Dispatches from the City of Angels
I'm a writer and humorist living in and writing about Los Angeles. You can catch my novel LOSING CLEMENTINE out March 6 from William Morrow. In the meantime, feel free to poke around. Over at my website you can find even more blog entries than I could fit here, as well as a few other ramblings. Enjoy and come back often.
Read/Post Comments (4)
Like me!
Follow me!
Favorite Quotes:
"Taint what a horse looks like, it’s what a horse be." - A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
"Trying to take it easy after you've finished a manuscript is like trying to take it easy when you have a grease fire on a kitchen stove." - Jan Burke
"Put on your big girl panties, and deal with it." - Mom
"How you do anything is how you do everything."
Want E-Mail Updates?
Click here, type your e-mail address into the first field (for public entries) and receive an e-mail note each time a new blog post goes up. Absolutely, positively no spam. Promise.
There was the dream desk and then there was reality
I couldn't take it anymore. I bought a desk.
Just because you can sit for nine hours a day hunched over a T.V. tray like someone with an advanced spinal deformity, doesn't mean you should.
But once you've decided to buy a desk, you must pick a desk. I imagined something with drawers. I would no longer have to live with clutter. There would be a place for every pencil, every paper clip. It should be wood but painted. Black lacquer. It should in no way resemble the sort of desk that would live inside a cubicle in an accounting firm dedicated to the use of beige carpeting and training seminars.
If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right. I imagined my future desk in my future home - as opposed to the cramped water-side apartment I currently inhabit. I imagined my condo high above L.A., floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lighted grid of the city at night. My desk would sit in front of those windows, and I would sit behind it. Feet up, enjoying a nightcap after finishing what would surely be my 45th bestseller. Tell Stephen King I'll call him back. I'm busy.
I found my desk. I wrote down the measurements. I gave them to my husband.
"Make this fit."
He looked at it. "This thing is four and a half feet long!"
I was unmoved. This was my future throne of greatness we were discussing. Four and a half feet seemed downright modest to me.
Being the spatially oriented fellow that he is and I am not, he got out the tape measure. He measured furniture and walls and made sketches. Then he started to move stuff. We would move before we bought we decided. Just in case.
And by golly, he did it. He made it fit. And the arrangement it required was so horrible, so cramped, so offensive to anyone with even semi-functioning eyesight, I was forced to admit defeat.
My husband, slumped in a chair said, "You know, it's not like you only get one bite at the apple here."
We moved things more or less back. We carved out a corner. Took more measurements. Then I ordered this. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the desk of my dreams, but at least I won't look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame when I finally shut my computer down at 7 o'clock each night.
Baby steps.
Now, I just have to find a chair...
Just because you can sit for nine hours a day hunched over a T.V. tray like someone with an advanced spinal deformity, doesn't mean you should.
But once you've decided to buy a desk, you must pick a desk. I imagined something with drawers. I would no longer have to live with clutter. There would be a place for every pencil, every paper clip. It should be wood but painted. Black lacquer. It should in no way resemble the sort of desk that would live inside a cubicle in an accounting firm dedicated to the use of beige carpeting and training seminars.
If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right. I imagined my future desk in my future home - as opposed to the cramped water-side apartment I currently inhabit. I imagined my condo high above L.A., floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lighted grid of the city at night. My desk would sit in front of those windows, and I would sit behind it. Feet up, enjoying a nightcap after finishing what would surely be my 45th bestseller. Tell Stephen King I'll call him back. I'm busy.
I found my desk. I wrote down the measurements. I gave them to my husband.
"Make this fit."
He looked at it. "This thing is four and a half feet long!"
I was unmoved. This was my future throne of greatness we were discussing. Four and a half feet seemed downright modest to me.
Being the spatially oriented fellow that he is and I am not, he got out the tape measure. He measured furniture and walls and made sketches. Then he started to move stuff. We would move before we bought we decided. Just in case.
And by golly, he did it. He made it fit. And the arrangement it required was so horrible, so cramped, so offensive to anyone with even semi-functioning eyesight, I was forced to admit defeat.
My husband, slumped in a chair said, "You know, it's not like you only get one bite at the apple here."
We moved things more or less back. We carved out a corner. Took more measurements. Then I ordered this. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the desk of my dreams, but at least I won't look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame when I finally shut my computer down at 7 o'clock each night.
Baby steps.
Now, I just have to find a chair...
Read/Post Comments (4)
Previous Entry :: Next Entry
Back to Top
