RBOC: Arrival in Cornstate

• I now live in Cornstate!  Seriously, some of these stereotypes of an abundance of maize in the Midwest have some truth to them.  It's everywhere.  The city I live in isn't necessarily defined by corn, but the state at large sure is.  Hence that particular pseudonym.  I'm still working on one for the city.
• Many thanks to Fie Upon This Quiet Life and her husband for putting me up for the night in their swanky, sophisticated digs!  (Not kidding.  It's awesome.)  I was so tired out after a day of cleaning and driving that I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow — even though there was a big portrait of William Shakespeare staring down at me from the wall.
• Fie and partner also served me a scrumptious dinner when I arrived.  One of the featured dishes was, of course, corn.  :)
• It's fucking hotter than a fucking motherfucker.  I continue to despise this heat wave, and global warming in general.  It's bad enough having to haul around boxes of books while sweating buckets, but I'm actually more irritated by having to drive around the area to one furniture store after another, looking for cheap yet not-so-crappy furniture, while the sun beats down on my car and me.  It doesn't help that these stores are all in strip malls, either.  Strip malls are not friendly places.
• Neither are big-box stores.  Blech.
• One the one hand, I'm going to move again in two years, so I can't really purchase the most beautiful, durable, heavy furniture around — I really want to limit myself to stuff that I could conceivably haul away with me.  On the other hand, I'm reaching a point of stubborn, bourgeois refusal to buy the cheapest, flimsiest stuff available to spare myself money and time.  Bourgeois consumption appears to be a progressive syndrome.  
• I'm making the best of this tendency, though.  By forcing myself to comparison-shop, I found a wonderful, lower-back-friendly bed for less than half of retail price.    
• I also bought a discontinued model* of office desk at a big discount.  Since that would require a $100 delivery charge obviating the discount, I figured that I could get a cheap piece or two of living room furniture.  After searching exhaustively with a very patient salesperson, I found a decent enough sofa-loveseat combo for $500.  It's not the leather upholstery that my inner contemptible bourgeois fuck craves, but it looks nice anyway.  With all of that delivered in one go, it's a good deal. Won't have any of it until next week, but such is the way of furniture shopping.
• On top of all those needs that keep me driving around in the heat, I won't have internet access in my home until next week, either.  My office at CBU isn't air-conditioned right now – I think they turned it down low on the assumption that no one would be in the building until August – so it's not exactly a pleasant workspace.  After hauling a ton of books into that office, periodically wiping the sweat from my face so I wouldn't drip on the texts, I was not inclined to stay there to work.  Guess I have to keep café-surfing for another week.  
• And work I must!  I have to give my (potential) editor a formal response to the reader reports by tomorrow.  Yikes!  Gonna be a heavily caffeinated evening.
• Did I mention that it's hot?  How hot is it, Koshary?  Weeeeeelllll, it's so hot that the cover of the left headlight on my car fell off the goddamn car last week before I left Ghosttown, after the adhesive holding it in place melted.  I am not making this up.  I didn't even realize this was possible.  I was frankly astonished that I made it all the way to Fie's house without some wayward dragonfly zooming into the exposed bulb and exploding it.  Gotta find a VW dealership next week and see about fixing this.

*Extra chuckle for you all: the store discontinued the model because it sold poorly in comparison to other office furniture sets: it has a metal frame supporting the wooden top, and true bourgeois consumerist fucks disdain anything other than a pure wooden desk.  Suckers!!