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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

My Missouri weekend

I'm back (about 15 bug bites later) from my visit to Missouri to visit with ervy's cousins, grandma, and uncle. We flew into St. Louis around midnight on Thursday and then drove 2 hours to Cape Girardeau.


evvie and me in front of one of the murals in cape by the mississippi

We had reservations at the Drury hotel (according to evvie's grandma, "those Drury boys did well. They tiled our bathroom too"), located right across from the Walmart supercenter. We crashed there until morning and then drove over to Grandma's house (evvie's grandma, but i'll refer to her as just grandma from here on). I met Grandma, Uncle Barry, his girlfriend Marty, Cousin Russell, Russell's girlfriend Christy, Cousin Lucas, pitbull puppy Jada, and large black lab puppy Cole.



Amusing things of note from this family trip:
1) Grandma's favorite and only swear word she'll say is "shit poop"
2) Uncle Barry has major beef with Sears over a rebates
3) Uncle Barry will always get angered over people shopping anywhere except Walmart and Sam's Club. (like when we wanted to go to Petco to get the puppies some toys that would last longer than 30 minutes, we got an earful of 'WHY ARE YA GOING THERE?' questions, statements)
4) Basements can be frightening
5) people seem to like to turn the tv on when they get up in the morning, and leave it on all day, even if they leave the house. I find this to be very odd as well as a waste of electricity.
6) people in cape girardeau don't donate much other than clothes to goodwill. My trip there to see what people give up left me empty handed.
7) the other side of the mississippi river, Illinois, has an old speakeasy (the Purple Crackle) but besides that, seems to just be miles and miles of farmland
8) there really aren't any coffee shops. There was a Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble, but the grocery store clerks looked at me pretty blankly when I asked about local coffee spots
9) there's so much porch sittin'
10) there are a bijillion religious/political billboards around Missouri

I went shootin' in Missouri. We went out to Uncle Barry's house in the country (near Jackson, MO) off some dirt road. Unlce Barry lives in a double wide (pre fab house) to which he has added a large family room and an above ground pool. I immediately noticed mosquitoes landing on me, although Uncle Barry loudly disputed that I had indeed seen a mosquito. I sprayed myself with OFF! as Uncle Barry and Marty told me what I really had to worry about was all the ticks they have right now. Eeeks!

I'm not a big fan of guns. I actually find them quite scary, which is why I wanted to shoot at least once. I used one of the lighter weight guns and shot off 9 bullets (there was a dud in the clip).


I didn't do too shabby. I hit the target each time, just not always on the black part. Looky! I got through the heart once! This is the only target I ever plan on shootin', just wanted to do it once.


Here's evvy loading a gun and cousin Luke in his shooting attire.



2 comments:

HoJo said...

Sounds like it was quite an adventure. The big question is: Did you get any knitting done? Welcome home!

Delia said...

I went shooting this weekend too ; of course, ours involved a bb gun and beer cans but still the same concept ;)

Welcome home!

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