spoiled chinese girl

…to ikea.

It was strange enough the first time when I knew exactly what I wanted to get and was able to get in and out in under an hour.  This past Sunday I offered to take my friends Phil and Kelly there as they wanted to pick up a bunch of stuff, including new couch covers, shelving and bedding.  It was my hopes I would be able to pick up some missing shelves for my CD towers, and some bedding as well.

I ended up leaving with nothing.  There was one thing I wanted which was a closet hanging thing that had 5 compartments for you to stuff items into, but I bought a 3 compartment one at my last trip to the chain, and I don’t really use it that much so I for-go’ed it this time.

But we started the day with me waking up late since I stayed over at Alex’s the night before.  Got down there to take forever getting ready.  Then went to an indoor flea market type place where Phil’s parents work on weekends, to pick up some gift certificates he received for christmas.  Which took longer, we finally left the flea market place around 2pm and headed to ikea finally.

There we ended up eating lunch first and I was starved since it was nearly 3pm by then and I had yet to eat anything.  I was surprised I was still a functioning human.  Then to look at stuff.  The show rooms are horrible for me because I don’t feel comfortable, I did my shopping last time online to know exactly what I wanted, and the only things I needed in the show room were what bin numbers it was in.

We looked, and they looked, and they looked some more.  I oggled the bookshelves I wish I could get to organize ALL of my crap all at once, but I don’t need it and didn’t think much of it.  They tested couches, and beds, and pots and pans and shelves and other shelves and everything under the sun.  It took forever to get into the self-help section, where I found the “As Is” section and it’s very meager offerings.  Nothing exciting.

I bought nothing.  They ended up with stuffed animals for their dog to tear apart (with which these stuffed toys are bigger than the dog) and matching couch covers for their chair and pull-out loveseat (which needs to go back since it’s the wrong kind) and bedding (which needed to be washed because it smelled)

I will refuse to go to ikea again, unless I have already planned and mapped out my shopping online.

Makes things go much easier and much smoother.

Although Craigslist tends to offer enough ikea items at discounted prices I may never have to bother again.  And it’s already assembled for me as well!

Please don’t forget how to drive when the weather hits.

Yesterday was Toronto’s “first big snowstorm” of the year, which was really a hazard more due to the fact there was freezing rain, ice pellets and the like coming down on us more than soft fluffy snow.

Either way, it was 6:30 in the morning when I left the house and damned if the streets for once were pretty packed with everyone crawling at less than 50% of the recommended maximum limit.  Frustrated me like crazy because I know how to handle my car in such conditions, and the fact I’m one of very view to invest in proper snow/winter tires instead of relying on “all-season” tires which are hardly all season.

Still, it only took me an extra 5-10 minutes to get into work than normal (I’m normally about 5-10 minutes late, so I was 15 minutes late that day) which hade me faring better than most everyone else in the company.  One girl who normally is an hour away with no traffic, was stumbling into work 2 and a half hours late, we all expected her to turn around and go home.

Better still for her, she left early because her route was fabled to have over 400 car crashes on it.  And she narrowly avoided (through luck that she avoids that stretch of the highway anyways) a massive road block of an explosive tanker trailer that had rolled over and caused the highway to shut in both directions, and the evacuation of all nearby buildings.  IT took me probably an extra 10-15 minutes to get home.

I may not love the fact that I make less money at this job.  But I sure as hell love the fact I live about 60% closer.  Makes things just that much more rad.

Alright so my last post was telling you about the cure CD i almost ran off with.  Here’s the background story.

I bought me and alex matching and opposite CD towers.  Since it was his birthday the day I Got it for him, he got to pick what colour he wanted (they were white and black, he chose the black one) so by default I took the white one.

I organize all my CD’s into the tower, and it just barely wouldn’t fit.  The thing claims to hold I think 88 or 90 CD’s but I have a lot of slim-line cases and CD jackets/sleeves so the count is way off for me.  But they all didn’t fit in mine.  I saw on Craigslist one guy selling 3 CD towers that sounded similar, bought them, and found out they were the same but an earlier generation of the same thing, in another colour, and missing shelves (he had obviously set his up to hold videos/DVD’s so there was the exact number of shelves for that)

So I got Alex to agree to take my white CD tower as well to help pay for the new ones I just got.  And I had to take all my CD’s out, dismantle the white tower, put together these “beech” coloured towers, and figure out how to reorganize my CD’s… again.  Especally with the fun task of them not fitting in CD sized slots, but DVD sized ones.  But I did it.  2 towers almost stuffed silly with CD’s and 1 full of DVD’s.

Get the white tower to Alex’s… and the next week on a bright and sunny Saturday I’m suddenly volunteering to organize HIS cd collection.  Only while I was somewhat haphazard with my own collection (I didn’t care THAT much about the alphabetical order once it was grouped by letters, and I was more interested in keeping same artists on a shelf than keeping perfect order) he wanted absoloute perfection.  CD’s by their band or surname, then by release date.  Thankfully he only owns albums because if there were singles involved (like mine) I would probably have tossed the whole thing out the window.

Organizing Alex’s CD collection took I swear at least 4 hours if not more since I crammed the compartments full to begin with, then had to space out the CD’s in the end for expansion of the collection at a later date.  I’m betting on more than 4 hours, because I remember showing up just after lunch, and not finishing til well past dinner time.

But it was a nice day.  And the best part is I don’t have to ever do it again.

Alright well this really isn’t THAT much of a music post but I thought I would share it under the subheading anyways.

So for his birthday, I bought my friend Alex one of the Ikea CD towers that’s like 6.5 feet tall and holds something like 90 or so regular CD’s when you use all the shelves (I couldn’t tell with mine because I had a lot of CD singles in the slim cases or in like CD sleeves and not jewel cases… and now the ones I have are missing shelves)  And when I bought 3 of my own I ended up selling him mine that I bought to be the polar opposite of his.

So he has 2 cd towers, and no cd’s in them because he was too lazy to put the CD’s in.

At the same time, I was dropping off two computers for him to frankenstein into one super-computer because he knows more about what he’s doing than I am.  So I traded him.  I would organize his CD collection (alphabetically by band name, or by last name, then by release dates… to the best of my ability) whilst he took apart computer parts galore and put together an awesometastic computer.

Before he began on my computer, he went through all his CD’s and was randomly throwing things out he didn’t want anymore, by looking at the front cover then dumping the contents of the jewel case into the trash can. (Keeping the jewel cases of course)  and I vowed to go through his trash at the end to see what I might be interested in keeping.

So we’re both plugging away one fine Saturday afternoon, and it actually took us the same amount of time to finish our respective tasks, which I think was about 4 or 5 hours.  Anyways, I grabbed all of the CD’s out of the trash that weren’t unlabeled burned CD’s just because if I liked it I could keep it, if not I could dump it.  It’s all about recycling.

But Alex went through my pile of ill-gotten merchendise, and suddenly was confused.  He found a CD that was a singles collection of the band “The Cure” and wondered what it was doing in the trash.  We looked for the CD liner notes but they were nowhere to be found.  We deducted that the CD was in the wrong jewel case.

Of course… this means nothing until he wondered where he got the CD from in the first place.  And realized… it’s a CD he lost five years ago.  Apparently his car was wrecked about that long ago, and it was claimed that this CD was in the car that was taken to the dump.  But it wasn’t.  IT was in a jewel case for the past 5 years collecting non-existant dust.

And better still.  It’s not alex’s CD.  It’s actually his band-mate’s Tynur’s Cure cd.  Tynur, who gave Alex shit for losing said CD because it was one of his favourites at the time of the CD’s inception into the music collection of Alex’s unmanaged CD’s.

And I almost got away with it.  But I didn’t.  The CD is currently at Alex’s waiting to go back to it’s rightful owner, with this story tacked to it.

Awesome.

I went to check out my friends Harlot at Lee’s Palace and I’ll be writing about that shortly.

First I wanted to talk about the band that was on before them.  Harlot was scheduled to play at 11:30 or Midnight (depending on where you saw it online.  And then you tack on an extra half hour since most places just don’t know how to keep a schedule, it’s something about them being musicians.)

So I got there around 11:15 and was able to catch a bit of the previous band, who’s name is The Weather Underground.

I swear I heard them before at another show because I recognized one of the songs they played (although so far everyone is telling me it’s a cover because I recognized it, but I think it’s just that obscure and memorable that I would remember it and have it be an original song) and throughly enjoyed the rest of the set, which included like 3 more songs before they began to pack up.

I’ll support bands I like, whether I know them or not.  Finally got a chance after they had mostly done packing, to get to talk to the lead singer.  Bought a CD off him (they’re $10 but I literally only had 8 bucks on me and they went for it) and let him keep one that was still wrapped, and instead asked to have them sign it.  Only I made fun of the guy for not having a sharpie and being in a band.  Which caused him to prove himself a professional musician by searching to the ends of the earth for a sharpie to sign with.

He got one, it was red.  So is their CD cover, I think the pen worked better anyways.  But I also had the other guitarist, and a bassist sign it as well.  I even made the bassist sign “To eBay” (although he fucked it up and wrote Ebay) because it’s just my running gag I have whether people have seen the Futurama episode or not.  And someone was getting a t-shirt signed, and the girl asked if they could borrow my back for the bassist to have something to lean on.  I obliged, and afterwards made the comment that “Since you signed my CD, the least I could do is bend over for you”  What can I say, my mind’s generally always in the gutter.
Getting the drummer was a bit of an ordeal.  I got to hang out and talk to the guy who did the paintings though, that ended up getting used as album art.  He was throughly impressed since he hadn’t seen the album before that night.  Got the drummer around, right when Harlot was starting.

I basically ended up leaving my CD with the drummer, and the visual artist while I went to go rock out with the band on stage.  After the show I went around thinking maybe the guys put it in my jacket pocket or something, but no.  So I just asked around, apparently the artist’s girlfriend took my copy and went upstairs to Dance Cave to show a bunch of their friends.  So I just had to wait around a bit to get it.  Although I joked with the singer how “That was a great CD I owned for 10 minutes!”  He offered to get me another copy if I couldn’t get mine back but it wasn’t too much of a worry, I didn’t mind at all.

In the end I got it back, my CD player is pretty fitzzed though so I can’t play it just yet.

But they were extremely nice guys.  I even got to flirt a wee bit with the bassist in a joking-ish mannor (or was it?? hmm!) which was more fun still.

Nice guys.  I definitely want to see them play live and watch the whole show.