Drinks and furniture construction.

Friday proved to be a very busy day. After cashing in a half-day at work I met up with a friend for lunch. She came up from the city to check out my new place and neighborhood. I dazzled her with my one big chair, mystery rummage-sale tray, and TV that sat on the ground because I didn't have a TV stand. I really needed to get something to set the TV on because the remote control beam was always getting blocked by my beanbag or whatever object was on the floor in front of the TV.

So after a drink at Cato's, and getting kicked out of Kotobuki because we didn't know they closed for a few hours after lunch, we grabbed food at a different place and then headed to Ikea. I went to Ikea with a goal in mind - get a TV stand. I didn't do too bad, my only additional purchases were an endtable for $10 and a six-pack of chardonnay glasses for $4. My friend actually seemed disappointed in how quickly I was able to breeze through the store - she made me promise to bring her back when I was ready to do some real shopping. Little did she know real shopping to me meant blowing $100 at Dr. Comics.

After saying goodbye to her it was about 5pm and I had about an hour and a half to get home, assemble the new furniture and get ready to meet up with my cousin and her husband. After dragging the boxes in to my living room, I opened up the TV stand and laid all the pieces out on the floor. Ikea instructions are the easiest thing in the world for me to read because it's just like a comic book. There aren't even any words, just pictures of screws and furniture pieces that fly around in the air and magically form an object sturdy enough to hold a television set.

And the best thing is, what you see is what you get. Unlike many aborted model kits from my youth, the TV stand I assembled looked like the one on the last page of the instruction booklet. Thank you, Ikea! And screw you Rodan Model Kit from the Polar Lights Godzilla Monster Series (mine looked nothing like that).

It took about a half hour to put together the stand and endtable, so I had plenty of time to shower and get ready. When I got done, my cousin and her husband hadn't shown up yet, so I grabbed a book and sat on my front stairs to wait for them. And guess who I saw? My upstairs neighbor who's clunky shoes had woken me up that morning. We talked for a few minutes but I couldn't help myself from making quick glances at her feet to check out her clunky shoes.

When my friends (yes, I've shortened "my cousin and her husband" to "my friends" for the remainder of the story) showed up they brought me an awesome bottle of wine and some huge red wine glasses that made my Ikea wine glasses look like paper cups. I gave them the quick tour of the place and we broke open the bottle of wine and finished it off before heading out for a walk on Piedmont Ave.

After that we ended up heading to Jupiter on Shattuck in Berkeley for some pizza and big ol' glasses of IPA. The place was super packed and super loud. I think I got pretty drunk because my cousin kept giving me the "beer goggles" signal whenever I started checking out any girls.