Yesterday’s post was more than a little consumer-whorey, so I wanted to offer something up in my defense.

My first apartment, when I was 19 or so, was shared with Carmen Spray, who is, in addition to an accomplished fan artist, also very accomplished at living on the cheap.

We got a 2-bedroom apartment, I moved everything from my parents house into my bedroom, she moved the contents of her old studio into her bedroom, and we had a living room that was, well, pretty barren. We had a couch and a TV, a couple of drafting tables, and a whole lotta empty.

Anyway, to get back to the living on the cheap thing, one day she brings home a coffee table that she’s rescued from our complex dumpster, and suddenly we have an actual table that we can, you know, put food on, in the aforementioned barren front room.

When she moved out, I inherited the coffee table, and it’s lasted with me through the better part of two decades and several moves before being left out, today, in front of another dumpster in hopes that someone new will rescue it and give it a home.

And THAT’S what I replaced, with a shiny new LACK from Ikea, for the princely amount of $29.99.

I think I’m justified. 🙂