It started off with my trip to Dallas to see my Brother, Sister (-in-law), and Niece for a weekend full of fun and family. We went to the park, to Downtown McKinney, to Downtown Dallas, and to a few other various places around town.

Once I got home, I adopted Brutus.

I took Red for many, many excursions around town.

I went camping in June, July, and September, each time at a different Illinois State Park.

I celebrated the birthdays of a few friends.

I went to Chicago a couple of times and Indianapolis once.

I helped J & J repaint the inside of their home.

I started rehearsing with the Philharmonic Chorale again.

Somewhere in there I found time to relandscape an area at the front of my house, but seriously only mowed the lawn about 6 times over the 3 months of summer.

This was probably one of the most exciting summers I’ve had in a REALLY long time, and I loved it. It was fun to be able to see so many friends and relatives in various places. However, I’m also glad that the majority of my travels have come to an end for a few months. There are a few day- and weeekend-trips planned, but nothing too major.

Along with being in town a bit more, I think I might have a bit more time to blog. I am going to try to blog once a week for a while, and then hopefully I can get back to a higher frequency.

I went to Dallas to visit with my brother and sister (-in-law) and had a GREAT time.

Okay, so it’s been waay too long since I started this post, and now I’ve forgotten some of the wonderful things that I was planning to share here. Anyway….

I flew into Dallas on the Friday before Memorial Day and immediately got to spend time with the cutie. My SIL and the Babe picked me up at the airport and took me to the Galleria mall. We moseyed around there for a while until my brother was able to wrap things up at work to meet us for dinner.

Dinner was at the Five Guys burger place there in the mall. I won’t pretend- Five Guys isn’t the most amazing burger, but it IS darn tasty.

After we ate, we made our way back to the car and headed home. We got to the homestead, put the Babe to bed, and, in true Braun fashion, talked into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Saturday and Sunday were very laid-back, casual days. We went to the park to see the baby ducks, went out for dinner, and then rented a couple of movies to top-off Saturday night. On Sunday, we went to church and then went to my SIL’s brother’s home doe some delicious Puerto Rican fare. After some hood conversation, we went home and chatted a bit more before calling it a night.

Monday, being Memorial Day, we took our time getting ready and then went back to the park for a walk, to see the ducks again, and to enjoy the sunshine. Later in the day we went to a local driving range to practice the ol’ backswing and topped the might off with some wonderful grilled food.

If you haven’t caught on already, I really seem to eat some good food when I travel. (not that I’m complaining or anything….)

Tuesday and Wednesday were just as great, even though they weren’t holidays. On Tuesday, I accompanied the ladies to downtown Dallas to see some of the more historical/touristy sites. We drove through the plaza where JFK was assassinated and went to the north side of the convention center to see a massive sculpture garden of a cattle drive. I didn’t get any pictures of the JFK site, but I took a whole bunch of the life-sized bronze cattle. We then met my brother for lunch at a park near his office. After lunch, the ladies and I went to a different mall – one where they have valet parking at EVERY door and where they practically despise any vehicles that aren’t worth more than my house. Regardless of their dirty looks, we had a fun time shopping around in stores that we could never afford to actually patronize. There was some really great people-watching, though .

Tuesday night found us sharing dinner with the hilarious Mr. and Mrs. Whiteeyebrows at Scotty P’s Hamburgers. After more delicious burgers, we went back home and played Mao (a card game) with the W.E.s until the rooster was about ready to crow.

On Wednesday, the morning was full of my efforts to take as many pictures of the Babe as I possibly could. I think I ended up with about 180 or so for the first half of the day. We met my brother for lunch again at the same park, and the ladies and I went to Historic Downtown McKinney to browse the couture, antique, and trinket shops that line the street and town square. As was the day before, Wednesday was tons of fun and very relaxing. The Babe is an absolute delight to spend the day with, and her mother is incredibly fun, too.

Alas, the trip had to come to an end sometime, so after we finished browsing we ran home, grabbed my luggage, and raced to the airport so I could catch my flight home.

I had an absolutely wonderful time and look forward to the next chance I’ll have to hang with the Fam in Dallas.

Here are a few pictures for you:

First, the Babe:

Next, the Cattle Drive:

Then the Ducks:

And finally, the Egret:

We saw this dude CATCH and SWALLOW a fish, not even 10 feet away from us, while we were feeding the ducks. I have two pictures of the catch/eat, but they’re not really clear enough to show here.

Until then…

A couple of friends of mine wanted to go to Chicago to see their Chinese New Year celebration. One of the guys is from Taiwan, and even though it’s not technically China, he seems to be involved in a large portion of that culture anyway.

Since we were going to make the trek to the big city, we decided to make a whole weekend out of it. And since the New Year parade wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, there was plenty of time for us to fill.

We left town on Saturday morning and drove up to Aurora, which is about an hour west of downtown Chicago. There is a gianormous outlet mall there, so we capitalized on the opportunity to get expensive products (mostly clothing) at largely discounted prices. It was quite interesting, though – some stores would have everything marked down with an additional 60-70% off the lowest price on the tag. But then there were name-brand places, like Sony, Nike, and Adidas to name a few, that only had a small selection of clearance items, with everything else marked at a normal (expensive) price. Anyway, I found enough bargains to keep me satisfied and enjoyed all of the people-watching that I was able to do. And when I say there was plenty of people-watching, I mean that there were TONS of interesting things to see and joke about. People are REALLY weird…

We were supposed to only be at the mall for a couple of hours, but that didn’t happen. We got there just before Noon and didn’t end up leaving until about 5pm. From the mall, we raced into downtown to check in to our hotel, but really got stuck in some nasty traffic. We started to get concerned – checking in to a hotel after 6pm is considered “late,” and some hotels will go ahead and give your room to someone else if you don’t make special effort to have them hold onto it for you. PLUS, we had somewhere to be at 8 and need to clean up and eat dinner beforehand.

Needless to say, we eventually made it to the hotel, the Westin Chicago River North (Amazing!), got checked in extremely quickly (Thank you, online reservations!), did a quick costume change, and headed into the Theater district, to the Bank of America Theater, to be exact. We scored discounted tickets to see “Jersey Boys,” an Off-Broadway production that tells the story of the band The Four Seasons.

I could probably post an ENTIRE blog (not just a post, but a whole blog) about this show. It was simply amazing. I want to point out some of the highlights, though, and I will preface my comments by saying that I was extremely disappointed and the way-too-frequent use of the “F-bomb”.

The BOA Theater is a classic-style theater in an old, old building. It’s extremely gilt, with ornate reliefs and woodwork all throughout the theater. The room itself is about 1.5 times taller than it is wide or deep, so it felt like we were sitting on top of the people in front of us. While this helps to ensure that there aren’t any heads blocking your view, it means that the top row(s) of the top balcony are WAY up there. As this is where our cheap seats were located, I was concerned that I might get a nose-bleed. Even though we were in the way-back, I thought that my view/seat was absolutely stellar.

The set design was impeccable. It was very versatile in the ways that they were able to use the same main set to create every scene. With only minor furniture-type items being move on and off set, they were able to create a street corner, a stage, a television studio, a recording studio, a bar/nightclub, an apartment,… and without much verbal explanation it was easily possible to know what the setting was. The ways that they used lights and shadows was dumbfounding. One in particular was a type of background they used a few times – there were two versions, but it was basically the silhouette of a cityscape with an ever-changing sunset illuminating it from behind. But it didn’t look tacky – it REALLY looked like a progressing sunset. Amazing.

I can’t say that I expected anything short of awesome in the acting department, but they definitely didn’t disappoint. These people are professional stage performers, so I anticipated that they would be one-cue and in-character throughout the show, and they were. While I am not familiar with the current line-up of Broadway performers, it seemed like the casting was perfect. The parts were very well done.

The music was extraordinary. There was a live pit, but they weren’t always in a “pit” – they were part of the show at various times, so they were as much of the cast as any others. And when I say the music was amazing, I am 100% including the vocals. I caught the lead off-pitch once. Once. In the whole show. It was a 2.5 hour-long show. Amazing. The Four Seasons was similar to a boy-band in the sense that they performed with four-part harmonies in a large majority of their songs. On stage, these were incredible. You may be familiar with some of their songs – “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, and the list goes on and on. If you can recall any of these, you may note that the lead singer had a very high-pitched, very distinct voice. Well, the lead on stage was just as distinct and absolutely awesome. His range was out of this world, and it didn’t come across as hokey or “faked” in any way. The other singers were just as amazing, though, and I don’t want to down-play their performances in any way… but the lead really did make the show.

One of my friends grew up with this music, and at intermission he was telling me about how he can remember hearing some of the songs played on the radio as “new” while he sat and talked with his sisters at home when he was in high school. Yes, that dates him rather accurately, but that made the show even better in his eyes. I was SO incredibly glad that I had the chance to see the show – I hesitated when it was first proposed as part of our trip, mainly because I had never heard of it, but I can’t imagine passing it up now that I know how awesome it is. I still cringe when I think about the foul language, but yeah… Wow. Amazing.

Now, the rest of the trip was just as fun, but it really wasn’t as exciting as the first part. We did a LOT of window shopping through various parts of the city, we went to an Asian food market (oh – my – gosh – there is some WEIRD food out there…), we sat and talked for hours over meals, etc. Oh yeah, and there was also the Chinese New Year parade – the whole reason for the trip!

One of the aforementioned meals went a bit long, and then we had to wait for the train, and then we had to walk to the parade route… and so we actually only saw the last minute or two of the parade. We were all a bit disappointed, but by the time we actually got there we knew that we weren’t going to see much. So, since we were in Chinatown, we went ahead and perused that part of the city. This meant more people watching for me, and I did go ahead and snap a few pictures as well. Peoria doesn’t exactly have a lot of Asian-inspired architecture, so I was fascinated by some of the buildings. I’m sure there are more ornate and intricate buildings in Asia itself, but I still enjoyed looking at it.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before (and it will surely become its own post if it’s not here already…), but I really, really enjoy good conversation. This trip was jam-packed full of good conversation, so there wasn’t really a chance for me to get bored or for me to want to come home. I had an amazing time throughout the weekend, and I’m so glad that I have friends that I don’t get tired of talking to. Thanks a million, guys!

Okay, so there is more to it than that. I used to work for a company called Cobatco, located in Peoria, IL. My two younger brothers worked there at the time, too, and one of them is actually working there again (for the third time, to be exact). This is a mom-and-pop waffle iron factory, and they also sell waffle batter mix to go along with their machines. Their main customers are restaurant chains – Bob Evans, Country Kitchen, Huddle House, and Dairy Queen (for waffle cones) – and Bruster’s happens to be one as well.

I had never before seen a Bruster’s, but I recall many trips on the fork-lift to retrieve pallets of the Bruster’s Waffle Cone mix. So when I saw one tonight, I knew I had to stop in for a taste. (Thanks, Andrew, for verifying that Bruster’s really was one of the Cobatco joints – I wasn’t positive when I first drove by.)

I walked up to the window, still feeling bloated from so much barbeque, and frankly admitted that I had never been to a Bruster’s before. I chatted with the guy that was working the window, and asked for recommendations. He suggested some sort of chocolately-chocolate death trap, which was chocolate ice cream and ANY other topping that had the word chocolate in it: chocolate chips, chocolate-covered peanuts, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate-peanut butter cups, and I’m sure there was more.

As we were talking about chocolatey goodness, I glanced over the guys shoulder and noticed the waffle iron. It looked suspiciously like a Cobatco machine, so I asked him to verify. Once he confirmed that it was from the mecca of waffle cone makers, I was sold. I asked for a double-dip in a waffle bowl – one dip of the chocolate madness and one of their mint chip. Somehow he thought I was a starving kid in Africa or something, ’cause this is what I got (for the price of a single-dip, no less ):

Seriously. I don’t think it was any less than a triple scoop, ’cause I could count at LEAST 6 disticnt scoops of ice cream in the dish. It was gianormous. And delicious. Their ice cream is made fresh each morning, and it was totally tasty. In fact, I ate the whole thing.

And, now that I feel like I’m going to explode, I’m going to continue to lie here on the bed until the sugar buzz wears off and I pass out from a chocolate overdose. When do I get to come back here?!

My travel partner had made plans to go out with friends this evening, so I decided to go find some good food on my own. I stopped by the desk at the hotel and asked for a recommendation, and they gave me this:

Fat Matt’s Rib Shack is what was suggested, and I wasn’t quite sold on it by it’s name. However, the gal told me that it was the best southern barbeque in the area and followed that with, “…you’ll smell it before you see it.” I couldn’t argue with that, so I set off to get me some grub.

I’m not all that familiar with this area – I’ve only been here a couple of times. Last time, though, my buddy and I went hunting for a decent place to eat and actually ended up in the same neighborhood as Fat Matt’s. In fact, I think we might have passed it on our trip and decided not to stop because it looks like this:

Fat Matt’s is located in the part of town where ALL of the good restaurants seem to end up – not more than 500 feet from multiple “adult entertainment” establishments. I thought that I had mentioned this fact in previous posts, but a quick review of my blog proved otherwise. Just take my word for it: if you find yourself surrounded by “adult entertainment,” there is a REALLY good chance that the restaurants in that neighborhood are amazing.

I went ahead and stopped at Fat Matt’s this time, and I was NOT disappointed. While it really is a shabby facility, their food was absolutely delicious and they had Live Blues, too!

I ate too much – 1/4 slab of pork ribs, 1/4 (of a whole) chicken, and a chopped BBQ pork sandwich. The meat was all slow-smoked over classic charcoal, and the taste was totally there as evidence. If that wasn’t enough, they drown it all in their homemade, signature BBQ sauce, which tastes more like a nice cayenne hot sauce than anything else. It was perfect. I’ll go back as soon as I return to Atlanta – I promise.

We left on Friday morning, and quickly jumped onto the interstate for the ride down. While the rest of the car was chatting and having a grand ol’ time, I was trying to work on a project for my job, which wasn’t as productive as I had hoped for.

As we worked our way through Missouri, we stopped in Springfield to meet one of my dad’s brothers and his wife for lunch. We had a nice, but brief, visit with them at the Golden Corral, and then got back in the car to knock out the rest of the drive.

Somewhere around 11pm, we finally pulled up in front of my brother’s house and it wasn’t a moment too soon. I’m definitely not a huge fan of such long drives… My sister-in-law had a bunch of family in town, too, so she and the baby were over visiting with them for a while after we arrived. We, of course, waited for her to get home so we could see the baby that night, and our excitement provided sufficient energy to keep us up well past 1:30am after the ladies returned home. We passed my niece around the room, and finally called it a night.

We all slept WAY in on Saturday morning, but then got up and made some breakfast, and continued to pass the baby around . What ELSE are you supposed to do in that situation?

For the remainder of Saturday, we really just enjoyed each other’s company and hung out. I became the official driver, so I drove around to various places and eventually took my mom and sister to a mall for some gift shopping. i don’t really think that this mall was anything special to the locals, but it was 100 times better than anything we have near my own home. It was a more traditional mall, whith all of the storefronts on the IN-side, but it had such a good variety of stores that it put most malls to shame. I’m not a huge fan of shopping malls, but I AM a fan of this one.

My dining habits were not the most consistent; for example, at 10pm on Saturday, I took one of my brothers with me to get a burrito from Chipotle and a burger from Whataburger. Why? Well, ’cause I wanted both and didn’t want to compromise. I may not have mentioned this previously, but I’m a complete Chipotle addict, and this visit was just as amazing as any other. As for Whataburger, it was my first visit/taste, and it is definitely something that I’ll have again if I can. It wasn’t the most amazing burger in the world, but it was definitely tasty and well-worth the trip.

Sunday was a very lazy morning. We needed to be at church at about 1pm, but we were all up by 7:30 or so. We lounged about, passed the kid around, and talked and laughed with each other. At church, we were joined by my sister-in-law’s family and a few of their friends. Most notably, the amazing, funny, and amazingLY funny WhiteEyebrows was present. (Yes, that was a shameless shout-out.) After church, the whole clan raced over to my brother’s home for a late lunch. Unfortunately, though, WhiteEyebrows wasn’t able to join us… and he was missed by all. (Wow – a shout-out and a brown-nose all in the same paragraph )

We definitely enjoyed the company of the other family. They are a fun, lively group, and they are totally friendly. Good times, good times! After things settled down again, we got back into the ritual of passing the baby around, and that lasted for the rest of the evening (and actually into the wee hours of the morning).

Monday morning really just consisted of us getting ready to leave. My brother got up and cooked breakfast and my sister-in-law got the baby up for us to pass around once more. We got the van all loaded up, and we were off. It was so nice to visit, and we’ll be back down there as soon as we possibly can!

NOTE: I’ll post a few pictures of the baby when I get a chance… we probably have a hundred of ‘em!

So this week I was in Glastonbury, CT, which is extremely close to Hartford. So close, in fact, that we rarely make the distinction between the two when referring to the office that our company has here. But though we’re here with (more than) two cities to see, there really isn’t a whole lot to report.

Hartford is a really old city that doesn’t have a whole lot of “new” in it. It has been called the “insurance capitol” of the world, but even that isn’t accurate any more. We were here last year, and the only excitement we found was the not-so-good part of town. And by “not-so-good,” I mean that I slouched completely down in my seat so that I wouldn’t be seen by the people on the street. It was fairly frightening.

Glastonbury is across a river (not sure what it’s called) from Hartford, and is a really, really small, quaint town. There must be a city ordinance of some sort that is in place to preserve the historic, old feel of the town, ’cause even the CVS and Walgreens look like they have been here for a hundred years or more. It’s quite interesting.

So the first day wasn’t too exciting. The most fun came from wandering through ALL of O’Hare Int’l Airport in the morning while we endured our three hour layover. After we landed in Hartford, we hurried to get to the office and worked until the early evening. We found dinner near our hotel, and then relaxed in the jacuzzi for a while before going back to our rooms for the night.

The second day was just as uneventful. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m exhausted from travelling so dang much or what my problem is, but I wasn’t really in the mood to do much. We worked all day and went to dinner with the local office manager at a local favorite. The restaurant is known for it’s FRESH seafood (the lobster is held live in a tank in the lobby area until you order it), which isn’t my fave, but I had a salmon dish that was extremely tasty. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that people here in the Northeast really like their butter. I’m not talkin’ about margerine or butter-like spread. I mean the real, creamy butter that comes from cows. Since I don’t eat a lot of butter on a regular basis, the food has been quite heavy in my tummy — but it still tastes delicious! After dinner, I hung out in the pool and jacuzzi, and then watched some television until I fell asleep.

The third and final day of actual work seemed to take forever. We got to the office fairly early, and the morning dragged on. A couple people from the office wanted to take us out for lunch, so we went to a local burger joint, called Plan B Burger. This place was phenomonal! The lights above the tables were made from old meat hooks and some very interesting light bulbs, and yet the rest of the interior was very contemporary, complete with green-and-silver foil wallpaper. The food was even more amazing than the place, but it wasn’t much more than “burgers and fries.”

After another long afternoon, we finally got to leave the office for a bit of celebration. This was the last (working) day in the last office of this round of travels, so we decided to have more great food. We went to a steakhouse, called J.Gilbert’s, for dinner and then got some delicoius ice cream at a local favorite: Friendly’s.

We were then so hopped up on caffine and sugar that we were absolutely giddy, so we went back to the hotel, sat in the jacuzzi, watched some silly TV, and checked out the latest posts on FailBlog and GraphJam. We laughed until it hurt, and then retired to our rooms for the night.

Now, after a casual morning, filled with a nice, wandering drive though the state od Conneticut, we’re sitting in the airport waiting to fly home. And, upon my return, I don’t plan to leave town for any over-night excursions until September, which is totally awesome!

We were driving to the airport this morning, and we found ourselves stuck behind a car that was just plain strange in my mind. I think it was a blue Ford Taurus, which will be verified with the promised picture, but it was no ordinary Taurus – it claimed to run entirely on Natural Gas. While I’m far from being a “greenie,” I still thought this was neat.

But the BEST part was that it appeared as if the driver’s seat was mounted directly in the middle of the car, or, in other words, the car was being driven by a true Homie.

I never would have guessed that Homies were so passionate about protecting the planet…

Here’s what we saw, as promised: