Ikea Cast-offs: a Semi-Regular Recurring Feature?

The Dear Reader may be aware that I am not a huge fan of Ikea. For one thing, I don't eat meatballs, Swedish or otherwise. For another, I find going there extremely dispiriting, a cross between going to the airport and going on an endless tour of campus dorm room models. And, of course, there's the fact that it's all horribly cheap crap, designed to be in vogue one season and tossed out the next time you move. Or redecorate. Or get paid.

But after the tossing out, that's where I start to like Ikea. We now have six Ikea items in our house, each of which one of us has found abandoned on the curb. (We have lots of things in our house now that we've found abandoned on the curb, one of the benefits of living in an extremely ecologically-minded city with a large student population and a climate in which it is guaranteed not to rain for a large chunk of the year).

Here's my latest find: a metal table. Not sure where it's going to go yet, and we didn't really need it, but it was in perfect shape and I couldn't pass it up.










We also have two tables, the smaller of which is featured here. We have another one, just like it only much larger, that's currently in our kitchen. These two items were definitely the most work getting home of any of our Ikea cast-offs.









We also have two lamps, one of which is in the corner in this picture (kind of hard to see). The shades were not in great shape; one of them was so bad we threw it away, but then Brian found a shade that fit it one day - where else? on the curb in our neighborhood. Ikea? We're not sure about that one. The final item is a lime-green waste basket (that one was easy to get home).






So, do you have any Ikea cast-offs? Send me an email, with text or a picture, and I'll put it my blog.

Logic-free

Can I just ask a question, please? Why would you develop ice cream flavors based on your coffees, make a big deal of calling them coffee free, and then put an asterisk next to the words "coffee free" and put a tiny disclaimer in the corner that says "not a caffeine-free food"? Just, WHY? Ladies and gentlemen, that does not make sense!

Vacation? What Vacation?!

My plan to quickly get up a series of posts about our vacation while it was still fresh in my mind has, of course, gone by the wayside even more quickly. I do have photos up on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21380180@N08/sets/72157624433600761/.

But, in the spirit of Better Late Than Never, here are some photos from the early part leg of the trip.

On our way north to Oregon, we stopped off for lunch at William B. Ide adobe State Historical Park, where there were lots of picnickers with dogs, and a family of wild turkeys. There was an adobe house, too, but it was not the original one, and in my opinion the dogs and the turkeys were far more interesting.







We spent the first night in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and attended meeting at Klamath Friends Church on Sunday.











In Klamath Falls, we spent some time pondering how, exactly, recliners, mattress sets and tables were different from sofa's and loveseat's and therefore merited different punctuation.










From there we went north, and made a couple of stops in the Klamath Basin. This photo is from Klamath Marsh, where we saw a Black Tern (one of several lifers on this trip).











Mountains!













Here's our cheese shot at Crater Lake (see previous post for more shots from Crater Lake).












The Rogue River, at a place called Natural Bridge. We would not have stopped at this place but for a tip from the guy who gassed up our car in Prospect, where we stayed while visiting Crater Lake. Awesome spot, there a place where the river flows through a big lava tube, making a natural bridge (get it?).








Mountains! With explanatory displays!












On to Portland!