Here a desk, there a desk

By chocolatesheep on June 30, 2024

I'm on the verge of making some real changes around here, I swear I am. Just as soon as I get my desk situation all figured out.

In our TV room — which we call the Brick Room because it has brick trim along the south wall — we have a very wide desk where the PC is set up. ThirdSon and I picked it up years ago from a couple who were moving out of their place in Madison. If I remember correctly, we were there for the desk and then they started offering us a lot of things that they just wanted to get rid of. There was at least one paper bag full of jars and boxes of food; I don't remember anything in it except for a jar of gefilte fish. Anyway, sometimes the best thing you can do to help someone is to throw away the things they can't throw away themselves.

So here's the wide desk, which I am trying to give away. If I can't give it to a friend, I am willing to donate it if I can fit it into my current car (when I acquired the desk, I had a minivan).

One friend seemed to be interested in the desk. But she's no longer responding to my texts, so perhaps she's less interested in it than I had assumed. That's a shame, because this week isn't a super convenient time to try to stuff all the pieces of the desk into my current car. (Maybe I can drop off one piece at a time at Goodwill in a reverse layaway.)

I have two desks in my garage right now, but neither of them is going into the Brick Room to replace this desk. One of them is waiting for a friend to pick up and move into his apartment, as soon as his friend with a truck is available to make the trip. The other desk is one that I would like to strip, repair, and refinish after I have some practice with stripping, repairing, and refinishing. Just because I can do it in my head doesn't mean my hands know how to do it yet.

The replacement desk is one that I found on Facebook Marketplace a few weeks ago. I almost made arrangements to pick it up last weekend, but I postponed it when I realized that my weekend was already booked with concerts, and the driving to and from of them. I hadn't even factored in the thunderstorms and tornadoes.

Here's the replacement desk, which is actually a typewriter desk.

There was a lot of non-communication associated with this purchase, which does make me hold out hope for finding a new home for the current desk. This weekend I had an extremely busy Saturday that I would have planned around pickup of the desk, if I had heard from the sellers. Sunday was wide open. I spent it journaling, reading, making stew, and watching the Formula One Grand Prix of Austria. And, apparently, ignoring my phone. After the race finished and the top three drivers were about to climb the podium for their trophies, I decided to check my phone. And there was a message: I could have the desk if I could pick it up before 5. I looked at the clock: it was 3:45. I texted back "I think I can make it" and Eldest and I jumped in the car and headed to West Allis. And picked up the typewriter desk, which was surprisingly light and fit readily in the Forester after we hauled it out of a basement. And paid the seller their $15.

So now I have three desks in the garage....

It's time for an update on the Impossible Read. I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that I have been getting some reading done in The Mists of Avalon. It can be an intense narrative, and the chapter lengths vary wildly. But I'm plugging away and have gotten to page 181.

The bad news is that I have added some more books to the reading list. This week it was The Iliad and The Odyssey, in coordinating paperback editions translated by Robert Fagles.

But there's more good news! I bought a DVD of the 1967 film (Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave) of "Camelot," which I will watch after I finish The Mists of Avalon and watch "The Sword in the Stone" (and follow up with "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"). I now own all of the materials on the Impossible Read-ing list through Don Quixote and Salman Rushdie's novel Quichotte. At this rate I will have several years of reading ahead of me before I need to worry about finding a good edition of Oroonoko.

Knitwise, I'm almost finished with the Sixth Part of the Seven-Part Secret Knitting Project. I thought I would be able to finish this part today, but the Grand Prix got extra thrilling in the last five laps and it was all we could do to breathe normally. And then I saw the text about the typewriter desk, and we were on the road to West Allis minutes later.

Tomorrow. I might be able to finish the Sixth Part tomorrow and start the Seventh Part tomorrow.