The Quest for the nearly perfect couch...

So, when I moved the stuff down, we only had a little cargo van. It works well for the little stuff and the treadmill, but not so much if I wanted to take the couch. The comfy antique crushed red velvet couch? Still in my folks' attic, with the wooden claw foot sawn off. Sad, but true. I should have just donated the couch to one of the drama productions around town, but I didn't.

Anyways, ever since we moved into the apartment, Matt's been all big on getting a couch. I don't think either one of us has ever really bought a couch before - I inherited the red couch, and I think the couch he had was from an old roommate. And here's a problem I never really considered - when you go into a town that had a flood, you have to be a little suspicious of anything in the goodwill - like maybe it was in the flood and dried out and given to goodwill. I couldn't believe it, that's one of the first places we hit up, and the entertainment centers all had waterlines on them. It was kinda weird.

So, we didn't really find anything that great at any of the places. We went from the thrift store to some chic furniture place and you know, they were really nice sofas. A little out of our league sofas, but really nice to look at. In New Orleans, there's a big population of interior designers and people who don't mind paying more for the purple micro-faux-suede couch in the shape of an antique fainting couch but with a gazillion pillows upholstered in zebra print.

Then we went to the "Bargain Annex" of the same chic-chic (she-she?) store, and they had the most aggressive sales-slime I've ever met. "Heya, young couple, you know you are sitting on the most popular couch right there. You know you are looking across the aisle at the most popular couch." Then we'd ask him if he had the same couch in a different color and he'd tell us to go back to the non-bargin annex.

Anyways, so every day after work, Matt and I have been hitting up these furniture stores. And I was tired of it. So by chance we swung into one that I'd been in in Covington (across the bridge) but not in New Orleans area.

And Matt liked the most hideous couch in there - no, wait, there was a lime green sofa-recliner - the second most hideous. It had paisley swirls all over the couch, and striped pillows and weird embellishments, and, well, it was kinda icky.

But then we sat on the Patriot Sand colored couch, and it was comfy. Really comfy. And it was less expensive than anything else. So, we went to dinner (oooh, at Raising Canes, yum) and went to a different branch to see if they had the hideous couch in some other color.

They didn't but they had the Patriot Sand couch there, too.

It's weird that the color is Patriot Sand. I guess that's better than "neutral tan." Now they have to deliver it - Matt originally was going to be home on Thursday, but the paper called and asked him to work on Thursday, soooooo, we called to try and get them to deliver it on Friday, but it's good Friday, so we may never get the couch.

Before we stumbled into Patriot Sand couch, we were going to order the couch off IKEA and have it shipped in pieces to us. With all these headaches about the delivery, I think that might have been a better idea.

Oh, well, I guess at least Matt gets his couch - okay, I might sit on it too... But I gotta say, our apartment is carpeted, and it's pretty soft stuff... Huh...

Anyways, talk to you later,
Barb.

No paradiso napkin yet...

Okay, so I haven't found a new paradiso napkin yet, no architectural renderings.

The job is pretty cool. I like it so far. I think it's funny that there's a kitchen on every floor of the building (we have the smallest kitchen, but it's right across from my office...)

I share an office with Darlene. She likes listening to classical music on low, so that's pretty cool.

On the first day, I went into the office, and Darlene was there and she was all like "Don't worry - this isn't really your desk, and this isn't really your computer." So, they had ordered me a new desk and computer but they hadn't arrived yet so they put up temporary ones. I didn't tell her that the desk was nicer than the one I'd had at my last job...

Anyways, so Darlene was busy on the first day, so she gave me a stack of magazines to read, magazines like the one we publish. So, that was it for the first day...

On the second day, she gave me more magazines.
On the third day, the desk showed up, and she gave me magazines that we publish.
On the fourth day, the computer showed up (without the software I needed...)
On the fifth day the software showed up (yay!).

So, that was week one. Not bad - Darlene has been showing me some good places to eat in the area. I've been trying to bring my lunch, to be healthier than I used to be, but alotta the stuff is way too tempting. On my third day of work, they took me out to this restaurant called "Draggo's" which was downtown.

I've never really been a big fan of seafod, but I had the red snapper and it was delicious. Like it didn't really taste like fish - Darlene says that when they pull it right out of the water and cook it, it rarely tastes fishy.

And then we went to this building that looked like a bank on the outside, but when you went in, it looked like a mall. Deceptive space - and we ate sushi at a food court there. And then, we went to the place I've liked the best, the 11th floor of the Pan-Am building. There's a cafeteria there, and they make different kinds of foods. We went on friday and they had a potato bar, with delicious kinds of stuff, I loved it.

The people at work are really nice, so I like that, and they all pretty much love New Orleans and love to share their opinions on what they like to eat.

In fact, it's really weird, but everyone seems to really like food there. There's one gal that's on a diet where she eats 6 times a day. And today we had a pre-meeting meeting to discuss what we were going to be eating at the meeting tomorrow. Uhmmm, seriously.

I'm just going to have to treadmill more often, no worries....

At last....

Dear Auntie Dolly...

Sorry it's been so long, but stuff has been happening.

Ooooh, and the interview I was all worried about? I got the job, they liked me anyways. So that's cool. I'm gonna be the "Communications Coordinator" for the Lousiana State Bar Association. They put out a magazine every other month and a tab every other month from that. Also they need various different things designed & some house ads, brochures, etc. So that's cool. And it's in this totally historic old building that's completely beautiful.

So apartments in New Orleans aren't easy to find. We looked around alot lookin' at a bunch of them. Ithaca's tight, but around here it's not tight so much as they just came out of a tight time and still think that they can charge the same rates. Plus, after living thru the Grand Forks Flood, I didn't really want anything on the first floor or anything in a house or anything like that. So we would go to these big complex type places and they'd be all like "Well, we have a newly renovated first floor apartment that's beautiful." Is it newly renovated because it flooded here? "Why yes, the levee broke just over there...blah blah blah" the other thing that was a little aggrevating is that they charge all these fees, $50 to run a credit check on you, $100 for administrative fees, plus the security deposit, on top of the rent. And we would look at these places, and they wouldn't have the actual apartment to look at but rather a "Model" apartment and you could stand in one room and reach into another, mostly they were really really tiny and in these huge complexes, with lots of other people all around.

Anyways, so we called this one place and the guy's telephone pitch was horrible, he was all like "We don't take section 8. We don't do subsidized housing. We don't run no crazy house. How much do you make in a year?" before he'd even talk to me about the apartment itself. Totally weird, anyways, so I made an apointment, but was kinda thinking "Well, I can blow it off if we want" and we found this other apartment house that wasn't too horrible, and the rent was a little more affordable, and the lady at the building was pretty nice, so we were thinking that maybe we'd go there, but we went to the apointment anyways.

The place was huge, and was originally decorated in the 70s. Like this thick blue shag carpeting. Flurescent wallpaper. But it was two stories, and it has this wonderful window-seat that I was like "Oh, with a couple of pillows that'd be perfect for reading..." So we drove to the old place, and I was all like "I love it. Let's get that place." Plus the rent was more reasonable than anywhere else, but still in the ballpark. So I called him the next day and he told me that the one we looked at was already rented, but he had this other unit that was the same floorplan, just reversed, and if we came by to drop off the security deposit, we could take a look at it.

No 70s wallpaper. Light blue berber carpet. Beautiful window seat. The wallpaper still leaves something to be desired, but it's not horrible. So we took it. Yay! It seems pretty nice.

Once I get my computer moved over I'll make sure to draw out a floor plan on a Paradiso napkin and upload it... :>

Talk to you later,
Barb.