IKEA is huge. Like, all of Metrocenter mall crammed into one store huge.

Wisely, they have a child care facility. When chas_ emerged from same, one munchkin down, I was amused to see that they hand out pagers to the parents, in the form of those flashing vibrating coasters that they use at Fuddruckers. No matter where you are in the store, as long as you're in signal range of the transmitter, they will be able to hook you back to take care of any Kid Issues that might arise, so long as you're paying half-attention to that coaster.

We went wandering about the store. I got "lost" at least once. My back was the first thing to start hurting. My sense of the plausible just shut down and left my inner kindergartner to glee about the place. I eyed a $7 toy tent, and wondered if it wasn't something I should buy one of and stick in the car (still fully folded) in case of breakdown. I think an umbrella would be more effective, though.

(Incidentally, Naomi now has little appreciable age difference from the rest of the Collective. As predicted, since she's the Geek, she's beginning to inherit. We'll keep on melding if there's an absence of pressures, and keep splintering if there's a presence of pressures. Our mind is modeled like a lava lamp, except with memories that work with personalities like they were Venn Diagrams.)

There was examination of all sorts of completely unrelated furniture. I was looking at some of those model living spaces going "Yeah, I could live with that." One hilarious bit was finding The Lost Years in a "bookstore" fitness shelf. And I saw Second Lady too.

I restrained myself and did not get any large piece of furniture other than the folding wooden screen. Something like that is good for privacy, and with two people in a studio apartment, occasionally that might be required. (I reassured hcolleen that if ever a situation came up where Darkside and I were spending Personal Time in my bed without an opportunity to warn her, that screen would be UP, so that if she wandered in while things were going on, at least she would not have to see the proceedings before they came to an abrupt and undignified halt.)

hcolleen had said that the question that should be asked of me upon each Large Furniture Type Thing attempted to purchase: "Where, exactly, do you plan to put that?" Answers of anatomical unlikelihood were to be disregarded.

The plastic-crate-and-cardboard edifice in the hallway? Needs to go. Which means I need something For Shoes.

The kids were as well-behaved as one can expect tired and cranky kids to be. It transpires that I Know The Tricks of Four-Year-Old Boys, and have gotten decently good at anticipating when babies are going to want to throw things or upset things. The "attempt to drink out of a straw cup like it was a sippy cup" thing, I'm still behind on. Practice for if I ever have my own, eh? We were all getting pretty tired. My feet eventually did start to give out, which problem I chalk up to using the wrong shoes. Note to self: wear the newest lace-up shoes for any future IKEA expeditions, not the slip-ons!

Fun was had by all. I'd attempted to call Darkside before the adventure started, but my timing was poor. I never did get a viable chance to call him back. I'll call tomorrow and apologize. Dawn called me earlier on -- she'd been having one of Those Couple Weeks. She's got a little bit of Supernatural fic up at ff.net; I'll read it when I get a chance.

We re-convened at Fry's (Electronics) briefly. They were closing. It was bright and shiny in there! I did not see the gadget I'd been looking for (a car vacuum) but that was all right. Upon getting back into my neck of the woods, I went grocery shopping and got the makings for stew. Stew is now stewing merrily away in the big crock pot, and I'll have lunch for a couple days! Hooray stew.

Morning was me calling Qwest and complaining about their IVR, and suggesting a few solutions for it. I was good: very few of them involved reprogramming with a chainsaw. There are a lot of people upset with it.

V came over this afternoon, and I played hard-to-get with the wireless card a friend had given her and my old laptop. Or it played that with me. Or the wireless router played that with us both. We lose track of these things, ultimately.

After intermittent screaming, she took me to Fry's Electronics, where I got equipment to make the bloody thing work. I had a hard time making one of the decorative geeks understand that yes, I did indeed want both a wireless network adapter AND a regular wired NIC for the same goddamn laptop. Is there a communications blockup somewhere?

V wandered off to wherever it was that she was headed, after making plans with me for Wednesday. I beat on the wireless cards until I was to the point of tears, then (at wibbble's pointed suggestion) got something to eat before resuming. For whatever scary reason, installing the wired NIC made things work.

After this, random image-geeking and the slurping of things off Tigereye that don't need to be there (chat logs filed away safely), and setting things up properly for V. I have decided that since she operates better not knowing how things work, just knowing that they work and how to use them (more than that scares her, and she prefers to be patted on the head and told it's too geeky for her to understand), I can go ahead and just play with things so that she'll be almost in touch with the Information Age. *giggle* Yay Information Age. And I've got things almost set up for her to be in the writers' group e-mail list, too; I just need a few pokes-at-things from her.

Time's started moving oddly for me.