Beautiful day, ugly couch

What is that strange color breaking through the clouds, or those streaks of light shimmering on the water? Could that be blue sky? Sunlight? How easily it is to forget.

My newspaper reported that 29 out of 31 days in August had measurable precipitation. One of those two days without rain was my birthday. The other, I'm guessing, came before I moved here. The climate is going to take some adjusting to, so my bicycling miles are way down. This kind of weather demands fat storage anyway. I have been logging more mileage on an indoor elliptical trainer. I was rifling through the magazine rack today when I realized I had already read nearly every Newsweek with the year 2006 on it, and found myself debating whether to read "US Weekly" or a two-year-old issue of "Self." And, suddenly, I realized that I need to cowboy up and return to a less soul-sucking physical outlet.

Today would have been a perfect day for some much-needed bicycling. However, Geoff and I decided to forgo our morning for a different kind of soul-sucking activity - the hunt for furniture, which people of our tax bracket call "garage saling." One of my favorite fringe benefits of owning a beater vehicle is all the ways I can prove that, contrary to popular opinion, trucks are not requisite to living in Alaska. So far I've hauled all of my stuff, a new bed, new table, and now the world's ugliest couch, on top of my little, two-wheel-drive sedan.

We bought this thing today because it was small for our small apartment, included a twin hide-a-bed, and came with an dark green slip cover - meaning it doesn't have to look like a 80-year-old woman's acid flashback gone awry. Driving down the road with the thing strapped to my roof generated more drive-by smiles than I've seen all month. Hauling the lead-weighted monstrosity down two flights of narrow stairs cost my back at least two years of use, but it was all worth it to set it down on my blue carpet, throw a multi-colored afghan blanket on top, and stare in horrified wonder at the visual train wreck happening in my own living room. I hope when I get home, the slip cover has been applied. Because no amount much garage saler's remorse is going to lift that ugly couch back out of my apartment.