It's a little bit frightening, but I guess we had to expect it would happen eventually. Last night we got our first phone call demanding a blog update. The voice was polite, but very clear in its message -- "It's been six days. We're counting on you. We rely on knowing what you ate and pictures of the boy for motivation." I understand, and in the future, we'll try and update at least a couple of times a week. But this past week, a lot has happened, so prepare for a tome.
Last week, Erin and I reached a boiling point with our current vehicle lineup. Our friends have always made fun of our cars -- one a big, white, bulky, gas hogging sedan, the other a small, gas hogging, slightly sportier sedan, so perhaps it's good that we start car shopping. My car is a AAA sticker and a "God Bless Our Troops" ribbon away from being a nursing home van and Erin's, while slightly less elderly, just isn't big enough to hold the two of us and Grant. Erin has been begging for a minivan for the past few weeks, but I haven't been able to look myself in the mirror without weeping at the thought. It's like releasing your last vestiges of untamed youth to buy a minivan. It's like admitting you're over 30. It's facing the fact that not only could you no longer win American Idol, but you're too old to even enter. This is the vehicle that will elicit screams of, "I will pull this van over if you don't stop blah blah blah..." So we bought a minivan. I've never felt less manly.
But this isn't just ANY minivan. It's a big, white, bulky, gas hogging minivan (Erin claims this description very nearly matches yours truly). In my engineering way, I briskly read the manual after we purchased it. Throughout there were phrases like "If equipped with..." and "If the automatic setting is available on your vehicle," and in all cases, the answer to these questions is, "No." Our van has features like "a steering wheel" and "keyed entry." So I'm now the proud owner of a Grant hauler. Erin will be the primary driver, which leaves us trying to sell Erin's sporty little sedan. We would have traded her car in, but the dealer offered us approximately $6 for her car, therefore we're selling it ourselves. Hopefully it'll go quickly and peacefully. I hate the process of buying a new car, but I'd say that this experience was less painful than average. The only downside is that we test drove about eight minivans with tornadoes looming, which wasn't very fun.
"Gee, Bob, this thing seems to be pulling to the right a little bit. Oh look, the wind just snapped that tree in half and flipped over that guy's minibarn. Perhaps it's just the weather..."
Our first outing in Big White (I racked my brain trying to use B.O.W.E.L. as an acronym, but only got as far as Big Old White...) was to Chicago this weekend with Erin's folks. This was Grant's first trip to the big city, which was exciting. Erin and her mom have an IKEA fixation, therefore I think buying the van was simply a ploy to get more space for furniture purchases. When we picked Erin's folks up on Friday afternoon, I encountered a very delicate situation which many guys only get to dream about -- my mother-in-law had lost her voice. Not just a little, but completely. So for the whole weekend, she could only talk in a whisper. Grant seemed utterly befuddled by this woman staring him in the face, appearing to talk with nothing really coming out. He stared at her somewhat quizzically all weekend while I chortled to myself at her predicament.
Our other big outing on this trip was to a Brazillian steakhouse called Sal & Carvao. A guy at work recommended this place to me, and he described it as "a carnivore's dream." He was right. The basic premise is that waiters circle the restaurant bearing swords with meat on them. I think they said there were 35 kinds of meat; everything you can think of from Portugese sausage to filet mignon. You have a rock and if you put your rock in front of your plate, they will continue to come by, asking if you want a slice of whatever their sword is carrying. If you want a break, you put your rock away. On top of this, they had a big salad bar with all sorts of exotic things on it, not just your typical iceburg lettuce and shaved carrots.
Now those of you that know me should already be thinking, "This sounds dangerous." And you'd be correct in this assessment. But more impressive than my own eating are the abilities of my father-in-law. He's been known to eat two whole chickens at the Essenhaus before taking his first sip of iced tea. In the end, the food was wonderful. I was concerned that with such vast quantities of food, the meat might possess the quality of a "steak" from a suburban buffet (I'm looking at you, Golden Corral), but this was not the case. Everything was top notch. I think in the end I ate maybe a dozen pieces of various things, and I suspect my father in law was in the same camp. I don't want to risk incurring an injury from the wife, but let's just say that small animals were running away from her, screaming, as we left the restaurant parking lot. Apparently they'd heard the news. Funny thing is, out of all of us, my father-in-law had the biggest problem after the fact. On the drive back to the hotel, he moaned and groaned in the back of the van, complaining that he hadn't eaten that much rich food in a long time. By the time we got back to the hotel, he dashed back to his room, begging the Brazillians to go quietly.
All in all, it was a fun weekend, and it gave us a chance to get used to driving Old Whitey. Summer driving vacations, here we come...
(Usual Disclaimer: Erin will post pictures of the boy later...)
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