Victory Soap v. 2.0

To stave off sleepiness, I will post about my current apartment redo. I've never moved furniture around so much as I have in this place. The problem is that despite the size of the rooms (it's an 800 square footer, with a tiny bathroom and narrow kitchen that would be a kitchenette if this place were a studio, so all the size is in the living room/dining room; the bedroom is a normal size and the closet is a walk-in) the layout is awkward. The living room part (which you enter directly through the front door, no intervening foyer or anything) is too big to arrange furniture comfortably, or at least for me to arrange my furniture comfortably. I don't have a big-screen tv (and neither did anyone in 1973, the year these apartments were built, so I can't imagine what they did with all this space) so to watch tv comfortably I had to have my couch in the middle of the room, about where I could stub my toe on it when I came through the door. Now if the room were bigger, it could have worked -- a "conversation pit" as they used to call them would fit with room for people to go around. But in this case there is just that one or two feet lacking, so the space behind the couch was too narrow to accomodate much beyond a bookshelf.

Then there is the dining room area. My two-seater dinette set looked ridiculous, so I went to the second-hand furniture store and found myself a big table. "At last, I can have dinner parties!" said I to myself. I don't know where that delusion came from -- getting my friends together is like herding cats -- cats who can't drive at night or who work so hard that all they can do is collapse on weekends or who have to fly off to Nevada or someplace to help set up computer systems. And I'm such a misanthrope that when my work week is ended all I want to do is cocoon. Needless to say there have been no dinner parties.

Also I have been disatisfied with the way I cram myself into a corner of the bedroom every night, this being the location of the dsl hookup until about twenty minutes ago. I figure that if I am going to go to the trouble of renting a real apartment instead of a room somewhere I might as well use all of it. So in short, since I am stuck here probably until September, I decided to: turn the dining room into my living room, move the dining room table out into the living room preparatory to selling it or giving it to goodwill, and move the computer and connection out of the bedroom into the former living room, which I am going to set up as my "office." So far I like the arrangement already. The "new" living room is much cozier -- I can back the sofa against the wall and put the tv on the other wall and there is just the right amount of space for comfortable watching. Also it's right off the kitchen so I don't have to carry my coffee and snacks all over the place, dribbling crumbs and droplets everywhere as I have a tendency to do. The "office" is, of course, currently a shambles -- I just shoved things around, and the dining room table is now serving me as a temporary desk. I think that for now the writing desk I was using will stay in the bedroom; I may get a new desk when I sell this table or just reassemble the old L-shaped desk which is currently disassembled and in the closet. I still have loads of clutter to discard. But this is an improvement.

And that's my exciting life, Chapter 4,998.