First, on Monday I drove Barbara up to O'Hare Airport in Chicago. It's about a four or five hour drive, but it was significantly cheaper to fly out of Chicago. Also, I was happy to take a day off and spend some time with Babs before she left. The drive up was nice and in fact it was the first time we've driven to Chicago in the day time. We were early enough, so we went to our favorite place to eat in Chicago (so far), Orange with a Peel. As always (we've only been once before, but I say "always" because we plan to go as often as we can) we enjoyed the pancake flights, the frushi, and delicious savory sandwich.
The pancakes were different flavors from the last time we had them. Unfortunately, we didn't document which flavors they were...
The frushi was also different. There was watermelon and I believe a blackberry with strawberry. The sauce is strawberry.
This was an egg, bacon, and spinach sandwich with a fruit spread. Barbara liked it better than the caprese we had last time, but I think I preferred the caprese.
We got to the airport, and said goodbye before Barbara went through security. I then spent the next 24 hours worrying until I heard from her that she'd arrived and was ok, and I was able to unclench.
It's been strange here with Babs gone, but work just sort of marches on. We've got two weeks before school gets out and I can hop on a plane to go join her. I'm so looking forward to that, in no small part because the kids are getting more and more out of control as the end of the year nears. There are many more fights, etc. that I've got to jump in and break up, it's exhausting.
On Saturday, Reynolds (Julia's fiancee) and I went up to Jeff's (Katie's fiancee) house for some fun guy time while the ladies are off doing London-y things. Jeff had heard that I'd had a rough week at school, so he suggested we "shoot things and burn things" which was really perfect. Jeff has some guns, and a big enough piece of property that he can shoot on. Actually Jeff has a really beautiful house and property, and we always love going up to visit. We had a great time target shooting with handguns, rifles and a shotgun. I don't recall if I've really gone "shootin'" since I got my rifle shooting merit badge (you read that right) and it was a blast. What is it about shooting a gun, especially the higher caliber guns, that's so satisfying?
Loading the 22 rifle. We spent much of the time zeroing in the scope. I'm proud to say that despite it being years, I got pretty good groupings.
Jeff, with that wonderful adolescent smile we all get when playing with big boy toys.
Jeff in action.
Checking out the damage to one of these cool metal targets Jeff has. As you can see, they swing, so even from very far away you can tell when you hit it.
The arsenal. Not pictured: the shotgun.
We also raided the recycling to set up some other targets.
Reynolds in action.
We started kind of late and basically went until it got too dark.
This was a really fun one to shoot. It was lever action and had one heck of a kick. It made me feel like I was in a western.
Once it got too dark to shoot, we retired to the fire. We roasted hot dogs (pretty much the only way to eat them) and sat around and visited for hours. Finally we said goodnight (long after we would have been made to go home if our responsible partners were around) and headed home. All 'round, it was a successful guy's night that we may do again soon.
Reynolds and Jeff roasting hotdogs.
Frankly, that looks like a lot of fun. And after shooting, it would seem like heresy NOT to gather around a fire.
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