Straight Trippin'

After a few days at home, I'm heading out again for a nice three week road trip, seeing friends along the way. My first destination was St. Louis, to visit Kerrie Boodt, a friend from Camp Miniwanca, a leadership camp in Michigan that I attend every summer. I didn't leave Indy until fairly late, about 5. My mom just couldn't really understand the idea of just going to someone's house to see them for a couple of hours, going to bed, and driving the next day to a whole new city to spend a few more hours with someone else. But I'm looking forward to it.

Kerrie is a little fireball and I've never been with her and not enjoyed it. She has a dog, Fry, who hates men, but he was staying with Grandma for a while, so I didn't get barked at all night. We headed off to dinner and ended up at a Vietnamese place because I had never had Vietnamese food before. The first two places we were going to go to were closed because it was Monday and I guess things close early on Monday's in the Loo. We talked about the general issues of life, including jobs, boys and futures. My line of the evening, describing the gay beach in Waikiki: Families, people in board shorts, Speedos. There's a hand gesture that goes along with it.

Kerrie might have to be deciding soon to stay in St. Louis or move to Chicago, and I was half-joking that we would make great roommates. Then at the end of the evening, she opens her fortune cookies and it says "You will soon make an important decision." No joke. We both laughed for a solid minute. The universe is funny when it wants to get your attention. And since we were on a destiny kick, when we went back to Kerrie's place, we used her numerology books to figure out my numbers. Turns out I'm a 6 in terms of destiny and a lot of 5s for other things. So far the most accurate astrological things I've ever read about myself have come from a feng shui book I read that told me I was a 1 Water Star, but the numerology was pretty good too. Unfortunately, it couldn't tell Kerrie to move to Chicago and be my roommate, so we went to bed and left it at that.

The following morning had me heading for Evansville, Indiana, after dropping Kerrie's housekey off while she was at lunch. I was supposed to be in Evansville for dinner and it's only about 2.5 hours, so I stopped at a rest area about 30 miles outside the city to relax and do some French homework. It was quite relaxing, really. My friends in Evansville were Laura and Mikey (aka Danger and MacGyver, and she really is and he really is, in case you were wondering). Laura and I met as freshman at IU during a pre-orientation rockclimbing trip. I had a really ugly goatee at the time, which I luckily shaved off before classes started. When I ran into Laura later in the week, she didn't recognize me and I had to convince her it was me.

Danger is definitely one of the most interesting people I know. She's my age, but has had 13 jobs, almost all involving dead or naked people (sometimes dead naked people), has black belt in tae kwon do and just planted berry bushes. Mikey, her husband, could literally build a house from the ground up given the materials. Sometimes I think about all my years of education and I realize that when the apocalypse comes, I will be worthless and Mikey will be the leader of a rag-tag band of survivors, hanging on to life and some semblance of humanity while the rest of us scrounge for scraps and slowly go feral.

We had a bit of pizza out on the town and I got to hear fun stories about Laura's social work clients and their...eccentricities (think peeing on sidewalks and "laser eyes"). When we got home, we discovered that Domino, one of their cats, was waiting for us outside the back door. Domino hadn't been seen since yesterday and some coyote scuffling sounds the night before had raised the Threat Level to Orange, but she was back, much to the delight of everyone, including Mr. Gonk, the other cat of the house. After some mild celebration, we settled in to watch Casino Royale, the newest Bond flick, with Craig Daniels as a blond Bond. It was a pretty rockin' movie and I especially enjoyed the parkour chase scene at the beginning. My brother Gerold had called me a few nights before to recommend watch it and a new movie that's just coming out called Waitress, starring Kerri Russell. So if you have the chance, see both. Gerold claims Waitress is Top 5 Movies, and his judgement is usually fairly solid on matters of taste.

The kids had to work in the morning, so they headed to bed while I had some popcorn and continued watching the first season of Desperate Housewives. I'm loving the show now that I can start at the beginning. Bree has some of the best one-liners. I totally aspire to give dinner parties like her. The morning would see me off to Louisville, Kentucky, and into the arms of my former housemate, Carson. ;)