I love lamp...

(Ron Burgundy: Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?

Brick: I love lamp... I love... lamp.)

Seriously -- I really do love my new Crate and Barrel lamps! I've been wanting lamps for the living room for a while now -- we have lights in the ceiling of the living room, and they do a reasonable job of lighting the room... HOWEVER, the ceiling is two stories above the floor. And while a couple of those lights may be accessible from the second-floor balcony that overlooks our living room, there are at least two lightbulbs that will never be changed if they burn out unless we call in some sort of lightbulb-changing superhero with a gigantic ladder...

He swooped into the house, dressed in shiny boots and a fluttering cape, and told everyone to stand aside as he deftly deployed his unwieldy two-story ladder... in a scant few nimble steps, he reached the ceiling and unscrewed the dim, long-dead lightbulb, replacing it with a brand new one from his trusty utility belt... as the glow from the newly-restored lighting fixture illuminated his triumphant-yet-humble visage, he leapt from the gigantic ladder and scooped it up in a seemingly effortless movement, pausing at the door only long enough to say, "wherever the injustice of dim lighting threatens a night of novel-reading... I'll be there."  

Yeah, so in lieu of THAT guy, we decided it'd be more practical to buy first-floor-level lamps with easily-changable lightbulbs.

We found some online at Crate and Barrel that we really liked, so a few weeks ago we headed down to the Austin store and found the same lamps on display in the showroom. But when we asked for two table lamps and one floor lamp, we were told they only had ONE table lamp in stock. So we sighed and decided to be patient and try again some other time. Rick called them on Friday morning, and they happened to have exactly TWO table lamps in stock. Of course, they refused to hold them for us (really? You can't even hold them for an HOUR?), so we raced down to the store and threw ourselves onto the lamps to protect them from predators. (I may be slightly exaggerating...)

Anyway, we finally have lamps in the living room, which means the lights in the ceiling can have a rest for a while. Maybe if we hardly ever use them, they'll never burn out...  

Pay no attention to the undecorated Christmas tree in the corner... I managed to put away all my decorations this weekend, but still need to dismantle the tree and put it back in its box in the garage. (Actually, I rather like having the tree in the corner... it makes me feel like my living room is in a pine forest...)

 

My little computer area...

 

And lamp #2 on the other side of the couch...

And these next two pictures have nothing to do with the lamps, but they were on the same card when I downloaded the pictures:

 

Awwwww... kitties in the sun... (and they're getting along -- usually Piva is annoying Allegro, and Allegro is hissing at Piva... but something about a sunbeam just turns them both into mush...)

 

And c'mon -- how cute is that face?? :) It almost makes up for the fact that she woke me up at 4:30 this morning because she wanted water from the sink... crazy cat... The only good thing about that is that I was awake soon enough to knock out 4.1 miles on the treadmill.

The bad thing about it is that I've been ready for a nap since 9 am... yaaaaawn...