Irene had some of her medical tests last week. Included in that was a radiograph- basically, you are injected with radioactive stuff, then you have to wait for three hours before the actual scan is taken. It shows bones, bone density, and bone lesions quite well which is why Irene gets it every three months or so.
This means we had three hours to fill with stuff, and one of the things we did was go furniture shopping. I wanted a few odds and ends for my den space: a table for our puzzling, a recliner for gaming, and some lighting. We got two of three done as the lights they had were not what we wanted. Maybe they’ll have more stock later in the year.
A puzzling table
A table for jigsaw puzzling is a hard one to get and to fit in the space we have. Due to our cat and dog infestation, jigsaw puzzles are secured in a folding felt puzzling board when not actively in progress. The puzzling board is a compact 30 inches by 24 inches give or take when ‘closed’. But to unfold the thing when the game is afoot requires something approaching 5 feet by 4 feet: a giant table indeed. I imagined finding something smaller that could be made suitable.
What we settled on was almost exactly the size of the puzzle board thingy we have. The table was half price, and had a ‘lift up’ section you could put a laptop computer on or otherwise use as an elevated table. There goes half of my floor space, made worse by the huge amount of space the adjacent comfy chair takes up. But it works, and Irene likes it, so here we are.
The second comfy chair
I have two really nice Secret Lab gaming chairs in my den. But I have found that they are not really that great for the kind of console gaming I do about 70% of the time. Controller in hand, I want to lean back and be suspended, but the Secret Lab chairs are firm and rather upright- this has actually caused me no small amount of pain due to my aggravated sciatic nerve.
What I was looking for was a compact recliner with a ‘suspension’ type seating arrangement. Basically, a hammock for your back side. What I got is pretty close to that: narrow arms so it doesn’t take up too much space, suspension seat, and unexpectedly an electric reclining mechanism. It also rocks, but only when the seat is upright: when you lean back it locks in place.
And yes, it is covered in real leather.
Is it stylish?
Nothing about my den is ‘stylish’, although I do aim to keep things tidy and for it to feel like a space I want to be in. It is where I go when I want to write a longer blog entry or read a book quietly, my gaming area, the spot I meditate in. It is not decorated very well, but it has a few odds and ends that make it clearly my space.
The jigsaw puzzling area is sort of me carving out a spot for Irene and I to share the space, which is important to me too. I’m not trying to hide, just have a place I can put my own mark on. A place I can burn my dang incense in if I want to.
One day I’d like to have some custom millwork and/or carpentry done to make the space seem more ‘old’ instead of modern, but I have a few things I want to do to the space first. We are talking a decade long plan here, so a chair and a honking-great gigantic table cause no ripples in the space-time continuum for me. They just add to the quirkiness that sort of matches who I am anyway.
