A Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

If you're following my twitter, you got some bits and pieces of my weekend. I figure I better fill in some of the details.

Friday night, we took off for Rapid City at about six o'clock. We got about halfway to Worland when we heard a whining sound coming from the engine, which was shortly followed by me noticing that the car was running really hot. We pulled over, and popped the hood to find that the coolant reservoir was empty. After discussing what happened, we decided to fill it (fortunately there was half a gallon in the back of the car) and see how it ran for a few more miles. We checked it a couple miles further down, and it seemed OK, so we kept going. Just before Worland, it did the same thing, so we pulled over and found that it was bone dry again. Fortunately we pulled over into a mechanic's parking lot. After some discussion, we called Sarah's Dad to come pick her up, take her back to Thermopolis to get my car. So we hung out for about an hour and a half waiting for my car to show up. We ended up getting to Rapid at about 2:30 in the morning. The roads were crap with slush and rain, so it was slow going.

The rest of the weekend was good. We got to take Nico, the French exchange student up into the hills, showed him Mt. Rushmore, Keystone, and Hill City. We also were able to do quite a bit of shopping, see a couple movies (Indiana Jones and Iron Man), and eat at Ichibans (our favorite Rapid City sushi resturaunt) twice. Today we drove back via Devil's Tower. It was the first time I got to see that up close.

The shopping resulted in us getting a new set of pots and pans. Which is something I've wanted pretty much since we got married 6 years ago, but just hadn't gotten around to getting. The new ones are all stainless steel, so we won't be eating teflon flakes any more. We also got some glass Pyrex containers so we can move away from using our cancer causing plastic ones. On a personal success note, I stayed within my blow money budget.