Day 1133

After meeting with my financial adviser and confirming that I was not a rich man, I went up to Ikea and bought a cheap floor lamp. I'm sure that some of you have shopped at Ikea before. The stores are enormous and I always get lost in them. I usually get lost right after I pick up something heavy and then spend the next fifteen minutes looking for the check out aisles. Things are incredibly cheap at Ikea. That's why the stores are always crowded. People don't even care that most of the stuff is pure crap and will probably break before you figure out how to assemble it. It's just incredibly cheap, so you fill your buggies like everyone else. Ikea doesn't miss a trick. If you get hungry while you're lost in the store, they'll sell you some lunch. If you need something to carry your heavy purchases out to the car, they'll sell you a shopping bag at the check out counter. Everything is cheap, but nothing is free. I think you could furnish your entire house at Ikea for the same price as a single dining room chair at Design Within Reach.

When I got my floor lamp home, I had to assemble it. You have to assemble everything you buy at Ikea. My fully assembled lamp seemed to lean a bit to the left, but you can't expect perfection from a $29 floor lamp. The high-tech LED bulb I screwed into the socket to complete things actually cost more than the lamp. I still can't figure out why the lamps I was looking at a few weeks ago at the ritzy lighting studio cost $1500 and up, while this somewhat similar lamp cost $29.

Although today was a holiday, Janet and I certainly didn't take advantage of it. She cleaned the house and went to a Zumba class at the gym, while I got lost in the crowds of people buying baby furniture at Ikea. Tomorrow, it's back to work again. I've got a lot of website revisions to make this week, but none of them will make me much money. I was trying to explain to my financial adviser today why designing websites is no longer a winning proposition for me. I'm not sure he understood. He asked why I couldn't start offering cheap template driven sites myself.

I think the garage that did my safety inspection screwed up my car. It's been making an odd rattling noise ever since I got it inspected last week. This is a different kind of rattling noise than the rattling catalytic converter, so now I've got two rattling noises. I guess I'll have to stop by the Land Rover dealer later this week. It's always something.

Myles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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