Saturday was a family birthday party over in Vancouver, WA. Just about everybody was there. I made a cake Friday night (just a regular cake from scratch. Takes about 10 minutes to prepare. Nothing fancy). Saturday morning I frosted it, then left by 9am for the 3 1/2 hour drive. The drive was peaceful and pleasant; the air was so clear I could easily see Mt. Hood from Umatilla, about 150 miles away, and the sun was shining brightly on it.
I had picked 12:30 or 1 as my arrival because I didn’t know what time the party was supposed to be. Unfortunately, I had picked wrong. I had no problem finding the house thanks to my handy phone and Google Maps, but I was a few hours early. I used my phone to read back through all the emails, and I finally found the one that said the party was supposed to start at 4pm. oops. I had passed an Ikea on the way in, and I’ve been curious to see what the inside of one looks like, so I decided to kill some time there. The place was packed with people, and the store was enormous. There was so much stuff inside. A few times I looked hard at something and thought it was cool and that I’d like it, but it was immediately followed by the thought that I already have something that does that, and I didn’t need whatever it was that I was eyeballing. I called up a friend to see if she wanted me to pick up anything for her while I was there, then slowly made my way out of the store without purchasing anything, and a little shaken by how many people were inside and how much stuff there was to buy. I had remarked about how many Wal*Marts a single one of the container ships we were watching in Tacoma could fill, and seeing the Ikea made me realize how much people buy.
I went back to the house, and by then everyone had arrived. It was a good dinner with Turkey sandwiches and plenty of food and drinks. I talked to everybody there, and it was nice. My cake went over well, even though I had only spent a total of 30 minutes on it. I left at 7:30 so that I could make it back to Richland at a reasonable hour. In a gas station at The Dalles, I ran into someone who works just a couple doors down from me. I had a really hard time staying awake on the way home, but by 11pm I pulled into the apartments and had made it home. I was asleep shortly after.