Pass the allen wrench

Q: What’s cheap and Swedish and worth driving two hours for?

A: No, not me.  Because I’m only half Swedish.

I’m taking about the blue and yellow monster, of course.  Ikea. Of which there is no Raleigh location.  Which provoked me to take a road trip to Charlotte today, 150 miles each way.  For cheap-ass furniture. I feel like I’ve gone mad.

The challenge: I needed a desk.  A really small, really simple desk.  No drawers or adornments or keyboard trays.  Just a plank of wood attached to four legs.  Should be simple to find, right?

But I’d searched every single furniture store in Raleigh.  No dice.  Hell, I even tried to make my own.  (Yes – I rolled out of Home Depot with a hunk of particleboard, some 2X4s and a handful of wood screws.  Do I even need to tell you how long that project lasted?  About fourteen seconds.)

I knew Ikea would have what I needed.  I had seen the exact desk I needed on their website.  For $25.  The only problem?  Shipping was $75.  And I’ll be damned if I’m paying three times the cost of a product for its transport!  (Hello, fuzzy math!  I realize that I should have looked at the all-in cost and that this still would have been pretty inexpensive.  But I just couldn’t do it.)

So this morning I got in my car and drove my ass over to Charlotte and retrieved the cheap desk of my dreams.  Along with a file cabinet and a shelf and some other stuff.  After hauling it all into the apartment, I spent most of the afternoon poring over illustrated assembly booklets, inserting wooden pegs and spinning allen wrenches.

And now – well, step in to my office!

It’s just a corner of the dining room and yes – it’s very red.  (Red was on sale.)  But kind of cheerful, no?  I am very excited to have a dedicated work space!  Because the couch is really not very conducive to getting shit done.

I also picked up a couple of these:

They were a bitch to put together!  Like 18 screws!  My hand is calloused, Ikea.

Also – impulse buy! – a new duvet and shams!

Twenty bucks.  Take that, Pottery Barn.

I’m off to haul some boxes down to the recycling bin and rest my tired fingers on a glass of wine.  Nighty night, party people!

Today’s EAT: Here’s a fun idea for using up leftover squash soup: make it in to a pasta sauce!

With tofu and Parmesan cheese, and a side salad, this was a delicious and filling dinner.  Much better than eating plain old soup by itself!

Today’s DRINK: Trader Joe’s has a ton of these Novella wines and I have a tough time keeping them straight.

I knew I’d had a couple of Novella whites before and didn’t remember them being anything special.  But for some reason I decided to give the Zinfandel  chance, and I’m glad I did!  For a $6 bottle, this Zin is well worth drinking.  It’s not bitter or overly drying and has a nice cherry-ish flavor.

Today’s RUN: Between the driving and the hauling and the assembling…I have to admit that Ikea kicked my ass.  So I took an unplanned rest day today.  No biggie!

Congrats to everyone who successfully registered for Boston today!  I missed all of the drama, as I was busy rocking out to random Charlotte country stations and eating meatballs.  I’m curious about what will happen in 2012 with the qual standards.  And I wonder how many charity runners will get loogies spit at them this year.

Today’s QUESTION: Random but – I have two pumpkins to butcher for Halloween and want to carve something funny in to them.  Any ideas?