Mary had a little lamb
his fleece as black as soot
And into Mary's bread and jam
his sooty foot he put
Mary had a little lamb,
you've heard this tale before;
But did you know she passed her plate
and had a little more?
Yesterday evening, we were invited to Andreas Goerke's 30th birthday party. It was a surprise party which he didn't know about beforehand (or wasn't supposed to, at any rate.) [How sad is it that I typed "support" instead of "supposed" at first?]
We met at the kindergarten where Mareike works, and a while later Andreas was brought in. He had been driven around blindfolded so that he wouldn't know where it would be, but he managed to figure it out anyway. After a brief speech and opening his presents, he declared the buffet open and everyone tucked in :)
It was a little awkward sitting on chairs and benched designed for little kids but we managed.
Most of the people whom I didn't know (mostly his family, I presume) left fairly early; Bettina mentioned that often, people who are used to having alcohol at parties leave fairly early if there's none and that she wondered whether this might have been the case there.
At any rate, after around 9:30, it was pretty much only ward members, and we all sat around in one circle (rather than small groups as before) and played some games until midnight, which was pretty fun.
This morning, Stella and I went to the Dänisches Bettenlager to have a look at some furniture.
Since what's now the study will be the child's room when it arrives (whee!), we'll have to move my computer out and we decided to put it in the bedroom. That way, I can withdraw when we have visitors and the socialising is too much for me, as is my wont occasionally. However, that means we'll have to throw out our current wardrobes.
Stella had been busy measuring the room and looking through Dänisches Bettenlager and IKEA catalogues to find wardrobes and desks that would fit (she also considered boards which would simply carry the monitor, and little wheely shelves-on-wheels type computer things).
So we had a look around, and she showed me the two wardrobes she had in mind; they differed mostly in price, since one was made of solid wood and the other only had a solid wood front and had plywood sides, back, and shelves. She also asked me whether I'd prefer two two-door wardrobes (most customisable for both of us), a four-door wardrobe, or a three-door wardrobe (with the caveat that only a three-door wardrobe would allow for a desk to fit in).
We finally decided on a three-door, solid-wood wardrobe, and we found a desk that looked decent as well and that would just fit in alongside the wall (151.5 cm [4' 11½"] wardrobe + 128 cm [4' 2½"] desk = 279.5 cm [9' 2"] compared to a wall length of 283 cm [9' 3½"]!).
To compensate for the reduced wardrobe space, we decided to get a "bridge" that goes above and to either side of the headboard of our bed, thus providing some more shelf space.
Since the desk and bridge were marked down, we decided to order them immediately even if we probably won't get around to rearranging the furniture immediately.
That ended up being a good idea, since the employee we got hold of said that such a large markdown as the one on the bridge typically meant that the item was being discontinued. (This would probably explain why it wasn't in the catalogue we had picked up a bit earlier.) He also mentioned that the price on the desk was the lowest he'd ever seen that desk sold for in the last five years.
And indeed, when he went to check the availability of the various items, he couldn't find the bridge any more. However, he found one(!) in another warehouse in the finish we wanted, but without the accessories (backs and doors for two of the shelf compartments as well as lights).
We went ahead and ordered it anyway; he recommended that we come back in a week or two and he'd start a search order for the item and they might find it in another branch, but the people responsible for that didn't work on Saturday so he couldn't arrange for that to be done immediately.
We ended up paying €930 [US$ 1150, CAD 1516, AU$ 1530, GBP 625] for everything (bridge, wardrobe, desk + keyboard holder + monitor stand, shipping); I imagine the employee got a tidy commission for that sale :p
I finally got through my build-up of zillaspam... about 1000 emails whittled down to no unread ones over the course of a few days. Moral: don't let things pile up but take care of them "zeitnah"—reasonably quickly.
I'm falling behind on my friends page reading again. Hey ho.
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