Drive to Ohio, Baseball and Karaoke

When I was little my mother and I would usually make the trek from Silver Spring, Maryland to Grove City, Ohio in order to spend Easter with her side of the family, which included my grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousins K., K. and M. I remember getting excited about my Easter dress back in those days, and the Jello pudding pops in my grandmother's fridge. Even more enjoyable was the Easter egg dying my cousin K. and I did at her mother's kitchen table As I aged I became less enamored of the holiday in direct proportion with my lack of faith, and by high school I don't think I was still going out for Easter. But this year I felt a desire to commune with the Ohio folks. This may have been in part because of the good time we had in Gettysburg just a few weeks ago. In any case, I headed the Ohio way on a Thursday. A., K.'s boyfriend, asked me via Facebook if I could pick up some Lancaster Brewery beer, so throughout my drive through Pennsylvania I kept making these pit stops in random towns off of 76 with the hope of finding a proper beer distributor. While I did become familiar with a number of shopping mall complexes in towns whose names I've already forgotten, I can't say the beer search was successful. But I did go through at least five tunnels. How do they decide which mountains to blast through instead of going over or around, I wonder?
Exactly where I was going was a bit up in the air, especially because I decided to get off the main highway around Zanesville, which in addition to my random beer stops (and a lunch so mediocre I'm not bothering with writing about it at all) probably added at least half an hour to my trip. While I could have made it in 8 hours, I ended up making it closer to 9 and a quarter. But I did get to see some pretty country roads and a building that from afar looked like a takeout Chinese box, but upon closer inspection resembled a basket far more. All to say that I ended up driving into the heart of Columbus and meeting up with K., A. and their crew for beers and a minor league baseball game. Huntington Park was a nice stadium and I liked how close we could be to the actual players. But it was cold, so we didn't stay for the whole game.
Instead we went to Mickey's for karoake and the terrible idea of 'cherry bomb' shots, which is some devil's mix of red bull and evil.

There were many songs sung, dances done, and I briefly enjoyed the conversation of a cute boy, so a good night on the whole.

Gift Basket You Say?

Yesterday I had class and grad projects. Class is this thing that happens for three hours. Grad projects is this other thing that happens for one hour. It, technically, should be referred to as Graduate Projects. The class and the grad project both went well. In the class we talked about Marilyn Robinson's book Housekeeping. We watched parts of the movie version, mostly in fast forward and silence. The grad project was good. I realize I know a fair amount of my characters but not all of it comes across through my writing. Which means, astoundingly, more writing. I came home and there was a box by our mailboxes. It had my name on it! I took it up to the apartment and opened it. Inside was a basket filled with Harry and David goodness. Apples, pears, chocolate covered cherries, cheese and more were waiting for me when I got home!
I have already eaten an apple, a fair amount of the cherries and two truffles. It's dangerous this basket. It's dangerous in a brilliant, wonderful way. Thank you to Bear and Mackey's owner for such a thoughtful and sunshiney spot of my day.