I had a great time taking a solo walk around a local park today, which has both paved and forested paths. There is restored prairie in some sections of the park and some mostly terrible outdoor sculptures as well. I took some of the off-road paths in the twilight during today’s perfect weather and shot some iPhone pictures. (I processed these with either Camera+ or the newly upgraded Instagram.)

In the man-made realm, our new couch is finally in our house as of this afternoon. We ordered a couch from a local independent (and very quirky) dealer who offers, among other things, sofas from Younger — a modern and classic high-quality furniture maker that seemed perfect for our “no crappy made-in-China couches” approach to quest. After 6 weeks of waiting for it to be built, the couch that finally arrived had the wrong fabric. The floor model the dealer already had, the exact one we’d fallen in love with and ended up ordering, was still there of course and in pretty perfect shape (this is a low-traffic furniture store that’s open about 18 hours a week). So one negotiated discount later we ended up taking that couch and depositing our incorrect one in its place on the display floor. “All’s well that ends well, you know, like Shakespeare!” he exclaimed as we left.

Check out a few more pictures in my set here.

Here’s Dustin holding my first Catherine Holm piece today. We found this in the back of our local mid-century furniture/object store — which we also recently found out is moving out of town. Gah! At least we found this first.

(This was taken with my iPhone and post-processed by my new CrossProcess app, which I am loving so far.)

A little update for the in-between time… sorting things out.
Late-night trivia tomorrow night — I hope it’s fun. It’s at our favorite local restaurant and we are pretty good (though I personally don’t offer much).

We went out for sushi on Tuesday afternoon. One roll we ordered called the ‘phoenix roll’ arrives at the table flaming.

The chicken-man was walking along alone, waving at cars that honked at him.

We wandered around downtown this Saturday. I came across this manatee bracelet in a local thrift/curiosities store and couldn’t leave without it.
The weather is rainy but nice. The yard is crazy overgrown. My mental landscape is strange. I saw Alice in Wonderland with Edhy today and was actually impressed; it helped that she told me beforehand the reviews were bad. Expectations change everything.
We lost trivia at a local pub tonight (by 3 points out of 300+). So close!

A sandwich at a local coffee shop and a walk around the neighborhood. The weather is (briefly) wonderful… rainy days coming this weekend.

Dustin’s uncle bought this house recently; the interior needs significant renovation (the previous owners wanted a ‘Tuscan villa’ look and totally ruined all of the flooring, walls and woodwork), but it looks great from the outside at least. It’s huge, over 4000 sq. feet, with two stories and some great built-in features and brickwork. Also, the multi-level yard! Wow. It will take a long time to refurbish it, but I’m excited to eventually see it looking more like its original incarnation again.

Friday night before our send-off of the library-program-attending friend that had been staying in town this week, we stopped and had some tapas at Radio Maria. The tapas side of their restaurant is as cool as the dining side.

At “Carrie’s”, an odd little curio shop packed with random vintage stuff in downtown Champaign, we found a full 8-piece set of vintage Bodum glasses last Sunday. I am in love with their design and the clean happiness of the white handles. They even have the older Bodum creed stamped on the bottom. They look unused; I wonder what their history is, if any.