I sat on an $11,466 sofa

I can barely believe I am about to say publicly that I had a thoroughly enjoyable time ..... shopping. If you know me, and even if you don't know me that well but you recently read my Ikea post, you know that I don't enjoy shopping. For pretty much anything (except maybe Williams Sonoma cookware, which is actually true, and not just a way to get this hilarious send-up of the catalog that Karen showed me into my blog. (Aside: I hate catalog and online shopping just as much and potentially even more than in-person shopping.) (Another aside: I just remembered that I love bookstores.) So aside from bookstores and potentially Le Creuset, which I don't actually buy—I just swoon over) I hate shopping. And so it comes as a surprise that Josh and I spent a thoroughly delightful late afternoon and evening shopping for sofas. We had made a list of stores that sell eco-friendly sofas, which I know doesn't answer all the questions that this article brought up, but at least helps, and we mapped out a plan to get to all of them in some reasonable order, from Soho to midtown. But then we missed the B train (when is a blog post going to go by without my commenting on the B train?) and hopped on the Q train and reversed the order of our entire trip.

I had never even experienced, let alone noticed/heard of the huge fanciness that is ABC Carpet and Home, but it was on the list, and so we went in. Five floors of home decor—already the kind of place that would normally send me running for the door, but I was committed to this project, and so we went to the top floor, and started to explore. We saw a $900 that was marked down to $650 if you bought the floor model, and a bunch of stuff that was too ugly to even consider. We kept wandering and found a couch that looked excellent, and was super super comfortable. When I picked up the price tag, I laughed out loud. That great-looking, super-comfortable couch cost $11,466. I mean, what do you do with that, except maybe sit on it a little longer and take a phone call?

The rest of the trip stayed pretty enjoyable, and even brought us to a potential purchase, but here's what I might have loved the best: the first sighting of daylight savings lights.