A Big Black Chair and One Crazy Maze

I decided to move.

Apparently when I decide to do something life changing, it happens quickly.  Two weeks ago my cousin and I started looking around for an apartment.  As of yesterday, I'm sleeping in a new bed in a new town.  Granted, there are still plenty of things that need to be done to get the place in order, clean, and all set up, but I did sleep there last night!

I've been all over Connecticut these last two weeks for this reason.  Most of the travelling was for shopping for the new place, and I got got to experience some new stores.  Both my roommate and myself are moving from living with our parents to save money, so we're starting completely from scratch as far as the various sundries needed for a place.  Over these two weeks we've been to all kinds of stores, from discount bargain bins, to high end outlets.  It's been quite the adventure!

By far, the two most interesting stores were "The Pit" (owned by Bob's Discount Furniture) and IKEA.  The Pit is simply that... a cesspool of furniture that is usually ruined in some way.  I went there on mission to find some furnishings for the new place and found a lot of broken crap.  There are signs on all the pieces that state the price and then will sometimes have a description of a possible defect.  There were a few that had holes in them, a couple had some broken wood… you know the deal. 

Big black chair in it's new home.

In any case, I found a really nice looking black leather recliner that had an original list price of $650 (who knows how correct that is) and was knocked down significantly.  The sign had no other information on it as far as defects, so I went and tested it out.  Of course the automatic reclining part of the chair didn’t work and I let the salesperson know.  She proceeded to write the problem on the price tag.  I asked if the price was going to change because of the defect and she snottily replied with a “no.”

Naturally, I bought the chair (and a lamp plus end table) anyways.

IKEA was a far more interesting place.  I know that I've been into one of these furniture super-stores before, but it has been quite a long time since that visit.  I remember playing hide-and-seek once in one of the floors because of all the fun setups and alcoves it had.  I was certainly looking forward to seeing the place again (...well as much as any man might "look forward" to shopping).

In any case, the closest IKEA to where I formally lived was about 75 minutes away and I cut that time in half by moving.  I also knew exactly what I was looking for before I left.  I needed a storage shelf that would display nicely and be able to hold both board games and binders of baseball cards.  After a bit of online searching I found the KALLAX unit that IKEA sold and decided to traverse on over.

What a monster... When you walk into the place, they usher you up an escalator onto their display floor, and that's all it is.  Display.  You can't actually pick up anything to buy.  It's just all ticketed and tells you where you can buy it.  I was looking for "media storage" and I found the section on the convenient map (yes... there was a map).  The clever map told me that I was right next to the section in question.  I simply had to walk through a wall to get there.  Luckily, there was a cleverly hidden "shortcut" to get me there faster.  This is not the exact map, but hopefully you get the idea.

After you finished walking through the showroom, they ushered you to the ground floor marketplace where there were even more hidden shortcuts that you could only use if you had a map in hand.  I would say that we did a speed run through the place and it still took us 30-45 minutes to get through it all.  It definitely had us laughing.

I did get my storage shelves though!  I have to go and build them today!  I just wanted to let you all know what I was up to.  I have some trade posts to get up in the near future, but it still might be a bit as I have to go out and buy a brand new scanner.  MORE MONEY!

Oh, this also means I have a new address.  I almost forgot about that.  You're more than welcome to send to the old address if you wish.  I'll still be there 3-4 times a month.  Otherwise, feel free to reach out to me for the new one.  I'll still be more than happy to trade!