Olav, you bastard...

So this was my first weekend off in a month. Yesterday was a lovely day: we shopped 'til we dropped and had lunch at Granny Bonn's Fish and Chips, a local institution I had somehow avoided over my (wow) 21-year tenure in this city. We'll be back. The chips were merely average, but the fish was some of the best I've ever had in my life.

We've been getting JYSK flyers for a few weeks now, and they've looked mighty intriguing. Yesterday we investigated the store and found it...mighty intriguing. It's the hybrid offspring of a midget IKEA and a Bed, Bath and Beyond. Great prices. We got a raincheck on Luc the computer desk at the eye-popping retail of $99; picked up a supremely comfortable office chair; and snagged Olav, the pine buffet, resolving to put him together today.

I was not looking forward to the experience. Olav sounds like he belongs in the Swedish mafia.

The instructions suggested the process would take two people an hour to complete. I leafed through them with dismay: not a single word. All pictures. I don't speak picture. These looked reasonably clear, all things considered...which means I probably had only half of them wrong. I'm a man who knows my limitations. The instructions went to Eva.

So did the tools. I assumed my role of 'holder, turner, and general screwer-upper" with aplomb. Actually, I took some initiative and laid out the roughly gazillion little screws, nails, and unidentifiable whatchamacallits on the table, counting and checking the inventory against the sheet to make sure everything was there. Labelling it all, too, because the instructions referred to each thingumabob with F and a number. F5x50, for example, referred to those fifty tiny finishing nails. I wondered how many times we'd be saying F this and F that today.

Supposed to be 24 dowels. I counted them twenty four times: there were twenty three. Scour the table, dump one little baggie, then another--there you are, you little bugger! Fifty (!) finishing nails. Eight big screws, 24 little ones, 2 huge skinny ones, four...thingies...where are the four thingies?

Examine picture. Thingy looks roughly like a razor blade; I assume it's part of a hinge. I'm missing four thingies. They're not anywhere. I probably threw them out. Go through garbage, yuck. No thingies. Well, lots of thingies, some of them decidedly GROSS thingies, but none of the thingies I'm looking for.

Eva comes out and determines in about four seconds that my thingies are attached to other thingies, and everything's okay. Sigh. When they say two people, one hour, I wonder what that translates to when one of those people is a retard. I doubled the estimate in my mind.

And so we begin. There are fifteen steps. As usual with these things, we got through the first one in about a minute flat. The second step didn't take long, either. Neither did the third. But then we got to the fourth step and step two undid itself before our very eyes.

This is par for the course in this here Breadbin. It seems to me as if one shelf will only fit in properly if the top and bottom are attached, but the top and bottom will only fit properly if that shelf is attached, and before long I'm ready to STRANGLE Olav and throw him out the window.

I could take you through the entire process, and you'd find it hugely entertaining, I'm sure. Suffice it to say that the 'tools required' list was a bit short. Besides the indicated hammer, screwdriver and Allen key, we used crazy glue (to no effect), our own nails (because the crazy glue had no effect), a saw to shorten up a board that was too long for some reason that was probably my fault), a dremel (because the saw didn't cut cleanly enough), and numerous swear words for lubrication. All told, it took eight and a half man-hours, not two, but Olav is a resplendent addition to our living room.

Luc the desk comes in two weeks, and it looks even harder...