I know I haven’t been too forthcoming with the posts; my time has been monopolized by our month-long move from the old apartment to the new condo. Or townhouse. The consensus seems to be a bit fuzzy on what the classification of the new place should actually be. Regardless, we’ve had some stuff to do.
Friday Nik and I made the hour-and-a-half trek to the nearest Ikea to spend the smaller of our two tax return checks on some new stuff. We picked out a bedframe, nightstands, a sofa and matching chair, a dresser and a new desk for the computer room. Of course when we got to the warehouse the sofa wasn’t in stock and we were told they would be getting three more in the next morning on a first come, first served basis. Also a pivotal piece for the bedframe was also temporarily out of stock so we got everything else and I steeled myself for an early Saturday morning.
For once in my life I was actually on time and I arrived at Ikea expecting a parents-at-Christmas style rush for the three available sofas, possibly involving fisticuffs or at the very least, a few German suplexes. Instead I was the only person in the warehouse since the rest of the earlybird shoppers hadn’t been there marking their shopping cards with Aisle and Bin numbers twelve hours prior.
Somehow I managed to muscle the couch into my truck on my own and since it decided to rain on what I had been hoping would be the Ultimate Moving Day in this lengthy process, I had to cover it with several tarps. Actually the couch transition went down pretty smoothly, but they still didn’t have the part of the bed we needed so I’m planning one last trip today after work in hopes that I can get all this money spending out of the way.
The couch is kind of a deep plumb color that looks brown in most artificial light, a fact that I think dismays Nik a little because she was hoping for more with the brown and less with the red. Personally I think they look pretty cool either way. Compared to the green/nasty-yellow-stuffing colored horror show we call a sitting device now, it’s practically a work of art.
We did come to one key determination with all this Ikea assembly work in our present and future: Electric screwdrivers or drills are mandatory. The angry red blisters on my hands are evidence enough, and those came from putting half the desk together. We tried to cheap out on the mechanical assistance with a little $5 battery-operated number, but it scarcely has enough torque to put a hole in drywall, much less offer the kind of power necessary to put a load-bearing bolt in place. If I wasn’t so cheap and resistant to buying things I don’t actively desire, I’d just go buy a real electric drill. Now that I have a garage you’d think these kinds of things might leap closer to the top of my list, but no.
In any case, most of what remains is little stuff like a few dining room chairs and some computer equipment plus everything that we’re getting ready to throw away. Besides that there are a couple of items I can’t physically handle by myself like the TV and the desk that used to hold the computer but will now be out in the garage serving as my workbench, plus our mattress which we can’t really move until we get the bedframe.
Well, technically we could move it and complete our living transition to the new place, but Nik is reluctant to sleep in the new condo alone so I’ll probably wait until Wednesday afternoon to drag that over. Ideally that will give me time to put the frame together anyway so we don’t have to sleep on the mattress just lying on the floor.
I have to say that despite it feeling at times very epic or unending, the slow move has been one of the least overall stressful that I’ve ever undertaken. Having the month overlap has given us a very welcome ability to select the pace and also allowed me to get as much as possible done without having to request anyone else’s help. Considering that Nik has well chronicled back issues and now HB is having severe back problems probably stemming from a recent car accident, that has been a big relief from my mind. I do have Doza stopping by on Friday to give me a hand with those few items I mentioned, but I’m hoping his role won’t have to last more than an hour or two.
Quick Playoff Note
I did get a chance to catch the first two Sharks playoff games in Nashville and I wanted to make a couple of comments. First, the Sharks broadcasters were pretty riled up about Nashville’s apparent game plan to take key Sharks personnel out of the equation by any means necessary. Granted, Nashville has been pretty cheap in a lot of their shots but for all the hubub, I gotta say, I don’t think that’s their problem.
The problem is that they just haven’t played that well in either game. That they came out of Nashville with a split is pretty miraculous—they looked like they were trying very hard during the game one overtime to lose that match. The second game they pretty much got what they deserved and the fight at the end was not a make-up for their uninspired play throughout. Look, when you get a five minute major power play and then a 5-on-3 and you give up a shorthanded goal and don’t score you deserve to lose. And it mostly comes back to the same things that have plagued the team during every one of their slumps and losses all season: They don’t clear the zone when they have the chance to, they can’t hold the offensive zone when they start getting a rhythm down and they try to be too cute with the passing instead of shooting the stupid puck. I concede that they’ve been playing reasonably physical hockey, but Nashville is out there playing insanely physical hockey that borders on dirty, which is exactly what Edmonton did to them last year.
The second thing is that the Sharks need to stop messing around with these guys. There is absolutely no reason why they can’t mop the floor with the Predators. They’re plainly a better team, even with Forsberg playing for Nashville. But they need to act like they’re actually in the playoffs and that means Nabby or whomever has to stop every lame little shot, the D needs to stop scrambling and trying those loathed backhand clear attempts and the offense has to pepper Vokoun with 50 shots per game and prove that they deserved the title of 2nd best power play in the NHL. We’ll see how they far at home tonight, but it had better be a dominating performance or I don’t see them making it past the second round, if they can even get that far.
