PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: The 5 x 5 Ikea EXPEDIT bookcase does not fit in an Acura TSX.

This information would have been a little more useful to me yesterday, before we purchased said bookcase and hauled it out to the parking lot.

Fortunately, Ikea offers home delivery. Now, all we have to do is assemble the thing.

OH MICKEY, YOU'RE SO FINE: The Eliot Spitzer scandal -- what does it mean for the NEA?

Good 89, Evil 78.

PICTURED: Our living room and kitchen. Yes, I am a tad obsessed. We've lived in the house for five months now, and although the previous owners' cinnamon-spice living room was fine for fall and their creative-but-poorly-executed gray/red dining room was bearable for Christmas, it's time to impose our personality on the main-floor walls.

Our personality is clearly beige. But the perfect shade has been elusive. My husband-slash-test-painter has been infinitely patient as I've handed him sample after sample and sat around frowning and squinting at the walls.

My salvation (or downfall) has been myperfectcolor.com, where they'll mix you a small can of any color and send it to you really, really fast. Benjamin Moore has little sample pots, but only for a fraction of their colors, and the pots are really tiny. Myperfectcolor will mix any color, and they give you enough paint to really slather some on. They use Benjamin Moore bases; I'm not sure I'd trust their color matches for other brands. But we're strictly a Benjamin Moore household anyway -- or so Jorge, our painter, decrees. (And if I allowed myself to buy another brand's color wheel it would extend this process at least another month.)

The personal color viewer on Benjamin Moore's website has also been very helpful -- and surprisingly accurate in depicting how big patches of color actually look on walls. It predicted, for example, that Elephant Gray was going to seem purple, despite its subtle smokiness on the chip. And indeed, two brushstrokes into the test, my husband exclaimed, "This is purple! Elephants aren't purple!" I had such high hopes for Elephant Gray.

PEGGY NOONAN on John Edwards: "Mr. Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can't."

HOW FANTASTIC is this video, showing the making of the Band Aid classic "Do They Know It's Christmas?"



Have I posted this before? It seems like I should have, because this is the second year I've been obsessed with it, but perhaps not. Phil Collins, Sting, George Michael, Bono, Simon Le Bon -- they're all there with their crazy 80s 'dos. Such cheesy goodness.

You can read all about the recording of the song (including how Boy George had to be rushed over on the Concorde to sing his bit) here.

JUST A FEW years ago, I thought that having groceries delivered (groceries! delivered!) was the height of yuppie decadence.

But our first Peapod delivery arrived this morning, and, well, my sentiments have undergone so material a change, since the period to which I've alluded, as to make me receive with gratitude and pleasure my seltzer water and Cheerios from the Peapod man.

Instead of spending my precious Sunday afternoon dealing with the frustration and tedium of the grocery store and associated parking lot, I'm heading to Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte and the New York Times.