Road Trip

The family and I took a little road trip this past weekend, to our old stomping grounds of Greensboro, NC, for Evie's first (of many) visit to see her grandparents. A weekend at the in-laws might not seem like much to get excited about on the face of it, but I really like hanging out with Brooke's parents...they drink, swear and are excellent cooks! Besides, after spending approximately 22 to 23 hours of every day for the last seven weeks in this house, I was thrilled at the prospect of simply having four different walls to stare at!

Thankfully, there was even more than that going on. We drove down Friday afternoon, and Eve was an angel the entire way, sleeping for all three or so hours. Saturday, I drove around to a few of my favorite haunts, including Addam's Art Loft, which always seems to have some odd item that I find indespensable that no one in town seems to carry (in this case, a tiny replacement lead sharpener), and Ed McKay's used books, hands-down the best-stocked used bookstore in North Carolina. They have everything...the usual huge selection of fiction, classics, paperbacks, etc., but they also have tons of used records, CDs, DVDs, and books of every stripe-history, media, cartoons, and of course, comics. I usually bee-line for that section, and Saturday was no different. The finds of the day were a mixed bag...I picked up the first trade of Brian Wood's DMZ, which I've heard good things about but found to be almost unbearably trite and awful, and the first volume of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers, which made about as much sense collected as it did in single-issue form- which is to say, not much. Some nice Ryan Sook art on the Zatanna chapters, though. In the children's section, Brooke found a well-worn copy of Syd Hoff's classic Sammy the Seal, which Evie will no doubt want to have nothing to do with when she gets older. She also scored the find of the day (and in the kids section, no less): In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot by Graham Roumieu. It's absurd, hilarious, and instantly quotable (everyone, including Brooke's dad, must've uttered the phrase "You shitty cat" at least a dozen times over the weekend) and it's nice to finally own a copy.

Sunday, we actually managed to get away to the movies for the afternoon and caught a screening of SUPERBAD. It was pretty consistently hilarious, and like all Judd Apatow flicks, it had a lot of heart behind the filth. Is this guy on a hot streak or what? I left the film with two thoughts: A, I want to put Evie in a convent already, and B, I want to have me some drinks! So, next up was back to the house for a few beers in the hot tub! The water felt great, as the picture below illustrates quite well. We finished the night up with a dinner of baby back ribs and preseason football. I felt like I was on vacation!



The trip home was not quite as smooth as the trip down...We had to stop for a diaper change and a feeding, neither of which is easy or fun when you have a dog in the car and it's 97 degrees outside. But, that's travelling with kids, I guess. And occasionally, it leads to moments like this: