While today is our national day of stress and anguish and generalized terrifying anxiety about the results of our presidential election, there’s nothing I can do except wait it out. I voted as soon as early voting began. The election is like a runaway train now- all we can do is ride it to the end. There’s nothing more I can do today, and being a stressball about it will only hurt my own well-being. I’m trying to put the rest of it out of my mind as much as possible until everything settles down.
Instead, I’ll think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Specifically, I’ll think back to when she was lying in repose at the Supreme Court back in September. Since the Supreme Court is only a few miles away from where I live now, I was able to wander past to pay my respects.
First, I walked past the Capitol building, where the flag was flying at half-mast.
The line of people waiting to walk past RBG’s casket was several hours long. It snaked back and forth between the buildings, then down the street, then down another street, and then down still another street. While I was walking the length of it, I saw people displaying their support in various ways. This mourner’s jacket was awesome. I’d like to think that she wears that jacket all the time.
Ultimately, I chose not to go through the many-hour line, and instead I walked across the street from the front side of the Supreme Court. This is where the media was set up, and I had a clear view straight up the stairs at the front. This was a perfectly acceptable place to have a moment of silence and contemplation for all that RBG did in her lifetime.
I also realized while I was standing there that I missed out on nothing by skipping the two-plus hour line. Even those who waited through the line still didn’t get very close, and my view from across the street was just as clear.
Plus, there was an unexpected benefit to going along the front side of the Supreme Court- the walkway across the street had become absolutely filled with tributes and art and messages of love and hope and gratitude for everything that Justice Ginsburg did. If I had not walked this way, I would never have seen them all.
I’m skipping my traditional end-of-post question, because they all seem trivial and empty on this one. See you all tomorrow.
I mentioned in the previous post that I purchased and returned an uncomfortable, inadequate sofa. This is the story of that sofa. It begins with the arrival of my previous sofa, on the day that the movers brought my furniture.
The Sofa was an Ikea Ektorp, a fairly comfortable seating arrangement, but one made of pressboard and held together with little metal fasteners and happy thoughts. When the movers set it back up, I noticed that there was a big ripped and stained hole in the cover.
No biggie, I thought, Ikea sofas are designed with replaceable covers and the contract with the movers included insurance for just this eventuality. I didn’t realize just how broken the couch really was until later when I finally tried to sit on it. It had a variety of damage to the undercarriage, and it wasn’t level in all sections. It had the look and feel of a sofa with a broken spine. I won’t bore you with a photographic record of all of the damage I found when I looked more closely, but here’s the most egregious part.
When I realized how broken it was, I put in a claim with the movers and they paid me replacement cost minus my moving insurance deductible. With that money in hand, I set about trying to find a replacement sofa.
I settled on the LoveSac Sactional. I’d seen them before, years ago. There’s a LoveSac store in the Town Center Mall in the Boca Raton. Aside from the exceedingly silly name, LoveSac’s idea of modular furniture is pretty neat. I like the idea of being able to design the furniture to meet your needs, choosing sections, sides, and covers to shape how you want.
I went to the LoveSac store in a nearby mall, not far from the Pentagon. I sat on several different chairs and weighed my options. After some deliberation (and a little waffling) I took advantage of a Labor Day sale and ordered my LoveSac Sactional, a two seats/four sides configuration. I thought it would be wide enough and if it wasn’t, I could always order another seat and side later to expand it. It arrived fairly quickly, packaged in a bunch of boxes.
Once the new sofa pieces were here, I disassembled my poor Ektorp and took its main pieces down to the trash room. I put aside the sofa pillows, not sure yet if I wanted to do something with them. This proved later to be a very good decision.
Assembly of the modular LoveSac Sactional was fairly straightforward. The two largest boxes contained the seat, cushion, and back pillow. The other four slimmer boxes contained the sides, and the two smaller boxes included all the covers. The boxes themselves had unboxing and assembly instructions printed on them. All the clamps and accessories I needed were included. It was difficult to pull the covers onto the individual pieces- it’s probably a lot easier with a second person. Ultimately, I was able to muscle them into a proper sofa shape.
I sat on the LoveSac Sactional for a few weeks, and I was dissatisfied in the following ways:
It wasn’t as comfortable as I had hoped. When I sat on the floor models in the store, I thought it would be fine, but at home I found that the foam seats were not firm enough. I sank into the foam every time I sat down- some people might enjoy this sensation, but I did not. I need a firmer seat.
I need a sofa with a taller back piece. The sides are all the same height- that means that the back support is only as high up as the armrests in the completed Sactional photo above. The pillows are taller than the top edge of the back pieces, which meant that if I leaned back, it was just weird, with the top edge sort of jamming into my back.
The Sactional wasn’t long enough to lay down on. Laying down on the couch after a long day at work or any time I want to pass out for a little living room nap is absolute bliss, and it’s absolutely necessary. Laying down on the couch is an important part of my life and I couldn’t do it on this one. The width of LoveSac seat parts are just a little bit weird- the modular sections of a LoveSac seat are 35 inches wide by 29 inches deep. You do have the option of doing the sections sideways, to change the width. I tried orienting it the other way and found that the back pillows were too wide and smushed together. 35 inches is a weird width- the two sections were just a few inches too short to be comfortable for laying down. If I had added a third section, I would have been able to lay down, but then my sofa would have been almost ten feet long.
Last, but certainly not least: LoveSac Sactionals are on the pricy side of things. They’re relatively well made and guaranteed for life against manufacturer defects, but I never really felt like the Sactional was worth the more than two grand I shelled out to purchase it. Mine was a relatively small example, too- for a bigger room, you could easily shell out eight or ten thousand dollars for a Sactional.
Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t for me. After 24 days of life with the Sactional, I disassembled the thing and boxed it back up to ship back to LoveSac. Fortunately, they have free shipping and a 60-day in-home trial, so this was quite simple.
Allow me to pause my retelling for just a moment to talk up how amazing LoveSac’s customer service was throughout this process. It’s easy to complain online about bad service, but truly excellent service is rarely commented on, and it should be. LoveSac was so great throughout all of this that I am willing to consider them again in the future- their giant beanbag thing, the hilariously named SuperSac, does look kind of amazing. Here’s how they excelled: First, their in-store help was amazing. Secondly, when I reached out to return it, the process was dead simple. They sent me FedEx shipping labels and boxes, and when I had boxed it all back up they arranged a FedEx pick-up to come to me and cart them away. All I had to do was disassemble and rebox them. Once the boxes were received back at the mothership, I was given a full refund. The service was effortless and so much less difficult than I expected.
In the time since I boxed up the LoveSac and sent it on its way, I’ve been using the cushions of the old Ikea Ektorp on their own without the rest underneath, just set up on the floor- I call this the Boneless Sofa. It’s comfortable enough, in a Bohemian sort of way.
The Boneless Sofa
Ultimately, I know that this isn’t a good permanent sofa. While the Boneless Sofa has been acceptable for the very short term, I do want a proper couch in the future.
I’ve already located a part of Falls Church that I refer to as the Arlington Sofa District- a place with at least five different stores that have sofas within approximately a single square mile. I’ll go there some weekend in the near future, sit on a bunch more sofas, weigh my options- and then I’ll probably just order another Ikea Ektorp.
Back at the start of the year, I said that I was going to try to do at least a post a week, thinking I should be able to come up with something bloggable that frequently without too much difficulty.
Then the pandemic happened, and most of the things that are interesting enough to talk about went away- travel, concerts, going outside a lot… each of these things vanished and I spent more than half of the year (so far) in my apartment, without anything interesting happening. The blog posts have fallen off as a result.
Enter Nanopoblano! Nanopoblano is “the Internet’s least-official November blog challenge.” Basically, it’s a bunch of people who commit to following one of several paths- some people will post every day for thirty days, some will commit to engaging with the other participants. The recommended way forward is “10 days of posts, 10 days of reading/commenting, and 10 days of sharing posts through any other platform.” I’m going to go my own way a bit and try to do the 30 posts in 30 days route. It might be the kick I need to make blogging a habit again. I might suck at this too, but I’m at least going to try.
Now that I’ve got the Team Tiny Peppers housekeeping out of the way, I can detail some of the myriad ways that I’ve been spending my time since I arrived via the Amtrak Auto Train in the last post. The last post which was nearly 90 days ago.
I’ve been setting up my apartment, more or less, once the movers brought my stuff. There are still lots of things to do.
I’ve been exploring my neighborhood.
I’ve updated my voter registration and been to the DMV.
I’ve been working a lot, naturally. I enjoy my job- it’s challenging and busymaking and really doesn’t require more comment than that.
I’ve been ordering a LOT of GrubHub- like too much. Seriously it’s so easy, which is very empowering for a wannabe agoraphobe.
I’ve explored a few local monuments and touristy things and taken lots of photos- I’ll make a post out of these because I’ve got pictures.
I had a houseguest for one weekend a while back when my longtime friend Lorrie visited. We went to some of the aforementioned local touristy things and even had lunch with another friend who went to high school with us.
I purchased and returned an uncomfortable, inadequate sofa. This is also going to get its own post because I have analysis, lessons learned, and – of course – photographs.
I’ve been to a crazy number of different grocery stores since my arrival because I still haven’t quite settled into a preferred grocery option. Long time readers will remember that I had the same problem with grocery shopping when I got to Germany. It’s really tough to top Publix. This is probably going to get its own post as well.
I’ve been having at least one meal out every week or so with one of my local friends, but I haven’t gotten to see everyone I know around here because some of my local people are skittish about going anywhere during a pandemic. I don’t blame them for being more cautious than I am, but I miss seeing them. I did have dinner once with my cousin but then got wildly side-tracked with things- I definitely need to share more meals with her now that we’re geographically close for a change.
I went to an actual concert in an actual venue with an actual live act and an actual audience. And it was actually weird.
And that’s pretty much it! I nearly traveled to Florida for a family thing, but did not. I’ve had lots of canceled events and trips, and it’s just been day in and day out of the same stuff, most of the time. There are seeds in the above list of longer posts that are going to be coming throughout the month, but this is where I’ll leave it for the moment.
See everyone back here tomorrow! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
Despite living in South Florida for most of my life, I never managed to drive up to Cape Canaveral for a shuttle launch. When I saw that SpaceX and NASA were launching astronauts into space from Florida again, I thought it might be a good time to finally see a launch. Since I live in Orlando, the Cape is right around forty minutes away by car, so I took a half-day from work on Wednesday to go see the launch with some friends.
The first thing I was not expecting was just how bad the traffic would be for the crowds going into Titusville. It took more than 90 minutes to make that forty-minute drive, and when we got out of the car to move to a place where we could see the launch, they halted the countdown because of weather.
Such is life in Florida.
The first backup launch window was Saturday, so we tried again. This time we set out with a wider time window before the launch. We arrived in downtown Titusville and found parking with about three hours until the launch, so we grabbed a quick fast food lunch, and took a quick walk through Space View Park, which has some really neat stuff to read and see.
Space View Park, Titusville, looking east toward the launch site.
A short while later, we met up with another group of friends at Playalinda Brewing Company for a tasty drink before we went to sit and wait for the launch.
Downtown Titusville is super cute.
There were already people setting up with canopies and blankets and folding chairs, none of which it occurred to us to bring. It alternated between cloudy, raining, and sunny, and about fifteen minutes before the launch we moved to a closer vantage point, even though it was in a very thick crowd.
I took some video of the launch, but trust me when I tell you that the more official video is significantly better. Seriously, check out the first few minutes of the C-SPAN video:
From where we stood, roughly twelve miles due west of launch pad 39A, Crew Dragon was a tiny dot atop a column of fire. After about a minute, the sound reached us- the most incredible rumble of rocketry.
Being present for living history- the first launch of astronauts from American soil since the Shuttle program halted in 2011- was amazing, but seeing the crowd response and hearing that thunderous rocket first-hand, I’m tremendously glad I went to see Bob and Doug heading off to the International Space Station.
I don’t even mind getting sunburned while also simultaneously being rained on. Stupid Florida.
Here’s what it looked like from my perspective:
Did you watch the SpaceX/Nasa Demo-2 launch? What did you think?
I did it again. I mentioned my upcoming move in an offhanded comment on Heather’s blog, and she said, “And does this mean you’ve made a decision?? Spill!”
One again, I was absolutely certain that I had talked about this on the blog, but I haven’t. I scrolled back through the last few posts, and when I talked about this in February, I was still thinking about it and I hadn’t locked anything in.
So with that in mind, I thought it would be a nice time to do an overall check-in, a sort of “State of the Steven” post as it were. We’ll start with the topic I already brought up-
I’m moving! I spent a lot of time thinking about the things I mentioned back in February, and I talked the ears off of anyone who would listen about the possibility of a move. Most of the people in closest proximity to me figured out that I was definitely going before I knew it myself.
I did a ton of research, looked at dozens of possible places to live, talked on the phone with one helpful-but-also-standoffish realtor, and took several “virtual tours” of possible apartment buildings. Just a hair under two weeks ago, I signed a lease for an apartment in Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington DC. I have about ten weeks left in Florida then I’m headed up to the new place in August.
The red pin is approximately where the new apartment is located.
On January 1st, I posted about my theoretical goals for the year, and one of them was blogging more consistently. I’ve obviously let that one slide, so let’s take a quick look at a few of the other biggies:
• Health, exercise, and sleep: I started out the year strong on this one, but then we got a pandemic. My access to the treadmill went away. Grocery shopping involved more and more junk food and beer. All the things that keep me sane like live music and trivia out with my friends went away for more than two months. Time began to lose all meaning, thanks to the stay-at-home orders, and my sleep went off the rails. So overall, I would say this goal could be better.
• Travel: Unfortunately, Covid-19 and the stay at home orders have killed this one. I’ve had five trips involving air travel killed so far this year, and one remaining for September is in serious doubt. I’ll probably be going up to DC in late June, partly to collect keys to my new apartment and partly because the planned Seattle trip with my sister got squashed and we’re trying to make up for it with a smaller East Coast city-hop. We have to wait for touristy things to open though; if we went now we wouldn’t be able to do anything.
• Live Music: This is an utter failure, again because of the pandemic. I’ve honestly lost count of how many shows have been canceled, postponed, or rescheduled, but it’s more than twenty so far. The picture to the right is the little whiteboard in my office. The left column is cancellations and it’s only shorter than the other column because I erase shows once a refund is received. The right column is any show that’s been postponed but hasn’t said anything else about the status. If a show gets rescheduled, I’ll either erase it from the right column or move it to the left, pending a refund. I’ve given this WAY too much thought.
And some of the smaller goals from the January 1st post-
See more Shakespeare – I watched a little on YouTube, but the pandemic has put a kibosh in this one. Still, there’s a great Shakespeare theater in DC, so I’m optimistic for the future.
Make a decision about moving – Finally, a goal that I can actually say is DONE. All that’s left now are the move itself, the acclimating to a new city, and so forth.
More decluttering – I’ve actually done a heap of this in preparation for my move- I got rid of the kitchen stools I never sit in, the second television I don’t need, some other small furniture items, and a few odds and ends. I still have way more than I really want to bring for an interstate move, but hey, it’s a start.
Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV. 