Because Dustin is into crossword puzzles (the ones that appear daily in the newspaper), Amie is now into crossword puzzles. He let her work on one at his apartment, and now she’s hooked. Of course, he’s way better at it than she is because he’s been doing them for a long time, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s determined to solve them.

So last night, Amie, Shauna, and I went to Ralphs just before it closed (at midnight) and bough a whole book of crossword puzzles. Then we went to Mae’s Cafe in Garden Grove (which is open twenty-four hours and serves excellent food for really low prices) and ordered some junk food and hot chocolate and worked on crossword puzzles. We quickly decided that the ones in the book were too easy, though, so instead we worked on one from the Saturday L.A. Times which we had purchased “just in case” on our way into Mae’s. It was so hard! We ended up only solving about a quarter of it during the couple of hours that we were there, and then we got tired of staring at the newsprint and called it a night.

A friend asked me why man invented God, assuming that we did. I told her that we were built with the capacity to believe very strongly, to the point of hurting others or ourselves, that which we suspect but have no evidence to support. That doesn’t mean that there is or isn’t a God; it just means that the survival of the fittest depends on our belief in Him.

I was just reading an article on Ten Things Your Auto Dealer Won’t Tell You, and I think I was tricked by about six of them. The other four were about trade-ins, more trade-ins, leases, and used cars, so they didn’t apply to me. But alas, that’s in the past, and next time I buy a car I’ll be more prepared. I just have to go in there with the opinion that I can turn around and go elsewhere if they won’t give me what I want for the price I want to pay. Oh, and I have to really hate and distrust all salesmen too.

“You know when we should go to Knott’s Berry Farm? If the terrorists hit America again, we should go. C’mon terrorists! Please!”

– Amie

When I went to Ikea on Wednesday, I found a blue armchair that I wanted to buy. So last night I went back to Ikea to get it, and they had sold out.

It’s actually four separate pieces: a birch armchair, a blue armchair cover, a birch footstool, and a blue footstool cover. They had sold out of the blue armchair cover, so as far as they were concerned, they didn’t have what I needed.

I had them look it up in the computer to see when they’d be getting more, and they informed me that they wouldn’t be getting any in the next three shipments (over the next three weeks), so I would have to “check back” in three weeks to find out if it would be included in the following three shipments.

In my experience with Ikea, that means the product is being discontinued and will never return. That’s happened to my mother and I several times. If they tell us to check back in three weeks (because the computer just says that they’re not getting any; it never says why), the product never returns.

On my way out, though, it occurred to me that the employee didn’t check to see if there were any of these armchairs at other Ikea locations, such as Carson and Industry. Sure enough, there were one hundred forty-three of them in Carson and forty of them in Industry.

So I left Ikea Tustin and drove to Ikea Industry. Normally I would have gone to Carson, but I knew there would be more traffic that way because of the time of day, so I chose Industry.

Sure enough, there were forty of them at the Industry store, so I bought the birch armchair, the blue armchair cover, the birch footrest, and the blue footrest cover, and I put them in my car.

Now, the chair cover and armrest cover were wrapped in plastic, and it was sunny, so I could barely make out that they were blue. However, I wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t clash with the blue on my sofa at home, so I closely compared the chair cover with a sofa pillow (which I had put in my car for this purpose). The chair cover was lighter, but it was the same family of blue, so it wasn’t a problem. Pleased with my purchase, I drove home.

When I arrived home, I removed the chair cover and footstool cover from their plastic wrapping only to find that they clashed with each other. They were both labeled “medium blue” on the outside, but on the inside the footstool cover was closer to what I’d call “purple.”

I don’t want to drive all the way to Industry again. So tomorrow I’m going to visit Ikea Tustin and see if maybe, just maybe, they have some of the blue footstool covers in stock even though I know they don’t have any of the blue armchair covers in stock. If they don’t, I’m just going to return the whole thing and look somewhere else. Stupid Ikea.

I’m in the market for a new recliner. I want to get one that will match my sofa, but that’s kind of a tall order since my sofa was custom-made and I don’t think the maker still carries that design. Of course, they prob’ly still carry the same fabric, and that’s the important part.

I might also get a matching armchair and completely rearrange my living room.

I got rid of the orange chair because it was ugly, had a broken leg, and no one ever sat in it. Now I’m planning to get rid of my brown vinyl recliner because it’s just ugly. It’s the only piece of furniture I own that I didn’t choose and purchase myself, so it needs to go. It’s an independence thing.

Anyway, I mentioned that no one ever sat in the ugly orange chair. That’s not completely the chair’s fault; it really had to do with the placement of the chair in my apartment. It was on the opposite wall from all the other seating, and no one likes to be isolated like that in a living room. If they want to be isolated, they go pee. So I’ve decided that I need to move my CD/DVD storage unit into the space where the ugly orange chair used to be, and then I’ll have the wall perpendicular to the sofa available for a chair and a recliner. Then I’ll be using adjacent walls for seating instead of opposite walls, and that’s the way it should be.

Of course, this is a really boring topic except to me. But trust me, my friends will appreciate all of the thought that went into it when they come over to my apartment and sit.

I got rid of my ugly orange chair.

I set it out on the curb with a big sign that said “FREE CHAIR” in huge letters and “(broken leg)” in small letters underneath. That was yesterday afternoon. This afternoon it was still there. Apparently no one else saw the beauty in it like I did.

So today I laid the chair to rest in the dumpster outside my apartment. The ugly orange chair is no more.