7.2.2000

    Why is it July? Why? I'm not ready for this.

    Yesterday, Thom and I took a completely fruitless trip to Ikea up in Renton, Washington. We need cabinets for the bathroom. Renten is over three hours away. We got out early in the morning and got up there to see that they were having their "twice yearly sale." Whoop-de-doo. There was a billion people with their billions of children. It was a madhouse. I seemed to deal with it okay but Thom was a little more edgy.

    We wandered through Ikea, writing down a few things here and there as possibilities. We finally found the perfect cabinets — the Åsnen high cabinet and its smaller, hanging counterpart. Good color. Good price. Yee-ha. We copied down their numbers and then headed off to the checkout. Got there and showed them the number and they said they were out of stock.

    Ikea does not ship.

    Thom very nearly hit the roof. We walked out empty-handed.

    So, that was a little bit frustrating. The annoying thing was that there was nothing we could do or could have done. It's difficult to pick this stuff out of a catalog and I'm not even sure we would have been able to order it ahead anyway. In order to get it, we would have had to order it and then come back another time. I was noticing in their newest catalog this quirky front-of-book section explaining why Ikea is so inexpensive: you put the furniture together yourself, you pick it up yourself and, apparently, you don't buy anything at all if it's not in stock. That last one wasn't actually listed but it makes as much sense as anything.

    Friday night, we went out to Salvadore Molly's, this place everyone has been recommending to me. It had this sort of strange "Pirate" theme going on to match the Caribbean cuisine but it wasn't too cheesy. We had filafel-type things to start with and then I had the seafood Jambalaya and Thom had the Jerk pork. It was pretty damn yummy.

    We did a picnic lunch today up at Council Crest. This is the highest point in Portland and it commands a nice view of the city and, on a clear today (today really wasn't), the three peaks of Ranier, Hood and St. Helen's. We hiked up from the Marquam Nature Park trailhead through dense woods and crossed several roads. It wasn't too steep or too long. I think the trail was listed at just under two miles in length.

Council Crest is so-named for the belief that Native American tribes in the area used to congregate on the top for meetings and ceremonies. It also, apparently, used to have an amusement park on top which was torn down sometime in the 1940s. In town, there's a trolley car still running around with "Council Crest" on its placard. The area is really not very big so I can't imagine a roller-coaster up there.

    At the top, Thom and I stretched out on a blanket and had lunch while watching families come through in small waves. There was the after-church contingent all dressed up and the pre-Fourth-of-July, the-relatives-are-in-town-so-let's-show-it-to-them, group. The kids were amusing. We read for a little while and then headed back down the hill. It was nice and relaxing and right in the middle of the city!

    Tomorrow, I drive down to Eugene to get my car registered. Ugh. That should be loads of fun.