A shot of our home office in the morning.

Friday night before our send-off of the library-program-attending friend that had been staying in town this week, we stopped and had some tapas at Radio Maria. The tapas side of their restaurant is as cool as the dining side.

At “Carrie’s”, an odd little curio shop packed with random vintage stuff in downtown Champaign, we found a full 8-piece set of vintage Bodum glasses last Sunday. I am in love with their design and the clean happiness of the white handles. They even have the older Bodum creed stamped on the bottom. They look unused; I wonder what their history is, if any.

This weekend’s weather was nice, almost record-settingly cool (mid 70s), so we went on a few walks. While we were downtown, we discovered our sushi place now has dollar-sushi-Sundays. Awesome.

lily – West Side Park
bee – Meadowbrook Park
sushi – Kofusion

I’m a huge fan of the artists at Nervous System, who use biology-inspired shapes and patterns coupled with high-tech methods to create amazing jewelry. I recently got this ring from them, which is actually 3D printed out of a durable but flexible nylon; how cool is that? I will be collecting more of their stuff in the future, this is so exactly up my alley it’s crazy.

I’ve been sick for ~10 days now, really sick for 5 or so of those, though the end is in sight and hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon. Friend Brandon is staying with us starting Wednesday for a while while he kicks off his library sciences courses here at UIUC, so that should be a source of adventure too; hope I feel nearly normal again by then.

Friday’s sofa road trip wasn’t without its challenges, but we made it, and the sofa fit in the car, and we got a bonus Hang-It-All, so it all turned out alright in the end. The biggest surprise was that the sofa is blue; I had thought it was dark grey. Adding another color to our small and already somewhat colorful living space sounded risky to me but I think it worked out alright. The blue is starting to grow on me anyway.

See our new living room pictures here — the first sixteen are the new ones.

We’ve been looking for a new couch forever, and always had a secret wish for the right Eames sofa compact to happen along eBay or Craigslist. Today, it just might have. Pictured above is what we will hopefully spend a road-trippy Friday getting from Hudsonville, Michigan (right near Zeeland, home of Herman Miller!).
Updates to follow…

Before I left for my week in Elgin, we went to Seven Saints to try their famous sweet potato fries and variety of ’sliders.’ (Brandon should appreciate that.)
I must say they have perfected the art of sweet potato -> fry transformation. The sliders were un-amazing but maybe I just ordered the wrong ones. There was a salmon one I was curious about, so maybe for round 2.

I am in Elgin for the week house- and dog-sitting with my brother, combing the Chicago Craigslist for any cool mid century items that show up. I will do a post in the near future about our Craigslist finds, we have been really fortunate. One of my Craiglist idols is Jenn Ski, who scored a womb chair and an arc lamp for nearly nothing (the womb chair had been described as a “disco chair”… that’s the kind of creative search that scores you the awesome stuff).

Mizmo is developing great taste in furniture; lately his main hangout in the living room is underneath our LCM. Good kitty.