unexpected holidays

I only found out earlier this week that I had the day off for Veteran's Day today. Previously, I had this illusion that getting the day off for all the slightly obscure holidays would end at high school. Allegheny definitely didn't give us any of those days off (we didn't even get classes cancelled when the wind chill brought the temperature down to the negative twenties....not ok). So for the first time in a while, I started my day off not having any plans or any idea of what I'd end up doing. I can't even tell you how beautiful that was.

The morning began exactly how it should have. I had set my alarm for 9:30 (if I don't set an alarm, bad things happen..), and hit the snooze for at least a half an hour. Any day that starts like that has to end well. After a wonderfully slow, lazy morning - that centered around a LARGE cup of coffee - Laura, Matt, and I ended up at El Azteca for lunch.

For those of you who don't know, El Azteca is the most recent in a longgg string of Mexican restaurants that occupy the same building on Fairmount Ave. La Herradura lasted for a few years, and the circumstances surrounding its closing were rather notorious and caused quite a stir in this small town. As I remember (or as the rumors went), the management was busted for basically imprisoning some Mexicans and forcing them to work there - I think they took their green cards and wouldn't return them. Something like that. Welcome to Jamestown. Next came El Matador. All I remember about El Matador was that it couldn't get its liquor license. Enough said. This one closed a few months ago. Now we have El Azteca. The food's decent, but the best part of getting lunch there today has nothing to do with the food.

After we finished eating, Laura, Matt, and I got to talking about traveling. Traveling is one of those things pretty much every young adult can talk about forever. Where you've been, where you're going, where you really REALLY really want to go...and of course where you wouldn't go, even if someone offered to pay you. (North Korea, anyone?)

The long and short of our lengthy discussion is that the three of us decided we're roadtripping it up next summer!! We want to take two/two and a half weeks to go from here to the West Coast (and back), traveling the more northern route on the way there, through the Dakotas, Montana, etc., and returning by the way of N. California, Colorado, Kansas. We might have even drawn a map of the US on a piece of scrap paper so we could have a visual. And by 'we' I mean I did. It was pretty special looking.

Later in the afternoon, we met up again to continue planning this adventure out, and Anneli joined us. I couldn't tell if she was slightly amused by this whole plan or if she thought we lost our minds a bit, but either way, it had to at least be entertaining. After this second intensive planning session of the day, I headed out to Bemus and ended the day in a lovely way by having dinner with Soph and her parents. There really isn't a better way to finish a day than eating amazing food with an old friend and her wonderful parents while a fire's crackling on the grate, and outside the moon is rising slowly over the lake.