Daily Archives: June 20th, 2013

IKEA the Light

ikeaBeing new to the big city, my wife and I ran off last night and did something that officially baptized us as seasoned big city denizens. Nothing in this city will ever hold our wonder again.

Laws, yes. M-O-O-N. That’s spells IKEA. And what a sight it was to behold. In fact, I’m going to do my best to document the experience from the perspective of all five senses. Yes, all five! It’s a lofty goal. Let’s see how I do.

After consulting the texts of ancient lore (Google) we determined that we’d have to drive through about 10 miles of urban jungle in areas we had never explored before. This was going to be something new. I packed my machete just in case we saw any urbane gorillas.

At first we worried we might get lost, but while still about 42 miles away, the shape of IKEA loomed large and glowed in the distance. There was no mistaking the mountain of yellow and blue which shined bigger and brighter than Mt. Everest as seen from a distance of 12 feet.

The only close call we had on the way over was when my wife reflexively knee-jerked the car and almost pulled into the parking lot of another garishly colored blue and yellow building. But that only turned out to be the IKEA warehouse. I hate to burst any bubbles but apparently the trendy product widgets contained in the IKEA store are not actually björn there.
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Scary Tales: Mansion Lensman

A boy and his Lensman.

A boy and his Lensman.

A now a true story from the guru archives just because I can…

It’s weird how so many of my father’s interests became interests of mine. A lot didn’t, much to his disappointment, I’m sure, but some stuck. Things like wristwatches (he was a Rolex man), scuba diving (I’m a certified open water diver) and photography. My dad loved his 35mm SLR Pentax cameras. And no, the 35mm is not some lens spec. It describes the type of film that went in the camera.

Back then if you wanted a certain ISO, you had to buy that kind of film. It wasn’t just a setting on some fancy digital piece of electronics.

Eventually I’d have a Pentax of my own, which I still have to this day, although it’s been over 10 years since it was last used.

There was this one time we took our family vacation to Southern California. Among other tourist things we did, we visited a little place called Disneyland and that’s where this scary tale begins…
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