the ticking of that hideous clock!
I forgot to mention yesterday one more item we picked up at IKEA, and that was a clock. A real clock, that ticks and occasionally tocks. With some volume, actually, when everything else is quiet and you start to focus on it. It's not really hideous, though: in appearence it's rather nice in fact, especially for the $2.95 we paid for it. We were hoping that we'd be able to get the case open and draw on the paper insert on which are printed the numbers and little hashes, but that proved difficult, so for now we've just stuck the thing up on the wall in an as-is fashion. It's still sure nice to have a clock that's actually visible from nearly all the room. I still can't see any clocks from my side of the bed, though.
Oh yeah, and the ticking. Well, it isn't really that bad... Leah actually said last night she kind of likes it. And I didn't mind it at night either; it was just a little annoying in the morning, because I didn't want to turn on music to drown it out out of politeness to the housemates. So the innexorable 60bpm pulse kind of drove itself into my head for a while, as I tried to work. And while it is nice to be able to tell the time, I have my computer for that! Although, I do benefit by Leah being able to tell the time without asking me, so when she's on the other side of the room getting ready for work I won't have to be calling out the time every two minutes like... like... like some sort of time-telling robot gone berserk. Or something.