Some rain, then record-setting heat. Yesterday we had a fruitful trip to Ikea and dinner at P.F. Chang’s. I am loving my new camera.
I badly want to travel and expand my experiences. We both want to move to a larger city, maybe/hopefully/eventually near the ocean…

I hurt my knee falling down while running in February. The healing has been slow and and the skin there is still new and sometimes sore.

The last few days we’ve rearranged the living room a little bit and the bedroom completely — it’s like a fresh start to the space. Things flow more and feel more inviting. Improving my environment is a big priority for me right now, it makes me feel much better to have a space that resonates with me. It’s hard to explain, but when things aren’t arranged well or in a way that feels natural it can make the whole room feel subtly off/uncomfortable.

More house pictures will be forthcoming this month once we get the office improved the way we want (on the hunt for a loveseat right now).

A weekend of lots of talking and wine. We finished a bottle of Boxhead White between us on Saturday, and had more still (red) after that. Then a walk today and some Indian food. Another weekend day would be great.

Thanks to Craigslist and a really cool older guy in Niles, IL, we are now the proud owner of a set of four amazing Eames Herman Miller fiberglass arm shell chairs in seafoam green. (!!) (click the image above for more pictures)
They are from 1957, with metal glides on zinc H-bases. Two of them still have the foil label from that year. The maker’s mark looks to be the double triangles/mountains from Summit Plastics in Kalamazoo. I am in awe of these chairs, and our luck in finding them. We saw found them the day before we left for Florida and called the person selling them, who was awesome enough to hold them for us for a whole week until we could drive up there (it’s near Elgin, so we spent the night at my parents’ and hand an insane sushi orgy furnished by materials from Mitsuwa – more on that later).
Thank you, Craigslist. Oh man.

We’re headed to Florida for 6 days starting this Sunday; my month has been super busy work-wise but generally nice with fantastic weather and a great trip to Elgin around the beginning of this month. We visited the flea market again and I scored a vintage Nelson bubble lamp in the small spherical shape. I’ll post pictures soon once I get this place straightened up and actually take some. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser really is magical, by the way, because it is fantastic at cleaning up vintage pieces like fiberglass chairs and our bubble lamp; the thing was completely filthy but looks new after some work with one of those. I wholeheartedly endorse them.
I also found two original Rorschach ink blot test cards; each is double-sided with an ink blot image and numbered. I still need to look up my specific blots.
Finally, as I’m hopelessly bag-addicted and there’s no help for it, I bought two Lug bags to do my traveling with and I’m really happy with them so far. I got the Skipper in grass green and the Taxi Full Tote in ocean blue, below. The texture, weight, construction and color of these bags is fantastic, can’t wait to haul them around some airports (and Disney World).

A shot of our home office in the morning.

Friday’s sofa road trip wasn’t without its challenges, but we made it, and the sofa fit in the car, and we got a bonus Hang-It-All, so it all turned out alright in the end. The biggest surprise was that the sofa is blue; I had thought it was dark grey. Adding another color to our small and already somewhat colorful living space sounded risky to me but I think it worked out alright. The blue is starting to grow on me anyway.

See our new living room pictures here — the first sixteen are the new ones.

We’ve been looking for a new couch forever, and always had a secret wish for the right Eames sofa compact to happen along eBay or Craigslist. Today, it just might have. Pictured above is what we will hopefully spend a road-trippy Friday getting from Hudsonville, Michigan (right near Zeeland, home of Herman Miller!).
Updates to follow…

I’ve finally made the switch to the dark side/light side (depending on your views) and acquired myself a MacBook Pro (15″), on which I type this very entry. I had the opportunity to request one as my work computer, and I just got it today (a serious perk of working for a software company.) Here it is on my dining room table — more on this furniture later, but this picture includes an Eames table and four side shell chairs and a Nelson saucer bubble lamp, all of which is vintage. All that’s left is to replace the art on the wall there; nebulas are nice but I think we can do better.

The short bookcase in my living room contains, among other things:

Margot the betta, a gregarious female that most enjoys freeze-dried bloodworms.

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My two largest shiva lingams, the largest one a gift from my father. I have several more of these that are 1.75″ and smaller. They are visually and texturally intriguing. My dad collects them two and has some really great ones. The type of quartz these stones are comprised of is only found in the Narmada river in India.