn't fit in the car. No problem, they provide cardboard roofracks and twine. I heaved it up there, we passed a large quantity of twine over and around it, and off we went. The front end was up on the sunroof visor, and the back was against the antenna, so it flapped around a bit on the I-405, but the three times we pulled over it was fine, although it was probably the weight rather than the twine that kept it in place. It made for nervous driving, though—especially on Novelty Hill.
After I got it unpacked I was very impressed with the design, construction, and assembly instructions, especially considering that they don't use words, just pictures and numbers (saves translating). My drill, with a Phillips screwdriver bit, was very helpful as always. The hardest part was turning the desk back over after assembly, given its weight and the space available. But it's a magificent desk, L-shaped, medium brown, plenty of space, about 6'6" on the long sides. I assembled it while Honey was sleeping after we got back from church; it took about an hour. I'll probably put the small desk I had upstairs in the "media room" (it has my photographic equipment in there now and will probably host the piano when we get one, and since it's wired for Ethernet I'll probably put a computer in there too).
Made my bug goal this week, but not the secondary "stale" goal, due to some stubborn old bugs and not a few ambushes.
And the lawn keeps growing, and I keep cutting it....
