My Weekend

At noon on Friday, I left home to visit friends in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the weekend. When I arrived in Cedar Rapids, I went to my friend Captain Creative's apartment. When I arrived, our friend Jason was also at his apartment. Shortly after I arrived, the three of us headed out to pick up C.C.'s son T. from T's mom's place. Once we got him, the four of us went to Iowa City for dinner. We went to Z'Mariks Noodle Café for a fairly reasonably-priced and tasty dinner. Afterwards, we wandered around in the Old Capitol Mall for a short time before returning to Cedar Rapids.

Before returning to C.C.'s apartment, we stopped at the First Avenue Hy-Vee to pick up some refreshments. We stopped there because it was on the way back to the apartment. It isn't located in the best of neighborhoods, but I felt pretty safe there since they had three Cedar Rapids police officers and a Linn County sheriffs deputy there for security. We then hung out at C.C.'s apartment for the remainder of the evening.

The next day, C.C., T., and I ended up having breakfast at the Hardee's in Marion. I had not been to a Hardee's in a while, probably not since before we moved to Minnesota. We then took a drive over to the northwest side of town where we went to a role playing game store. The location of the store was quite familiar to me as it was located in the former location of the store from which we would go to rent movies when I was growing up in Cedar Rapids. That part of town is changing a bit though as a couple of buildings in the area, one of which I spent a considerable amount of time at, have been torn down. These two buildings were the BP station at the intersection of Edgewood Road and Johnson Avenue, and the Hardee's restaurant that was next to it. This was the first Hardee's that I ever worked at. I worked there each summer from 1990 through 1995.

A little while later, the three of us went to Metro Buffet in southwest Cedar Rapids for lunch. The food was good, but I didn't think it was as good as I remembered from the last time I ate there. I did manage to not stuff myself though. After lunch, we all went back to C.C.'s apartment where T. worked on some homework he had for school while C.C. and I watched an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Once T. finished his homework, the three of us played a little Dungeons & Dragons since they had recently picked up a starter kit for the fourth edition of D&D. It had probably been around twenty years since I had played D&D, but I think I remembered fairly quickly how to play. We ended up dropping T. off at his mom's place because C.C. and I were going to meet another friend of ours, Homercles.

C.C. and I first had a quick bite to eat at Taco John's before meeting Homercles at Fat Wally's downtown, where we played darts and pool for a few hours. After that, Homercles indicated that he could use a bite to eat, so we all walked down the block to Bricks Bar & Grill where we had an appetizer sampler consisting of jalapeño poppers, mozzarella sticks, and cheese fries. It was fun hanging out there. While we were there, a couple of guys asked C.C. to take their picture. C.C. said that this was actually the second time this had happened to him recently. I guess he just looks like the kind of guy who takes good pictures of total strangers.

Today I had intended on staying in Cedar Rapids until after lunch, but a winter storm was supposed to be coming, so I left shortly after getting up. Most of my drive back home was pretty good, although from a little but north of Waterloo until I got past New Hampton, the roads were pretty bad. After that though, the snow stopped and the roads were fairly dry. It was good to visit my friends, I hope it isn't another nine months before I get to see them again. Maybe they would like to come to Minnesota to visit.