…again.

Many of you know that I get most of my crap, er, furniture off Craigslist. It's a pretty valuable resource for cheap ass people like me, though there are a fair amount of creepy people on there as evidenced by the Personals.

Anyway, I've been intermittently searching for a chair for my room, and I have my eye on an IKEA Poang chair. I feel obligated to buy IKEA stuff not only because it's nice and affordable, but we're talking about a company run by my (Swedish) heritage here. Plus it'll match all the other IKEA furniture I have sitting around my room.

The Poang chair isn't huge, and is just the right size to fit in my room. Currently I strike all sorts of awkward poses on my IKEA bed with its IKEA mattress made up with IKEA sheets to watch the TV on my IKEA dresser without falling asleep.

Back to Craigslist. Like I said, I'm cheap, so finding a Poang chair for $50 would make my day. Today I saw a posting for a $50 chair and e-mailed the owner, half expecting it to have been snatched up by now. Well, apparently the guy who was supposed to buy it fell off the face of the earth, so it's still available… but there was one catch:

"The last guy had offered me $65." (says CL seller)

I e-mail her back and say, "I can pick it up tonight, but I was only hoping to spend $50 as that's what you have listed in the ad." He/she e-mails me back and says they'll take $60.

Okay, from what I remember in Used Stuff Negotiating 101 (as taught by my dad, aka "Cheap Charlie"), normally one bargains DOWN from the advertised price, not up.

I haven't e-mailed them back yet, as it seems kind of pointless. If I wanted to spend $60, I might as well spend $90 on a brand new chair that hasn't been used (and possibly peed on by someone's cat), or fork out a bit more on this cute Lillberg chair that someone has listed for $75.

Maybe I should just buy a folding lawn/lounge chair and just be done with it. I wonder if anyone on CL is selling one…

Va. HOT Lane Project to Start Early Next Year

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year, HOT means "High-Occupancy Toll," a sort of spin-off of HOV, aka "High-Occupancy Vehicle." Instead of have 2-3 people per car in order to use these special lanes (which usually equate to faster travel as it seems 95% of DCers travel alone), people pay a toll to use dedicated lanes for express travel.

Having seen the gridlock that ensues on the Beltway around Tysons (and thankfully, I haven't had to sit in it), the idea seems like a good one, since cars will be a little more spread out as each car that goes into the HOT lane means one less on the regular 4-lane highway. I doubt it'll make a huge difference in the traffic flow among the normal lanes, but any sort of effort should be considered a good one. In addition, HOV-3 vehicles travel free along with buses (which actually haven't had routes along the Beltway in a long time due to the incredible traffic).

However, this quote worries me:

State officials said that all Beltway lanes will be kept open through rush hours and that road closures will happen only at night and on weekends. But they conceded that drivers will face delays… the Beltway project will profoundly affect traffic into the retail and office destination of Tysons Corner.

This means that traffic may be pushed over onto Routes 123 and 7, aka the only way to get in and out of Tysons, aka major parts of my commute to work and the barn. :twitch: To give you an idea of what's expected in terms of travel, another article from the Post is titled Five-Year Forecast: Get Ready, Set . . . Sit.

Some critics who initially scorned HOT lanes as "Lexus lanes," saying that they favor the wealthy, have come around based on studies showing they are used in other states by people of all income levels.

Funny, I'd say we already have "Lexus Lanes" in place on 66 and the 95s - they're called HOV lanes, and the price of admission is (1) Hybrid car. For the rest of us who aren't so lucky, guess it's time to invest in an XM Radio subscription for having to wait.

On a more serious note, since bus routes along the beltway may be reopened, I'd rather spend my money on that (and also get one less car off the road) than the estimated $5-$6 to use the lanes. It's bad enough the Greenway is owned by the Mafia and has consistently ripped off the public ever since it was built by charging a flat rate of $3+ one-way… let's hope people don't get too focused on the HOT lanes and forget about the Greenway's plans to hike the rate in the coming years.

For the few of those who actually read this (and I'm pretty sure it's closer to 1 than 2), excuse the occasional blips in layout going on… the theme I used is from Wordpress v1 and a lot of the functions used are deprecated, so I need to go through and replace 'em with the new ones.

I haven't been really biking much this season for a few reasons - one, my beautiful Bianchi needs to be adjusted/re-componentatized (made up word) as it makes my shoulders and bum sore after 15 minutes, and two, the only place I can bike at the moment is on the bike trails around my house. I'm sure you're thinking, "What's wrong with off-street trails? They're wonderful and car-free and la la la…", but to be perfectly honest, I'm not a huge fan. The trails around here tend to be crowded with people, so I can never get a good pace going without having to slam on the brakes every few minutes to pass someone safely… or my biggest pet peeve, avoiding bikers who ride two abreast coming the opposite direction. (Incredibly inconsiderate, not to mention dangerous. )

So in that sense, I'd rather be sharing the road with cars and not with dogs, runners, and other bikers who are plugged into their ipods (also incredibly dangerous behavior - that means you Harish. ) On a side note, I think walking/running with headphones is fine, as generally you can react a little more quickly than someone on two wheels - plus those types tend to stick to sidewalks when off the trail. Bikers, on the other hand, ride with traffic, which puts them a much more precarious situation when on the road - lessened hearing and perceptiveness. If it's illegal to drive a car wearing headphones, then the same should apply to bikers on the road.

</stepping off soapbox>

Anyway, the whole point of my post. As a result of me not biking as much, I've been doing a lot of walking (running is something I truly suck at). The other day I walked past the park across from the Arlington Science Focus school and spotted some swings. I think it's been years since I last sat on a swingset, so I beelined it over there and sat down. Needless to say, I had to scrunch my legs up so they wouldn't drag on the ground, and I couldn't go too high as the bars would break or the entire thing would probably topple over.

If you happen to come across a swingset in the near future, I highly suggest taking a ride. It'll make you feel like you're 6 again, even if it's only for a few minutes. Just don't go too high.

I'm trying to book a flight home for Thanksgiving, and it's proving to be a little harder than last year. My sis is working Thanksgiving evening, so my parents want to do dinner on Friday. Okay, cool. That means I'll fly out Thanksgiving day and back to DC Saturday or Sunday. (Hopefully Saturday… CT is about 20 times more depressing than DC in the winter.)

Anyway, I head over to three different sites to see what's out there: Orbitz, Travelocity, and SideStep. I'm playing around with the fares, as it seems the cheapest out there is pushing $350 and considering the last two times I flew home, I spent $200 and $128. (Then again that cheap fare was via BWI and Southwest, thus making it practically a 6 hour trip door to door, but hey, who's counting when you save $80?)

As I'm changing the dates around on Orbitz and scoffing at the 1 stop flights, I notice this a further down on the page:

Who in their right mind would pay $552 for an OVERNIGHT flight from CT to DC via Chicago when there are nonstop flights for almost half that price?! Apparently some people, as there's only "one ticket left!" at that price.

Oh yeah, and I love how the departing flight has you go south, switch planes, then backtrack north.