Sunday, May 22, 2011

My Life in Review + Operation: Defeat IKEA, Part 1

Since it's been almost a year since I've written in this blog, here's a quick recap of the major events in my life: I graduated from Emerson and am officially a MASTER OF PUBLISHING AND WRITING. Oh yeah, you are all intimidated by that prestigious degree. I mean, on the scale of prestige, a J.D. gets the bronze medal, an M.D. gets the silver, and an M.A. in publishing is far and away the gold medalist.

Additionally, I got a full-time, non-temp job at Genzyme. I moved from the legal department to the fabulous CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS department where I get to write articles and tweets and update the website, etc. In the blog post where I mentioned that I got the temp legal job, I just said I was working at "a biotech company" because I was somehow under the impression that someone at Genzyme was monitoring an RSS feed that would show them any time the word "Genzyme" was mentioned and that they would henceforth monitor my blog. This now sounds extremely paranoid and rather laughable to me. I'm pretty sure that as long as I don't stupidly post anything labeled "internal and confidential" to this blog, I can safely mention the name of the company where I work. :-) In any case, it's a great job and I'm thrilled to have a paid writing gig. Also, I think this job might actually save me from my addiction to school because it's interesting and challenging enough that I won't feel like I am shrivelling up intellectually and creatively without my classes. This is a good thing because I really don't have the time or money to go back to school for another degree right now, and I don't need one for my future career pursuits. But I might be singing another tune in a year or so.



The third piece of big news is that I'm moving to the North End next month! I found a lovely little studio and I'm thrilled to be living alone and closer to THE CITY. (Please note that the picture above is actually of me standing in a re-creation of Thoreau's cabin, which I visited with my parents when they came here for my graduation. My studio may be about the same size as Thoreau's house but is much sunnier. Like Thoreau, I can say that I moved there because "I wanted to live deliberately.") The new studio brings me to the other part of this blog post:

Operation: Defeat IKEA, Part 1

When I moved to Boston two years ago, I purchased the most fantastic IKEA daybed imaginable. It is part bed, part couch, part storage space. It's beautiful and practical and ideal for apartment life. In fact, I purchased it with this day in mind--the day when I would be able to move into my very own minuscule studio. It was a dream worth dreaming, and one that is finally going to be fulfilled.



However, now that the day has arrived, I have discovered a flaw in my plan. My IKEA bed, now fully assembled, won't fit through my bedroom door nor will it fit through my new studio's door. So I have to disassemble it. With normal furniture, that would be no big deal. But IKEA furniture is anything but normal; in fact, this bed--though perfect and beautiful and ideal when fully assembled--was likely designed by the minions of the anti-Christ (my apologies to Carina Bengs, who is the actual designer). When my friend Ann was helping me move out here, she also helped me assemble some of my IKEA furniture. She was assembling this daybed while I was assembling my dresser. She got to a point in the instructions where two people were necessary, but the picture did not show two of those cartoon IKEA people helping each other out, so of course she assumed she could do it herself. (We had to put blind faith in those IKEA instructions, mind you.) The largest piece of the bed came crashing down on her foot, ripping off her toenail and spewing her blood all over the bed and floor. So the bed has already scored a point against the human race, and now it's out to score another one. But I am determined that it will not.



I have figured out exactly which cheap IKEA screws need to be removed in order for the bed to be disassembled into four manageable pieces that will fit through a standard-sized door frame. One problem is that some of the screws are so cheap that they have been stripped; the bigger problem is that four screws are the dreaded lock-screw combination:



You screw one metal screw into a hollow metal screw, which locks it in place. I'm pretty sure you're never supposed to be able to unscrew them once they are assembled. However, this is the perfect bed and I will not give up without a fight and a (possibly fatal) attempt to use power tools to accomplish my goal. If I die trying to disassemble this bed, then this blog post can be my eulogy and it can also provide evidence for a conviction in court when the best lawyers from Lockhart/Gardner bring IKEA products to the stand. (I have become a huge fan of The Good Wife over the past few months, hence the somewhat forced reference to the law firm in the show, Lockhart/Gardner.)

I know it's dangerous to promise a future blog post, but my plan is to keep you updated on how my fight against this IKEA bed goes. And I also hope to write in this blog more regularly, now that I no longer have classes for four hours two nights a week, plus an endless stream of homework. We shall see how both of these endeavors turn out.

1 comment:

  1. First of all, I totally thought you were in your new apartment in that picture (really). Second of all, congrats on finishing your degree. Third of all (now I have to keep it parallel), definitely keep your readers updated on the fate of you and your IKEA bed...

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