While sitting in the clinic office Friday afternoon, frantically typing on my iBook in order to get some serious work done, I chatted on and off with a few of the girls around me. "You know, I haven't even bought my books this semester," I said. "I need to, but with so much else in life to spend money on, I just can't afford my books right now."

(Truth be told, I'm not entirely keen to purchase my textbooks. Every semester, I fall for the bluff from the teachers that you MUST have all your books in order to make it in the class. I bite the bullet and shell out the hundreds of dollars in textbooks for each class. I then lug them to campus with me every single day because I know how important they are. Only I never use them. And I still learn. And my grades remain pretty good. In addition to this inconvenient factor, textbooks for grad school have gotten out of hand. I'm taking only two classes this semester, and between the two classes, I'm supposed to have SEVEN textbooks. Which, in the modern university market, translates to something like $600. And that's a conservative estimate. Fuck.)

"I just moved, too, so not only am I super broke, I don't have any furniture in my living room," I continued. "But you know, I think I'm going to go to IKEA this weekend. Obviously, I can't buy anything, but I can dream. YOU CAN'T KEEP ME FROM DREAMING."

By "can't buy anything," I really meant I couldn't buy anything unless I encountered a deal so good that there was no way to leave the place WITHOUT buying it. Up to now, the only place for me to sit down at home has been my desk chair, which is only comfortable for so long, i.e. until I reach the point at which my butt needs a full-body massage. I've been itching to get a couch, but Craigslist has proven fruitless thus far, and I can't quite afford a new one just yet. So when the IKEA voice directed me to the middle section of the self-serve warehouse floor to a plain yet comfy-looking armchair on sale, I only barely managed not to squeal in delight and football tackle the nearest sample chair.

Enter the delightful POÄNG chair (I'm not sure how to pronounce the brand name; I guess at it and it comes out sounding like "pwang", which while amusing, I'm fairly certain is wrong), part of IKEA's "Seize the Days" Sale. A chair for $59 instead of $89 automatically deserved my attention, and when I sat in the thing, one of the IKEA employees had to talk me down and convince me to stand up in order let another customer try it out, because I was not budging.

Thrilled is only the tip of the iceberg. I could barely make the purchase because I kept staring at the box in the shopping cart, and I suffered some pretty serious separation anxiety when I had to leave my new chair at the front of the building so I could get my car and bring it to the loading area. Now that we're home and I've put my fabulous chair together, I've been hard-pressed even to get up for a drink of water because it's just so damn comfortable.