The IKEA experience.

I remember a few times in college when my friends and I got hooked on IKEA. (It's kind of embarrassing looking back...) I had built a super-sweet "L-loft" for our room and we needed some accessories to make everything super-stylish. The following is a list of zany, little things that no one on earth really needs but that we knew we couldn't live without. A whole assortment of lights: these for under the loft, these for reading in bed, these to replace the large dorm lights, and of course we had to have a fade switch on each of these so we could set the mood. Then there were other silly things like a bag of 100 tea lights, slippers, or the completely wacky rug which were all the kinds of things you wondered why you actually paid for them by the time you got home.

My most recent trip to IKEA was actually last summer when we were in Budapest. The store we went to was exactly like every other store I've ever been to. We must have spent about four hours there. We ate at the food court and then started our journey through the maze. I can't remember that anyone actually needed to buy anything, but through we went. Rebecca and I ended up with a very nice cheese grater that we brought all the way back to America. We had three little girls with us (one six mos. and one newborn!), so this of course made for a most interesting adventure. And the last thing I remember about that trip was this little Hungarian girl who must have been in and out of every one of these lockers.

And if you wondered what sparked this post on IKEA, this is the hilarious article that got me thinking - mostly because I'm just geeky enough to see how an IKEA visit could be a video game.