Can you take a jaunt on an airplane? Probably not, if you consider the delays involved sometimes. Jaunts shouldn’t include unforeseen setbacks. Not that this one was particularly egregious. Just three hours more in Chicago than I’d’ve liked to spend. In any case, Denisa and I went out on Tuesday and were back on Sunday. In between those travel times, we managed to fit a fair bit in:
- A wedding, ring ceremony, and two receptions. All for the same marriage, of course, but still. Much food and fun was had by all, and I managed to avoid doing both the Macarena AND limbo, so . . . I’m counting that as a win all around.
- A hike/stroll up to Bridal Veil Falls. We’d been planning on doing something more like a real hike, but I messed my knee up somehow, and didn’t want to do anything worse to it, so we settled for a 2 mile walk on a slight incline. Lovely weather, though. Utah hadn’t gotten to its “Hellishly hot” stage yet, so that was a plus.
- TWO milkshakes. Utah has some really great shakes. I went to Iceberg the first day and Granny’s the third, and both brought their A-game. (I had decided to pause the diet while I was in Utah, which proved to be less than beneficial for the diet itself, but very beneficial in the milk shake department.) For the record, I got a Butterfinger chocolate at Iceberg and a Oreo/Butterfinger/Brownie Chocolate at Granny’s. And Granny’s easily won.
- Saw the latest Mission Impossible movie, my first film in the theaters since . . . Guardian’s 3? It’s been a while.The theater was great, with reclining seats and lots of space. The movie? If you ignore the plot and just focus on the action, it was solid. Unfortunately, the plot kept getting in the way of the action. Not my favorite MI movie by any stretch.
- Walked around BYU. It’s amazing how much money they’re pouring into the campus at this point in time, where so much of the rest of higher education is floundering. It makes me very happy to see how highly my religion values education, especially since they also sponsor remote learning through Pathways at the same time. I’m a firm believer that education is one of the best ways to help yourself and society. BYU was surprisingly busy, even after the main semester was over.
- Visited writing group. I do miss writing group a great deal. It was fun to be back and see folks.
- Dropped by a European market. For the record, European Tastees is weak in the spelling department, but very strong in the European goods department, which more than makes up for it.
- Took pictures, had a family barbecue, went to dinners, talked about AI, and generally had a good time.
Overall, a successful trip for sure. It’s also noteworthy, as it’s my first time back on a plane since my Scotland fiasco. That might not seem like too big of a deal to you, but it had been majorly stressed out for some reason. I don’t like planes in general, and it was much worse this time in the lead up to the trip. Thankfully, I’ve now got that behind me, and hopefully things shouldn’t be as bad in the future.
Phew!