What drove us to such madness?

Chicago Vacation, Part 1 detailed the fallout from a crazy day. There was physical harm to yours truly, a major tantrum thrown and a window in our brand new car was taken out by a wayward bungee cord. But that wasn't all that went frustratingly sour on our last day in Chicago...

Our plan was to leave Chicago around 2pm and get back to Mpls around 8pm. It was a good plan, really. In theory, we'd get home early Saturday night and have enough time to hang out with the K&K Connection or go to a movie or unload the car and relax or just relax. We'd have a Saturday evening. It's nice to have a Saturday evening.

Oh, how plans can go to shit.

We didn't end up leaving Chicago until after 5 and didn't get home until... midnight. *sigh*

Obviously things were not going smoothly.

All day Saturday, a multitude of things kept going slightly wrong and slightly wrong-er and it spiraled into the window shattering, tantrum throwing good time that I talked about in my last post. People, in general, were annoying the hell out of us. Stare, stare stare, you bastards. Keep on staring. Everyone. Kept. Staring. All day long. Wherever we went. Stare. I understand leering at us when there's a bright green polka dotted blanket shut in the door as a temporary window -- I get that. It's all the other times -- at every single gas station, at lunch, at Ikea. Oh lord there was a lot of staring in Ikea.

Anyway, away we go.

Early in the day, we were supposed to receive a 10am wakeup call. Due to a glitch in the hotel wakeup call system, we didn't. I mean, the front desk called up right after we called down for the 10am call -- just to confirm it. So either they went through the trouble of calling us just to not put it in the system or there was a glitch in the Matrix... er, hotel system. Instead we woke up at 11:30. There's an hour and a half to eat away at our 2pm departure plan, right there. *sigh*

After the late start, we had to go back to Ikea to return one thing that we didn't need and pick up the wardrobe that we did need -- but didn't have room for when we went there 2 days before. Ikea, on a Saturday, is the busiest business I've ever seen. Ever. They make beehives look like a senior citizen dance party. There are people getting paid to direct traffic in their parking lot, for crying out loud. Needless to say, lots of waiting ensued alongside hundreds of thousands of incredibly impatient, rude and stare-happy people. We just wanted to get in, get out and go home, people.

Each line at the checkout ran about 20 people deep -- and this is with about 30 lanes open, too. That should tell you just a little something.

Lindsay fought her way through the teeming throngs of people to begin the process of picking up a new purchase order for the wardrobe and then paying for it. I sat in customer service and waited and waited for my turn, so that I could take the one thing back and get a $180 credit for it. I was number 94 and they were serving number 81 when I settled in. Oh, boy.

After about 30 minutes of sitting and not acknowledging my twenty or so co-waiting buddies' stares, it was my magic moment. My turn. Once they call your number, you have to immediately jump up and yell and scream and do jumping jacks, making sure they can see your receipt. Otherwise they pass you over after about 1 and a half seconds of "waiting" and call the next number. I was all over the "getting their attention" thing.

Number Ninety-Fo...

Right here! *unleashes a flurry of jumping jacks*

Boom. Then, like four seconds later, I was through and done with customer service. $180 was back in the good ol' checking account, where it belonged. It was time to see if I could find Lindsay in the gi-normous haystack that I like to call Ikea. I strolled out of customer service, past the restroom, around the 80 or so people that didn't know how to avoid walking right at another person with their cart full of completely-necessary-swedish-goods and glimpsed at the checkout lines. Whew boy, it was going to be tough to find my short, cute, little Lindsay.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something bouncing up and down. On further exam, it was extremely cute, too. And waving at me. There, in line, was Lindsay.

Turns out she had been in line the whole time I was in customer service. She still had the purchase order for the wardrobe from Thursday, so she was gambling that she could take it to the cashier and have them run it for us and then we wouldn't have to wait a half hour for one of the employees to be able to print us up a new purchase order, which is what they do with their larger items. By the time I joined up with her, she had just achieved "front of the line" status and the cashier was nowhere to be seen –- apparently already checking with the head cashier about getting us a new purchase order. 10 minutes later, and several snappy and nasty remarks from the pair of ladies behind us, we were granted a shiny new purchase order, which we paid for and ran over to the big ticket pick up area and got in line again.

After a 10 minute wait, we were given another number -- and a hysterically random number, at that. The guy at the big ticket counter was assigning wildly varying numbers to everyone's big ticket item, with no discernible rhyme or reason. Kind of funny, really. Number in hand, Lins and I ran out to the busy busy busy parking lot and grabbed the VUE and pulled it into the least busy part of the loading area that we could find.

About 10 minutes later, they called our number -- We have 3 of the 4 boxes that you need. We think that 3 and 4 are the same boxes, though. We're checking on that and we'll let you know.

Christ on a cracker. Don't tell me we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for something that we might not be able to even buy now. This is the one thing at Ikea that we really needed. Our house came without a coat closet and our computer room is littered in unorganized crap. With the wardrobe we were buying, we'd have a coat rack and tons of really useful storage for all our crap. So we were a little worried.

5 minutes later, they called our number again. Here's your order! My how cheery. Fab. Time to load the damn thing on the roof rack. You know the end result of this. Finger trauma, giant welt on left forearm and a broken window. The broken window didn't happen at Ikea, mind you. The bodily harm happened there. While people were staring. Nothing like ripping open your finger while strangers stare on, is there? Oh, you don't know? Well, trust me. It's lovely. Absolutely lovely.

We opened the wardrobe box this past week, with the intention of putting it together. Boxes 3 and 4... are different. We're not sure what's going to happen with that, now. Ikea is supposed to call Lindsay today. They better ship the box we need to us for free. Man. I'm telling you: we need an Ikea here in Minneapolis. I've heard a rumor that when they update the Mall of America, there just might be a big giant blue building coming along for the ride. Rock. An Ikea 10 minutes from my house. That beats 6 hours away. That beats the living crap out of 6 hours away.

There you have it. Part 2 of Lins' and my Chicago vacation. Parts 1 and 2 were both from the last -- and easily the worst -- day of our vacation. There will be better stuff coming up, though. Happy and fun stuff. I promise.

Thanks for stopping by,
Eric