Gearing up at Ikea.

Took my third trip (during this visit, that is) to Ikea today. I had to put the finishing touches on my wedding gift to my office-mate M2. We wound up getting a ton more stuff, including bright red curtains for the office at home and bright yellow ones for the bedroom in the summer, a dozen new glasses, and various other goodies. We are very lucky that the seats fold down in the Mazda3 and that I always insist on hatchbacks. Very lucky. When we went back to Illinois after the holidays, the Focus was riding low in the back, since we had so many Ikea finds and Christmas gifts and other things to take home. Hopefully, it won't be so bad this time. We also found a nice quilt the other night, but not at Ikea. My wife has been wanting one for a long time. She actually made me one once, for my nineteenth birthday, just before she went away to college -- a long time ago, really. It had various symbols of our individual heritages and of things we shared today. But I would not dare actually put that handmade treasure on our bed. It's too precious. Tomorrow is Hon Fest in Hampden, a neighborhood in northern Baltimore City, where I grew up. There is a nice chap in my department at the university from Baltimore. We were talking one day, and he asked where in Baltimore I was from. I told him that I grew up my whole life before college in Hampden, and he said, "Oh, you're from the real Baltlmore!" I suppose he's right. I'll bet there will be plenty of people and things to get some photos of tomorrow. More on all of that later, for sure.