Jon and I just got back from Sioux Falls. We left Sunday after seeing Jon’s dad off to a conference at St. Olaf and got into town about 6:30. We had a lovely dinner at Olive Garden and then went to Barnes and Noble. (For those who don’t know, I’m an ex-BN slave.) It was seriously like being a kid in a candy store and having “pyramided” books while completely bored at cashwrap when I worked there to support my academic $tarbuck$ habit, I was having to fight off the urge to fix the displays. (Yes, I know I’m a freak.) I *did* buy two books: Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner and Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend. I crashed into bed that night, having had a crazybusy day with church and all that.

The next morning, I woke up and looked at the alarm clock and saw that it was 10:00. Dope! I had hoped to grab breakfast in the lobby but no luck. Since my “allergies” were causing me to cough up loads of yellowish-green gunk, I filled the script that my wonderful P.A. (to whom I promised to give chocolate if he would somehow get the script to me before I left on Sunday) wrote for me and dropped it at Walgreens. We then headed to the local branch of our bank, came back, got the prescription, and headed to $tarbuck$ to get something for me to drink. After I washed down my meds with a mint mocha chip frappucino, we headed to a discount shoe store where I found some summer sandals that fit (I have a really high arch so I have to get shoes that are wider than normal) and then headed to the Empire Mall. I found some underwear at Victoria’s Secret (nothing all that interesting — just some plain cotton underwear) and looked at Foot Locker to see if they had the running shoes I’ve been looking for. They didn’t, so I’m going to go online and find out the style and all that to give to the Watertown store when I go there for therapy in a couple weeks. (I put some of my birthday money onto a gift card for Foot Locker so that I’d have the money for running shoes when mine finally wore out.) We had lunch there and then headed back to the motel. I spent the afternoon reading, resting, riding 10 miles on the recumbent bike in the fitness room (and got some pretty good bruises from banging my knees on the machine because the seat couldn’t be adjusted well), and chilled that evening after getting food at Wendy’s. (Yes, I’ve honestly been watching my fat and I haven’t had any problems with stomach pain.)

This morning, we got up early, checked out, and headed up to Watertown where we had lunch, went grocery shopping, and then headed back to Minnesota.

It looks like Jen & Jon are vacationing – although I hope the were able to cross off more tasks than were updated in the post below. I’d hate to think of them going cross-country without packing, and I’d hate to think what the house would look like if the proper instructions weren’t left for the cat-sitters.

This is the time of year when I really start thinking about travel, too. When I was young, back in the day, we would pile into the car every Thanksgiving to drive over to my Memaw’s house, where we (my little brother and I) would sit at the kids table with the five other cousins to eat way too much turkey and dressing before going out to play on the lonely swingset in the backyard. Sometimes we’d play ball, or wait for Uncle Bill to show up and play a song for us. At Christmas time, we’d spend more time with the other side of the family. There wasn’t much driving either holiday until we moved to moved to South Carolina, but we did usually spend the day away from home visiting and being told “my how you’ve grown”.

Now, we usually have day trips to Asheville for my wife‘s side of the family, maybe a vacation weekend to the beach before the good restaurants close for winter, and then most of the other holiday festivities revolve around town, eating turkey leftovers and watching football – alot of turkey leftovers, alot of football.

All that to say: I hope they have a fabulous and relaxing time. Don’t forget my Christmas present.