Midwest Pilgrimage

Recap of a 5 day trip back to Illinois.

Day One (Wed) - Spent the night at Nick Plassman's. We grilled some burgers, cooked a mouse in Nick's stove (not on purpose) and played Madden 06' on GameCube until 3:30am in which I dominated every fiber of his being. We were having a few brews and it started to get kind of personal at the end. I was starting to think we were going to have to take it outside, which i would have done but Nick also has a pretty strong American Bulldog on his side, so I didn't have much of a chance there. She would have ripped a limb off.

Day Two (Thurs.) - Had breakfast with my newly engaged friend Brad Prunty! Congratulations Brad! Then we drove over to Merrillville Indiana where we were staying for the Szoke/Lowery wedding. Went to the rehearsal that night and saw a bunch of LCC people I have not seen for a long time. Ate at Aurelios Pizza for the rehearsal dinner which was some fine find pizza and then met up with Brian Simpkins, Jeremiah Smith, and Soebeck at Buffalo Wild Wings for some brew.

Day Three (Fri.) - Didn't do much, spent some time alone driving around with the windows down. Spent some more time alone in the hotel room and just relaxed. Met Kelli at the wedding that night. Neal Windham did a good job. It was interesting to talk to him about Regent College in Vancouver. Kelli and I are starting to make some future plans and Regent might be in mine. I'm very interested, if i can only get in! Neal pretty much said, "Is there another seminary? Regent College is it!" He said he would have studied there himself but they didn't have a Doctorate program.

Day Four (Sat.) - Got up early and drove a few hours back to El Paso where I grew up to have a short memorial on the two years anniversary of my grandmother's death. It was also the weekend of the Bagby family reunion. It was good to see the entire family again. We went bowling that night as a family and I bowled a 105, 156, and then a 178! Not bad! Josh Carr and his lady Julie bowled with us for a while. Good to see you Josh! Then we went back to our hotel and I dominated my family at Buck Hunter, the single greatest bar video game ever created. Sorry Brad I should have warned you before I hopped in but Elvyss and I played this game about a million times at Kabin in the East Village. We got pretty good at it. This was the 2006 edition however which didn't turn out to be a factor seeing that it is the exact same game as every other edition.

Day Five (Sun.) - Finished up our family reunion, said our goodbyes and then had lunch with my mom at Mandarin Garden and hung out at Starbucks for a while and talked. Then just drove to Midway (only took 1 hour and 50 minutes from Bloomington). There was absolutely no traffic and no construction. This might be one of the generations greatest miracles. We sat at a sports bar and watched the Cardinals fail in the postseason which I guess is not a rare occurence. I have to give it to them though, the homeplate umpire was calling a crappy game. The pitches that Larussa got thrown out over however were without a question all balls but i can see his point. I said it to Brad on Wednesday and I will say it again. The White Sox are the most dominant team in this thing. To which he replied, "yeah right, they lost their first game." Good call Brad, good call.