So here was the situation: having recently bought a Princess Leia slave costume, slutty Hogwart's student costume and sexy Christmas elf costume, I found that I was entirely out of room in my costume drawer* and also that I didn't have any other drawers. It was obvious that I needed another dresser. (Also because if I had another dresser I might be able to fit all the buildings in my Christmas village into one scene. For real, this is how I pick out furniture.) And for that I would need to go to IKEA.
There was only one problem: I don't really have time to go to IKEA. IKEA is a magical world full of rooms you wish you lived in, unpronounceable words and meatballs. And they build them like a Vegas casino in that once you're inside they hide all the exits to prevent you from getting out. You can lose three days in IKEA and not even realize it, and I can't have that happen right now because I have other shit to do (such as buying more slutty costumes - the Halloween stores only appear once a year people).
So this was my plan: I went online and checked inventory for the things I wanted (because I was also buying a night stand so as to hide my little bottles of lube in a drawer, yet have them still handily nearby) and I wrote down what aisle and bin I could find them in when I got to Schaumburg IKEA. That way I could bypass the Maze of Wonder and go straight to the warehouse and I would only lose the time it took for me to drive to Schaumburg and back (oh, also I actually printed out the directions for getting there. I always think I know how to get there, but IKEA Schaumburg is tricky in that you can see it from the highway and surrounding streets, but it is almost impossible to find the actual entrance. I once drove around for an hour before figuring it out).
My plan was sound. Really. It was. EXCEPT.
What I did not account for, because there was no way I could have known, is that right next to the place where they store the flatbed carts was a great big fucking display of Christmas decorations. IT WAS A SWEDISH CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND. It might as well have been a giant pile of crack. Clearly I wasn't going anywhere. There were shiny things! There were trees! There were adorable strings of snowflake shaped LED lights OMFG GIMME GIMME MORE MORE MORE MORE!
Yeah.
I have no idea how long I was trapped inside the holiday vortex - it could have been hours, it could have been weeks. What I do know is this: flat-packed dressers are fucking heavy.
I found this out while trying to wrestle one off of the shelf. I was really annoyed with myself because I've been weight training every other morning since April and I really ought to be able pick up and carry a four bedroom house by now. I was also really annoyed when an IKEA employee the size of an MMA fighter watched me have a cat fight with a box trying to get it into my car by myself while he calmly collected empty carts.
Upon returning home and dumping off my new possessions (after wrestling them up three flights of stairs first, natch) it was obvious that the only way to fix the fact that I'd wasted half a day wandering mesmerized through a warehouse and that I now had arms with the approximate strength of cooked spaghetti was to drink several margaritas and call it "lunch", then go drunk grocery shopping while simultaneously phoning the comic in England and then yelling at him for answering his phone when I wanted to leave a message. I wound up spending $52 on chocolate syrup.
Thanks, IKEA.
*I was giving an inventory of my huge collection of stereotypically slutty bedroom outfits (nurse, french maid, etc.) to a friend in an e-mail and got this response back, "You are either the perfect woman or a stripper."
Showing posts with label IKEA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IKEA. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I Can FEEL When Retail is Near. That's Why I Have to Go.
Fish: Where are we thinking for mattress shopping?
me: hell if i know, someplace known for their sale of mattresses i assume
Fish: Look, you have a vagina. Shopping is your expertise. I just bring my pocketbook
me: when, in the entire history of knowing each other, with the exception of going to ikea, have you ever known me to be all "omigod, let's go SHOPPING!"?
Fish: Never. I'm not arguing that YOU don't like shopping but your genes KNOW shopping. It's your bloodrite.
Imagine you are anakin
When you are born you don't know you have control over the force
But you do, because you have no father and George Lucas is terrible at drawing Jesus allegories
Hope this helps
me: hell if i know, someplace known for their sale of mattresses i assume
Fish: Look, you have a vagina. Shopping is your expertise. I just bring my pocketbook
me: when, in the entire history of knowing each other, with the exception of going to ikea, have you ever known me to be all "omigod, let's go SHOPPING!"?
Fish: Never. I'm not arguing that YOU don't like shopping but your genes KNOW shopping. It's your bloodrite.
Imagine you are anakin
When you are born you don't know you have control over the force
But you do, because you have no father and George Lucas is terrible at drawing Jesus allegories
Hope this helps
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Betrayal
I have loved IKEA since the first time TupperDoug dragged me to the one in Pittsburgh. "It's a furniture store," he told me.
"Whoopity-doo," I said.
"No, you don't understand. It's Swedish."
Having set my expectations firmly at underwhelming, I was entirely unprepared for the awesomeness that awaited me on the inside of the gaudy blue and yellow building. Everything is set up like rooms that look exactly like the rooms on the Real World (which I was still into at the time)(The reason for this is that MTV decorates the Real World houses with stuff from IKEA). It's so modern and trendy looking, and affordable! and best of all, you can take your furniture home with you the same day. Oh the hours I spent at Pittsburgh IKEA, wandering around with Doug and not with Doug, since my addiction became so great that I started sneaking into town behind his back to quench my IKEA need. I soon had a couch, several chairs, a dining room set, a coffee table and assorted rugs, curtains and picture frames. My house could have been an IKEA catalog page and I was so, so happy about it.
Flash forward a number of years to 2005 when I moved to Chicago. My friend Fish just bought a new house, where he has moved with 3 and a half other fine gentlemen (the half gentleman being Phil, who doesn't officially live there, but also never seems to leave). Move in was two weekends ago and I went out to the new abode for the duration to help out. One of our first orders of business? A group outing to Schaumburg IKEA. Imagine my joy at spending the better part of four hours in the store of my dreams! JoE, Fish and I giggled as we stood in line with an overflowing shopping cart and two flatbed carts full of at home assembly joy.
It was all downhill from there.
The first problem encountered was Fish's new four drawer dresser. It wasn't that it was difficult to build, it's just that it is difficult to build a four drawer chest when you've only been provided with two drawer bottoms. I mean, you can do it, but there wouldn't be much point now would there? The bottom is kind of an important part of the drawer. In the meantime the MASSIVE wardrobe JoE had purchased ( I am not kidding you, you could comfortably fit five people in there) was the wrong color and had to be exchanged. Also the mirrors that are meant to be hung inside the doors were missing the adhesive backing that we were assured would be in the package.
And then there was Fish's bed. It seemed simple enough at the start. If you've never built IKEA furniture before, let me explain that there are no words telling you what to do anywhere in the instruction book. The entire tale is told through drawings. On the first page is a drawing of the tools you will need, which in this case included both a phillips head and a flat head screwdriver. Step one was a drawing of this: screw hex nut onto double threaded screw. Use included flimsy wrench to drive screw into the footboard. Further use included flimsy wrench to remove hex nut from double threaded screw and save it for later. This went ok until I tried actually getting the hex nut off. For every time I tried to turn it, it would start unscrewing the screw from the footboard. Eventually we solved the problem with a pair of pliers holding the screw in place, however I was mildly annoyed at that fact that pliers were not pictured at the beginning of my instruction manual. Next there was the problem of the metal supports spanning the space between the midbeam and the sideboards. The screws required here were miniscule, and had to be screwed in upside down, into pieces that kept slipping out of where they were supposed to be even when someone else was holding them there for you. Fish and I struggled with this for an hour. Just as we thought we were nearing the end we discovered we were missing one screw. FUCKERS!!!! There was no way I was giving up. Fish was sleeping in his bed that night come hell or high water. We managed to scare up a screw in the house that was the same size but a different thread, which I managed to force in through sheer will.
After all that, my blind devotion to the IKEA gods is waning. All those years, IKEA, all those years of loyal purchasing, only to be betrayed during my most comprehensive visit yet? Why? Why have you forsaken me IKEA? I have done everything that you asked: I have pulled my own boxes out of the warehouse, loaded my own car, assembled my own pieces. I don't understand why you would abandon me like this. IKEA you have broken my heart.
"Whoopity-doo," I said.
"No, you don't understand. It's Swedish."
Having set my expectations firmly at underwhelming, I was entirely unprepared for the awesomeness that awaited me on the inside of the gaudy blue and yellow building. Everything is set up like rooms that look exactly like the rooms on the Real World (which I was still into at the time)(The reason for this is that MTV decorates the Real World houses with stuff from IKEA). It's so modern and trendy looking, and affordable! and best of all, you can take your furniture home with you the same day. Oh the hours I spent at Pittsburgh IKEA, wandering around with Doug and not with Doug, since my addiction became so great that I started sneaking into town behind his back to quench my IKEA need. I soon had a couch, several chairs, a dining room set, a coffee table and assorted rugs, curtains and picture frames. My house could have been an IKEA catalog page and I was so, so happy about it.
Flash forward a number of years to 2005 when I moved to Chicago. My friend Fish just bought a new house, where he has moved with 3 and a half other fine gentlemen (the half gentleman being Phil, who doesn't officially live there, but also never seems to leave). Move in was two weekends ago and I went out to the new abode for the duration to help out. One of our first orders of business? A group outing to Schaumburg IKEA. Imagine my joy at spending the better part of four hours in the store of my dreams! JoE, Fish and I giggled as we stood in line with an overflowing shopping cart and two flatbed carts full of at home assembly joy.
It was all downhill from there.
The first problem encountered was Fish's new four drawer dresser. It wasn't that it was difficult to build, it's just that it is difficult to build a four drawer chest when you've only been provided with two drawer bottoms. I mean, you can do it, but there wouldn't be much point now would there? The bottom is kind of an important part of the drawer. In the meantime the MASSIVE wardrobe JoE had purchased ( I am not kidding you, you could comfortably fit five people in there) was the wrong color and had to be exchanged. Also the mirrors that are meant to be hung inside the doors were missing the adhesive backing that we were assured would be in the package.
And then there was Fish's bed. It seemed simple enough at the start. If you've never built IKEA furniture before, let me explain that there are no words telling you what to do anywhere in the instruction book. The entire tale is told through drawings. On the first page is a drawing of the tools you will need, which in this case included both a phillips head and a flat head screwdriver. Step one was a drawing of this: screw hex nut onto double threaded screw. Use included flimsy wrench to drive screw into the footboard. Further use included flimsy wrench to remove hex nut from double threaded screw and save it for later. This went ok until I tried actually getting the hex nut off. For every time I tried to turn it, it would start unscrewing the screw from the footboard. Eventually we solved the problem with a pair of pliers holding the screw in place, however I was mildly annoyed at that fact that pliers were not pictured at the beginning of my instruction manual. Next there was the problem of the metal supports spanning the space between the midbeam and the sideboards. The screws required here were miniscule, and had to be screwed in upside down, into pieces that kept slipping out of where they were supposed to be even when someone else was holding them there for you. Fish and I struggled with this for an hour. Just as we thought we were nearing the end we discovered we were missing one screw. FUCKERS!!!! There was no way I was giving up. Fish was sleeping in his bed that night come hell or high water. We managed to scare up a screw in the house that was the same size but a different thread, which I managed to force in through sheer will.
After all that, my blind devotion to the IKEA gods is waning. All those years, IKEA, all those years of loyal purchasing, only to be betrayed during my most comprehensive visit yet? Why? Why have you forsaken me IKEA? I have done everything that you asked: I have pulled my own boxes out of the warehouse, loaded my own car, assembled my own pieces. I don't understand why you would abandon me like this. IKEA you have broken my heart.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
I'm Alive I Swear!
Please accept my humble apologies for my extreme laziness in posting. I'll do better, I promise. Please don't leave me!!!
Actually, it isn't laziness as much as busyness; I get paid to handle other people's money, I do not get paid to blog. Someday when my fairy godmother shows up I will blog and sing for a living. Until that day, I do math.
Let me think now: I've not graced you with a Week Four or a Week Five post. I'll sum that up here. Week Four was nearly identical to Week Three. There was much arguing and crying and yelling between the bartender and me, and between the bartender and Vicodin Jim. By Week Five we had all reached an agreement: the bartender and I called a truce, agreed to stop attacking one another, and to stay out of each other's way as much as possible. We spoke last weekend in a friendly manner for the first time in weeks when he called to share with me stories of my brother's extreme drunkenness that evening. I am officially permitted to return to Tai's. (Shameless plug: the bartender says the new trendy shot is going to be Apple Bombs. Bacardi has just put out an apple flavored rum, which apparently is way yummy when mixed with Red Bull. Tai's is serving them now. You heard it here first folks.) The bartender and Jim have decided they hate each other, at least for now, and are not speaking at all. They have both agreed not to drag me into the middle of their beef anymore.
Speaking of Cap, he was on his way out the door the other day to grab a sandwich, and while crossing his front yard he nearly crashed head on into Keanu Reeves. Apparently, he is filming a movie, and some of it was filmed on Brandon's street. In response to my inquiry, I learned that he's "not really" tall.
Cap, Nash and Lizak also invented a new variation on the game of Bags. If you aren't from an area where people play Bags, basically what you do is set up two wooden boxes across from each other. Each one has a small round hole in the top. Then you stand across the yard with a bunch of beanbags and throw them at the opposite box. You get points for getting the bags in the hole, and I think maybe points for getting them to land on top of the box as well. It's all the rage. Anyway, Cap, Nash and Lizak came up with this extra step where you can get some extra points or something by throwing the beanbags back at your opponent (football center snapping the ball-style), who is the "goalie". If you get bags past him, you get more points or something (I wasn't really paying that much attention to the details, because I don't particularly care). So they were playing this the other day when I stopped by. Unfortunately, they were playing Bags (2) IN THE HOUSE like the overgrown children that they are, and managed to break a pane of glass in my brother's liquor cabinet. Hindsight being 20/20, Cap mused later, "I guess that's why you don't play Bags in the house." Hmm. Bocce anyone?
I decided to go on an adventure last weekend. I wanted to go to IKEA, but no one was around to go with me. So, like the thoughtless spastic I have become, I just jumped in the car with no directions, hopped on the Kennedy, and figured I'd run into it eventually. I did run into it eventually, and bought new stuff. I know it probably seems a little stupid, traipsing around the suburbs with no map and no guide, but I figured, the worst that could happen is I never find it and have to turn around and go home empty-handed, so I did it anyway. The bartender was very proud of my successful stupidity and Jim told me I was retarded. I got a new dresser, and managed to piss off my downstairs neighbors by losing all track of time while assembling it and hammering on my floor (their ceiling) at 12:30 AM. Oops.
My cousin Bryan joined the 21st century and got his very first cell phone this week as well. He called me the other night to tell me about it and catch up. In the middle of this conversation we got cut off. He called me back and sheepishly said, "Yeah. Um, I guess my call got....dropped? I think that's right, isn't it? I don't know all the terms yet." HI-larious.
I am sorry to report that no midgets (naked or otherwise) moved in next door.
So all in all, the last two weeks have been devoid of any large scale events, so you all haven't missed much by my poor posting habits. I plan for things to pick up this weekend. I am trying to entice Bia to get the heck out of Dodge and come up here for a day or so this weekend, so we can go out and tighten up together and party like the rockstars we know we are inside. So post some comments to her so she'll get over herself and come play with me, otherwise you're all stuck with my boring, infrequent posts.
Actually, it isn't laziness as much as busyness; I get paid to handle other people's money, I do not get paid to blog. Someday when my fairy godmother shows up I will blog and sing for a living. Until that day, I do math.
Let me think now: I've not graced you with a Week Four or a Week Five post. I'll sum that up here. Week Four was nearly identical to Week Three. There was much arguing and crying and yelling between the bartender and me, and between the bartender and Vicodin Jim. By Week Five we had all reached an agreement: the bartender and I called a truce, agreed to stop attacking one another, and to stay out of each other's way as much as possible. We spoke last weekend in a friendly manner for the first time in weeks when he called to share with me stories of my brother's extreme drunkenness that evening. I am officially permitted to return to Tai's. (Shameless plug: the bartender says the new trendy shot is going to be Apple Bombs. Bacardi has just put out an apple flavored rum, which apparently is way yummy when mixed with Red Bull. Tai's is serving them now. You heard it here first folks.) The bartender and Jim have decided they hate each other, at least for now, and are not speaking at all. They have both agreed not to drag me into the middle of their beef anymore.
Speaking of Cap, he was on his way out the door the other day to grab a sandwich, and while crossing his front yard he nearly crashed head on into Keanu Reeves. Apparently, he is filming a movie, and some of it was filmed on Brandon's street. In response to my inquiry, I learned that he's "not really" tall.
Cap, Nash and Lizak also invented a new variation on the game of Bags. If you aren't from an area where people play Bags, basically what you do is set up two wooden boxes across from each other. Each one has a small round hole in the top. Then you stand across the yard with a bunch of beanbags and throw them at the opposite box. You get points for getting the bags in the hole, and I think maybe points for getting them to land on top of the box as well. It's all the rage. Anyway, Cap, Nash and Lizak came up with this extra step where you can get some extra points or something by throwing the beanbags back at your opponent (football center snapping the ball-style), who is the "goalie". If you get bags past him, you get more points or something (I wasn't really paying that much attention to the details, because I don't particularly care). So they were playing this the other day when I stopped by. Unfortunately, they were playing Bags (2) IN THE HOUSE like the overgrown children that they are, and managed to break a pane of glass in my brother's liquor cabinet. Hindsight being 20/20, Cap mused later, "I guess that's why you don't play Bags in the house." Hmm. Bocce anyone?
I decided to go on an adventure last weekend. I wanted to go to IKEA, but no one was around to go with me. So, like the thoughtless spastic I have become, I just jumped in the car with no directions, hopped on the Kennedy, and figured I'd run into it eventually. I did run into it eventually, and bought new stuff. I know it probably seems a little stupid, traipsing around the suburbs with no map and no guide, but I figured, the worst that could happen is I never find it and have to turn around and go home empty-handed, so I did it anyway. The bartender was very proud of my successful stupidity and Jim told me I was retarded. I got a new dresser, and managed to piss off my downstairs neighbors by losing all track of time while assembling it and hammering on my floor (their ceiling) at 12:30 AM. Oops.
My cousin Bryan joined the 21st century and got his very first cell phone this week as well. He called me the other night to tell me about it and catch up. In the middle of this conversation we got cut off. He called me back and sheepishly said, "Yeah. Um, I guess my call got....dropped? I think that's right, isn't it? I don't know all the terms yet." HI-larious.
I am sorry to report that no midgets (naked or otherwise) moved in next door.
So all in all, the last two weeks have been devoid of any large scale events, so you all haven't missed much by my poor posting habits. I plan for things to pick up this weekend. I am trying to entice Bia to get the heck out of Dodge and come up here for a day or so this weekend, so we can go out and tighten up together and party like the rockstars we know we are inside. So post some comments to her so she'll get over herself and come play with me, otherwise you're all stuck with my boring, infrequent posts.
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