Maybe I should get a GPS...

So, our Wednesday night crew are coming to our new place tonight, and I decided that I wanted to make sushi. I remembered, about a year and a half ago, stumbling upon an asian grocery with a friend while we were on our way back from somewhere. I couldn't remember exactly where we were on our way back from, but I had a general idea of the direction, and I was about 80% sure of the road that it was on. So far so good. I can usually find my way back to somewhere I've been to before with some amount of trial and error. As long as I'm coming from the same direction.

But then I decided that I needed an oil change. And the closest Jiffy Lube was about five miles away, and not at all in the same direction as where I imagined the asian grocery to be. But not in the opposite direction, either, that would have made things too easy. They were three corners of a triangle, and I decided that I could cut across the top of the triangle and save myself some time. I was even a good little girl and tried to look the directions up in my map book, but unfortunately, we live on the top edge of the map book, and I had traveled even further north, out of map range. So I just started driving.

Then I passed a Goodwill, so I decided, on a whim, to stop and see if I could find any decent maternity clothes. Or a decent table for the new place. I generally consider a trip to a thrift store a success if I find one thing worth buying, and I'm ecstatic if I find more than two or three things. Today, I found a total of nine items of maternity clothing that fit me and I liked. Pretty awesome. I figured, at this point, I had probably used up all of my good thrift store karma, but decided to check out the furniture anyhow. And I found a gorgeous dining room table, in nice heavy wood, with two leaf inserts to make it big enough to seat about 12, and with only a few scratches on the finish that could easily be refinished away, but would be covered by a tablecloth most of the time anyhow, so were not a big concern to me. There were no chairs I liked, but my karma had to run out at some point. Best of all, I got out of there spending only $50 on everything together. Take that, Ikea.

I also caved at this point and called Jeremy to see if he could get directions for me online, and I carefully wrote down the route he gave to me. Then I missed a turn somewhere along the line, and ended up about 5 miles north of where I wanted to be. So, I called him again, and got fresh directions from my new location.

As I was driving along, still not 100% sure of where I was going, I passed Big Lots. Then I remembered where I had been coming back from with my friend when we found the Asian grocery. Big Lots! So, I stopped in to see if I could pick up a few of those random household things that you always seem to need to get when you move. Like a broom and a dustpan and a kitchen trash can and an ice cream sandwich (okay, fine, that last one had more to do with being pregnant than moving). I even managed to pick up a remanufactured Hoover vacuum cleaner for about 1/5 of the normal retail price. Score.

And, believe it or not, I even found the asian grocery after that. It was right where I had thought it was, and I probably would have saved myself a lot of time and energy if I had just driven home first and gone there "the long way". But then I wouldn't have found so many awesome things on my random shopping stops. I managed to find everything I wanted at the grocery (which, for my later reference more than anything else, was called "Assi" and is just north-west of 202 on 63). I even found some things I wasn't looking for, like red bean mochi. Yum. I had also forgotten that this particular asian grocery was also, for some reason obviously not related to geography, a hispanic grocery. So now I know where to go to get maseca and queso fresco the next time I have a hankering for pupusas. Mmmm... pupusas...

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