Showing Some Moleskine at Ikea

As Cindy mentioned, we went to the new Ikea store in Dallas (actually, it’s in Frisco, but nobody knows where that is) over the weekend. Now, for people who have access to Ikea stores, this isn’t a big deal. But for us, it was like Disney World, or the Vegas of inexpensive furniture. Just imagine a couple of hillbillies visiting the Big City for the first time, the roofs of their mouths getting sunburned from looking up at all the tall buildings. That’s more or less us in Ikea.

During the 4 hours we spent wandering through the store, sorting out our plans for a room-by-room makeover, I ripped my pants along the back pocket seam. I guess this happened about 30 minutes into our Ikea experience, and I’m pretty sure I know how and why it happened.

CSI:Ikea

For a while now, I’ve been carrying a small plain Moleskine notebook (it’s actually the one Todd gave me) around in my back pocket. It’s a very sturdy notebook, and because I’m always sitting (at the computer, in the car, on the couch, at the coffee shop, wherever there is sitting to be done), the Moleskine, being sturdy (that is, a bit rigid), was pulling the pocket away from my seat whenever I sat down. Over time, that constant tension weakened that area.

It might have been okay for everyday sitting, but this was no ordinary day. We were at Ikea and doing some fancy sitting, dammit. In one of the showrooms, Cindy and I decided to try out a Lunna swivel chair, which was pretty comfortable. The Lunna has a deeper seat than most anything I usually sit in, and you have to really lean forward and push yourself out of it, but when I leaned forward and pushed, the chair made a slight cracking sound. I froze. “Did you hear that?” I asked Cindy. She hadn’t. I thought Oh, great, I like this chair and it’s going to be a piece of crap. I wanted to see if I could get it to make that cracking sound again, so I leaned back, then forward to push out of the chair, and again it made that cracking sound. “Okay,” I said, disappointed with the chair, “we’ll just keep looking.”

And that was that.

Another 15 or 20 minutes later, I reached back to grab my notebook to jot down some information on a sofa, and immediately knew something was wrong. My pants were ripped! How the hell did that happen?

Now, this is the part on CSI: where there would be a color-filtered flashback of me getting out of the Lunna chair, and right when I leaned forward and started to lift out of the seat, the camera would quickly zoom in on my ass, and you’d see the Moleskine notebook pushing the pocket seam out, and then the side of my pants along the pocket would rip in slow motion with a muted echo-y tearing sound.

That hadn’t been a cracking sound; it was a tearing sound. Who knows how many times I had bent down — or over — to look at something before I discovered I had a rip in my pants.

Curse you, Gillis Lundgren, and your Lunna chair. Curse you!

[Note to Self]: Get thinner, more flexible Cahier for carrying around in back pocket. Also, buy better jeans.

Noticeboards

We were walking through the desk accessories area when I saw these.

Here’s a noticeboard called the JAGGA. It’s made of steel, has 4 cubby holes for storage, is painted in white and red, messages can be placed with magnets or written with dry erase marker, and has a built-in clock.

Then there’s the KLUDD. It’s a dry erase board made of tempered safety glass.

But what do they call the plain, most basic corkboard? CHRIS.

Thanks a lot, Ikea, you bastard!

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