Day of Fun

I had another nice Portland day today. I woke up, spent about 3 hours on the depressing job hunt, and knew I needed to get myself out of the house to not slide into a funk. Or maybe to get out of the funk I'd already slid into. I Yelped around a bit to get inspiration on what to do today and decided to go to a few stationery stores. (I love yummy paper and am the only person on earth who still regularly writes letters. On paper. And then I put a stamp on them. And they go through the mail.)

I started at Oblation, which is such a great store. A little spendy, but I was mostly window shopping and just looking for inspiration from their silky ribbons and yummy blank books. I ended up getting a tiny little gift tag in the shape of Oregon for $2. Super cute.

After that I went to Ecru, which I'd never been to before. Such a cool little store - lots of great Portland-themed stuff and beautiful papers. The person at the counter was friendly and the music was soothing and perfect; it was a relaxing shopping experience. You might want to visit fast - I was the only one in the store for about a half-hour, so I'm not sure how long they'll be there.

After that I decided to grab a ham and cheese baguette at Lovejoy Bakers, which Gowalla helped me discover. It's such a beautiful little deli, and my sandwich and Russian tea cookie were awesome. It might be a little too fancy for my tastes, but the food was great.

Finally, I visited the World Forestry Center (free admission in December because I'm a member of the Chinese Garden!) for the first time ever. Such a cool place. It's so perfect for children (of what age, I have no idea) because the exhibits are very interactive and they have some seriously advanced technology to learn about different aspects of forestry. It's laid out beautifully and I was very impressed. During my visit I learned a little about the laws requiring reforestation in WA and OR whenever trees are cut down, about all the different animals that live in the 4 different types of forests, and I saw a piece of petrified oak that was 25 million years old. ! In the gift shop I picked up a map of Forest Park, which I think I've been in once in 13 years of living in Portland, so hopefully a post about exploring one of the trails there will be coming soon.

Thanks for another great day, Portland. Can we play again tomorrow?