blog.olya

thanks to my loving friends and coworkers my chair addiction is steadily being fed.

first, work allowed me to take an eames chair home. they didn’t need it.

then, scarf gave me a book of modern chairs.

(while meanwhile everyone else maha patiently listened after i called say “OMG OMG I SCORED A BERTOIA FOR $20!!)

(and my dear boyfriend fiance husband tolerated my putting said bertoias in our living room - and actually thought its a good idea!)

anyway.

third, work gave me another 70s chair, and now i hooked at least 4 more people into discussing the history of chairs with me.

aside: the building i work in was built in the 50s-60s-70s. the aesthetic is late mid-century-modern. there is a lot of side eames shell chairs floating around, teak furniture, old school chairs with great lines and awesome casters. whats hilarious, is that while i’m just happy to see this design gorgeousness, the rest look at it as “old furniture”. i have never realized more clearly how big of a gap there is between what is happening in the “design world” (not the high end; but the more common ikea-target-west elm-craigslist shopping people who like to discuss design on many various blogs) and what is happening in the “real world” (the people who buy furniture without having a “visual” of what they are looking for. or alternatively, people who don’t agree with me ;p ). regardless of this gap, the fact that i own an eames chair (broken-ish and old, but totally repairable) makes me eternally grateful to our building manager.

so, one of the chairs i had in my cubicle (i had 3 which almost became 4, but they forced me to give up one. which is probably for the best.) had to be moved out to another guy’s cubicle until they throw it out (oh the pain, please let me not imagine how the machine will crush it!). out of curiousity we flipped it upside down to check year made. made in burlingont, brought to mississauga from the toronto office. and a cleaning tag. “shampooed and vacuumed in 1973″. 34 years at least. and its more solid than some of the 5-10 year old office chairs we have. that is why i love old chairs so much.

anyway, so this is to explain how interested i have become in design, and chairs in particular lately. so this is so awesome that i have no words.

so after many months of planning to do it i finally went on etsy to check it out.

current finds, in order from really most wanted to really wanted:
Set of 4 Napkins in Tuquoise Linen with Brown Branches Print

Set of Four Turquoise Cereal Bowls

too lazy to save/upload for these. they are cute necklaces.
silver hedgehog necklace
tiny charm (necklace)
wish bone (necklace)

damn. etsy is neat. (it takes a lot of time to find what you want though; there is almost too much variety).

about a month ago i spied a garage sale on the street parallel to my parents’ house. my mom, my dog and i stopped by to see whats what. among the hockey memorabilia there was a table.

it looked like this one:

and cost $100. (and he said he’s willing to bargain).

i had no space for it; mom didn’t like it. we left, me with a pained heart.

in that month, after never having seen that table before, i started seeing it everywhere. (and it is unlikely a selective attention as i really do obsess over the wire-frame designed furniture more than i should.)

first there was this.

after about 20 other occurrences, i research our new chairs (tempted to ebay more… sidenote: i can possibly ebay some chairs for around $250 that would cost $1.5-$700 new. i am sad.)

and find this link. i’m not sure it works for you; but for me the single, lonely recommendation is that freaking table.

which wouldn’t have fit anyway.

ARGH.

i picked up a new pair of eye glasses today. i’m loving them. tim called them “high tech”.
(also got the lenses replaced in my emo-pair, so that now i can actually see through them!)

when we were in the opticians i asked for a quick check up. while my mom and i were waiting for him to come in, we took turns sitting in the chair and trying to read the eye chart in the other end of the room (like 3 meters away). she could see until the 9 and somewhat 10th line for the linked eyechart as an example. i… couldn’t really read the first. like, that big letter up top. holy cow.
in good news, my vision did not change in around 5 years now! woo!

this week should bring some exciting updates. all in all, life is pretty goshdarn great. kudos scarf, i even have a flickr account now. makes me feel special, for the low low price of $25/year! i should just give someone else the money next year and have it work out that way.

comment feed is here

schedule keeping and goals

so, to sum up about a week of schedule keepin.
writing things down helps an enormous amount; i’m considering getting a smal moleskin just for that purpose. (maha gifted me with a notebook sized one which is fantabulous for everything). writing them down online? not much; actually. while i’d like to think you all care and eagerly check my blog wanting to see what i am doing, in reality i know its a really boring list of what am i doing. i can be funny! or try to, anyway.

what i am having difficulty with is how to determine what are my medium-long term goals. i.e. in between 3 months from now to 3 weeks from now
i can see my goals for the next 1-2 weeks, and for next 1/2 year to a year. i find goals to be motivating, and incredibly, err, helpful, in achieving things.

i guess that’s pretty intuitive, but, still, how to figure out whats my goal for 3 weeks from now?

writing down a list of what to do weekly is nice; although i still have a mental and partially physical “general” to do list that i gotta implement. i’ve been considering trying to fully swtich to the GTD method.

GTD is Get Things Done, written (I believe) by David Allen. it seems to be a highly popular way to create structure and organize your life. the only thing i am lacking though is a 13 folder file. i don’t want to make it a physical one, as visceral feedback is far better for me… i think. anyone heard of this before? tried it?

must we have personality?

i can’t remember where i found this, but its tempting to print and hang this in our bathroom. hilarious!

apartment design

i buzzed everyone ears off i think, but i just needneedneed to talk more about this. its like travel. i return thinking “i’ve had enough” and 3 months later i’m itching to go somewhere else!

SO in the 6 months or so that i’ve started living with tim i’ve (first) bugged him enormously about redecorating, improving, renovating, designing, purchasing, arranging, cleaning, until one fateful day he left to california and i renovated a bunch of things without really … telling him. so, now tim has agreed that not only the apartment has potential, that it is this potential that is possible to show and is WORTH showing as we’ll be living there for a while.

so, now my daydreams are mostly about wall colors, lamps and couches. among numerous other things.

the big reno happened end of february. it is not even a month, and we alredy rearranged the living room (there is an actual LIVING ROOM now). and now i itch to paint the living room, office areas, bathroom, kitchen. i itch to find lights for all the nooks that they will be so perfect in. i itch to organize the large closet so that when you walk into it, it feels like a neat space. i itch to get rid of my plastic drawers, and figure out how consolidate all the things that i have in them now into neater, prettier, smaller, invisible containers/shelves/whatever solutions. i can’t wait to get to chinatown and find the baskets for the bathroom shelves, and hang art in it. i can’t wait to find the perfectest shower curtain, and bath mat(s), and finally put the mop into the aforementioned tobe organized closet so that bathroom is just NEAT. i can’t wait for tim to have his own light at the desk, and for reading lights in living room to be convinient for all. i daydream of carpets and pillows and blankets and warmth and fuzzy that it will be SO VERY SOON.

i KNOW how great this feels. after painting the bedroom with maha’s and alina’s help, and organizing all the closets there (which are STILL ORGANIZED, w00t w00t), walking into that room became a 1000 times better experience - even when it is messy!

i want bold color! and light! and a pretty bathroom. and i think those are the things i want first.

so now that i’ve bored everyone away…

i’m getting a haircut tomorrow WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE