The Continuing Story of the Bookshelf from IKEA

Friday Phil and I drove all the way to Ikea for curtains, and when I opened the package, I saw they were the wrong color. They looked right IN the package! So Emily and I drove all the way back there yesterday, and I picked out new ones. I get to the cashier right before it closes. Byron had given me his credit card to get stuff for the house with, so I hand it over and the lady asks, "Oh, is this one of those Black AmEx cards I hear about all the time?" I shrugged and said "Yeah, I guess... it's not really mine."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I was like "oh fuck. what did I do." She was very polite, but she wouldn't let me use it, and called the manager (who was about five years younger than I am... very scary) who was like "oh, well, I'm really sorry..." I wasn't about to start an argument with an 18 year old. So there are STILL no curtains in the living room.

Emily got a bookshelf, however, and it's standing (sturdily, too, if I may say so) in her living room. Getting it there, however, was an adventure. It started when we went to the self-serve section of the store. How it works is, you copy down the isle that the piece of furniture you want is in and then you copy down the section of that isle it's in. We found the bookcase she was looking for, and she tugged on it. Didn't budge. I pulled on it. Still didn't budge. I asked one of the workers if he could get it down for me, and he laughed at us and put it on the cart, no sweat.

We were in line when Emily goes "How are we going to get this in your car?" Did we take her huge, meant-for-lugging-stuff Jeep? No. We took my 2-door not-really-big car. (Which has named itself by the way, but that's another story). We saw the "Getting it home couldn't be easier!" sign and read it for clues. It discussed home delivery. Emily was like "I want it home NOW! Maybe we could tie it to the top of your car. Do they have twine?" I shook my head. This was going to be interesting. We got to the car, walked around it, looked through it, realized that no, the seats do NOT go down, and the thought of driving all the way down I-95 with a bookcase strapped to the hood of my car sounded horrible. I was at a loss. Thankfully, one of the Ikea workers took pity on us (although I swear he was laughing) and pointed out we could get it in the car, although Emily had to sit in the backseat. We looked at him helplessly. He put it in for us.

We got to her apartment, which is a three floor walk-up. Her very kind, butchy, and I swear slightly intoxicated neighbor was kind enough to help us get it up the stairs, and we had it in her living room.

We managed to assemble it with only a few mishaps (we put a lot of stuff backwards and upside down). The officially assembly time is two Led Zeppelin albums. It's fantastic. If you want her account of the story, check out Emily's Blog.