Girl's Weekend 2010 - St. Louis

Every year, my high school friends, JJ and Stacia, and I try to meet up for the weekend and catch up. This year was my year to host. The family I dog/house-sit for needed me to watch Pickles, and I told them I couldn't, but their alternate dog-sitters fell through and took their alternate alternate dog-sitters with them. So, the owners said we could stay at their house, if I could just help them out. Since their house has more room and is cleaner than my apartment, I said yes.

I met Stacia and JJ at the airport with a pitcher of appletini's and two glasses. After that, we headed to South County to get manicures and pedicures and then headed to dinner. We went to 54th Street Bar and Grill and had a few more drinks with dinner.

Then we walked to the movie theatre and watched "Eat, Love, Pray". Luckily, Ronnie's 20 sells cosmopolitans and a drink called stilettos. I had a stiletto and JJ and Dues had cosmopolitans. I love Julia Roberts and enjoyed the movie. It moved pretty slow and wasn't the most exciting film, but it was relaxing and filmed in some beautiful locations. I'm not usually a fan of Javier Bardem and don't understand why women think he's hot, but I understood after seeing him in this movie. After the movie we went to the Pink Galleon (no, it's not a gay bar) to play video games and have more drinks. JJ, the resident golfer in our group, kicked our butts at video Putt-Putt. My boyfriend, Jeff, beat us all.


We had planned to take the train to Hermann, MO and go to the wineries on Saturday, so my sister and I had made other plans to have my car get an oil change, emissions test, etc. on Saturday morning. But, the plans for the winery fell through and now we were stuck without a car or an idea of what we were going to do. We headed back to the house we were staying at and pretty much went to sleep and left the plan making to the next day.

The next day we slept in. I don't know a lot about the neighborhood Pickle's family lives in, but thanks to ideas from my sister, and Stacia's magic iPhone we ended up with a successful morning. We used her phone to navigate our way from the house to the restaurant, which was pretty neat. We walked (1.7 miles according to the iPhone) through Tower Grove Park and ate at the Three Monkeys.

My sister and mom dropped my car off at the Three Monkeys after it was finished, and we decided to go to the Anheuser-Busch factory and take a beer class and then take a factory tour. This is us in class and then me with my certificate that says I'm a Beer Master.

This is Stacia and JJ with the A-B Eagle and then having a drink after the beer tour.

We were treated to two free adult beverages after the tour. I had a Bud Light Wheat which I love. Stacia tried a Wild Berry beer which tasted like blueberry juice. JJ went for the Bud Light Wheat like me. Then we headed back to the house for a nap. When we got up from our naps it was after 8 pm. Stacia used to live in St. Louis many eons ago, so I asked her if there was anywhere she wanted to eat that she missed. Since she had fond memories of The Hill we headed there. The Hill is an area of St. Louis known for it's Italian restaurants. It's got narrow roads, crappy parking, and seems to always be busy. We decided to go to Zia's and when we got to the restaurant around 8:45, we still had to wait 20 minutes for a table. The food was amazing, we had toasted ravioli and some kind of shrimp, cream sauce, cheese stuff on little mini sliced toast for appetizers. For our dinners, I got the seafood ravioli, Stacia got mostaccioli, and JJ got the mostaccioli with chicken, mushrooms and broccoli. No desert since we were very stuffed and sleepy all over again. So even though we had had a recent nap, we all went to sleep when we got back to the house.

The next morning we all slept in again. My big plan for the day was to have breakfast, and then to get the iconic St. Louis photo, a picture with the Arch in the background, and then head for the airport. You would think it would be easy to find a good picture with The Arch in the background, but it really isn't. If you get too close, you can't get the entire Arch in the picture. If you are too far away, you pretty much have old ugly buildings clearly seen in the background with The Arch not so noticeable in the distance. It's a delicate balance. So, I've only found two good spots. One has the Old Missouri State Capital in the background along with The Arch. The other is from the balcony on the fourth floor of The Four Season's hotel. So, it was my idea to have breakfast in Soulard and then head to Laclede's Landing. We picked up my mom so that she could take the picture with all 3 of us in it and we wouldn't have to rely on a stranger to be there and willing to take our picture. Then we headed to the Soulard Coffee Garden and had breakfast in their back garden area. My mom and I had eggs benedict, Stacia had french toast and JJ had an omelet. It was very nice, relaxing morning until I went to pay for my meal and realized I had left my credit card at Zia's the night before. This instantly stressed me out. I made calls but there was nothing I could do to find out where it was at until Monday and I couldn't check my balance to see if there had been any unauthorized purchases until I could get to a computer which wasn't going to happen until after I dropped my friends off at the airport. So, we headed to Laclede's Landing to get the picture I wanted...and then proceeded to run into a crapload of traffic. The Rams game was going on downtown and there was nowhere to park, the traffic was terrible and there was no way I was going to get Stacia and JJ back to the airport on time. So we abandoned the picture, which frustrated me a great deal. If I had thought ahead about the game, we could have avoided the traffic or taken the picture on Saturday after the beer tour instead. Stacia and JJ rarely come to St. Louis, so the chance to get a picture with The Arch in the background has passed and isn't likely to happen again for a long time. But whatever, life goes on. Anyway, after the failed picture attempt, I dropped JJ and Stacia off at the airport and they went safely home. It was a really fun weekend and I was glad to spend time with them again. I hope we keep up this tradition for a long time.

Visiting Kansas

My friend Summer is being deployed to Iraq. She's leaving behind her husband and two kids for 15 months to take care of our troops. It makes me sad.


So, I spent Labor Day weekend hanging out with her and her family before she goes.

I was late getting to the airport to leave because my sister bought a new car and it took longer to tie up the paperwork than we planned. I think I checked my bag with less than 20 minutes before my flight and still had to get through security. Luckily, everything went smoothly and when I got to the gate everyone had already boarded. I had to sit in a middle seat, but that was okay because the flight was only 45 minutes (The landing was not so smooth. Probably the worst I've ever experienced, but we all landed alive and unhurt).

Summer picked me up and we headed to Applebee's for lunch before continuing our journey to Fort Riley. When Summer and I were in college we would go to Applebee's for their after 10 pm Happy Hour specials, so that place always reminds me of her and Lindenwood. After we got to her house, we hung out for awhile and then went shopping at Target before getting dinner at Panera Bread. Her house rocks, but my favorite room was the mini theatre in their basement. There was a pull down screen and projection system with surround sound and reclining comfy chairs. While at Target we picked up a bunch of movies, so Friday night we watched "Daybreakers". I'm going to have to say I liked it even though is was a little gory. I don't know why I liked it. I can't pick out anything that I would say was good about it, but I liked it.

On Saturday we had lunch at Chili's and then went to The Sunset Zoo. They had a new baby chimpanzee. Apparently, chimpanzee's usually live to about 60 in captivity. The baby was born to a 56 year old mom. They took her off her birth control for medical reasons and they thought she was too old to have babies, but they were wrong. I felt a little sorry for the mom, though. Chimp babies can't grab on to their moms until about 3 or 4 weeks, so until then the mom has to carry her baby. Since they use all 4 limbs to walk, she was having a little trouble walking with her baby since she was so old and already stiffening up with old age. But I guess she's an inspiration to any old lady who still wants to have kids.

This is the otter who started freaking out for someone reason and trying to escape his cage when he saw me. I think he was in love with me.

Summer made some delicious Chicken Parmigiana for dinner and then we watched "Zombieland" that night and I had already seen it, but I really like that movie, so I enjoyed seeing it again. We also watched "The Back-Up Plan" with Jennifer Lopez. Better than I thought it would be, but not great.

On Sunday, we went to the mall and had lunch at Carlos O'Kelly's. Summer's daughter wanted to get her ears pierced, so we went to Claire's and we thought her daughter was going to cry and freak out, but she was so calm and such a good girl. She jerked in surprise as the ear guns went off, but then she just took a few deep breathes and was fine.

This is Catie letting her mom do her hair in the morning and then later when she got her ears pierced.

We hung out more at her house in the afternoon and we tried on Summer's deployment gear. This is Joey playing dress up in his mom's clothes. (Just teasing, Joe.)

We had Papa Murphy's for dinner. Then we watched "Mulan", Summer's favorite Disney princess movie, and then "City Island". I had never seen Mulan, but that is a really good movie. City Island was different, but I still liked it. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, but it was still good.

On Monday, we drove back to Kansas City to drop me off at the airport again. We had lunch at McDonald's and when we got to Kansas City we went to The Legends Shopping Center. We played for awhile at Dave and Buster's.

And then visited the place that's like The Rainforest Cafe, but is about dinosaurs instead of the rainforest. It even had a "Build-a-Dino" instead of a "Build-a Bear". Very cute.

Before we left, we got some ice cream from Stone Cold Creamery and then headed for the airport. I was a late check-in. The alarms went off again as I checked my bag. When I got to my gate, they had already started boarding, but I made it just in time to get in line for my boarding group. I still had to sit in a middle seat, but at least my bags made it on the plane even though I checked them late. I got safely back to St. Louis and made it home before my friend finished driving back to Fort Riley from the airport.

It was nice seeing Summer again. I should have visited before now. I can't wait until she gets back safely again and she comes to visit me in St. Louis.

My car died :(

My poor car died. About a month and a half ago, my car started to act weird and finally she rolled to a stop in my apartment parking lot two weekends ago. After a tow to the car shop we found out my little car with 110,000 miles on it was going to need a $4,400 to $5,500 fix.

Sadly, we made the decision to trade her in. So, good-bye to my lovely. I will miss you.