Illinois 2013
by Scott Hardie on December 1, 2013
Ten highlights of my just-concluded road trip to northern Illinois with Kelly, in chronological order:
- Seeing lots of friends and family at our engagement party in St. Charles, our old hometown. I was glad to be able to talk to everyone there, and also glad that I now recognize almost everyone in Kelly's large family on sight. (It took me a few years!) My thanks to Chicago-area Funeratic members who joined the party with their respective spouses and kids: Jackie Mason, Lori Lancaster, and Matthew Preston. I wish I had remembered to take a group photo of us all for this site.
- Playing the depraved, adults-only Cards Against Humanity at the after-party in our hotel with Kelly's close friends from Springfield. What's good to the last drop? Leprosy.
- Dinosaur-watching at the Field Museum in Chicago. My memories of visiting it on grade school field trips are mostly about resenting the abundant stairs. As an adult today, I suppose I still don't like the stairs, but I better appreciated how neat most of the exhibits are, with appeal for all ages and knowledge levels. I wish I could spend a whole week there. Hmm, we have a honeymoon coming up...
- Eating lunch at a colorful Mexican restaurant in Princeton with Kelly's brother Andy. I rarely get one-on-one time with him, and it was refreshing to learn a different perspective on family issues that I hadn't considered before. It helps when hanging out with him that he's a pretty gregarious guy.
- Having the vacation portion of the goo tournament go smoothly. After the disastrous first week of the contest, I really did not need anything else to go wrong while I was mostly offline for ten days. Thankfully, due to advance preparation, it didn't.
- Seeing The Day of the Doctor in a huge 3D screen, even though it meant driving all the way to Davenport late at night. It really made the show cinematic, like what a Doctor Who feature film would look and feel like. Enjoying the terrific show in a room full of eager fans dressed as their favorite Doctors improved the experience even more.
- Having a great time for only a few dollars at Nickel World, and sightseeing the eighty-some Asian restaurants around Rockford. That city must have more Chinese restaurants than Hong Kong.
- Taking Kelly's mother Pat shopping in Peru for a day, while Kelly was stuck working and the rest of the family was busy. I was able to help her get around (no easy feat given her medical situation) and find precisely the right items for herself and for her family as gifts, and we had a good time.
- Introducing Kelly's family to the aforementioned Cards Against Humanity. It was worth it just for the look on Kelly's face when she realized that her retired father knows what pixelated bukkake is. It also provided what might be the single greatest poem I've ever heard:
Hulk Hogan
Expecting a burp and vomiting on the floor
Dying
- Shopping for Thanksgiving dinner supplies with Kelly's father Russ, helping Kelly (just a little bit) to prepare the delicious meal, and eating around the dining table with the whole family. My transition from Kelly's boyfriend to family friend to family member has been gradual, but I realized during the meal that I now definitely feel like we're a family. In a few months, we officially will be.
One Reply to Illinois 2013
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Retrospection
If I recall the dates correctly, yesterday would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She lived to just shy of her 89th, despite a lifetime of chain smoking. I remember her as a sweet, generous woman who liked to laugh and teach me life's simple pleasures; a typical afternoon for us was playing crazy eights and baking cinnamon rolls. Go »Doppelgänger
I saw myself at the grocery. Tall, fat, shaved head, black collared shirt, black slacks, black leather shoes. I caught up to myself and muttered "I like the look" with a wink, and myself smiled, then myself's girlfriend saw us together and laughed. Go »Willow
Kelly recently spent a socially-distanced evening with some friends who were fostering a two-month-old kitten, and fell in love with her. Who couldn't love a face like this? So, we put in the paperwork to adopt her, and two weeks ago, Willow came home with us for good. Go »DMV Mystery
My last car, a 1996 Mercury, was registered in my mother's name, so every year in December (the month of her birthday), the registration sticker would be delivered to her at her house and she'd have to pass it to me to put on the license plate. No big deal. A few months ago, I bought a 2007 Dodge in my name, though she co-signed the credit application since I had no credit history. Go »Red Carpet Saturday
Some friends of ours recently made a short film (they're officially in IMDb) that got into the Sarasota Film Festival, so Kelly and I had to check it out. It screened with eight other short family-friendly films on a Saturday morning, and there was good turnout for the two locally-made titles in the set. I enjoyed our friends' comedy and laughed along with everyone else, and I was impressed by several of the other movies too. Go »
Scott Hardie | January 1, 2014
The construct-a-poem card in Cards Against Humanity (technically it asks for a haiku but doesn't care about syllable count, so to me it's just about making a three-line poem) is quickly turning into my favorite. Two poems from our game last night:
Lady Gaga
Waking up half-naked in a Denny's parking lot
Dying of dysentery
Drinking ten 5-hour Energys to get fifty continuous hours of energy
Crushing Mr. Peanut's brittle body
Leaving an awkward voicemail
If you haven't played Cards Against Humanity, get a copy and round up some friends who aren't easily embarrassed and have yourself a great time.