The Biggest IKEA Desk in our Smallest Room

On Saturday I was informed that the final part I needed had come in to IKEA Flat Pack, the warehouse for IKEA special orders. The new office desk was in pieces in the basement, awaiting assembly, but the part was taking a week to get here and it seemed better to have all the parts first, although it turned out that for this model we could have done it without the part and install it later.

We’ve been working on an office redo for a while, repairing ceilings and walls, removing wallpaper and painting the place. It’s a very small room, about 8’ x 11’, with way too much stuff in it to begin with. It houses our personal files, our computer and peripherals and the sewing machine and related sewing paraphernalia. I had to remove all the shelving, photos, awards and junk before we could even figure out what we could do. All this was happening over Christmas with a house full of people and it was impossible, at best, to make any progress.

After the physical stuff was done, we needed to determine what we were going to do. We figured we can eliminate most of the old files and lots of junk, and we could make do with one very large curved desk that would hold both the computer things and the sewing machine, and come up with alternatives to metal strip shelving which I had just dumped.

A trip to IKEA accompanied with a few hours of internet searches revealed the best deal, and one that could possibly get down a narrow stairway was the IKEA Gallant Series, a very flexible office desk system. It also, unlike most of the other options, came in white, which we preferred.

It took lots of measuring plus actually bringing a cardboard piece into the room, which was the size of the largest piece, just to make sure it would fit in the car, down the stairs and into the room.

We took an insane trip to IKEA during the holiday sale, the wrong time to go, and we purchased the desk in the configuration we wanted. The parts have been sitting in the room awaiting the final part. Yesterday, at about 2:00 p.m., we finally got to put it all together.

I am an old IKEA shopper, and have put together many a piece, and understand what I consider to be the Zen of IKEA. I have to sit with the pictographs and get, probably through a form of osmosis, the plans in my head. At that time I can move forward.

After the fact, this morning, I discovered that some of the necessary put together instructions for non understands can be found on YouTube, I should have figured this one out in advance!

My wife and I started the task together. She has never done this before and it turned out to be challenging, to have two people work on one project, because I had an unshakeable belief in the plans and she had the old, who needs them, approach! We did not kill each other and we were, in the end, successful. It took about two hours. Most of the problems stemmed from the fact that we had a room full of stuff to try and work around which didn’t work, and we had to move as much as we could, which was limited. Each piece we tried to move to build would be close to crashing into a new wall or old computer things.

After we were finished, we had the challenge of taking apart the computer and running the wires. We had the telephone, the modem, the cable, the wireless network, the computer, the monitor, the speaker system, the web cam, the extra hard drive, the extra DVD writer and the printer, I think that’s all.

It all went together pretty well, and my wife was putting the speakers into the sub woofer, which she had never done, and she had never seem a parallel port and I got concerned she didn’t know what she was doing. The speakers did not work!

These are our new speaker system, a great Logitech system which I got refurbished (of course) at a huge discount (about 75%) and now they weren’t working and the warranty lasted about 30 minutes, so they had to work!

The computer asked for the disk to reinstall, and with all the upheaval, I looked for thirty minutes for the disk, and I gave up. Finally I was able to go to the net to get new drivers and a manual and fooled with it for another thirty minutes and finally, the sweet sounds came forth.

So we now have the biggest desk we could get into the smallest room in our house!

Next, another overly large IKEA shelving piece to hold all the crap we still have to keep!

Parsnips in the Sand......

We have good neighbors and friends. They live a block or so away, and are extremely helpful and good people. So it’s with a bit of concern that I write these thoughts, but some things need to get out! I have kept their names out of this so that no criminal intent can be blamed on me.

They were redoing their kitchen several years ago and were getting rid of their old refrigerator. They were paying the delivery company $40 to take it away. When we found out, we had it taken to our house for the same $40 (we did pay it) and it lives in my garage as the garage frig. I know it eats up some electricity, but it gives us great frig storage when we need it. It does not freeze in the very cold winter because some law of thermodynamics says freezers won’t work if the outside temp is below freezing, although frigs do work at that temperature. I asked a repair guy about it and he explained it and I never understood, I just smiled!

So, the now their frig is gone and he tells us last night that in his garage he has three or four barrels, filled with straw, and in these barrels he keeps vegetables! These are people who gave away a perfectly good frig and keep food in barrels! They live within walking distance of one supermarket and within five minutes of three more! They only have two people in the house! They keep vegetables in barrels of straw? On top of that, they tell me, they keep parsnips in sand! What the hell for? Who eats parsnips? If you ate them, how many could you eat that you’d have to keep a supply in the garage in sand?

She bought a giant size bag of carrots! She keeps them in the garage. He doesn’t eat carrots! She will turn orange trying to eat the carrots by herself!

I want to turn these people in the logic police but I can’t find their number.

He has retired. When he was semi-retired they redid the kitchen. Now that he is retired, he has fallen into the retiree renovation stereotype, the need to redo all we can see. He has redone the whole living room and dining room, ripping out the ceilings and replacing them, and now he is redoing all the bathrooms, so there are thrones available everywhere one can go. He keeps vegetables in the garage but will crap on a throne! The logic police must exist! We need them.

Next, after they run out of things to replace, they will probably sell the house, buy a condo and start taking cruises, along with all the other people who have done the same thing!

I want to go another way! I hope to be shot be a jealous husband while climbing out of a second floor bedroom window in about twenty years!

Students Teaching

In the old days, we had a teaching program which included, among the traditional class work, three teaching related experiences. In the sophomore year the student visited public school classrooms in a group with an instructor, and observed teaching in a most “unnatural setting” (large group of college students in the back of the public school art classroom on chairs). In the junior year, the student participated as a classroom assistant in the Saturday kids programs, getting increasingly more experience and in the end, taking over the teaching responsibilities. In the senior year, the student had a traditional student teaching experience.

Today I have a tale about a third year student, who was assigned to a Saturday class, and in the end of the classroom experience, as an experiment, an opportunity to fill our a report card for the kids. While we never graded the kids in the Saturday programs, we felt this would be a good opportunity for the student teachers to have a chance to complete evaluations.

The idea was that the report card experience would be a learning experience, and the cards would remain with the college as helpful examples in the college students learning experience.

One of the students, not clear on the concept, wrote about a child, “ Grade C- . She is not a particularly good student, but you can understand why if you met the mother”.

She then copied all the report card forms, kept a copy for our records, and sent the other one home with the child…..

The Drawing Class

In the early 70’s, in the office of the Extension Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, late one Tuesday evening, there was a phone call from an adoring wife looking for her part time student husband. She was informed that except in emergencies, students could not be contacted during class time. While she had no emergency, she did need to talk to her husband, and could they get a message to him that during his break, that he should call home.

The assistant at the desk assured her this was possible, and asked her in what class her husband was registered. The woman told her it was a life drawing class, but she wasn’t sure which one.

The assistant pulled the records and looked to find the life drawing class offered that evening, and asked the woman for her husband’s name. She gave her the name and the assistant said, “There’s no one registered by that name in that class”.

“There must be”, said the woman, “he’s been going all semester on Tuesday nights, and he comes home with drawings of nudes”.

She checked all the class registrations and said, “He’s not registered anywhere in the school”.

We guessed the nude drawings may all have been from the same model…..

GPS- The Story

My GPS is a wonder.

OK, it’s not perfect, and it sometimes takes me in weird ways, but I love to use it.

Basically I can’t really see it from where I sit, without some very special glasses, but I can hear it so I know where I’m going. It has helped me through all sorts of problems, both locally and all over North America. I will admit that you are better off using it if you really know where you’re going, just in case it gets a bit weird, but in any case, it works.

In my drive to Washington, D.C. last summer, it took me (the fastest way was what I chose) through Pittsburgh which was, in fact, the fastest way, not the most direct. The most direct takes me west into Pennsylvania and South through PA to the PA turnpike and east to Breezewood, south through Maryland to D.C. I had a MapQuest with me so I could try and make sense of which way I liked. I chose my own way returning and it was much shorter but took an hour and a half more.

Yesterday, I took my daughter to Union Station in Toronto so she could get a train back to Montreal. My GPS had been in the car for the last few weeks, nestled in a back compartment and freezing. Like most electronics, it doesn’t like freezing and I figured it would need to be warmed up to use it. Unfortunately, that didn’t work, and it was dead!

After much shuffling of papers last night I found the bill of sale and the warranty sale slip. It had only a 90 day warranty, but a guy had convinced me to take a two year replacement warranty for money. I felt duped but I ended up taking it and I was happy until I realized I had a slip proving I bought one, but didn’t have the warranty itself, which I think is from a secondary party and I would probably need it to make this thing work.

As well, I need the GPS tomorrow, so it would do me no good unless I could get a new one quickly, not a possibility. So, I decided to see what I could find out there and looked at all the net possibilities.

I had to look at places I could go to on a Sunday and buy one and it would still be the last day of Boxing Week in most stores.

The bargains were not overflowing.

I want a GPS with a voice that announces the street names. Size was not important, and a refurbished one would be great. I was willing to pay around $100. They were willing to sell me one for around $200-300. This would not do.

I knew that I would return my Magellan (refurbished with a voice for $99) and maybe get a new one if I could work out the details of my warranty. I figured I could give it to my wife to use. It would be nice to have one with new maps as there are a few roads that are currently not recognized and the GPS thinks I’m lost in the woods.

I did my research, found a Magellan on line that may be in the store, refurbished, in a 4 ½” size (bigger than mine).

I took a shower, got dressed, got in the car, picked up the frozen GPS and before I left, plugged it in one more time to see if I could use the reset button (I hadn’t noticed before) to start it.

It started up as soon as I plugged it in!

Who knows? Maybe the planets aligned. Maybe the sun was out. It just worked!

I brought it into the house and put away my coat and gloves. My shopping day had ended!

Vegetarian Chili

I was at a meeting on the west coast many years ago at a very well known U.S. art school, and at the end of the morning session it was suggested that we go to the college cafeteria for lunch. Arrangements had been made for us to be given cafeteria privileges for the day instead of going out for and taking way too much time for lunch.

The Dean of the school suggested we should try the vegetarian chili, a local favorite. The cafeteria was run by a dear older woman who had been doing this for many years and her chili was a favorite on the campus. We all went in and were introduced to the cafeteria manager and she welcomed us.

I chose the recommended chili myself as it sounded good and healthy and had a salad and a bun to go along with it. I probably skipped the milk and had a diet coke as usual, but can’t remember that far back.

After my delicious lunch I went back to find the manager to thank her for her wonderful meal (it was) and tell her that while I loved the food, there was meat in the chili!

She laughed and said, “Of course there’s meat in the chili. How are you goin’ to make good chili without meat?”

I asked her, “What do you tell the kids?” She laughed and said, “I tell them that’s protein!”

After Boxing Day

Boxing Day is a big holiday in Canada. People start to line up early in the morning, similar to Black Friday in the US to get “bargains” the day after Christmas. I seldom need bargains after Christmas, and try and get them for Christmas. As well, they are all appearing very as Christmas bargains, and great things also appear as Boxing Day specials on line, so why wait in the cold. I know there must be a romance to it; it’s just not my thing.

I didn’t wait in any lines, however, at 8:00 a.m. two days later, I found myself taking my daughters and two teen aged friends to the early opening of the Salvation Army 50% off sale! Why would anyone care, and why would anyone be dragging out to get old clothes for less. We rushed out to beat the crowd, and we did. We were the crowd!

It did start to get busier a few hours later, as I found out, because I waited for them!

I looked around, and unlike Value Village, the Sally Ann has a much smaller selection.
There was nothing for me, not that I really cared, but I needed something to do as I waited. I mean, how long could it take? Four teens bargain shopping for used clothes? Two hours was about it.

I decided to go to Tim Horton’s to get a hot chocolate, and drove down the road for about a mile, I found none. I drove back up the road and found a Tim’s, directly across the road from the Salvation Army! I guess I didn’t look.

I sat in the car and listened to a book and didn’t fall asleep. Finally, as I needed a bathroom, I went back inside to find the girls getting ready to check out and the bathroom out of order. While I waited, I went next door to Wendy’s to find it not yet open, and back I went to the Sally Ann.

My oldest daughter had the biggest bag and spent the most money. I looked through the bargains, and I will admit that a pair of used Doc Martins, in pretty good shape, was worth $4. The other bargains were questionable, but I didn’t have to wear them or pay for them. My other daughter spent less, and had some nice stuff, including a new ”Friends” t-shirt if you’re into that sort of TV trivia.

I guess that what ever day this was, it was not such a special event for me. They had a great time and I imagine lots of the clothing will be used before it gets back to Goodwill or the Salvation Army the next time.

Having my older daughter home for a few weeks creates a level of activity I had grown out of as she’s been gone. We have these mini-events and activity every day it seems, and it will grow quiet again after Saturday when she goes back to Montreal. I will look back on this time and miss it, in a few weeks!