Knox County, Illinois – A Good Place To Be FROM

I love following behind Cora.  Not just because I like looking at her cute buttocks, silly.  Butt I do.  :-)  No, I mean I'm a blog post behind her on our weekend together.  Assuming that most of you have read her post, it means that I don't have to go into all aspects of the day, but can focus on some, and skim over others.

Such as, I will skim over how wonderful it is, as a life time bachelor, to wake up snuggled with this gal.  Won't even mention that I don't even notice her sleeping on my arm.  Nope, not a word of that from me.

Saturday morning, I got up and headed out to the public area of her house for breakfast while Cora hit the bathroom.  It takes her a bit.  (You may notice from the pix, she's got some fabulously curly red hair.)  I tooled around on my netbook, and wrote up a post that I have no idea when I'll finish, and generally waited for Cora to finish up.  Before she does, her mom and her brother who is in town for her birthday pop up stairs to grab her daughter and head off to the town fest.

About 5 minutes later, Cora comes out of the bathroom, claiming that the meeting with her brother didn't count because she didn't introduce us.  She was looking so cute and a little pouty standing there in her towel.  Until it dawned on her that we were alone…

[TIME LAPSE]

Eventually, we made it out of the house and onto the bus downtown.  We grabbed a bite to eat at Pike Place Market, and then fought our way against a stream of Sounders fans to Pioneer Square for the underground tour.   The tour was pretty neat, but what I think I liked best was the pre-tour information session.  Turns out, the Denny Party that settled in Seattle departed from Knox County, Illinois.  The very country I was born and raised in.  It is truly a great place to be FROM.  ("FROM" = "No Longer There")  And they even had a picture of the time traveling sometimes blogger, and former college classmate, Alex Galvez.

Post tour, and tons of just stopping on the street for a snog session, we went back to the Pike's Place Market to make sure we make a wall post that has nothing to do with Facebook. Yup, we hit the gum wall again.  But this time the smart cookie Cora brought gum for us to put up there.  Seriously, the place isn't as nasty as you think it is.  Okay, it hasn't to call her "Ms. Jackson", but still, it doesn't smell or anything.    But there was a second where it looked like a gal who was down there putting her gum on the wall about fell into it face first.  That would have gotten me to blow chow, on the spot.  (As you can see, we are trying to do the Seattle "green" thing, and share one piece of gum.)  I place my gum up high, where I could hope to remember it, to see if it is still there in the future.

After Seattle, we did something that had the potential for being even less appetizing than the gum wall:  meeting Cora's Ex (Mr. X) and his new wife (Mrs. X) for dinner.  He wanted to meet me before his daughter stayed at my house for a week.  Okay fine.  Parental concern.

Cora and I get the the restaurant a little early, and I destroyed a bread basket, and she nibbled on a bit of crust while we were waiting for them.  Cora and I sat on the same side of the table, and when they showed up, he took the seat opposite Cora, so she sat across from me.  I had already discussed with Cora that I was going to pick up the tab as a sign of good faith.

Honestly, it did go as well as you could hope.  Mrs. X seemed nice enough and she and I actually chatted most of the evening.  At one point, he did mention that Chicago had a reputation for crime and wanted to be sure I wasn't going to be taking his daughter anywhere dangerous.  I left the snappy comebacks in my pocket (see list below), but instead assured him that where I live is as safe as anyplace is going to be.

After dinner, we went back to Cora's and I think we, umm, went to bed.

What?  It's a picture from Pioneer Plaza that I couldn't find room for further up the page.

Some snappy comeback to the "crime" statement:

• No, I won't take her someplace crime ridden and full of questionable people.  I don't even know if the White Sox will be in town.
• So, how was "Public Enemies"?  You know that was in the 30's, right?
• Yeah, getting her daughter shot would probably be a deal breaker with Cora, too.
• The biggest criminal mastermind in my 'hood is impeached ex-governor Rod Blagojevich, who live about 6 blocks from here.
• Yeah, and Seattle is supposed to be cool and rainy.  How's that working out for ya this year, Mr. Heat Miser?