strange_complex | Entries tagged with furniture

Argos arrived promptly with my new bed at 10:30 yesterday, and I spent the rest of the morning manhandling the pieces up the stairs (which the delivery men refused to do, despite the fact that it said on their website they would) and assembling it. It isn't quite 100% complete at the moment, because it turned out on opening the box that two of the pieces were missing. However, luckily they were only the struts which supported the headboard, so it didn't stop me assembling the rest of the bed into a usable state - it just means I don't have a headboard for the moment. And I phoned up the manufacturers of the bed, who were extremely apologetic and keen to help, so I should be getting the requisite struts delivered to me at work early next week.

The mattress I'd chosen has a memory foam top, which I'd tried out in a shop while looking around at bed options, and had been extremely impressed by. It responds to heat, fitting itself to the curves of your body as you lie on it, to reduce 'pressure points' while you are sleeping. When I first cut it out of its plastic cover, it smelt kind of acrid and chemically, but ten hours or so in a room with the windows open largely sorted that out, so that it wasn't too noticeable by the time I went to bed. And as for the comfort! It was definitely worth the money. I felt a bit like one of those cute pictures you sometimes see of a tiny animal curled up asleep in a human palm.

Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy a really good-quality lie-in in it this morning, as I've just finally got around to registering with a doctor's surgery in Headingley, and had to be there at 9:30 for my annual 'flu jab. That was an experience in itself, though. They were doing nothing else that morning, and had a regular conveyor-belt system going on. Before I'd even opened my mouth to explain why I was there, I was greeted with 'Do you want to take your jacket off and go straight through?' (an instruction, not a question), sat down for 30 seconds, *prick*, and out again via another door, while the next patient was ushered in. Meanwhile, out the front there was a chorus of car-doors opening and closing, as a seemingly never-ending stream of senior citizens rolled up to join the queue.

Apparently I will feel a bit achy for the next 48 hours now. But that's OK. I have a pretty quiet weekend planned, and a very comfortable bed.

I seem to have rather good work mojo on at the moment. Not in an achieving incredible things sort of way - but just in a rather satisfying getting on with it and ticking things off the 'to do' list sort of way. I'm in a run of busy teaching weeks which will last for another fortnight - but I'm keeping on top of things in a way which suggests that once things slacken off a little on the teaching front, I should be able to get some Actual Research done. Y'never know.

While this is clearly a Good Thing, it does seem to mean getting behind with my LJ. So, in order not to accumulate an overwhelming backlog of stuff which ends up preventing me from posting, let's have some bullet-points:

I went to a lovely concert in Chapel Allerton on Saturday with big_daz, featuring northern-based choir Renaissance Voices singing a rich programme of Monteverdi, Palestrina, Gabrieli and the like. It was very beautiful, and Daz and I had a grand old time drinking and chatting in a nearby pub afterwards.
I finally chose a bed! And Argos are delivering it tomorrow. I look forward to this immensely, as I deliberately chose a super-comfortable mattress for it, and am pretty sure it will be a great improvement on my current cheap single mattress.
All week long, some Tibetan monks have been creating an amazing multi-coloured design out of sand in the University's Parkinson Court. I thought they were painting it at first, but when I looked closer, I realised that they were actually very slowly and carefully releasing a stream of sand-grains onto the paper from thin conical tubes. It's incredibly intricate and amazing - and tomorrow afternoon they are going to destroy it, to show the impermanence of things. Their work, and the associated exhibition of photographs, trinket-stall and information stand, has triumphantly outdone a similar photographic exhibition which the Chinese society put on in the same space a few weeks ago, and which I'd forgotten all about until glitzfrau reminded me. In the Parkinson Cultural Propaganda Wars, it is China: 0, Tibet: 1.
On Sunday, I shall be going along to the opening rehearsal of a non-auditioning Leeds-based choir, The Sacred Wing. Basically it's for LGBT people who like singing sacred music, and this year they're preparing Vivaldi's Gloria, Handel's Zadok the Priest and a few carols for a Christmas concert. This is very cheering to me after last week's experience - not having an audition is a very promising start, and I'm assuming they'll be more than averagely receptive to the idea of a woman singing tenor. Plus I looked through my score of the Gloria, and the tenor line doesn't go below the E below middle C, so NO-ONE can tell me I don't have the range for it!

That's all of note, really. But at least I can post from fresh next time.

My weekend plans got changed at the last minute yesterday, when

hollyione's car broke down, rendering it incapable of bringing her and her daughter here to stay. That was a pity, as I'd been looking forward to seeing my friend, but then again an unexpected free weekend can be pretty handy sometimes. So I've been putting it to good use attending to domestic matters.

I have:

Done four loads of washing.
Mended / shortened / hemmed five curtains.
Successfully extended my Sky cable, so that I can now have the TV where I want it, rather than where the wires will stretch to.
Vacuumed the house.
Bought some very tasteful paints in complementary colours.
Applied them to the two curtain pelmets which my Dad made for me a few weeks ago.

I've now reached the limit of what I can get done in the painting department for the moment, as each coat takes 16 hours to dry properly, so you basically have to wait a day in between them. But my pelmets are starting to look very nice already, and since I've sorted out all the curtains which need to hang from them now it is only the painting that I need to finish. By mid-week, they should be all up in place and looking very posh, and I will be able to shift my full attention to the next domestic task I need to accomplish - buying some furniture. I mean, I'm getting by, but I'm still using cardboard boxes as a wardrobe and sleeping on a rather tiny single bed. I miss the quality of weekend lie-ins you can get on a really good double, and am sick of having to rotate carefully and precisely on the spot every time I want to turn over, or risk falling out onto the floor!

So yes - there is some serious browsing of furniture catalogues to be done in my near future. For the time being, though, you will forgive me if I use the afternoon to catch up on some overdue LJ posts. Apologies for the spam, but they are only book reviews - feel free, as of course you always are, to skip if you're not interested.