IKEA-tastic

Not a day went by this weekend--and by weekend I mean Friday and Saturday--in which I didn't drive/ride at least 3 hours round trip for some adventure or another.
Friday: Going South
So I needed some shelves on which to put the stuff that's currently covering my bedroom floor (ooh, check out that grammar... I didn't go to college for nothing!). My mom needed the same, only for the mudroom instead of the bedroom. So the two of us trekked down to sunny New Haven on Friday. We started out with lunch (yeah yeah, eating is supposed to come last... but it was lunch time by the time we arrived! We're such rebels...). Their Swedish meatballs really are pretty amazing. The lingonberry juice, not so much--a little too sweet. Anyhoo, then we went on our merry way, this time following the nice arrows on the floor. First we found Becca! who was there with her housemates getting some stuff for their senior house. Then we found some great shelves called IVAR and had figured out all the pieces to get and were ordering them from downstairs, when the guy who was helping us discovered they were out of the shelf part. So we had to find other, less perfect stuff. But it was also even less money, so... woot! Then we continued down to the catacombs of the accessories area, where one inevitably finds tons of stuff that one absolutely needs, even if one did not need that set of placemats before entering the store. We also got some coffee and chocolate to take home... or to eat on the way.
As we were in CT already, we stopped in M-town to see whomever I knew was there. So we had ice cream with Elach, saw RC and BSom's house and then also Becca's house. And SWeigle's, but she wasn't home so I couldn't say hi. Then, after way too much time there (at least if you ask my mom... I would have been fine staying for the semester myself) we headed home for the best part of an IKEA trip... PUTTING TOGETHER THE FURNITURE! ... well, I don't have room on my floor for a bookshelf (bit of a catch-22 there... oops), but we assembled the mudroom shelves. And we saw the Daily Show, which finally covered the protests... twice! Way to go, Lewis Black. And... whoever else.
Saturday: Going North
On Saturday, I got up wicked early (as we say in the MA... and in the NH, where the day's trip would take me) to join my dad and a couple other grown-ups to hike up Mt. Monadnock. But that's not all. At the top, there was a dance performance! Right there on the rocks! It looked like this:

Pretty amazing. They did Native American Sign Language within the dances too, of poems and stuff. The hike was long and tiring, but the dance was wicked cool. Then everyone else went swimming, and I went wading, in the frigid water across the street from the trail head. Then we got massive ice cream cones at Kimball Farm, and came back for take-out Chinese food. A tiring day, but pretty adventure-tastic.