Fri, January 27, 2006

Sorry for the late update - no Wi-Fi at the office yet (!) and I'm not about to start editing my website with vi (1/8 of you know what I'm talking about), so I had to wait until I had some free time at home with my laptop to fix the onebee timezone (now EST!). It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how your free time evaporates when you move in with roommates.

Friday

We'd had some nice dinners at the Grand Canyon and a delightful steak dinner with authentic creole gumbo in Longview, Texas – made all the more delightful by an after-dinner bout of Ms. Pac-Man. But when we reached Vicksburg, Mississippi, it was clear that the "fucking around" portion of our culinary odyssey had concluded. We found an adorable restaurant called Borrello's on Washington street, just down the way from the historical district and the Coca-Cola museum. I had a lobster ravioli with pesto, and immediately lapsed into a food coma. Laney had an authentic shrimp po'boy large enough to feed a family of nine. Not to mention the sweetest, fizziest fountain Coke east of the Mississippi (1.5 miles east, to be exact), and a crab cake appetizer with more crab in it than most actual crabs. Borrello's: very highly recommended.

We took in a few overcast views of the Big Muddy, and pressed on through Jackson, then southeast towards Mobile, Alabama. There, we encountered more rain, and more impressive food. We ate at a restaurant named Pillars, housed in an old 19th century mansion, and offering a special described thusly: Queen Filet Mignon, butterflied, stuffed with cream cheese, and topped with king crab crumble. (Or something like that, I fell asleep halfway through.) Unfortunately, we were still stuffed from our lunch, so we had light appetizers and sushi. My crab rangoon were delicious, and my spider roll sushi was served on a thick slab of gently chilled marble. Wow.

Saturday

Unfazed by a morning drizzle and a late-night four-car pileup on the interstate just across the street from our hotel room, we enjoyed a brief driving/walking tour of historic Mobile architecture before hitting the road. Once we were in the car, it was a day of mostly driving, driving, driving – but we did stop for one early soda coup at a rest area in the western tip of the Florida panhandle, where I scored vending machine Mello Yello and Sunkist in the same stop. Lunch was less successful: we patronized a Burger King drive-thru so I could introduce Laney to their new chicken fries, which I'd sampled on my last road trip. In a hurry, we neglected to double-check our bag after the window attendant handed it over – sure enough, back on I-10, we discovered the honey mustard sauce had been omitted. We were too far away to turn back, but rest assured a strongly worded letter is in the works.

Having begun on I-10 the previous Friday, it was fun to return to it again for the last leg of the trip. It led us to I-95 and into Jacksonville, and suddenly I was driving familiar streets again, which was a weird feeling since I'd never driven them in my car before.

Laney's boyfriend Brian met us at home, grilled us some delicious chicken, and played poker with us until 2 am.

Sunday

A blur. I think I had lunch. Also a much needed massage.

This Week

Some additional real estate shopping with my tireless and affable agent. Training on AutoCAD at the office. Catching up on TiVo. (Courting Alex, sadly as disappointing as expected; Emily's Reasons Why Not, canceled already?! No!) Duke, 80; Virginia Tech, 67. Work continues on the swimming pool. (We were supposed to get water today, but the workers gave up waiting for the final layer of concrete that they had to add first – even though it arrived five minutes before they left.)

Photos to come!