Category Archives: ikea

Swedish Goodness, Beer and Cheese, and Fun With Social Media

One more weekend down. Not too much going on, really. On Saturday, following a late start, takaza and I ran some errands, with stops at Target, Binny’s Beverage Depot, the MFF PO box, the MFF storage locker, and finally Ikea. Three hours later, we left Ikea with quite a load of stuff. We picked up a new Billy bookcase for glassware and cookbooks in the breakfast area and a new headboard for the guest bedroom.

Sunday was the Midwest FurFest staff meeting at the Westin. It was a good meeting, relatively short, and included a couple of exciting announcements. Afterward, we came home and enjoyed a pleasant evening with linnaeus, roho, and genet, back from camping in the wilds of Wisconsin. They brought the spoils of their trip with them: beer and cheese! Dan grilled up some hamburgers and we enjoyed some of the beer, then watched the season premiere of Glee, which was quite amusing.

Today has been so-so. Last night’s didn’t sit well and my stomach is still not very happy. Life goes on, though. More work on the house to be done tonight and all this week – finish assembling the book cases, get the guest bedroom into shape, and put the finishing touches on everything. With luck, we could have the whole place in good shape by the end of next weekend.

Some of you might have noticed that I’ve stopped crossposting my Twitter posts over to LiveJournal. They were here for one reason only prior to that – so my family could read them. I made sure that they were behind a cut and were as unobtrusive as possible. I discovered something, though – the automated posting made me lazy and less likely to actually update this journal. Once I determined that my family knew to check my Twitter page directly (and thus see the tweets less than 24 hours later), there wasn’t much reason to continue them.

I do respectfully disagree with woodychitwn‘s thesis that Twitter is not an LiveJournal replacement. After giving it careful thought, I came to the conclusion that how social media is used is up to the user themselves. There is no right way or wrong way to use it, particularly since most social media is opt-in. In fact, I think it is somewhat presumptuous to instruct someone how they should be using one form of media or another (and I am guilty of this myself in the past, though I will endeavor not to do so in the future). If you disagree with how someone is using a particular media, no one is forcing you to continue to read it. If you worry that by defriending/unsubscribing you will cause issues, then you are going to have to judge whether that social cost is worth the annoyance the usage is causing you. And at that point, that is a problem for you as a reader to resolve, not the user of the social media.

OK, off to a short meeting. I need to post more this week about upcoming plans, parties, and other fun things like that!

Bowing at the Swedish Altar

Slowly but surely, we’re assembling our house into a home. takaza worked half-days on Monday and Tuesday and put a little more work into unpacking; the guest bedroom is close to being usable, except for the lack of any window coverings, of course. That helps because it gives us a place to put stuff – the stuff we’re not sure why we’re carrying around, but it’s gotta go somewhere.

Yesterday Ameritech SBC AT&T hooked us up, so now we have not only local phone service, but zippy-fast DSL as well! Unfortunately, after checking around it appears that the phone plates in the walls around the house are just that – plates, no wiring behind them. Wha?! This means we have one and only one active phone outlet, and that is in the kitchen. It looks like we’ll be investing in a cordless phone jack so our TiVo can call out – the only reason we have a phone line, really, since we don’t plan to give out the number. That what our cell phones are for 🙂 And speaking of the TiVo, it now works as well since the DirecTV installer came out and hooked that all up (never mind the stupidity involved in getting that done, something that required some new wiring, multiple trips, and lots of whinging on the installer’s part). It all works now, which is all I care about.

Last night after work, Dan suggested we go ahead and hit Ikea, since there’s a bunch of stuff that we needed. And so off we went to the Great Swedish Consumerism Temple, and we spent a heck of a lot more than I expected. On the bright side, we now have a light for the guest room nightstand, a replacement accent light to go over the kitchen sink (the replace “the pimple” contractor-grade light that’s there), a low cabinet for our TV and A/V equipment, a new dresser (we left our old one that was falling apart in the alley and it somehow went away), a few other knickknacks. We looked at some of the blinds and curtains there, but couldn’t find anything like what we were looking for, or that we couldn’t get cheaper elsewhere. Oh, and the Ikea Cafeteria? Maybe it’s good for breakfast, but for dinner? Bleah. Not recommended.

For tonight, we have our work cut out for us, as Dan is going to assemble the entertainment cabinet, I’m going to work on de-boxing more of the kitchen, and then we’re going to both work on assembling the dresser. We’ll continue our marathon of laundry, attempting to wash every blanket we own, and somewhere in there I’ll need to cook dinner. On the bright side, I’ll have more time to do all of this, since my commute has gone from 90+ minutes each day down to 10 minutes. The free extra time is a bit of a shock, and I’m still adjusting to it (“I’ve been home for an hour, we should be cooking dinner! Oh, wait, it’s only 5:30…”)

And one more bit of good news: I wrote to the kind folks at Intelligentsia Coffee, and they supplied me with a list of places in Lake County that I can buy my coffee beans. Life is good.