Up very early on this Friday, ~0600, after a fit full sleep on the air mattress. It wasn't uncomfortable, although I believe we should have inflated it more fully for the 1st time, I just had work swirling around in my head!
We still had a lot to accomplish on this day to get Conor's apartment sorted out including waiting for IKEA's delivery service to deliver his new couch sometime between 0900-1300. Took a shower and by 0630, Conor had rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and, was ready to head out to Sam's Club with me. We left Rosie behind to catch IKEA, just in case our shopping went long.
Made good time, Sam's isn't that far away, and parked in a very sparsely populated lot. This was Conor's first experience accessing Sam's way before general access, 0700, and he was duly impressed. It's why I pay a little extra on the membership dues... it's quiet, no crowds, no rush - pleasant. :-)
Spent most of our time debating the merits of mid-sized HD TVs and finally decided on a 43" Vizio Smart LCD TV (our early birthday present for Conor). Although we didn't find everything we wanted, we also picked up: a big fan that will fit into a corner of his apartment; a portable, collapsible dolly; trash bags; peanut butter, and; ketchup. Check out was a breeze and we loaded up the SUV.
I would normally not agree to shopping at Target but, being this was an extraordinary circumstance, caved, decided to head that way to pick up as much as we could on our remaining shopping list. Along the way, we stopped at a Bank of America so that Conor could deposit a check, bought $20 worth of gas and, hit a Starbucks in a Mall - found via Yelp - for coffee and pastries for breakfast. Didn't spend alot of time in Target and picked up everything we were looking for except for lamps. Added a small microwave, iron & board and, a hot water pot to our SUV load of goods we packed back to his apartment. Got back to his place by 0910 and unloaded the SUV. No IKEA delivery.
At 0945 Rosie and Conor headed back out to find lamps that would fit in this apartment without taking up too much space. I stayed back to catch IKEA. They returned about an hour later - still no IKEA - and we worked on building lamps. The lamps were very tall and narrow and took a bit of constructing to get set-up. With that chore done, I took our 3 'if it fits, it ships' post office mailers out in search of a Post Office.
Side note: My garmin, showed quite a few post offices nearby but, the first 3 I drove to were either closed down or converted to some other business. A bit sad to see how much the US Postal Service has had to retract in these tough economic times and with other complementary competitors i.e., UPS and Fedex, eating in to classic mail service. Not to mention the use of the world wide web to move things around and communicate.
Finally found on my 4th attempt, the Torrence Post Office, dropped off our packages to be delivered to Long Valley, NJ, for just about $46 and, got back to Grant Ave, apartment #8B at ~1315. Still NO IKEA. Since we were all a bit peckish, Conor and I went out to get lunch at a nearby Italian deli, Guiliano's. Brought back a couple of meatball subs and an anti-pasta salad. They were excellent! As we started to dig in, heard a knock on the door and, lo and behold, IKEA delivery!
Time, 1415, the delivery guys were over a hour late and we'd just wasted 1/2 a day waiting for a delivery that was promised earlier. The overall communication between IKEA dispatch and us was abysmal! Had Rosie and Conor not called IKEA, several times and got put on extended holds, we'd have had no idea what was going on and even then it was unclear as to how late the delivery guys would be. The actual guys on site got caught up at another location and went long. They claim to have informed their dispatch who, didn't tell us. I fully expect Conor to get a refund on the $59 cash he paid out to have it delivered next day.
The 3 seat couch comes in pieces... I guess that shouldn't have been a surprise to me based on all of the experience we have with IKEA but, for $500 I was expecting a fully formed couch to roll into Conor's apartment! NOT! We had to build it. Everything was going pretty well with the build until we got to the footings. Three of them went on just fine, the 4th had stripped threads and there was nothing to be done. So, Conor went out with Rosie to find a hardware store to buy a tap set. They went in search of a Lowes/Home Depot but found an Ace Hardware store. Both of them were very impressed with how knowledgeable and helpful the Ace guy was and they left with not only a tap set but also, the knowledge of how to use it. Applied it to the stripped footing hole and, ta da, the 4th footing went on just fine. He now has a very nice, 3 person couch with a throw rug between the couch and his new house warming gift, the TV. Of course he has no service at the moment. :-)
It was now ~1600 and we were all itching to get out and access some Internet. So, we headed out in search of a good Starbucks. We took the long route via a quick tour of main street Manhattan Beach, Conor's very recent stomping grounds and then to his office building and through his parking lot in El Segundo. Manhattan Beach is gorgeous and right on the Pacific Ocean particularly on this day as the weather has really turned awesome. Definitely easy to see the allure of living there and, how expensive it would be! The Northrop Grumman complex is huge and Conor's office is just 1 of the buildings there. I did not realize, until Conor pointed it out, that the F-35 'Lightning IIs' production line is right there! Very cool.
Found a Starbucks that looked lonely at the corner of Douglas and Rosecrans near the Northrop Grumman facilities. Parked and went in. We got comfortable at a table and logged on to their free Internet... I do love Starbucks! We all got beverages. I tried their iced green tea for the first time and it was very refreshing. They lace it with a hint of mint. Rosie got a call from Meg... she and Mike had just landed back in Newark from their week in Aruba. It was very nice hearing from her. They had a great time and we were happy for them. Will catch back up with her later. We all surfed for about 45mins. During that time we decided that we'd go and catch the movie, Brave, at one of many theatres around.
Left Starbucks at 1800 for Arclight Beach Cities Theatres - it's quite huge, no surprise for this part of the country - in Manhattan Beach. Bought our tickets for the 1830 showing of Brave via a kiosk for $14.50/adult and went in. Bought some sodas, popcorn, candy and took our comfortable seats in the theatre.
We thoroughly enjoyed the 1+45 animated movie! Was over at 2015. On this particular day, we dropped off Conor at his place at 2030 and we drove on over to our hotel, the Four Points Sheraton, right off the airport for the evening. Got to the hotel at 2100 after putting another $30 of gas in the SUV at a Phillips 66 along the way. While I parked Rosie checked us in. Our room, 322. We got ourselves situated in the room and called it a night after I jotted down some journal notes.
A busy day. We were very happy to have accomplished everything we wanted to do for Conor and we still have tomorrow, Saturday, left to spend some quality time with him. Our goals tomorrow:
Visit and tour the U.S.S. Iowa, BB-61, in San Pedro and to say our goodbyes to Conor! Gonna be fun and sad at the same time.
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