Furniture Jenga & Results...

It's that time of year again when I get the free carpet cleaning done.  Each year when I resign the lease for another year they give me a free carpet cleaning.  I usually save it until the Fall time of year just before I ended up having social occaisions and spending more time inside.  So here's a quick picture I took of what is usually my kitchen area....

Furniture Jenga in my small apartment kitchen.

It's always amazing what you can fit together when you set your mind to it and you are also dealing with limited space.  The kitchen has most of the living room furniture and some of the bedroom.  The futon, frame, and mattress filled up my bathroom.  It's funny that I can fit all of this furniture into 2 of the smallest rooms in my apartment.  The other funny thing is that I always forget how HARD it is to move my queen-sized futon mattress into the bathroom.  It's a WORKOUT and then some to move it from the bedroom, down the short excuse for a hallway and straight into the bathroom where I need to lan it against a wall so I can then carefully slide the futon frame into the rest of the bathroom.  I get another workout when I get home tonight and get to move all the furniture back.  LUCKY ME! Who needs weight training when you have furniture?  Really if I worked it out right I could get paid to workout by going door to door and offering to move people's furniture.  NAW~! Maybe NOT!

I finally got to look at the on-line results of a 6K Fun Run I did on October 8th.  It's the 2nd time I've done this Fun Run and it takes place at nearby Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  It's an all female event called "Love Your Body".  There's a choice of a 6K or 10K.  I opted to do the 6K this year and I'm glad I did because it was a rather rainy and cold run; which I didn't mind once I got warmed up but till then it was chilly.  I managed to finish the 6K in 41:32 and had an average mile time of 11:08.  Not too bad though I am now starting to wonder if the time was really off on the last 5K run I did where I average an almost 10 minute mile.  The more I do of these 5 & 6 K runs I think that one was a total fluke.  But I will say that I am happy with having a 11 min/mile average; especially when last year I was averaging a 12 min/mile.  This is good and a definite improvement.  I was 11th place out of 50 that were in my age group and placed 166 overall out of 647.  Not too shabby!

Furniture Jenga~!

Last night after coming home from my water color painting class, I rolled up my sleeves and started in on a game of Furniture Jenga. Why you might ask? Am I, perhaps, insane? Or maybe this is part of a new workout theory? Or is it just that I don’t get enough excitement that I need to be plying stacks of furniture into my kitchen just for fun of it? NO! All this game of Furniture Jenga was in preparation for having my carpets cleaned.


So here I am last night looking at my pint sized kitchen and trying to figure how to fit as much of my living room furniture, and possibly some of my bedroom into that space. Now let me preface that my living room is a living room as well it serves as a dining room too. It was a vertical jigsaw puzzle that needed to be solved and just may prove how much of a warped mind I might have.

I started first with the bulky loveseat on its side. Nope! Not going to work. After a few more gruntingly laborious attempts, the loveseat ended up on its back facing up. It left plenty of room for stacking chairs, tables, pillows (why does there always seem to be an excess of pillows?), and what not. Next, my dining room bistro set, then an end table, and then … well, you get the picture. I arranged a few times over and ended up putting some of the more “weather proof” items on my ¼ pint sized balcony.

I went to bed last night with a small sense of accomplishment that I had only my futon, an alarm clock, and my cell phone out in the carpeted areas. After getting ready for work in the morning, I dragged the wooden futon frame into the bathroom. It fit just barely, and left just enough room for the futon mattress. It had maybe taken me 10 minutes top to move the futon frame into the bathroom. The futon mattress, however, was a whole different beast all together. It was like trying to move a huge dead body. (Not that I would actually know how to handle a dead body.)  It took me a total of 30 minutes to wrestle that darn mattress into a slim place between the futon frame and the bathroom door.  Whew!  What a relief!

It was after this wrestling match with the futon mattress I looked down and discovered I shouldn’t have worn my black work clothes to do this job. Being that I already running a bit late I tried to just slap some of the dust off of my black clothes. As I’m heading towards the door, I remember my lunch that happens to be in the refrig in the kitchen. Oooopps! In the refrig that I can not open the door to because there’s a huge stack of furniture in front of. Darn!

So I’m writing a note to self—No black dress clothes to move furniture in and have a back up plan for lunch because you are an idiot and won’t be able to open the buried refrig door.  On a positive note, I know what’s for dinner tonight!  Of course, that’s after I un-bury it!  DOH!