where i've been -- part ii

After returning from my family camping trip, it was time to move the furniture into my new apartment. The apartment has one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a large room that is the living room and dining area. And lots of closets.

Since rain was in the forecast for the next three days, Mom and I decided to get started with the moving nearly as soon as we dragged all the wet stuff into the apartment. Within 24 hours we had moved almost all of my furniture using the roof rack on Mom's Honda Accord (and the back seat and trunk) - and we even managed to miss out on all of the rain showers, though just barely for some of them!

The camping stuff dried out fairly quickly in the apartment after I turned on the air conditioning (I have A/C!!! YAY!!), and by Thursday we had transformed the apartment from a campsite-gone-wrong to a possibly habitable abode.

mom in the kitchen

Perhaps my favorite part of the experience was going to IKEA to get the couch I've been saving for. I had envisioned us putting the pieces of the sofa in Mom's car, since many IKEA things are flat-packed in boxes. But it didn't occur to me that sofas are not extremely flat-packable. So I was a bit discouraged when we also discovered that the sofa couldn't even be put on Mom's roof rack because it weighed more than the rack and roof were rated to hold. I was just about ready to fork out the extra charge for delivery when I wandered into the clearance place and found...my sofa. It was "damaged and dirty" (very mildly) and wasn't nearly as heavy as whatever they deliver was quoted to be...and it was over $100 cheaper than the full-price version. I took it (as well as the matching footstool). Mom and I put it on the roof and drove quite precariously back to my apartment. A few slipcovers later...

tada!

Real, live living room furniture in my own place. Woah. Nice. I feel like a real person!

And just think about all that money I saved that I can now use to buy yarn. Hee hee.

Since we had moved so quickly, there was extra time, so Mom and I went kayaking on three rivers. We went down the Monongahela, passed through the Ohio, and did a little paddling on the Allegheny. It was a long way, which we realized when we had to go back up the Mon - it took forever, and I'm not all that good at kayaking for endurance. Mom is way better because she kayaks all the time. She had to tug-boat me a little bit, but it was still fun.

you may laugh, but i didn't get sunburned!

We both slept very well that night...after we went to the Harry and the Potters concert at the library! I picked up their latest album and decided I have to read book 6 before I listen to it because I gather there's a lot of stuff from that book in the songs. I said it before, but I'll say it again: these guys are super entertaining; go see them if you can! Often it's even free.

On Friday Mom went with me to my lab meeting, and then off we went to our next adventure...!