Productive Saturday

Well, after a week of being sick and taking it easy in the lawn chair chaise that was my only living room furniture, I picked myself, dusted myself off and headed into Philly on Friday after work for two reasons, the first was to hit Ikea (yes, again) and return a couple things, redeem a few coupons, and, finally, buy my loveseat! The way it works with Ikea home delivery is that they will only deliver that day or the next day, so my plan was to head in before they closed on Friday and have it delivered Saturday. So that worked out really well. From there I headed over to Kim's to watch the Presidential debate and eat take-out Chinese. It was a fun evening and I spent the night there instead of driving home so late.

We had an early morning on Saturday because I had to get home for the delivery and Kim and Alex were heading down to her parents outside of DC. When I got home I did a little straightening up, moved some boxes to make room for the couch and had a nice, long conversation with my friend Ann who just moved to Savannah. But I had to get off the phone when the first of two delivery trucks pulled into the driveway. This was the cable guy! Woo-hoo, even though I'm not really getting cable (it's basically anything you would get with rabbit ears, if rabbit ears actually worked out here), I'll admit, it's nice to have reception. So at first he hooked it up with all kinds of crazy channels and I kind of didn't want to say anything and hoped he wouldn't notice, but of course he did and went out and changed it to what I actually will be paying for. So once he "fixed" it, I went in and went through all the channels only to realize that I actually get Bravo! I think it's the only cable channel I get, but hey, no complaints, I can still watch Top Chef! That was one of the exciting parts of the day.

So I settled into my lawn-chair chaise to channel surf only to decide that there was nothing good on, and instead opted for an episode of Mad Men that I have on DVD from Netflix. Right at a crucial moment, I heard the next delivery truck pull up and I hopped up to realize that the loveseat had arrived! I folded up the chaise and directed the guys to put the boxes in the living room. Because it's from Ikea, it of course came un-assembled. So even though I was dying to find out what happened in Mad Men, I took an hour or so and put together my little green couch!

Now, that might not seem like a long time, but by the end of the ordeal I had dropped the f-bomb more times than John Malkovitch did in Burn After Reading and was sweating like crazy in the famous NJ humidity. I ended up turning on the AC and by the time I was done I felt like I was too gross to even sit on my new couch. So I took a quick shower, and then settled in for the end of Mad Men. It is SO nice to have real furniture and it really is helping a lot to make my little apartment feel like a home. And the painters are "supposed" to come next week (although I've heard that before). So once that is done, I'll be able to hang stuff on the walls and then really start feeling like I live here.


After all of that, I headed out around 3:30 to volunteer at the voter registration table in downtown Princeton run by the Obama campaign. It was kind of a misty, humid day to be sitting outside for two hours, but I always enjoy the passersby, my fellow volunteers and the people who stop to chat. We had one guy who stood around telling us that we were wasting our time and that America really needs a strong third party candidate, and ironically, after he left we had someone who works for Nader come up and tell us that she already had an Obama sticker on her car, but that she needed a button. We also had a former mayor of Princeton stop by, lots of young folks, some adorable kids who wanted our "I'm an Obama kid" buttons, and a handful of folks who were first-time registrants. It was a great way to spend a couple hours.

After that I stopped at The Bent Spoon for some sorbet (one scoop of cantelope and one scoop of nectarine, yum!) and then I headed home. I have to admit, my evening consisted of finishing the first season of Mad Men and than falling asleep (on the loveseat!) while watching Legally Blonde on Bravo. What a day!