It was a big weekend in San Francisco for me. Yesterday I did battle on two fronts simultaneously, and I was victorious in both.
The first was the dreaded San Francisco driving. When it came time to find an apartment, my mom came out for a week and rented a car, and she and I spent a few days driving around all of San Francisco, visiting apartments and buying brooms and mops and a bed, and I very carefully refrained from posting about any of it.
The thing is, driving as a whole didn't go so well that week. Stop signs and traffic lights came out of nowhere. There was a lot to pay attention to, and a lot of new dynamics, such as cable cars and bicycle lanes, that just aren't part of driving in Malvern. San Franciscans also have a terrifying propensity for double parking, often for hours at a time. It took 2 of us paying full attention to everything in order to drive safely. We didn't get into any accidents but it was thrilling nevertheless.
The only reason I'm willing to bring this into the public light now is because it turns out it's not just us. A few months ago, an old housemate (who grew up in the Northeast) was out in SF for a few weeks, and he and his girlfriend and Chris and I spent a day in his Zipcar doing a scenic drive around the city. And it was like house hunting all over again. Stop signs were missed, wrong turns were made, and I'm pretty sure we went down at least one one-way street the wrong way.
All of this had me scared enough that I had no desire to drive in the city whatsoever. I didn't think I'd be able to do it. But Zipcar memberships are free, and oddly enough, I felt slightly more confident about my abilities after reflecting on the housemate driving experience. Because, from my vantage point in the back seat, I'd seen all the stoplights and signs miles away, even though no one else did.
This all brings us to yesterday, when I got invited to a party in Mountain View, which is about 40 - 50 minutes south by car, or 2 hours by public transit. I decided it was time to try out my Zipcar membership and dig up my navigation skills and drive down to the party rather than suffer through the public transit commute.
I am both old fashioned and minimalist when it comes to navigating while driving. I glare with disdain upon GPS navigation systems, and I have a well honed take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards maps if I'm not going more than an hour away. Armed with nothing more than a scrap of written directions, I set out.
(The car review: I was in a Mazda 3 automatic with that fake manual "Tiptronic" transmission, should I desire to shift "manually". Great car, corners beautifully, fast acceleration in automatic mode. However, the driver's seat is low and it did absolutely nothing for my back, and it doesn't have the anti-rollback feature that some automatics do. It started sliding backwards when I started from a stop sign on a steep hill, and then I gunned it and then there was tire screeching, but that only happened once. Also, it's really really quiet. Overall, quite a pleasant little sporty sedan.)
And the trip down was uneventful. After I'd gotten used to driving in general (it's been a while) and driving in SF (didn't take as long as I feared) I made it to the party with only one wrong turn and subsequent phone call to the host. I proclaimed victory over driving and enjoyed the party, until it came time to leave.
One of the other people at this party joked that Zipcar is an especially wonderful thing when visiting the in-laws, because the driver has a deadline by which the car must be returned, on penalty of $50/hr late fees and a membership suspension that could last months. "Oh we're so sorry, but we just can't stay any longer. Our Zipcar reservation is about to end." etc. So I had diligently studied the trip time and set my phone alarm accordingly.
The trip down only took about an hour, door to door, but I gave myself a luxurious 3 hours to make it back because I realized that right near the party location was...an IKEA. With bookshelves.
A short recap of the bookshelf scenario: when I moved out here, I brought all my books along with 2 sets of shelves to hold them all. I didn't have any extra shelf space, but it worked. Then one set of shelves collapsed, and then I went to a used book sale and went nuts and bought 30 books. I was in serious bookshelf debt, and it was getting slowly worse (well I'm not going to let a little thing like lack of storage space stop me from buying books. That would be wrong). Anyway, the problem has been growing since September, and yesterday I figured that as long as I had a car and I was going to be near the IKEA, I should really do something about it.
I knew exactly the shelf unit I wanted before I ever walked in. I'd had my eye on it for months. So many months that since I first glimpsed it, the price has dropped 20 percent. It's real wood, not particle board, and it's dark and masculine and gorgeous (and it looks like this: Markor).
I arrived at IKEA, wandered down to the self service furniture section, pulled the box onto my cart, and headed for the check out. And then I froze. I thought of the books lining the walls of my library. I'd put them in a neat little line against the baseboards when the rebellious shelving unit had collapsed. And then I thought of the box full of books in the library. I'd pulled some of the volumes that don't get read as often off the remaining functional shelves so I'd have room for some new additions. The anxiety steadily mounting, I recalled the books under my TV (which arrived after the big book sale). And when, finally, a vision, unbidden, arose of the pile of books next to my bed, which threatened to dwarf the bedside table*, I was faced with a heart stopping, rictus-of-terror inducing prospect: What is one set of shelves isn't enough?
I stood motionless with indecision for a full 5 minutes, contemplating the possibilities. I wasn't averse to owning more shelves, but buying more shelves was a little different. That was a far more expensive proposition, to say nothing of the dicey-ness of getting both sets of shelves in the car. I wasn't even positive the first would fit. And the more astute readers might have noticed that the unit I'd picked out came in a single 87 lb. box which would have to somehow be transported up a full flight of stairs to get to my apartment. (I'd known this going in. And I'd tried to recruit some grunt help at the last minute, but it didn't happen. I was trying to remember if I'd ever attempted to carry something so heavy. "Hmm... 87 pounds... Balance beams! I used to carry those around the gym, they're about that weight. Oooh, and canoes. Canoes are what, 75 pounds? I can handle those without too many problems. I'm tough, I can do it. RAR!" Yes, girls too can do the macho shithead thing when pressed.) Even the macho shithead in me wasn't at all jazzed about having to do the stair climb twice.
The economist in me wasn't too keen on dropping another 40 or 50 bucks to rent another Zipcar and drive back down to IKEA for another set of shelves if it could be avoided, however. So, figuring there was no real way I'd get these beasts in my car, but willing to try anyway, I grabbed the second set, checked out, and headed for the car.
Amazingly enough, both sets fit without problems. Even more astonishingly, my body lived up to my bravado and I got the stupid things up the stupid stairs and in through the stupid door with minimal issue.
I assembled one set last night and the other this morning. And yes, I needed both. There were only two hiccups in the shelf experience. One is that I haven't had to use a screw driver on real wood in years, and I'd forgotten how much more resistance solid birch offers than particle board. And these shelves have a ridiculous number of screws. At the end of the first set, my whole right arm below the elbow was sore. And now that I've done the second set, I'm worried I'll have blisters on my hands.
The other issue is that I'm missing a shelf. One of the sets was short a piece of wood that would normally form the bottom shelf in one of the shelf compartments. Fortunately, installing those is the last step of the shelves so when the replacement gets here in about a week, it will be easy enough to fix. I won't have to take apart the whole thing to do it.
The whole bookshelf experience gives me cause to reflect on living alone. It's strange, not being able to yell up the stairs for assembly assistance. And I was really concerned that I wouldn't be able to actually get the things in the house and put together without help. But I did nevertheless, and since I can't go out and kill a buffalo barehanded, this will have to stand as my testament to my ability to take care of myself. Be warned: my ego is back.
*My bedside table is cooler than yours. It is a Mongolian chafing dish, I think. I found it in a furniture store while I was solving the problem of the dining room table. It's copper and beautiful and it has gorgeous and ornate handles. So there.
