June 30th, 2001

Cruising around the suburbs...

Hi there! Today is geared more towards my mom, grandmother and grandfather down in Florida. (Hi Mom and Mimi and Papa!)

PS- Yo, Mr. Alabama from the guestbook. That's who Mimi is. :P

Anyways...

We spent most of the day relaxing... visiting with Mike, Jamie, Pam, Jock and Julie. The boys and Julie had to run some errands, so Pam and Jock offered to take me around Lake Forest and show me like where my mom grew up and where my grandparents lived and worked etc... Lake Forest is a suburb/town about 15 minutes south of Libertyville, so... we hop into the Ronin's Acura and started to cruise. Jock showed me one of the nifty toys on the vehicle... and integrated GPS system. It's pretty slick... he gives me a demo about how it works and uses it to get us down to Lake Forest. It even talks at you.

In Lake Forest...

Lake Forest is a cute little town that's been absorbed as a suburb of Chicago and has, over time, been settled by ritzy folks. That happened largely after my mom had grown up and moved away.

It was pretty cool, seeing where she had grown up. Pam and Jock show us all around, taking us to some of the older houses that relatives and friends used to inhabit. The places we visited can be seen on the pictures on the right. Again, this is something my mom and grandparents down in Florida would appreciate more than the casual reader of my page.

Lake Forest Town Square

Lake Forest's Town Square

Aside from that, the rest of the day is pretty lax. I'd like to state right now, though, that Aunt Pam is a kick ass cook. The Ronin's have been very good to us so far... I was worried I'd be putting them out by sort of dropping in on them unexpectedly, but they've been very gracious in putting up with me and Alie crashing at their place. I think they're just glad they get to see me again... that's good. The feeling's mutual.

Once we get done cruising through Lake Forest we run a couple of errands and head back home. When we get there Mike, Jamie and Julie are outside the house cleaning their assortment of vehicles. Jock and the boys appear to prefer muscle cars... included in their collectin are a fire engine red Mustand Cobra, a dark purple Pontiac Thunderbird and a Buick modified with a race car engine so it has something like 625 horsepower.

Mike, Jamie and Jock all pamper their cars, they regularly wash and wax them and the cars show it; they're in damn near showroom condition.

All of us hang around outside as they finish up washing the cars then we sit around visiting and drinking some beers and visiting. We have dinner and the rest of the evening is spent relaxing before we turn in for bed.