Saturday we made a pilgrimage to Seattle to worship at the house of Ikea. We went up with Cheron and Craig (the couple who just moved, but needed MORE stuff to put in their condo! They needed stuff that they could stuff their stuff into.) We left at the crack of dawn in an effort to beat the hordes of shoppers--alas THAT was a fantasy. I don't know when you could go there without feeling like you're part of a herd of cattle. The main thing we wanted was a tv stand (I know, I know--driving 300 miles and adding in the cost of gas, food, and an entire day, the cheap price of the tv stand isn't so cheap anymore!) Well, once we got there, we were mesmerized by the aroma of the Swedish meatballs wafting through the building telling us to buy, Buy, BUY! Well, we listened to meatballs--they told us we needed a new office desk, two office cabinets, a vanity, and some Swedish cookies. Between the two couples, we came home with a VW van loaded to capacity with boxes and our little Jetta so weighted down in the back that it felt like we were preparing for a take-off! Little did I know that the loading and unloading the one and half tons of boxes was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of work.

I spent all day Sunday assembling the furniture--it's a good thing I love Legos, because putting together Ikea furniture is Legos for adults--only you get to set a tv or books on them afterward and they don't get sucked into the vacuum. Most of the stuff we were putting together was in the basement, so I would put something together and Margaret would take the empty box upstairs and set it on the porch for recycling. It wasn't until we broke for dinner and I walked outside that I saw the mountain of cardboard we'd made. It's a good thing that Portland has a curbside recycling program--although I'm sure the collectors are going to be none too pleased when they see this mound when they come by tomorrow! Oh well, with the taxes we pay here in Oregon, I think it's the least they can do.