Those three weeks went by in a flash!

[liv]

Haven't managed to post anything since I started back at work after the New Year break. During that time I have:

• Visited angelofthenorth in Cardiff
• Hosted khalinche for a truly delightful couple of days
• Made a flying visit to Cambridge for jack's birthday / engagement party
• Heard a fascinating but rant-inducing talk by Simon Baron-Cohen
• Had a visit from my parents, uncle and grandmother
• Heard a really good talk about the Staffordshire Hoard
• Marked dozens of exam papers
• Seen an urban fox
• Helped represent the Jewish community at a whole bunch of Holocaust Memorial Day events
• Saw Star Wars for the first time (only the original film, now called episode IV, as yet)
• Continued going to the gym regularly with mathcathy

And jack has been staying with me, which is probably the biggest reason for spending less time on the internet than I sometimes like to.

I have built up a huge queue of posts in my head, including my thoughts about many of the above events, but I also want to post about:

• Reviews of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, Stephen King's The Liar and Jo Walton's Among Others
• Finishing the 10-day countdown meme
• Answering deep questions people have been posting about relationships
• Answering the final, giant FAQ about getting engaged, namely: what are the political implications of your decision?
• A retrospective of 2010; I always do that, every year, and although it'll be February by the time I get to it I'd feel bad about not doing it at all...

Sorry for the bullet points instead of a post. I am very much enjoying 2011 so far, but wow.

I also have a small logistical problem: there is a sofa. It belongs to my brother's partner. They (brother and SO) want it in the long term. Right now it does not physically fit in their living room. I have no sofa, but I do have plenty of space. My brother and sister-out-law would like to long-term lend me their sofa. Sofa is currently in their flat in Hackney. How do I get the sofa from there to my house in Stoke? I'm happy to throw money at the problem, but, you know, preferably not more than the value of the sofa!

Comments

On the fungibility of sofas

[hairyears]

What this needs is a Virtual Sofa Exchange...

If the sofa is a commodity item (say, a common IKEA design) it could take part in a two, three or n-part exchange of identical sofas in which fewer-than-n sofas actually move the while distance, and the end-point recipients receive locally-sourced sofas that are identical to the distant sofas.

Post this to er... Freecycle? Where do sofa donors and recipients signal their market positions on the Web? This is a problem of communication and intermediation, not long-distance logistics.

Assuming, of course, that the sofa in question is a commodity item and not a distinctive crafted work.

[liv]

LOL! You may well have a point here, and you certainly express it amusingly. My understanding is that Ms Poet wants this specific sofa to be part of her future home, for some reason which I don't know, but assume is good. I think maybe my next step should be to find out how much she does in fact want this very sofa, and therefore how much money / effort it's worth putting in to move it across the country. It's better than a basic IKEA / junk shop job, and it does come from her family, but it may well not be unique, all the same.