Oh, also, nothing will ever be as bad as the first time I put together furniture -- I got one of those cheapo futon beds, and it came as literally a box of lumber. Ugh! I slept like a baby that night.

Also, it's "ardeur", being, you know, French, but neither LKH nor Anita can spell.

It makes the baby Jesus wanna bitchslap somebody with le dictionnaire.

Dad gave me two nice ceramic knives for Xmas. I'd never used them before but I have read about them. So far I've only used one and it's nice and sharp and cuts nice. I'm keeping both of them in the packaging they came in just because I'm so worried that they'll accidentally get caught against something and snap.

Does this mean I'm not a n00b foodie anymore?

Anybody that's making goat cheese and fig quesadillas has moved on to a new level, my little padwan.

I need to buy a new mattress/boxspring set. I don't want to spend over 500 bucks. Is it possible to get a decent one?

What size? If you want, I can ask my next-door neighbor who works for Simmons Mattresses and get back to you.

Damn foodies! Now I need some lunch!

Me too. Somehow, the WW frozen lasagna I brought in doesn't seem as appealing anymore. Not that it was to begin with.

A warning: The people who were to me what Lori is to ita went and had twins and now are too busy to handle my Ikea-related business.

I need to buy a new mattress/boxspring set. I don't want to spend over 500 bucks. Is it possible to get a decent one?

I got a really good one for cheap at a matress discount store because the ticking on the mattress had been discontinued. It was maybe a $600 set I got for 1/2 off. And I love it more than almost anything. I just walked into the store and they told me what they had on special. I did no shopping around at all.

If I've learned anything from watching movies, it's useful to have your knives in a wooden block on the counter, because if you have a stalker in your home, you can easily glance over and see that one of the knives is missing.

See, in my house the advance warning comes from the stalker stepping in the cat's water dish and catapulting the dry food dish from the tray (it's a two-fer event) while opening the silverware drawer with a crash as the fork-spoon-knife holder thingie wallows around in the drawer, the cursing as they slice their knuckle on that really fucking sharp biscuit cutter (why do I have one? I don't know. It often is misused to open soda cans or the occasional dragon's eye eggs,) the frustrated huffs at all the paring knives with bent tips and melted handles, and finally the enormous crash as they spot the one semi-scary looking newish knife (bought at Safeway because it was big enough to hack apart a watermelon gracefully and since it is the only really sharp knife, used for everything) and try to extract it from the wooden crock of cooking utensils. Which is really overpacked.

By this time, I've left to buy more cheap knives a and the cops are bored.

Thanks Dana. I was worried from what I'd read that a) that's exactly what it was, and b) that LKH was mangling the French language. It seems my fears were well founded.

Kalshane -- that truly sucks! But as (I think) Nutty said: at least it wasn't a job you loved.

Kevin -- whoo hoo on the abilty to get financing.

I heard that report about the carseats this morning and one of the things they said was that any carseat was better than no carseat. (Cold comfort, I know.)

Not to mention get the UI rules sorted out so I know how to fill out the online forms?

The online forms aren't that tricky. If you do it wrong it'll just tell you where to change things.