WE HAVE FURNITURE!

yes, it is true -- we finally sucked it up, spent some money, and got things on which we can sit and eat. i uploaded all of the pictures to picasa, complete with wordy descriptions of their appearance and function. i must say, it feels very nice to own a couch and dining table. in between yard sales and thrift stores, rachel and i painted some furniture a lovely shade of glossy aqua.

we rented a uhaul pick-up with which to take our furniture home; we drove to a thrift store named st. vincent de paul's, which is basically a warehouse filled with furniture of all kinds. we picked out a couch, coffee table, and four dining chairs. however, it took a few minutes before we realized that our couch was too long to fit in the truck. the men at the loading dock told us how to get to home depot, to buy rope, so we drove there at about ten miles per hour with the tailgate down. we managed to use the whole fifty feet of rope on the truck, by which time it kind of resembled a lanyard you'd make at summer camp.

we took the freeway home and were fine, until we exited onto this street called duane st. it is honestly the biggest hill i have ever ridden on, without being pulled up by a chain in a roller coaster car. we made it to the top -- apex avenue, appropriately enough -- and it was immediately very scary. we could not see the road directly in front of us, that's how steep it was in this pick-up. i was afraid both for our couch and our lives, and had visions of us tumbling back over front into the dog park at the bottom. it took some squealing and moaning and driving at five miles an hour, but we did indeed survive. i'll have to take a picture to describe it, because i don't think words work well enough.

needless to say, all of our furniture is unloaded and functional now. we need some paint for the walls, desperately, but i'll need to be making some money before we can buy that. curtains, paint, rugs -- all of these things will be lovely, but things are functional enough for now.