Of Ikea and Travel Hassles

So, fun fact for the day. In at least some parts of Massachusetts it is legal to drive in the breakdown lane during rush hour. (6-10 and 5-7?)

Today was quite productive, got our own internet hooked up, though the cable still isn't right, we'll have to call tomorrow about that. Today we decided to go shopping and to make our first trip to Ikea. As an Ikea virgin, it was kind of overwhelming. We had to drive 45 minutes to even get to the place, but for someone from Ohio, that's common practice for a lot of things. Needless to say this place was enormous.

It had it's own parking garage, and an escalator ramp for taking carts and such up. We spent two hours in there finding a lot of stuff we liked, a few things we're going to have to go back for (like a bookshelf for the kitchen) and a few things we planned on actually walking away with. When all was said and done we spent less than $50 (barely) and got a magnetic knife holder, a pot rack, boxes to put our dvds in and a nice live bamboo plant to put in the bathroom.

After our stop there we went on to Target just to look at a few things and compare some prices. Of course what do we find when we get there? A damn nice futon that is pretty inexpensive and will work great for our couch for the time being. On top of that it was on sale for another two days and it was the only one they had left. So we picked that up as well, more assembly for me. However it did put together easy and now we have somewhere to sit and its pretty comfy too.

Here is where we started to run into our travel problems, we figured hey, lets stop at Trader Joe's on the way back to pick up some frozen dinners right? Wrong. we find the nearest store using the GPS.... or so we thought. We drive the 10 minutes to find it and turn where it says and there is nothing. The whole are is a business complex that look like office buildings, so we drive around for a bit just to make sure we aren't stupid and we see a Trader Joe's car. By now we both know but still are determined we just can't find it, so we drive up and sure enough the damn GPS had taken us to a corporate office of Trader Joe's not an actual store. So we find the next one and get back on the highway. Of course more than once she decides it is important to recalculate because I'm going EXACTLY where she tells me to go and changes her mind back and forth enough times that I miss the exit I was supposed to take and have to drive an extra two miles before there is another exit.

Eventually we found the store and got what we wanted and started on the hour drive home. As it turns out each leg of our journey, while not being too far from the last, took us a bit further in the wrong direction. We get home and make food while I'm starting the assembly on things. By now I've moved on to getting the pot rack together, only to find out we hadn't measured anything and it is about a half an inch too long to fit above our oven. It is luckily an easy fix since it just hits some molding and I've got a couple scrap pieces of wood and they left us extra paint for touch ups. Tomorrow I'll just make a buffer that bumps the rest of the rack out from the wall a bit and it will fit fine. So that was the mess today was, and now it is time to relax some and prepare to take a trip up to Boston tomorrow. I leave you with this picture of the ceiling fans inside Ikea.

The thing was like the prop for a 747, I swear it was from a small wind turbine, it had to have been 30 feet across. and there were 3 or 4 of them. Until later.