citizen of the planet

Due to an event happening the Sunday after next, I decided to head out to Moores to possibly pick up either a blazer or a sport coat.  I was originally considering going to the event with just a suit jacket and my dark jeans, but from what I was reading online doing so would have been a faux-pas.  Apparently combining a suit jacket with casual clothes doesn’t look like you consciously dressed it down, rather that you just couldn’t find the right jacket, or perhaps accidentally stained the rest of your suit.  Ouch!  So, that’s why I decided to go to a specialty men’s clothing place.

As I walked in, immediately I was attended to.  Nice job!  If I ended up having to wander around pawing at the clothing on my own I’d probably be out of there within minutes.  I suggested that I was looking for either a blazer or a sport jacket for the event and he immediately took the measuring tape to get my numbers.  After that, he brought me to the jackets to try on a few items.  After a few questions it was apparent that I really didn’t have much idea about dressing up.  From what I was able to pick up, a blazer seems to look more formal.  As such, you have more of an opportunity to dress it down without it looking like a mess.  A sport jacket uses a slightly more casual fabric so you can’t dress it down too much.  You really should wear dress pants with that.  See!  I had no clue.

The guy kept saying “these are essential pieces for a well-dressed man’s wardrobe.”  I certainly couldn’t disagree there.  I’ve really wanted jackets like that in my closet, but I just didn’t have a need.  I lucked out in my timing because the place was having a buy one get one free deal going.  As such, in the end instead of deciding on the sport jacket vs. the blazer I got both.  As he kept asking me more questions, I really started thinking that I’m really missing some important things.  He asked if I had dress pants.  I had to really think about that.  All of the pairs I had are now too big.  So, I told him that I didn’t really.  Imagine his shock.  He asked me what shoes I was going to wear.  I sheepishly told him that I was just planning on polishing the scuffed and salt stained casual brown Rockports I had on at the time.  Really, I had no choice because those were my only non-sneaker type shoes.  He told me that it’d be prudent to go with black shoes.  Ugh.  Well, I was planning on getting black shoes anyway, so I let him show me what they had.  He also showed me a shirt which really was 100x better than any of my current shirts that I would have attempted to pair up with the jacket.

Ultimately, I ended up buying two jackets, a shirt, and a pair of shoes.  The price wasn’t bad at all and within the mental budget I set up in anticipation.  Maybe I can use these as a foundation of sorts.  From now on, I can continue adding on pieces to things.  One day, maybe I’ll be able to consider myself a well-dressed man.  HAH!  Not likely in the next little while, but I suppose I’m on my way.

Not that it’s a bad thing, but more and more I’ve been finding myself sleeping on the couch.  Sometimes it’s not intentional.  For example, sometimes I’d just be typing something and for whatever reason I’d just tilt until I’m horizontal.  Next thing you know I open my eyes and an hour or two has passed.  It’s a bit of an annoyance, but I suppose I should just be glad that I seem to have picked a couch that’s actually quite comfortable.  The flip side to all of this is that I wonder if I’m getting enough rest.

Ugh, right now it’s freaking 2 a.m. I just woke up after being awake at 1 a.m. This is getting ridiculous.

How is it that I’ve been frequently running out of time as of late?  Fascinating. What’s the deal today? Well, I met up with my friend and we went to Ikea to shop for some decor.  While there I made it one of my intentions to partake of the Swedish meatballs that everyone seems to talk about.  Well gee, now I know why: those things were damn good.  I even got a back of frozen ones to cook here at home.

I suppose I tried not to overdo it with the spending, but I still managed to get a good haul.  I was originally planning on getting a matching Årstid table lamp to go with the floor lamp on the other side of the couch.  Instead, my friend convinced me to go with a Böja lamp in the natural colour.  I totally wouldn’t have chosen that at all on my own, but now that it’s in place, holy crap, it adds so much character to the living room.  That alone would look out of place, but…I think we got enough other pieces to tie it in.

We got over to where the cushions are and after having a good look around I decided to get a pair of red Edit cushion covers.  Remember how long ago I kind of wanted an autumn-type palette?  I think I’m starting to get the ball rolling on that.  So, combined with the two other cream cushions I got last Thursday the couch is looking better and better; in the words of my friend: it’s not as emo.

So, now I’ve got some weird red cushions and a weird wicker lamp.  What am I doing to being it all together?  Remember that bookcase I got about two weeks ago?  I decided to get inserts for two of the sections.  For one, I got a red wooden Expedit insert.  For the other I got a Branäs basket.  So yeah: red, wicker, it all makes sense.

I think.

I suppose I’m risking a bit of a hodge podge thing going on, but the thought’s there.  Right now I have to tidy up because it’s kind of a mess in here with packaging strewn about.  No matter, though.  I’m just happy to have another layer of decor in place.  Again, this place is feeling more and more comfortable.

Maybe it’ll surprise you, but up until today I had never stepped foot inside an Ikea.  With the idea of picking up a coffee table in mind, my mother (who had come to visit to help get my place organized) and I ventured over to the North York location to have a peek around.  I had no idea what to expect.  As we approached the place, the building looked enormous.  Immediately, I kind of felt dwarfed by the scale of it.  I parked on the upper deck and we ventured down to the front entrance.  As I walked to the front I couldn’t help but notice just how crowded the place was on a Saturday afternoon.  I have never seen a furniture place that packed, you know?  I passed a lot of families with their little kids in tow.  I swear, you’d think they we were all heading into an amusement park.  Maybe I was imagining it, but there was some palpable excitement among the kiddies.  On my first step in, the fact that I saw kids playing in a ball pit made me laugh out loud.  Yup, the magic happens inside.

So my mother and I were wandering around the showroom, kind of ooh-ing and aah-ing at some of the merchandise.  Sure, there are some items there that kind of look inexpensive, but if you pick the right item you’ll get that whole clean-line modern thing without much fuss.  Now, yesterday I said I was eyeing the Ramvik or the Klubbo coffee tables.  When I finally got to see it for myself, I realized that the Klubbo was far too low to the ground for my liking, and the Ramvik was just way too chunky.  Even the fact that the Ramvik had storage was not enough to make me want it.  However, then I saw a black-brown version of the Expedit coffee table.  It was thick, sufficiently chunky, and looked sturdy.  The glass on top gave it a bit more character.  At that point I knew that if I were to get a table, that would be the one.  So, I pencilled it onto my Ikea sheet.  It just so happened that beside the coffee table they had the corresponding side table.  I figured that if I got the coffee table it would probably be a good idea to just get the side table as well.  At $60, why not?  I pencilled that in, too.  I wasn’t intending on getting a bookcase either, but when I saw the 4×2 bookcase and noticed that it was also Expedit, I just decided to pencil it in as well.  I don’t know if I intended to actually buy all of that from the get go, but I figured that writing down what I wanted wouldn’t hurt.

Well, my mother and I wound our way through the store.  We tried to minimize the impulse stuff as much as we could, though I did end up getting an Årstid floor lamp as well.  We eventually got to that self-pick up area with the flat-pack boxes.  Right by the entrance was the bookcase.  Sweet mercy, that thing was freaking heavy.  I was already wondering how the heck we were going to bring it home.  As we went around, the boxes piled up.  The cart was heavily loaded.  Every time there was a slight slope, the cart really started rolling out of my control.  That’s how heavy everything was.  All in all, I ended up paying $365 for the day, which, in my mind, seemed obscenely cheap for all the stuff I got.

When we got back to my car, my mother and I sort of had to play Ikea Tetris just to get all of the items to fit into my car.  She had all of her training lifting heavy patients at the hospital.  Even though I knew that, I was still quite impressed with her ability to lift things to get them in.  That bookcase package wasn’t light at all.  I’m also impressed with the Corolla.  I knew that it was good at holding cargo because of the fact that I was able to stuff all of my boxes in there during my move.  Still, the fact that I got all of the furniture in there just amazed me. I really did a lot of heavy lifting today.  Moving has that effect, no?  Part of me wishes that this process is on-going because this necessary weight lifting must be doing something good for me (or so I’d like to think).

So, it’s late on a Saturday now.  All of the furniture is assembled and I swear, my living room is now looking like a proper living room.  Yes, there’s more stuff, but no, it’s not cramped.  Everything goes well together, and that makes me happy.  Very soon, I’m going to start work on softening up the room.  I’m a little afraid that all of the pieces together might be a little overwhelming.  Maybe adding cushions and other textures to the couch will help.  We’ll see.

Yup. It’s been yet another productive weekend.

In terms of interior decoration, one common message that just about everyone has been telling me is that I should be in no hurry to fill my place.  I really need to take the time to pick out pieces and personal touches that I truly want to represent what I’m all about.  I agree with that notion.  I don’t think I’ll get around to putting more personal touches in my place until I have everything else put away.  In my living room I still have a couple of boxes of stuff lying around.  I would have emptied them by now but there simply isn’t any place to put the stuff.  So there they sit, making my habitation of this space look more transitional than anything else.  That’s OK.  I’ll know I’ll eventually get things put away.

The next thing that I’ve really been stressing out about as of late has been the addition of a coffee table.  I mean, last weekend I picked out a nice rug.  Since then I’ve been trying to figure out what would go with the couch and rug.  I have some ideas.  In truth though, I’ve really been focusing my attention on the stuff at Ikea.  Why?  Well, I figure that it’s easy enough to pick something out from that place and then take it home for quick assembly.  In other furniture stores I’d have to stick around the place for delivery, and given the state of work over the next week or two that’s time that I just can’t give up.  The few options that I’ve really been throwing around have been the Ramvik table or the Klubbo table.  Why?  Both have the whole clean line thing going on which I think would fit well with the couch.

I am going to use this time to apologize to my friends for the past few days.  I’ve really been bouncing ideas off of so many people.  There have been a variety of opinions, but in the end all have been valuable in helping me figure out what I want.  Thing is, I still don’t know what I want!  Yes, I’m going to give it a bit more time, but I should settle sooner rather than later.  The reason for that is that if I drag it on for much longer I’m going to go absolutely insane.

Just a few words on the couch.  Back when I signed the contract and paid out my first chunk of the down payment, my mind immediately started churning out ideas with regard to how I wanted the place to look.  For a couch, my mind immediately gravitated toward having a sectional sofa.  I even wrote about wanting one about two years ago.  Why did I want one?  The plain and simple reason was that I enjoyed the idea of having a corner of sorts to curl up in when I wanted a nap.  A lot of people kind of scoffed at the idea saying that I basically wouldn’t have the room for it.  So, ultimately I just put the thought on the back burner for a long time.

Fast forward now to August 2009.  I ventured into Leon’s just with the intent of looking around to see if there was anything that caught my eye.  I was helped out by this friendly sales lady who really seemed to have a decent handle on what all the trends are for today’s youth (yeah, I fall under that category, I guess).  I told her that I was interested in having a sectional so she showed me the fabric options.  They were all kind of large, and really I wasn’t feeling entirely enthused about any of the options.  That’s when she convinced me that a sofa would probably be more appropriate.  So, we started looking around at those options, but again I didn’t feel that any of the sofas really fit what I had in mind.  That’s when I asked to see leather options.

Now, I wasn’t planning on going the leather route at all.  When I thought of leather furniture, I always imagined the big puffy things that you tend to sink into.  I also imagined that on sweaty days I’d have to peel myself off the couch.  Was all kind of gross if you asked me.  Well, when she took me over she showed me a nice mini chocolate brown sofa.  Well, I sat on it but wasn’t completely sold on it.  Then again, compared to all of the fabric couches that one was leaps ahead of the others.  I eventually decided to go with that one.

So, afterwards the sales lady started taking me to other parts of the store to see what else she could show me.  Just as a matter of circumstance, we ended up in one of the back areas of the store where the decor seemed to be very sleek and contemporary.  I ended up seeing a black leather sectional and immediately fell in love with it.  It was low slung, relaxing, and taut.  It pretty much shattered any conceptions I had about leather furniture; the darn thing was just really comfortable!  It just so happened too that its dimensions just fit nicely into the scheme of things.  I asked about it and the sales lady said that she was going to show it to me but thought that it might cost a bit more than what I was looking for.  Fine.  This couch was probably $1000+ over the chocolate brown sofa.  I replied, “yeah…I’m not made of money.”

And that was that.  Or, at least, that would have been the end of it.  As we kept going around the store I kept thinking about the couch.  I knew that I’d be taking advantage of the 18 month promotion that they had anyway.  Eventually I decided that this would be my splurge item so I made the switch.  And that’s that.

As I type this, I’m reclined on the couch tapping away at the laptop.  I took a picture of the couch the other day.  I’m posting it here in this entry.  Please ignore the socks in the picture.  Despite how it looks, the couch isn’t a behemoth at all.  It really is just enough for a guy like me, you know.  I’m happy with this piece of furniture.  Yes, I am.

I’m sitting here cleaning out my wallet. I regularly take out the contents of the coin pocket and leave the $1 and $2 coins in with a couple of quarters just in case I need them for some weird reason in this day and age of the cell phone. Hell, are pay phones still only 25¢?  I honestly don’t know.  That’s one thing about having a wallet with a coin pocket.  You really need to clean it out regularly or else the accumulation of pennies and nickels just makes it bulky and heavy.  Now and then my wallet weighs down my pants to the point where it becomes dangerous to walk around without a belt.  Having a possible wardrobe malfunction because I’m too lazy to clear out my coins?  No thanks.

Also over a period of time I find that my wallet accumulates a large number of business cards.  Every month that I’ve gone to the dentist to get an orthodontic adjustment, I’ve come out with a reminder/business card for my next appointment. I was surprised the other day to find 5 copies of the same card. No wonder my wallet’s got bulk. I’ve gotten some business recommendations for various things from various people. The most likely outcome from those recommendations is that I’d forget that the card even exists. Months later, when I finally clean out my wallet, I often find cards for people whom I haven’t had the slightest bit of contact with. Bulk bulk bulk!

This evening, I somehow managed to find a way to take three plastic cards out of there. Of all things in the wallet, the plastic cards are usually the least likely to get moved out, right? I mean, how often do you have to remove a credit card from there permanently, right? Well, since a new month just recently started I’ve just started using the July Metropass for transit. On the first day I swapped out the June card for the July one. I stashed the June one away with intentions of taking it out the next time I cleaned out my wallet. Well, I just pulled out the June one, and was surprised that I was somehow still holding onto the May one as well. Those millimetres add up. The third card is actually something that I’ve been holding onto since January. One of the promotions that came with the Corolla was a $450 gas card that Toyota gave to all buyers. No kidding, $450 lasted a very long time. Six months later, the sucker finally ran out. I’m really going to miss not having to worry about paying every time I filled up, but it’s back to reality for me, I guess.

After all of that tidying up, my wallet is still far from being lean. It’s just no longer at a point where I have to lean over when I sit down with it in my back pocket. Sitting upright is wholly underrated.

So, I was over at the electronics store (not a big box one) to buy a new set of earphones.  The current ones I have for my iPod are starting to wear down.  The sound cuts off frequently and I find that I have to tilt my head slightly one way or the other, or jiggle the cord just to get the sound back.  Ridiculous!  Anyway, in the store there’s the display with all sorts of earphones.  Up in the top row I saw a set of Skullcandy ones so I tried to get it off the hook.  After a moment or two I noticed that I couldn’t pull it off the damn thing.  I just gave up and tried a different set.  They too were locked in.  How the hell am I supposed to comparison shop like that?  What if I wanted to check out the specs of different sets to figure out which one suited my purposes?  Whatever.

After a minute or two of frustration a clerk came over seemingly smiling at my ineptitude and I asked for the set on the top shelf.  He pulled the magnetic key out of his pocket and unlocked the thing.  Seriously, so where were you a minute or two ago, jackass?  Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot.  He brought it to the counter and promptly started ringing it in.  I had to put a halt to that immediately, because seriously, I’d like to take a look at what I’m getting first.  I went back to the display and started pawing the other brands.  He just stood there as I tried to check the backside of the packages for stats, knowing full well that I couldn’t take them off properly.  I went to check a cheaper brand and the clerk chuckled as if I had no clue: “[that brand] is not better than Skullcandy.”  Gee, thanks.  Why don’t you just let me look?  Ugh.

In the end, I didn’t leave the place if only because the ones that I wanted were on sale.  After he rang it in he asked if I was interested in the extended warranty.  Apparently those exist for earbuds.  Were you aware of that?  I refused.  Why would I want to spend 133% of the original cost on a gamble like that.  First of all, these are cheap earbuds.  If something were to happen to them 2 years from now I won’t be crying a river over them.  He tried a second time saying that it could mean two extra pairs of earbuds for free in the future if something goes wrong.  I still refused.  He insisted, “for an extra $10?”  I was already getting annoyed, but I kept it to a simple “no.”  Think he’d get the hint, right?  He did stop, but he stated while shaking is head “not many people would turn down two extra pairs of earbuds for $10.”  AS IF.  Don’t shake your head at me, asswipe!  You know very well that you’re peddling bullshit.  Don’t get mad because I saw through that.

Sorry, I just wanted to let go of all that.