How to assemble a desk
Categories: life-and-musings
Date: 18 November 2007 12:34:38
Or possibly how not to, I'm not quite sure. First, choose your desk. For maximum stress and wibbling, choose something that has a heavy and fragile top that is nearly as wide as you are tall. Ensure that your desk comes with instructions that consist of three exploded diagrams on a piece of A5 paper.
Pick a morning to start assembly when you are in the house on your own, and have, for instance, no big strong housemates around to help you lug enormous bits of glass about.
Follow diagrams. Assemble desk. Polish your mucky fingerprints off the glass. Start loading desk with computer equipment. Discover PC tower is just a fraction (about 1/8 of an inch) too tall to fit into its little shelf.
Sigh deeply.
Take top off desk (pleaseGodpleaseGod don't let me drop it, I'm on concrete). Lower PC tower into shelf through top, thanking everything you hold dear that you backed everything up to an external hard drive last night. Because, as manoeuvres go, it's a jolly ticklish one, involving knees.
Put top back on desk. Polish your mucky fingerprints off the glass. Start plugging everything in. Discover that broadband modem cable doesn't quite reach from where broadband modem is hiding to broadband modem socket on back of PC. Try to move broadband modem. Realise that with your talent for tripping over your own two feet, having phone cables trailing round Rosamundi Towers is a foolish and dangerous move, and you're going to have to turn the desk around.
Swear. Quietly.
Unplug everything. Take top off desk (again. PleaseGodpleaseGod don't let me drop it, I'm on concrete). Take PC tower out of shelf. Turn desk around, so PC shelf is on the left instead of the right. Lower PC tower into shelf through top.
Put top back on desk. Again. Polish your mucky fingerprints off the glass. Start plugging everything in. Again. Breathe a massive sigh of relief that all your cables now reach where they should, and all is sweetness and light. Wonder if you should go down the PDSA and get a white cat.
Also, take the opportunity to give your collection of program CDs and instruction manuals a thorough pruning, and decide that it is no longer necessary to keep the instructions and drivers for the first digital camera you ever bought (a 2MP Minolta that you no longer have).