IKEA -- What language was that?!

Well, after being in back in Baltimore for a week of work and staying with my sister (thank you Angie and Jimmy) we are back in South Orange. We finally went to settlement on the selling of our condo late Friday night. The pain in the a** lady who bought it actually showed up to the settlement table -- she was late, but she DID show up which at earlier points in the day Friday we weren't sure if she would even make it. Actually, I began to wonder how she functions in society at all b/c she sounded like a complete moron who came up with random questions after putting on a contract in on the house. Example (at the settlement table): 'Are there school taxes that I would have to pay in addition to the property taxes??' 'NO' was everyone's answer while I wanted to shout 'and what if there were?!?!'. Anyways, enough about her b/c it is all said and done now. So after settlement, around 8:00pm we finally hit the road to head back to our new home. It was rainy and dark and all we wanted was to get up there and go to sleep, except for the fact that our cars were packed with crap -- I mean stuff -- we had to unload.

Saturday morning we decided to take our first shopping adventure to...... IKEA. Yeah, sounds boring I'm sure, but it certainly was not. There are 2 IKEAs around; one in Paramus and one in Elizabeth next to the airport. We chose the one in Elizabeth to go to which a major bonus (okay the only bonus) was that they have only 3.5% sales tax there since its an underdeveloped area. Pretty cool incentive for retailers - Maryland doesn't offer any programs like that to retailers. Anyways, back on track... I think it was the most crowded store I have EVER been in in my whole entire life. In the first 15 minutes we were there I heard more languages being spoken than I had in my whole entire time in Baltimore. It sort of felt like we were on the 'It's a Small World' ride at EPCOT.

After pushing our way through the droves of foreign language speakers, we managed to find what we were looking for: a new bookshelf (our old one was too large for the living room and we needed somewhere to display our books so we could at least try to look half way intelligent), and a new coffee table (once again our old one was too large for the living room). Do you see a trend here that we might have a house that is too small?? At least it is just temporary. We had success with the bookshelf however as luck would have it they were out of the coffee table we wanted. Those darn foreigners were evidently on the same budget we were! While at IKEA we had lunch of course. Who can resist the little swedish meatballs?!? Apparently everyone who goes to IKEA has the same thought so the line was absurd. We eventually made it through and sat down for a relaxing lunch. Well relaxing might be a stretch, but we did find seats to sit down to eat!

We made it home and it was time to assemble the bookshelf. IKEA having the monoply in retail on assemble yourself furniture and me being the one who feels the need to control anything I can, took the job of constructing the bookshelf into my own hands. I'm looking at the bookshelf now and I don't think it is going to collapse. Thanks Dad -- you taught me how to read directions!!

Lesson 3 on NJ: NEVER go to IKEA on a weekend.

Lesson 4 on NJ: People around here don't expect you to say excuse me, so it's alright if you just kind of push them out of the way. (Oh man, wait till I take this lesson back to Baltimore with me)