So Larry and I were kind of stumped. See, Norman was gonna drive us up to Portland in his vehicle because we were sure that Larry's MG wouldn't make it. Also, Sam had said she was paying for the hotel room for the night. We left her place and I felt hoped Norm's dad was fine but I also was really disappointed that we weren't going to go to Portland. Larry said "Well, what do you wanna do?" and I said "I know this sounds crazy, but I just have this intuition that your car will make it up to Portland and back with no hitches, so let's give it a try on our own." Luckily I still had birthday money left from my mom (which I had planned on using for bills or medication or something) and Larry had some money, so we drove up to Portland with no car problems whatsoever.
We checked into a cheap motel (The Downtown Valu Inn on 4th and Montgomery) and luckily the room didn't stink or anything though everything seemed to be covered with cigarette burns (all the dressers, the bathroom sink, the desk, even the comforter on the bed had burn holes in it) but it didn't smell like smoke or wet dog or anything in there and for $55.00 a night in downtown you can't be too picky anyway. I did notice right away that our pillows had no pillowcases on them and I feared that cheap motels expected one to furnish their OWN pillowcases, but when I went down to the front desk and told them our pillows had no pillowcases the guy laughed and then handed me two clean ones.
We zoned out on the bed for a little while and watched some of that free cable/HBO and then we walked around downtown to locate someplace to eat dinner. We went into 2nd Ave. Records, which has alot of records I wanted to purchase. I knew I could only buy one thing and I happened upon a sealed copy (and on PURPLE VINYL) of The Cramps' "Date With Elvis" which I've been looking to buy on vinyl for sometime now. It was only around $10.00, so I was happy. I can't wait to open it up and listen to immortal songs such as "Hot Pearl Snatch" and "Can your Pussy Do the Dog?" Goofy, good shit!
Then we walked around looking for food. By looking at the menus posted outside we decided that almost all of the restaurants downtown were out of our price range, but we finally happened on a reasonably priced Lebanese restaurant called Kahim or something similar to that. The decor inside was nice..it was dark wood tables and chairs and dark Arabic carpets and painted walls. I had a delicious sampler plate which included things I love such as kafta kabob, baba ghanoush (sp?), taboueli, hummus, falafel patties and a tiny bit of a chicken dish whose name I can't spell so I won't try. It all came with a puffed pita (which I've never seen) and I had a Lebanese soda which was bright red, stained my mouth, and had rosewater in it. It was all delicious.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel and our friend's Jody and Elena (who live in the Portland 'burbs) came and met us at the hotel. We then walked back down to 2nd ave. and went to Kell's (an "Irish" pub of sorts) and drank some beers (I had Boddington's, which reminded me of a certain young man from the North of England that I know..he always talks about drinking "Boddies") and Elena told me about this diet (for health, not really weight loss) that her mom is on called the "Blood Type Diet" and it's totally based on one's blood type and what foods that blood type would benefit from eating and what to avoid. I'm going to research this a bit because it sounds interesting and a little weird. Unfortunately, I don't know what blood type I am. I wonder if my mom does. Hmm.....
After Kell's, we walked back up towards the hotel and stopped in at "The Cheerful Tortoise" which Larry had trouble pronouncing cuz he had drank several pints of Guinness. I was relatively sober the entire night. I really didn't like the "Cheerful Tortoise" at all. It was too brightly lit and full of a weird crowd of people that I can't describe. Young college kids that might frequent a sports bar..that is how I would describe most of the crowd. It just had an icky vibe in there and I was starting to get tired. Thank God we weren't there more than an hour or a little over an hour.
Finally we went back to our hotel room and I slept fairly decently and we came back to Springfield yesterday afternoon.
As for what to do on this sunny and breezy Labor Day? I'd like to take two camping chairs and drive to a nice park in town and bring our books and just read. We still may do that, but first Larry said he had to do stuff like take the tires off his cars to tighten the bearings or something and he also needed to clean out the furnace room so he could put his Vespa (more like Vespa project..it needs lots of work done on it) in there for storage. There are also library movies to watch which are due tommorrow. Right now I'm going to look through the Register Guard and see if there are any jobs I can/should apply for.
