June 28, 2010: Hanging with the Ralstons

Back to work this morning.

For lunch today everyone wanted to do something different so we drove down to Perry to have lunch at the Charcoal Corral with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo and Jeremy came along as well.  Jeremy is on summer break from SUNY Fredonia and has been at home.  Sara is the only one who did not join us but she is coming down tomorrow afternoon to hang out at dad’s house so that she can see Liesl.

Lunch was good at the Corral.  It was quite busy there.  The “restaurant” section was completely full and we had to sit in the pizza parlour to have a seat at which to eat our lunches even though we were not having pizza.  The pizza business appears to be pretty slow at lunch and picks up for the movie crowd in the evenings.  We also got ice cream while we were there.  They have Perry’s ice cream and they have the banana cream pie that I love so much!  They also have the new midnight orange flavour that Dominica has been wanting to try.  Apparently Perry’s is doing some amazing things with their ice cream line up.

Liesl got a kiddie soft vanilla cone and was in heaven.  She is an ice cream lover like her parents.  She ate pretty much the whole thing – at least the parts that she did not get all over her.

On the drive back home the Ralstons managed to call us.  They both have new mobile phones now so the are reachable again.  So we made plans to get together this evening since Dominica is going to the Silver Lake Drive In tomorrow night to see Eclipse at midnight when it opens.  She tried to get me to go but there is no way I am going to watch that stuff.  Jeremy is going to go with her which is pretty funny because Sara and I won’t watch it.

We worked all afternoon.  I am making amazing progress on the DVD archiving.  I have one laptop running around the clock in dad’s office and one set up on the kitchen counter as well.  So I am constantly running back and forth and going downstairs for another stack of DVDs.  As they get archived they are going straight into boxes for storage.

At six the Ralstons came up.  They have been down the road at their house most of the time getting it ready so that they can move back in.  They are hoping to be moved in in another week or so.  For the moment, until the house is ready, they are living at Art’s mom’s house in Mt. Morris.

Liesl had a great time playing with Art and Danielle.  She really missed them, I can tell.  She was SO little the last time that she got to see them – when they were down at our house staging to leave for the Congo, down in Peekskill.  Liesl would only have been just six months old at the time.

Liesl has really started playing a lot with my 1980 Hot Wheels Sto n Go City set.  I loved that set when I was a kid.   It has pop-up buildings, a scale, a police chase hideout, an automotive lift, hidden garages and more.  It was a ton of fun when I was little and liked to play with cars.  There were two other sets, the Service Center from 1979 that can attach to this set so that a car can travel from the top of the Service Center all the way down through the city.  I’m not sure how well that would actually work in practice but in theory it is pretty cool.  I never had that set even though I wanted it as a kid.  I checked on eBay and they are pretty cheap, maybe ~$25 after shipping.  So maybe I will splurge and get it for Liesl.  I also found the third of the set, the construction area, that attached at the bottom of the city (the Service Center attaches above) and we are talking about maybe buying that on eBay so that Liesl can have it to play with when we are at home in Texas.  Apparently she is really into Hot Wheel and Matchbox cars.

At almost nine we piled into dad’s car and drove over to Geneseo to get dinner at Tim Horton’s.  We got sandwiches, coffee, smoothies and donuts.  A good trip.  Liesl did pretty well considering how late it was.  Her bed time is as early as eight thirty, normally.  We were out well past ten.  By the end she had had enough and was definitely needing to go to bed.

We managed to get a hold of Mary but she was just getting off of work at Walmart as we were climbing into the car to take the Ralstons home and Liesl was not going to put up with being awake much longer so we were not able to get together.  So we made plans to get together for lunch at the Omega tomorrow instead.

We got home and got Liesl to bed.  I worked for a little bit longer and then we went to bed ourselves around midnight.

We found out today that Art and Danielle just bought a car so they are not going to be needing the Mazda for very long.  We had been intending to have bought my plane tickets for me to fly to Washington, DC and then on to Texas tonight so this completely changes our plans.  So the current plan is that I can grab the Mazda just before heading south and I can drive it all the way to Texas.  That means no car rental in DC either.  This will save a lot of effort.  It also means that I can drop it back off for Jen at some point as well so that she can drive it again.

We are quite excited that I am going to be able to take a rather full load of stuff down to Texas now.  Originally we had no spare space whatsoever.  Now we have lots of room.  Now the challenge will be figuring out what we want to take with us and how tightly to pack the car.

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