The End of the Chicago Trip

For our last day in Chicago, I made my annual pilgrimage to Ikea. There are no Ikea stores in Ohio. We must travel either to Chicago or to Pittsburgh in order to visit the big blue box, and frankly, Chicago is further away, but there’s more to do there.

Ikea is my Mecca of home shopping. Lots of unique items, and best of all – cheap.

While we have thankfully outgrown our “College Eclectic” home decorating style, I still appreciate inexpensive but well-made home goods.

This year’s haul: two laundry bags and holder, a cute bin to hold Cordy’s toys, two wall-mount reading lamps for each side of our bed, a tunnel and play tent for Cordelia, and a little wooden wagon with wooden blocks for Cordy. Last year I found a bead puzzle, and that thing is still the most popular toy in the house.

After shopping and eating dinner, we picked up Aaron from the stage combat workshop, and began the long trek home. I drove the entire way, thanks in large part to the support of Mountain Dew Livewire. Yeah, I was a little slaphappy, too.

I can’t be sure, but I have a theory that there is a rip in the time-space continuum somewhere in Indiana along I-65. In this rip, what is normally only 2 hours feels like 20.

Time drags on, as you look at each road sign hopefully, praying you’ve covered 20 or 30 miles, only to find you’ve covered 5 miles. I swear that the section of I-65 between Gary, IN and Indianapolis is the single most boring stretch of highway in the world.

Also along that stretch is the Slowest Burger King in Indiana (TM). Aaron decided he really wanted Burger King for dinner on the way home, so we stopped off to fill the gas tank and let him get food. 20 minutes later, we were all in the car once again, all awake (including Cordy, thanks to the long wait), and ready to get back on the road.

We arrived safely in Columbus around 2am. A frantic dash was made by myself, my mom, and Aaron to quickly bring the unhappy (and still awake) Cordy inside, set up her crib with all of her must-have items, change her and prepare some milk for bedtime. After she was asleep, the three of us soon followed, exhausted from a very long weekend.

Today, I took Cordelia over to her grandpa’s for the day. I had the day off work, but I really needed some time away from her to get unpacked and also take a nap.

Aaron, on the other hand, had to go back to work today, and got to have a huge announcement dropped on him: his company laid off another 30 people today. A little over a year ago, they laid off 20 people and cancelled the telecommuting policy, forcing me to look elsewhere for another job. Now 30 more are gone.

Some are people I worked with for several years and I considered friends. I feel so bad for them; they were given no notice, and probably were given insultingly small severance packages.

Thankfully, Aaron escaped the axe, probably because he’s one of the poorly paid employees. Most of the people cut in his department were those who made better money. Hooray for being…underpaid?