Alice had a rotary tilting table for Tim's metal lathe and mill set aside at Grizzly. Rather than shipping the gift down to our house, letting Tim go to his adult version of Toys-R-Us for his birthday sounded like a pretty good plan. We managed to make it out of there with only a bench grinder and a few connecting pieces to go with the tilt-table. Next stop was another Bellingham tool store: Harbor Freight, where we were in awe of how poor the quality was on some items, and the strikingly low prices on others. After seeing one-too-many squares that were visibly off from 90-degrees and falling over ban-saws, we decided it might not be the best place to invest in a table saw, or any other tool.
In the parking lot, however, we found this excellent drag-racing car for sale. There is a bar off the back to keep it from doing wheelies, that's a parachute for slowing down attached to the rear, the inside is a full roll-cage, the windows are all non-opening Plexiglas, and the wheels in the back nearly touch in the middle they are so wide. We thought we'd follow it a ways to see how it did on the highway, but we were in our Escort with 50-horsepower instead of the truck with 200, so we put-put-putted along and watched it get farther ahead between cars.
Pretty soon we found ourselves headed for Lummi Nation, the Indian reservation north of Bellingham, and a kind man named Smoky (or at least the sign out front said "Smoky's Fireworks") set us straight on how birthdays should be celebrated before we headed south. After missing the exit for Whidbey somehow, we thought this might be just the opportunity to use up some of our gift cards before anything expired. $400 at Fred Meyers later, we were down three gift cards and had a car stuffed full of food saver vacuum sealing supplies, a fry-daddy... and I can't imagine what else.
Mind you, I had been terribly flu-y and sick all day, but doing my best to keep up with Tim, so I was quite relieved to finally curl up at a table in the Cellar. Everything was amazing! I was delighted in the soft bench of my side of the table, no-one else in our section to see me blowing my nose, dimmed lighting, and a dark, warm color scheme that let my eyes and head recover. I was grateful for the never-ending supply of hot tea, lemons, and ice water delivered directly to my hands without having to move. Tim's appreciation went beyond these comforts that came just short of a pillow and hot water bottle.. maybe a blanket would be nice too... - he got us some excellent sushi that came in a little boat with something suspiciously like fresh pickled cucumbers. The bread and garlic and Parmesan was wonderful, and both of us took our time on our amazing dinners until our plates were clean.
Of course, no birthday is complete without cake, so even after being stuffed with so many good foods, Tim consented to a slice of raspberry cheesecake and our waitress brought it out complete with a candle and helped me sing to the birthday boy.
After the very long drive home, which I managed to stay awake for most of, we found the best present of the day - floors! The painters had been busy and managed to get all the upstairs painting at least sprayed and rolled up all their plastic. Finally we can walk around the house again, use the kitchen, get to the bathroom, play with Tilly! I feel a bit like the man who brought all the animals into his tiny house only to let them back out again so the house would feel bigger - we've let the painters back out of the house and it is huge again!
No comments:
Post a Comment