NO FOOLIN. (it’s IKEAbus time!)

It’s springtime bitches, and you know what that means… IKEA BUS! Yes, we’re (and by we I mean me) doing it again, and no April Foolin, tickets are on sale today. I’m doing a limited amount of $30 early bird tickets, so if you’re definitely in, you might want to get on that soon. (BE AN EARLY BIRD RIGHT NOW)

For those of you who don’t know about the many mystical properties of the IKEA Bus, here is a brief lowdown:

For less than a price of a bus ticket to Boston, you get a ride to a place that the Greyhound won’t take you, donuts & coffee, a bunch of local snacks, and trashy in-flight movies. Oh, and did I mention the liberal BYOB policy?

Did I also mention that we have an awesome moving company who will bring all your giant boxes back to Portland for you and deliver them to your car or house? (Deliveries to towns other than Portland are currently in negotiation.)

p.s. IKEA is a amazing. Jonathan Coulton will tell you all about it.

If you want all the actual factual details about the logistics of the trip, you can find it all on the ticketing site. But really, you don’t need to know those details.  All you need to know is that there’s pretty much nothing better than slightly tipsy furniture shopping with a lot of excellent people. Also, meatballs.

IKEA busted.

well, IKEA bus (the squeakquel) has come and gone, and i’m finally recovered enough to write about it (a mere 18 days later) (i know) (i’m sorry).

well, recovered enough to half ass my way through a recap where i’ll omit a lot of details and probably not tell you what you want to know.  i’ll pretend that it’s because i want to preserve the mystique for future riders. yeah. that.

but be kind, i’m lazy because i’m exhausted.

there were actually a number of passengers who asked me how often i  run the IKEA bus, and recommended that i do it more often. which is totally a nice compliment, if woefully uninformed.

IKEA bus is actually a lot of work. not that i’m complaining (i’m totally complaining), but the snack research, and the phone calls, and the paperwork, and deposits, and movie selections, and ticket hawking/guilt trips… twice a year (or monthly, as recommended) would probably kill me a little.

but enough of my whining. for all the work, of course it was AMAZING. some highlights:

death of a salesman.

let’s be clear: i am a terrible sales person.

when i was in 2nd grade, i quit girl scouts because i didn’t like being forced to sell cookies. in 5th grade, i quit trick or treating because it felt too much like solicitation. despite the fact that everyone loves girl scout cookies, and virtually every person in america has a bowl of candy at the ready on halloween, i couldn’t shake the dirtiness of asking someone to give me something- or worse, BUY SOMETHING!

it’s kind of my worst non-dismemberment related fear. like twitchy cold sweat vomit grade fear.

so here we are at IKEA bus time again, and we have 27 people signed up for a bus that holds 50. and on the inside, i’m all like OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT. but then again, i don’t actually want to ask anyone to to buy a ticket. or flood my facebook and twitter feeds with plugs for my little project. so i’m sort of at a stalemate.

so my decision was to try and overcome my fear in the least invasive and annoying way i could think of- a short and to the point blog post. just one more before i give up, pat myself on the back, and say “hey, 27 people is still pretty sweet. you’re gonna have a kick ass time”.

so here it is.

packing it in.

i packed my first box today.

13 actually. 13 paper boxes full of books, dvds, and things that will probably get broken in transit despite their many layered protective newspaper cocoons. theoretically, this should be good news (especially for my breakables). but really, i’ve got 4 days until my movers show up, and i’ve only packed about 1/8 of everything i own. and that was the easy bit. unfortunately, the rest of my apartment is far less square and regular than my book and dvd collections.

and now, here i am, watching netflix and writing instead of playing through the pain and packing up my kitchen implements before i have time to forget that i’m moving and accidentally get them all dirty again.

thing is, i don’t want to move.