Right, it’s monday again (odd how that happens), and I seem to have set this morning’s alarm early by roughly two hours. Pah.

Large box. Not to be confused with The Orange Box, though that’s quite good as well. G4 calls Portal “pretty much the best thing ever”, and now that someone’s got the portal gun jamming with HL2, there’s really no reason not to just buy the entire bundle. 50usd for three epic games isn’t bad.

On an unrelated note, advertising that assumes the idiocy of the target audience sickens me. … Though granted, if their target audience are in fact idiots, I suppose they have the right. But still. Scholarships with eligibility tests asking the sum of $999,999+$1 (apparently “a whole lot of cheddar” is considered correct) to things like this:

What is market research?

Encyclopedia Britannica Definition:
Study of the requirements of specific markets, the acceptability of products, and methods of developing and exploiting new markets.

Your Definition:
Get paid cash to share your thoughts and opinions on products, services… the possibilities are endless.

Come on.

(Oh, Emma. I found an escalator named Otis. Though I don’t think it was female.)

The plan was to sleep. Right through until 4pm, then have dinner and sleep again. Riiiight.

Heh, then Celeste called. Moral of the story: phone off when sleep’s the object. But she offered a trip to Ikea. Couldn’t really turn that down.

I love Ikea, but if my credit card could speak, it would mock me every time I walk through the motion-activated revolving doors (are those really a good idea anyway?). Blast those crafty Swedes and… and their low prices. And meatballs. Only $4.29 a plate.

But yes, my goal was a chair (one of those sitting things, Celeste). I have a loft coming at some point (the card got particularly sarcastic on that order), and I wanted something to go beneath it. Though for all that Ikea is quality and cheapness (and joy and joyness), their furniture line really isn’t designed for the student budget. The futon/cushion combo was roughly $160 (parenthetical expression here for the sake of consistency) – not bad, but still slightly expensive.

But then there was the sofa.

Dark grey with a hint of blue. Roughly #474E52, I’d say, with a matching footrest that looks enough like a weighted companion cube to make the entire $150 package entirely worthwhile.

Also converts into a bed. So that’s good too.

The tricky bit was getting it into the back of Celeste’s ’96 Grand Prix, which for the record was not designed for furniture transportation. Imagine two collegiates, outside of Ikea, manhandling a largish box through a car door that really was about two inches too small, with tired Ikea shoppers trying not to look like they were paying avid attention.

We did get it in there. And we did bow, though no one applauded. This surprised me, honestly. Twas a considerable accomplishment, after all. And they did sit there and watch the entire debacle success.

Any artists in here? [silence] I guess they’re all in the Aesthetic Calculus class. … The one that uses the book ‘Numbers Are Your Friend’. – calc instructor

The final challenge: driving back to campus with a large box (see the above sign) blocking any view of whatever might be behind. Scrawling LARGE BOX onto the thing (incidentally, that was all Celeste could see in the rearview mirror – LARGE BOX) wasn’t really our idea, I admit. There was some pansy in a little white car up ahead, a box a third the size of ours in the back seat. Labeled LARGE BOX in white block print. /me shakes head They do not know the meaning of LARGE BOX.

And that’s pretty much the end of the story, I think. Extracting the boxed sofa wasn’t bad, as keeping the box intact was no longer a concern. Heh.

Anyway. Happy Monday. Go do something unexpected.

Buy a sofa.