99-Cent Breakfast
Where: Ikea, the new store in Canton.
When: Wednesday morning.
Mission #1: a table-top reading lamp.
Outcome? Zip. The only lamps bright enough for reading were halogen. Halogen is not allowed in the dorms for reasons I tend to agree with, given the intelligence of the average college freshman tasting the freedom of being away from home for the first time by drinking himself into oblivion and knocking his lamp over into his dirty laundry as he crashes into his bed. Lamp? What lamp? I didn’t know I had a lamp!
Mission #2: a spinning chair. Uh, that means a chair for a spinning wheel operator to sit in, not one that spins around in circles. (Maybe for that drunk kid, you were thinking?)
Outcome? Zip. Not one of the 800 chairs tested had a back straight enough for a spinning wheel operator. And here we thought that spinning wheels were all the latest rage.
Breakfast? We passed on the 99-cent breakfast as well as the Swedish meatball lunch.
The take? We escaped from the store with a cute stuffed ratty and a couple of cheap hanging things to stuff yarn in.
Damages? About $11.00 plus whatever gasoline it took us to drive over there and back.
Other: I got dizzy on the way out. There was this big warehouse-y type section with a ceiling as high as the sky and huge shelves. I used to get that way in the library sometimes too. I dunno why it doesn’t happen to me amongst tall pine trees. Go figure.
September 15th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Ceiling joists are not the same as blue sky, night sky, or even a rainy sky.
We visited our new Ikea recently, and came away with no large purchases, just a spatter thingy for a frying pan and a couple of other small things that escape me, about $20. The last time we went it had been pouring all day, and we just wended our way through the displays for exercise!
September 15th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Yeah, I could’ve probably gone nuts buying small things in that place. But my house needs to be fumigated or hosed out with a fire hose or something and I am on a stuff diet.
September 15th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Rec. reading of the week – Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv.
September 15th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
We bought a small table lamp, 3 candles and some dish towels. Too overwhelmed to do much else and I also got very, very dizzy!!
September 15th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
What is it about the architecture of some of these places that cause that dizzy sensation? I get that too (can’t tell you off the bat which places they are), and they are not “one-offs”, either.
Or could there be some toxic out-gassings from whatever’s used to decorate or even the products being sold?!?!?
September 16th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
i have the feeling it’s not just the room structures that cause people’s dizziness, but perhaps the combination of high ceilings with the extreme lack of air circulation that *i* always seem to notice…