The Parents Visit Illinois

So, the parents came to visit a couple of days ago.

A few weeks ago, Mom had mentioned that she had some vacation time coming up in late February and that they might try to come up and visit. For Christmas, I had asked for (and received) a GPS to hook up to my laptop. When Mom saw the thing in action, she decided that she wanted one as well. She figured that this would make it easier to navigate the unfamiliar areas. So, I got her “hooked up” a couple of weeks ago and she had some time to play with the GPS and get it figured out.

Dad is a dairy farmer, and has been for pretty well all of my life. The main relevance of that to the current topic is that owning a dairy farm means that the cows have to be tended to morning and evening, 365 days a year. Period. No exceptions. This has had a definite impact on the vacations that the family has been able to take. You basically have to find someone to do the milking for you, and it has to be someone that you trust with your entire livelyhood. If the milking isn’t done correctly, the cows can be irreparably damaged, thus destroying your source of income. Not a good situation. So, it’s difficult to find someone that knows what they are doing, that is trustworthy, and that is able to do the milking twice a day while you are gone. So, Dad had pretty well decided that he wouldn’t be able to leave the farm.

Last Thursday night I had called to find out what was going on with them coming up. I needed to ask off work if they were going to be around, and I needed at least a little bit of warning to be able to get away with that. They didn’t know. Friday, Saturday and Sunday came and went. Still no decisions. Monday morning rolled around and I was talking to my brother, and he mentioned that I could do something “when Mom and Dad got up here”. So, come to find out, my brother ended up being available and graciously offered to take on the milking duties while Dad got away. So, Mom and Dad were planning to be here about the time I got off work on Tuesday. I got home from work and did some house cleaning. The house was in pretty good shape, except for the bedroom where they were to sleep. I had to clean it up some. (which was fine.. needed done anyway)

Tuesday morning, this revised itself to them being in town around noon. Which ended up being fine. I was able to get off work, and had been waiting at the house for a few minutes when they arrived. I showed the outside of the house, the inside of the house, the cats (Scratch hammed it up; Stu disappeared), and got their stuff moved in. I even turned on the projector and let them see the glorious image.

Then we went to eat. The lunchtime meal was planned for Dos Reales, which has been voted the best mexican place in town several times. I think Mom and Dad were surprised at the size of the portions. Don’t think they were expecting quite that much. A good time was had by all. Mom was a bit worried that the food might be too hot, but it wasn’t, and I think they enjoyed it. Mom got the lunch chimichanga, and Dad and myself both got the Numero Dos, which is a burrito, beans, and rice.

After lunch, we went farther north on Prospect to the shopping area in town. We went by the various places that I shop from time to time, and we ended up at the Verizon store to try and find a replacement antenna for the cell phone that they had brought with them from home. The Verizon store didn’t have the antenna we were needing. Then we visited a used Game place next door and Mom browsed the used N64 games, but didn’t find anything she wanted to get. From the Verizon store, we grabbed some gas at Meier’s before it went up (it had already went up about 20 cents at several other stores around town). Then, a trip in front of Menards and down Neil street in front of mall got us into downtown Champaign. From there I showed them the library, and drove along the route that I walk when going from home to the library.

Once at the house, Mom wanted to work on the curtains. I had been wanting some darker curtains to help with the projector viewing, and just hadn’t gotten around to measuring everything that she needed. So, she had brought some fabric with her and a sewing machine, and was anxious to get to work on making the curtains. I wasn’t going to protest. This process actually ended up taking several hours. But, I now have excellent curtains that block out pretty well all of the light when closed. I can now view the projector anytime I want, day or night. For the winter, this really hasn’t been that big of a deal. When I got in from work of a night it was already dark, so there weren’t any issues with this, except on the weekends. But, with summer on the way, I knew that we’d soon reach a time where it would light until 9pm, which would cause problems of an evening. This is no longer an issue. I now have some nifty green curtains that look pretty good in the room.

Once the curtain issue was sewn up, it was time for supper. For supper, we went to the Texas Roadhouse. I had tried to call ahead, but didn’t find their phone number in the restaurant section of the yellow pages, so didn’t bother. I just hoped to myself that they wouldn’t be terribly busy. This was about 6:45pm or so. We got there, parked directly in front of the building, and didn’t have to wait in line. Perfect. Once there, we enjoyed the peanuts and fresh rolls with the cinnamon butter (yum!). Talk quickly turned to the amount of food we were eating, and this remained a staple of conversation for the entire time that they were here. We ate well. I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, Dad and myself both had a 6 ounce sirloin. I had salad and a baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar for my sides. Dad had salad and a baked sweet potato with caramel and marshmallows, and Mom just had a baked potato and salad. We ate well, and were quite stuffed when we got done there. As we were leaving, there was 40 seconds left in the Illini basketball game against Michigan. The Illini were down by 4. Come to find out, they lost by 8. Oh well.

From the Roadhouse we made our way back to the house, and watched a couple of Nature shows on TV. Everyone was getting tired at that point, and we retired. Mom and Dad slept in the bed that I normally sleep in, and I slept in the waterbed that I have in the spare bedroom. The waterbed is smaller, and not as well suited for multiple people, so it seems to work out well to give the guests the larger bed.

Yesterday morning arrived, and we got up a bit after 7 and got everything going. Mom wanted to work a little more on the curtains, so she reworked a couple of white curtains that I had and set it up so that I could push back the light-blocking curtains and use some the white curtains when I want to have light in the room. Good stuff.

After we had that ready to go, we went up on campus and I showed them the building where I work. Mom and Dad had the chance to meet the people who happened to be at work that early. This basically consisted of the secretaries, the secretary’s aide, a former office mate, and a couple of co workers. I then showed them my actual office, and went back to our 3d facility and showed them some of the software packages that our group works on. We then ran up to the 5th floor and looked around in the tower room and gave them a nice view of the campus and pointed out some of the buildings in town that you can see from there.

From there, I headed back towards the house. I took them down Green Street so that they could see some of the students. Mom mentioned that she wanted to go to a Barnes & Noble and look for a book. I glanced at the clock, and it was 11am. I asked them if they were hungry; they said no. I thought that we could run to Barnes and Noble and then go to the lunch restaurant (Hickory River Smokehouse (formerly Longhorn!)). So, we headed towards Barnes & Noble. We stopped in to Champaign Surplus on the way, because I wanted to show them a Merino wool sweater that I had seen there before Christmas. But, I couldn’t find it. I can only surmise that they had sold out of them. They had some merino wool, but it didn’t feel like the one that I had seen before Christmas. So, that was a bummer. From there we went to Barnes and Noble, and they didn’t have the book that Mom was wanting. I mention that we could be at Borders in about 3 minutes, and so we went there. Borders had the book that Mom was wanting, but only in Hardcover. However, they had several other books by the same author that Mom hadn’t read, so she picked them up. Dad checked on some westerns, but they didn’t have the westerns that he was wanting. From there, Dad said that he wanted to go by Sams. So, we went to Sams. At Sams, he picked up some cappuccino mix and we grabbed various fruits. The oranges that we got ended up being really bad. Quite a few of them were almost rotten. Very disappointing. Along with oranges, we got nectarines, apples, and bananas. Fruit == good.

After that, we were ready for lunch. A quick jaunt on the interstate took us over to Hickory River. We each got the sliced beef sandwich. I got cornbread and corn as my sides. Mom and Dad both got apple sauce and cottage cheese. Dad really seemed to like the meat. He said a couple of times that it beat any steak he had ever had. They do have good food there. We had to wait in line a while to order, but it wasn’t bad. It was clear that the restaurant wasn’t having any trouble keeping customers.

From there we headed back to the house. Along the way we stopped at a different Verizon store and picked up the antenna that we had tried to get previously. All was good.

In the afternoon I showed them some more stuff on the big screen. Dad considered taking a nap a few times. They planned to leave early in the morning, so a late night wasn’t being planned.

We wanted to eat supper a bit early, so we headed for Biaggi’s (highly rated Italian food) before 6pm. In light of the recent spat of large meals, I had suggested that we might want to get a couple of entrees and just split them up. We got there and I told them that I liked the Chicken Parmesan. They could get whatever they wanted. Mom said that she would defer to Dad, and Dad said that he wanted the Chicken Parmesan. So, I ended up getting the Chilean Sea Bass. The meals came quickly. They brought extra plates for us, and a good meal was had by all. We all agreed that the Chicken Parmesan had a lot more flavor than the Sea Bass. But, having the multiple plates let us try out a little more than we would have otherwise done. Definitely a good idea. We then decided to get dessert. We ended up getting the Cannoli’s, and Bananas Foster. The Cannoli’s had ground pistachio’s on one end, and shaved chocolate on the other. They were good. The Bananas Foster was also good. Both plates looked nice and fancy. We left there satisfied, but not (in my opinion) overly stuffed.

We didn’t want to stay up too late, so I didn’t want to start a movie. We ended up just watching an episode of a TV show. Then it was time for bed. I finished up a book I was reading before turning in for the evening, but still probably laid down to sleep at 9:30 or so. Stu did a pretty good job of sleeping on the waterbed. Scratch was mostly a no-show. Kinda the opposite of the way it works on my normal bed.

Got up a bit before 5 this morning. They wanted to be gone around 5pm. Got everything loaded, and they actually left at 5:17. I ended up going a mile or so on the treadmill, got ready, and went into work at about 7.

The visit was a good one. This was the first time that they had seen my house, and it was nice for them to be able to see it. Hopefully the drive up won’t be as daunting next time, and hopefully they got to see enough of the town to realize that it isn’t a huge overwhelming town.

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