Gooooood Morning IKEA!

It all started like this...

Maggie: I want to camp overnight at IKEA.
Amy: Okay.

There was no asking "Why?" When it comes to IKEA you don't need a reason to go. We left the kids at home and set off for IKEA of Portland on Tuesday night. We arrived around 7:15pm and staked our claim. As we looked at the crowd we were surprised there were not more people there, but figured there had to be more than 100 adults... leaving us empty handed on the free Pöang chair being given out to the first 100 adults through the door.

Less than an hour later we met the "line lady" and found out that we were number 92 and 93! Score! Free chairs! Weeeeeeeee! We had to sign some paper saying we were "In It To Win It". The rules stated that tents/chairs/blankets had to be gone by 7am, no alcohol/smoking/drugs in line, no open flames, and you are not allowed to leave the line for more than 10 minutes at a time or else you are disqualified. Yikes. Thank the lord they had port-o-potties on the premisis.

About an hour after we go there lucky number 100 showed up in line (seen here as the girl in the white sunglasses) and about 30 seconds after her unlucky number 101 claimed his spot in line.

And so began the long wait for the store to open. We were next to Bojangles (more on that later) and a 14-year-old girl. She was nice and all but she was 14 and alone... her aunt dropped her off. What kind of aunt drops off a girl to wait by herself? A fairly nice one we found out later when she arrived with her two kids and seriously encroached on my and Maggie's buffer space we had created between us and Bojangles. Mom and Shelah came by around 10pm and brought us some candy to add to our munchies bag, did a little people watching with us, and generally kept us company until around midnight.

We passed time playing cribbage, Yahtzee, and a crappy Target $1 section version of Jenga; of which I lost four games in a row and refused to ever play again. At about 1:45am the sprikler system went off soaking everyone next to the little strip of grass. Maggie and I were one row away so we only had to watch and laugh while eveyone else woke to find themselves in puddles. It's still funny just thinking about it.

2am rolled around and travel games were no longer cutting it. It was time to break out the iPod. What did we do before iPod's allowed us to watch Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion in the parking lot of an unopened store at 2am?

At 3:30am we started playing cribbage again. At around 5am the news crews began to arrive waking everyone up. Literally. By 5:30 almost everyone was awake, tents were down, and chairs put away. Everyone that is, except Bojangles. He got a personal wake-up call from Andy Carson from Fox 12 news. He was requesting the one song that the idiot had been singing all night. And which he then, thanks to stupid Andy Carson, sang all morning to every news and radion station in attendance. The song of which I speak is cleverly called 'IKEA', and is sung to the tune of Lola by the Kinks; ruining that song for me. Thanks for nothing Bojangles!

Once the IKEA employees, and a moose showed up the show actually began. Instead of the "cart lady" from the previous night handing out freebies now there were "authentically" dressed ladies throwing things into the crowd. As you can see these are not young ladies and watching them huck things into a crowd was hilarious. Not only did the items not go far they usually hit people in the head. A completely random give-away were the free keys. At one point in the morning we heard an announcer tell the crowd that complementary house key duplication would be going on at a tent nearby. Not one to turn down a free item, Maggie made her way over to the tent to see what it was all about. Turns out the duplicate key was a giant yellow key with IKEA written on it in blue. Freaking hilarious! We of course got two.

While the old ladies were busy hitting people in the head with free stuff the Flying Ace All-Stars were entertaining the crowd by jumping on a giant trampoline with skiis or snowboards. The guys are supposed to be pretty big in the sports world but I had never heard of them. And the only name I can remember of the three guys is Ryan St. Onge, a 2006 Olympic Team Member and 3-Time US National Champion who is on the 2010 US Ski Team. One of the other guys is on the 2008 US Olympic Trampoline Team. I still don't understand how that is a sport. And I honestly can't remember the other guy's name or what team he may or may not have been a part of. Sorry dude.

Finally the IKEA folks came around and gave all of the first 100 people in line neon bracelets to identify us, cards that were told "do not lose these cards, they can't be replaced" (no pressure there), and t-shirts to wear over the four layers of clothing we already had on from the night before. My question is why did IKEA only have shirts in two sizes? And why were those sizes XL and XXL? We were all swimming in those shirts. I don't like what that says about thier image of Portland shoppers.

Despite the ridiculous size of the shirts we were still pretty excited to get them. The excitement is evident as Maggie does her best "Excited Vasili" impression. And if you look closely in the background (right) you'll see that idiot Bojangles with his guitar.

The time finally came to get things underway. Before the doors opened, Mayor Mayor Tom Potter sopke about something that I tuned out, they rose the American flag (along with anthem), the Swedish flag (along with anthem), and then tried and failed to raise the Oregon flag. "We'll get to that later" they said. Ken Bodeen, the store manager welcomed the community into the IKEA family with a traditional Swedish log-sawing ceremony. There is no way of saying that with a straight face. It is supposed to bring good luck to the new store and its visitors.

The doors finally opened and we were handed a tiny gold envelope, lead through a gaunlet of screaming employees, up the escalator and into the store. I have to say, it was worth the wait. Going past all the excited employees was infectious. Maggie and I hurried to get out of the crowd and into a quite corner to open our gold envelopes. We both won "Buy-One-Get-One-Free Cinnamon Roll" coupons for the restaurant. Oh well. We already had free chairs!

Maggie had a list of things she wanted to we managed to break away from the crowd and found ourselves the first shoppers downstairs and were able to browse the store in peace. We finished fairly quickly; due to our exhaustion we just wanted to go home and sleep. We made it to the cashier without a scrape and as Maggie checked out I went to the self-checkout. It was gloriously fast and pain free... easier than at the grocery store. Turns out Maggie was the second official customer and was of course accosted by channel 8 news. I was the first through self-checkout but managed to evade the cameras. We made a quick trip to Returns/Exchanges to pick-up our chairs and were out of the store in under a half an hour. It was a lot of fun. For those that have never been to an IKEA you need to go to this one. It's better than the Renton, WA store by a long-shot.

We're already planning to go back by next week.

Harry Potter... and the Kick-Ass Book!

I have never anticipated a book so much in my entire life! And even better than it finally arriving on my doorstep, is that it did not disappoint me. I refuse to give away any of the plot. That would be spoiling it and that's just wrong.

A co-worker of mine was still finishing Goblet of Fire last week when she made the mistake of getting on the Internet. I had been avoiding all media beginning last Wednesday to avoid what she encountered. She was innocently visiting a message board she visits regularly about soap operas, when buried in a thread about some obscure soap plotline is a spoiler, in letters so large and red that she read it before she realized what it was. She proceeded to run down the hall to my desk and yell, "What is wrong with people!?" I concure. Why do people get joy from ruining it for others?

I am pleased to say that I made it to the end of the book without having a single detail ruined for me and I think the book is better for it. I was shocked, scared, heartbroken, confused, amazed, and so many other things while reading the final book. I honestly don't know how one woman could have created such a detailed and complex story that started out as children's literature. I finished the book at 4:04am on Sunday after about 13 hours of reading it. And all I wanted to do was call someone to talk about it some more. I was wide-awake. It took me nearly 45 minutes to fall asleep that's how on edge I was.

It's really hard to write how much I love this book without giving examples to prove how good it is, but I refuse to ruin that experience for anyone. I will end this love-fest by saying go read these books! GO! You will not be disappointed.

Even Skinny Women Are Fat...

At least according to Redbook. How else do you explain the doctored photo of Faith Hill, who happens to be on this month's cover.

I was scanning TMZ.com when I came across this photo. Turns out someone at Jezebel.com sent it their way. I don't see what's wrong with showing the world how a 39-year-old working mother of three girls really looks. And she looks incredible! What? Is she pushing a size 6? Is 6 suddenly too fat to be on the cover of a magazine? Is a beautiful normal sized woman suddenly too hideous to look at? I mean they didn't just airbrush her to make her look more appealing, they stuck her head on a completely different person. And not even a different woman, they put her head on some emacitated girl.

I'm scared for women of the next generation. How is anyone supposed to live up to this kind of "standard" when even skinny women are considered fat?

For a detailed account of what was changed check out this humorous rundown .

Clark And Michael

For everyone who has been looking forward to Superbad, myself included, please check out Clark And Michael. Freaking hilarious!

Before you start doubting me here is a quote from the blog on their site:
"So every Wednesday, a new episode is going to be put up. Which means Episode 2 is a mere 1 day away! And it's loaded with laughs and laughters. Clark and I recently watched it and enjoyed it immensely. We both agree it's the only show on the internet to date that heavily features the two of us." -- Michael (Michael Cera)

There is hope for young Hollywood yet.


On an unrelated topic: I just overheard some guy in the office say, "Home Depot is the biggest homewrecker." I had to be careful how loud I laughed in agreement for fear they would catch on that I had been listening to them. Now, back to eavesdropping.

Green Street Hooligans - Watch It!

I just finished Green Street Hooligans and damn was that a good movie. Some people, okay a lot of people question my taste in movies but this one is damn good. It's dark but it's good.

It's about the world of Firms, or "gangs" of die hard football fans in the UK. If you have any interest in the culture of football in the UK and you don't mind unabashed swearing and blood, than this is a must watch for you. If you don't, than I can't help you.