Getaway

Joe and I had a great long weekend visiting my brother in Boone. I'm thinking about suggesting that the family go in on buying him a guest bed, because three nights on an air mattress is two nights too many. We did have a relaxing time otherwise, and we both needed the day off work. Especially Joe.

We got a bit of a late start Friday night, because Joe wanted to pick up a crappy fish sandwich. The no-meat-on-Fridays-in-Lent is about the only Catholic thing he does. I suppose it's the least annoying thing, but in this case, he got mad at the drive through clerk at Hardee's when she got snippy with him, so we sat down at Culver's instead. It takes about half an hour longer to get to my brother's house than it did for his apartment in Ames, so we were pretty tired when we got there. We slept in the big family room, which they at least heat (he hasn't been heating the upstairs, since he doesn't need the space yet), but I was still pretty cold that first night. We figured out the magic combination of supplemental heaters for the rest of the weekend at least.

Saturday morning we breakfasted at the Dutch Oven Bakery, which is right up there in quality of baked goods. It was so good we went back Monday morning on our way out of town and picked up more pastries to take home. Then we headed to an open house that was the reason for choosing this weekend to go up. An acquaintance of Joe's from racing opened a car restoration business, and had an open house of his facility. Joe's been dying to get a look at this guy's collection, because he's got probably 80 cars in various stages of restoration. I admit, he has a interesting and diverse collection, so I wasn't totally bored. We then went to Hickory Park for barbeque, since I had not been there before. It was a half hour wait for a table at 2:00 in the afternoon - that's how popular this place is. I could see why. Those were some of the most tasty ribs I have ever had. We spent the rest of the evening playing Settlers of Catan. Lew and Kelsey got it for us for Christmas, and they had hoped for the chance to play it with us, but this was the first opportunity. We ended up playing three or four games over the course of the weekend, it was that much fun!

Sunday was a little more laid back. We made waffles for breakfast, Kelsey went off to do homework while Joe and Lew built steps for the basement to outside and I knitted and watched Dexter. I got the best of that deal! We made supper together and finished off with an apple pie I had promised Lew for his belated birthday. Kelsey said "Don't tell your mom, but this is the best pie crust I have ever had." I'm getting better at it, I see. More Settlers and Lew and I played a few rounds of Tetris on the N64 for old times sake before heading to bed.

Joe and I wandered around Ames for a while on Monday after breakfast. He wanted to hit up Mayhem Comics firstly and have lunch at Cocost. We also did a lot of walking around, with Joe pointing out how what had changed since he went to school there. He also didn't tell me I wasn't supposed to walk across the Zodiac in the Memorial Union, and now I'm going to fail my next test.

It was nice to get away from the routine. We need to do that more often.