Yesterday RDC installed some long-awaited software or a USB card or whatever it was that now means I have a quick cam. But not a web cam. There's Blake on my knee.

Reading: Sons and Lovers

Moving: Nordic Track 45', 4.67 miles. I've never gone that long before

Listening: dead quiet office

Watching: "Sex and the City"

27 December 2000: Furnish

A miracle happened yesterday. RDC wanted to shop. He's home for a while and would have time to install a ceiling fixture in the living room. And we need to find a rug. And although once he would have cringed away from Target as a source of any home furnishing, the fact that SPM's curtains hail from there has turned his head. So we went to the Great Indoors and looked at rugs.

See, about rugs I have no definite ideas. I figured I wanted a pattern because our walls are plain and our curtains and furniture palin. All I know is that both of us, but he more, hate to browse for boring stuff. I feared looking at one store and making a decision simply because we were sick of shopping. At the Great Indoors, I think we found the opposite problem, too much selection. Or a lot but nothing quite right. We looked at rugs for over an hour, maybe two. Size, pattern, weave, colors, hand-hooked or machine-woven. It was endless. Then we went to the lighting section and chose two lights in less than ten minutes--a floor lamp for reading downstairs and a ceiling fixture for the dining room.

The family room has two overheads, one a couple of feet from the television and the other a few feet behind the couch. They're inadequate for reading and too much for televsion (and we have to have some light on for television because Blake's afraid of the dark). So we found a lamp to stand between chair and couch.

The dining room has a light with a ceiling fan, which a) we don't like and b) is dangerous for birds. Fake gold, like the fixtures in the bathroom, and nearly-black blades. Whenever the special order arrives, we'll have a suspended light in brushed pewter.

Now, the theory was to go for a walk after the Great Indoors, but we were drooping and lazy and so we went home. I suggested that our exercise could be the 3-mile walk to the cats and back, but RDC drove straight there. At that point I didn't even lie to myself about the Nordic Track. So we came home and RDC installed the webcam we've had for months and I put the floor lamp together and we ate leftovers and he ate dinner and I surfed a bit and then RDC startled me further by suggesting we go to the mall.

Because when we got home, his Connecticut aunt and uncle's gift had arrived.

It was a table.

It actually wasn't a table yet, but it was a check for Christmas and housewarming that they suggested using for a table, in an amount that would exactly cover the price of the table we wanted.

Okay.

So in the evening we went to Pottery Barn and ordered our table, which should arrive in the next couple of weeks. Then we went to Restoration Hardware, just in case their stock had changed significantly in the past week and there was something we could use our gift certificate for. On the way, RDC suggesting looking in at Z Gallerie, and I kept giving him sidelong looks wondering if he'd been replaced by George Moore (because I'd just read Anne's House of Dreams on Saturday).

The gift certificate bought a rug pad, which isn't something I'd ordinarily buy from Restoration Hardware except that there was our rug at 40% off. Its pattern is in its weave not its color. It's 6x9, which turns out to be an odd size but exactly what our dining room wants. Unlike the ceiling fixture or the table, it was available. So we took it.

Furthermore I had suggested going to Target to get curtains, and he remembered this on his own and still wanted to do it as we left the mall. Whew. So we bought rods and finials and tab-top ivory linen panels--and a plastic crate with a lid for Christmas ornaments--and came home.

Still under debate are dining room chairs. We found ones that we both like and that go with table, rug, and walls in Restoration last night, but they're a lot more apiece than we had planned to spend, RDC pointed out. I countered with how much we had budgeted for a rug and a table versus how much we had spent. "You've been spending too much time with me," said Mr. Surprise Digital Camera-Surprise Nordic Track-Surprise Television Shrine. "Justify, justify."

Which cracked us up, because if Thoreau really had wanted to simplify, he'd've said it once, but instead he justified everything he wanted to do. As do we.