IKEA improvisations

Recent improbable baking success: a chocolate birthday cake with cointreau icing (!) and lemon pepper (!!). I named this bold creation "Swan cake" in honour of the birthday child in question, my friend J. Svahn. It bites back, so the name is fitting.

Nico: I'm glad to have someone point out the finer perks of the scientific profession. Uncontrollably yelling 'Eureka' whilst wagging my index finger into a frenzy sounds like a lot of fun, plus it seems compatible with charleston dancing. :)

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Lately I've been absorbed in a personal episode of "Unexpected Home Makeover", a project which started on a whim and has now swallowed a significant portion of my life, sleep and concentration resources. It began undramatically with the vague notion "Hm, I really should replace my sagging old bookshelf that I bought at an online auction for 60 SEK", upon which followed a trip to IKEA on thursday with Inang. That's where I saw the Mother of all bookshelves (a sleek yet imposing giantess in burnt-dark brown wood, with sliding panels and glass doors) and wondered why she wasn't already in my living room.

The next day, it was back to IKEA, this time with Inang and my good friend PAta in tow (I was setting out to spend more money on shelving than ever before in my life, while in contrast, PAta's mission was to buy a new soap dish). It turned out that my darling (the shelf) weighed over 200 kg (!) and required two low-rider carts for transport out of the store. I can safely say that without PAta this would have been very difficult, seeing as Inang and I, for all our stubbornness, are très petites. Plus, all three of us wound up buying a little more than planned (that's the whole significant point of going to IKEA), so we had a third regular shopping cart as well.

After lugging all the intriguingly dense IKEA packages (the weight equivalent of a small horse) into my flat - and hopefully expressing the depth of my gratitude to Inang and PAta (Thanks guys!!) - the mantling began (I figure that must be the inverse of dismantling). Contrary to the nature of my day job, assembling furniture is a process with visible progress, which felt very therapeutic. 4 1/2 days of therapy later, I am still not finished, but my living room looks fantastic underneath the sawdust, plastic wrapping and cardboard. At least I hope so.

I have to say, the people who have come up with the standard assembly systems at IKEA are GENIUSES (...or is it genii? That sounds ridiculous. Nico, help!!). Regardless of what they are in plural, I shall be singing their praises to my grandchildren on my deathbed. At any rate, it's been a massive ego boost: I felt really intelligent after putting together my bookshelf practically on my own. To give you an idea of of scale, the shelf is 155% as tall (and 5.3 times as wide) as I am. Mom and I discovered that I fit comfortably into the drawer module (minus the drawers, of course).

Eventually I will supply this blog with some photo evidence of the new improved flat interior. Whenever the sawdust clears...
(C)