The chairs are due this afternoon. In talking with the apartment manager he's going to put together a junk pickup appointment that will be shared by two other apartments for the end of next week when I'm back from L.A.. We should do just fine with just my junk in filling whatever it is you need to fill to make it worthwhile (he as in I said confidently). No Protime test results yet, but I assume I'll be getting a call this morning. Or this afternoon. Or eventually.

Later. Laundry's done. Good. It's noon, no call from the delivery people with a thirty minute head's up yet, so we'll wait and see if “between noon and two” turns out to be really “after three”. Could be.

Later still. OK, now I understand why they deliver them, unbox them and put them in place and, if I'm ever foolish enough to do this again, that's the way I'll have it done. They're now unboxed, they look pretty good (you worry about that), they seem substantial (and nice) and they're sitting in my hallway and living room ready to be assembled, but later, when I've caught my breath.

I had them put the boxes in the lobby (in retrospect, the boxes were too big for the small elevator anyway) and uncrated them myself. Cardboard, lots of cardboard, Styrofoam and more cardboard (the paper recycle people had, of course, made this week's pick up earlier this morning), all of which is now stacked by the (empty) recycle bins in the garage. And I'm a little pooped, but pleased. As I said, they look as I'd hoped. Chalk up another one for ordering online, it's a bit like winning at roulette, you never know until the ball has dropped and the croupier has made good with the chips.

One hopes the odds are a little better.

Later again. Good thing the assembly was easy, essentially four bolts that had to be put in place, the chairs coming with the needed tools. Took me a bit, but they've been assembled, they're in place, they're larger than the old ones, but not by all that much. I think things will be happy around here once I get rid of the broken stuff that's now piled here and piled there. Sounds worse than it is, but not much.

It's been well up into the nineties and, since I've had to stay here to do the laundry and be here to accept the chairs when they were delivered, I've not been outside to feel the heat. I'm not feeling a need to feel the heat. No I'm not, not until tomorrow (when it's projected to be twenty degrees cooler).

Evening. They are comfortable. A little higher up off the floor and much better support. I was thinking that would be the case, better support, but hadn't really been thinking about it until I finally sat in one for a while. OK, enough on the chairs, but this day has gone well.

A Maigret this evening at six. The plots are more than a little weird, weird in the sense you really don't believe them, so maybe it's the interaction of the players, whatever expression of French culture is involved when these were make way back whenever. So an hour and a half with Maigret (yes, I'd see it before, this time remembering some of the plot), maybe thirty minutes of it playing along on the guitar, good enough on the guitar to say it's been a good day with the time I'd gotten in earlier in the afternoon.

The temperature outside at eight is now a little less than the temperature in here, so maybe we'll be favored with a little breeze to flush the apartment out. If not, then to bed with the fan, a Tatung fan bought from a store that sold them client in the late eighties - I believe he gave me a special price of something like fifteen dollars - and it's been running reliably for these last twenty-five years.

We are prattling now, are we not?

We are indeed prattling here with our two new chairs (only one of which I can sit in at a time) on an overly warm evening in Oakland.