It's been so long since I've posted that Blogger has changed their interface. I like this one a lot better. Much more room to write an a cleaner interface. We're having one of those gorgeous September days. Blue sky, spotted in areas with a thin layer of high clouds. Perfectly warm with a gentle breeze. I scored a table outside, where an older foreign man is talking to a younger Japanese kid in his 20s about the ills of society. I can't tell the where the man is from by his accent, but have spoken to the Japanese kid before. He's a student at the New York Film Academy, which has sort of turned our little area of Toluca Lake into an artsy college town. And I mean sort of. I've lived in college towns before. But, the students are always walking by my window on the way back and forth to the school and their apartments, and they are always filming their projects.Two groups of them live in my apartment building. One was the victim of the building psycho's torments about parking his bike next to her illegally parked big stupid scooter.Speaking of the psycho, she came into Starbucks a few days ago when I was here. I quickly turned away from her when I saw her walk in, all crazy-eyed and suffering from stage four bad hair day. Clearly having seen me, she struck up a conversation with the girl behind the counter, attempting to achieve a veil of sanity. (See?? Other people think I'm normal!!!) all while not knowing that I'd shown the picture of her rambling note and shared stories about her psycho behavior to the very barista she was talking to. Inside also was another man the psycho had accosted inside this Starbucks about where he was sitting. When he blew her off, she took his photo and posted nasty things about him on her facebook page. Of course, since she didn't have her privacy settings set correctly, I was able to access it and print it out. I gave him a copy the next time I saw him, just so he would be aware that a nut had her ray-gun eyes trained on him.

She thankfully moved out of our building months ago, which means that enough time has passed for her new neighbors to realize what a nut she is. Unfortunately, she's only a couple blocks away, but luckily, this Starbucks is the only time I've seen her since then. Hopefully it will be my last.

A couple months ago, I bought my dream chaise from a guy on Craigslist. I had first seen the chaise almost ten years ago at Kreiss furniture in West Hollywood. I've sort of held other chaises to those standards since I saw it, and couldn't believe it when I saw someone selling it online. I was able to talk the guy down to $450, because I could see from the picture that it had been through its share of wear. And, because I could tell that he really wanted to sell it. Considering the chaise new was well over $2500 ten years ago, that was a super deal. This is one of his pictures that I copied from Facebook, and there are other shots of it on my Flickr account. As you can see, the upholstery needed a good cleaning. He delivered it to an upholstery cleaning place, Bobcat Carpet and Fabric Care, that I'd found on Angie's List, and I paid him for it right there. He was a really nice man, and it's always interesting to see the faces from behind the Craigslist advertisements come alive. He was happy to be rid of it, because his fiance was moving in with her furniture and he needed the room. I on the other hand, was thrilled to finally, have my dream chaise. Well, about a week later, I got a call from the upholstery cleaning place who said that the material was in much worse shape than they'd first thought, and during cleaning it had ripped. This was not their fault, it was just that the micro fiber had begun to disintegrate. It was also nothing that the man who sold it to me could have known. We were all right there when I inspected it. Bobcat recommended a reupholstery company, Roman Upholstery, a long-term business colleague of theirs, and kindly worked out a deal for me with them to only pay cost for labor. They have been in business for three generations and were experts at high-end pieces.

So, I took a couple hours off work, drove down and chose the fabric. Now I'm sure that this will come as a complete surprise to anyone who has been a regular reader of this blog, but I'm incredibly picky. However, after perusing through at least 20 fabric books and reminding myself that a chaise of this size should not be of an opulent-patterned fabric, I decided on this warm color pictured at right. Luckily, they had the chaise in their workshop, so I was viewing everything in natural light. You can see the gorgeous color, grain and craftsmanship on the wood. There's not a scratch on it.

About a week ago, I got it back and am now finishing this blog post on it while Atticus lies beside me, sacked out. It is drop dead gorgeous. They did an absolutely phenomenal job and totally nailed it on every level. Flawless. I got new pillows so it's basically brand new. Total cost of the reupholstery was $1500, which also includes the fabric. Worth every penny, and it's a total solve for where to sit while I write. I did an entire freelance writing job on it, and had ample space to spread out the paper work...not to mention a couple cats who joined me. I've done away with the desk, which now has my TV on it, and have adopted the chaise as my wonderfully comfortable writing space.

I have fabric that I'd previously bought from a high-end fabric shop, and am going to have an accent pillow made from it. I laid it down on the chaise and it's absolutely stunning. I haven't been able to take a picture of the finished chaise that does it justice, so that will be coming.

Hopefully, having a comfy, relaxed and luxurious place to write will aid in my blogging more regularly.