Hanging out

Well, I’ve been spending time in Illinois, mostly just relaxing and enjoying not being in the car… and taking naps every afternoon. It’s been hot here, more so than I’m used to, so it’s been slow going lately. My brother (Billy) and I took our dogs to the dog park and they both quickly just sat down in the shade – too hot even for the dogs to run around. But at least the mornings have been nice enough to go for a run; Hailey and I ran for the first time the other day in a long time.

When I haven’t been resting (or annoying Billy), I’ve had some fun, too. And of course fun starts with “world’s largest”. This time it was a catsup bottle. They were even repainting it for an upcoming festival.

Now if I just had some fries!

I found a cool grocery store in St. Louis called Local Harvest Grocery. It’s really tiny, but they have good stuff (even Nancy’s yogurt! I’m betting they're one of the few places out here you could get it). They even have raw milk! But with the laws, they can only distribute it if you bought from the farmer, so I didn’t get any. They did have a café across the street, so I went with Billy and my step-mom for lunch. It was really good; even Billy, who groaned that “organic food tastes awful” thought it was good. I’m having so much fun introducing some good food to him; it’s slow going, but every little bit counts. Heck, I even got him to try sushi the other night and he actually thought it was good!

There was a funny moment on the way to the grocery that actually wasn’t all that funny – we drove past the St Louis Botanical Gardens – sponsored by Monsanto! Yuck. There is a Monsanto location here; maybe I should go see if I can get a tour… but I think if I did, I’d quickly be sent out by security.

After the grocery store, I went to a farmers market. It was so tiny; maybe 6-10 food vendors total. But it was awesome. Just locals growing stuff in their gardens and selling it. So I got peaches, blackberries, and some rhubarb. I did ask the guy selling pork if he had any lard – he said he didn’t but he’d try to have some next week. He clearly wasn’t expecting anyone to ask for that :)

I love farmers markets, even the little ones :)

Then on Friday, my dad got tickets for the baseball game fan festival. The all-star game is being held in St Louis this Tuesday and my dad’s company gets tickets. So I went with Billy and his friend J.J. First we had to go pick up the tickets. Here’s the view out of my dad’s office. I wonder how long it takes to get one of these as a dietitian? I’m thinking never :)

You can even see the St Louis arch to the left (but not in this picture)

Entering the fan fest

Anyway, first thing at the fan fest was to eat – and you know what that means: over prices garbage food! But if there’s ever a time to eat crap for me, it’s at a sports related thing. So I got a burger and ate some of Billy’s fries. But Billy on the other hand went nuts. He got a burger, 3 fries, nachos, and an orange soda. He spent over $30 on his food. And the crazy thing is that he then decided he didn’t like how the nachos looked. Now granted, it’s probably a good thing that he didn’t eat them, but what a way to waste $7. The joke for the rest of the day was that we all needed some nachos.

Yummy (that's my brother Billy)

Going to a fan fest with two teenagers was an experience in its own right. Both were too cool to do anything. It was like pulling teeth to get them to do any of the games with me. Finally, after a lot of harassing, I got Billy to race me in the “Steal Home” game (race 90 feet). Billy used to run cross country and it pretty fast, but he was sure he would lose to me. Anyway, we finally ran and he should have had me beat in the end, but he missed the plate and failed to stop the clock. I just think it’s funny how every time I suggest he and I do something (especially if it’s physical) he has 10 million reasons why he can’t. And when he finally does it, he actually does well. Maybe I was that way too as a teenager, but sheesh!

Here's the video of our race. Notice that Billy should have won... but didn't! I win! I win!

Then today, I got up early to go fishing with my dad. We drove out to a lake and were greeted with pouring rain, thunder, and lightening. So we decided to get breakfast and then eventually we headed to another fishing spot an hour away to avoid the rain. Right off the bat we caught a catfish, but that was the only one of the day. Otherwise it was just small perch, but they were easy to catch so we pulled out about 30 of them (don’t worry, all were safely released back into the river). Mid-day, thought I got to see a fun sight. Carp started jumping out of the water like salmon going up stream. I couldn’t take any good pictures of it, but it was fun to watch all of the fish flying out of the water (if you had a net in the middle of the stream, you have some easy fishing!)

You can't tell, but I swear that's a 3 foot, 18 pound fish! (fish stories are harder when there's a picture to go with it :)

So that’s been my last few days. I also started to think about when I’ll head out on my way to Boston. I had thought I’d fly over to find a place and then drive there, but now I want to just go and stay with my older brother in New Hampshire and that way I’ll have a bit more time to find something (and I’ll get to Boston sooner – I’m so anxious to finally get there; and to finally get a home again). I think I’ll leave towards the end of this coming week. That’ll give me some time to visit more and get everything ready to go again.

And tomorrow, I’m heading back up to Springfield to check out all the Lincoln stuff. I’m told the museum there is really good, so I’m excited to check it out.