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Saturday, February 04, 2006

Saturday Morning at the Zoo or My Trip to Ikea

Have I been diligently working on revisions this morning? Nope. I went to Ikea. I needed a bookcase for the computer room and I've heard such good things about them. I figured get there first thing when they open on Saturday morning, whiz through the place to take a look at the bookcase and see what else they have, then get the hell out of there. The whole Mall of America area is nuts--especially on weekends.

We arrived at 10:02 and found a lot of other people decided to arrive right when they opened. The parking ramp was huge and it was pretty darn full already. This didn't bode well.

And of course, I was right. The store was packed already and it was pretty difficult to get around and look at things because there were always people in the way. I don't do crowds well and this was a mob scene. I'll confess, the one thing I can't figure out is why do people bring children to a furniture store? Now, Ikea provides a place for kids to play with supervision. The parents check them in and have to check them back out again so it looked pretty safe to me. But so many parents dragged their poor kids through the store, and they were not happy to be furniture shopping. Even the teenagers were whiney.

I started getting a little whiney myself. My foot began hurting, my socks were rubbing my feet wrong and the store was warm. I did find some really cool stuff, though.

The bookcase decision was difficult. I did end up with a pair of the bookcases I saw online because the inner divider let them hold more weight than the long-shelved bookcases and some of my reference books are very heavy.

I also found a really cool table for scrapbooking. It's fairly long and deep. And it was cheap! I didn't buy it today, but it's marked on my sheet.

I also found a cheap bureau that I could put in my master bedroom closet. I have two dressers already, but they're absolutely jammed and I need some extra room. I didn't buy this either since the only thing that was a must buy was the bookcases.

They came in 2 boxes for one set so I had 4 to load into the SUV. They were long and they were heavy. Ikea, though, provides help. Had to tie the tailgate down though because the things just missed fitting by a few inches. Since I didn't want to go on the freeway with boxes hanging out the back end, I took the long way home.

Anyway, I'm exhausted! I have laundry to do. I have revisions to work on. I have like half a gazillion email to read and I've only opened two of them. I don't have enough energy to care about anything. I'm contemplating a nap. :-)

Maneuvering through all those people, dodging all those children, handling the parking ramp. Gah! It'll be a long, long time before I go to Ikea on a Saturday again.