"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."

~Lao Tzu

A few weeks back, after each being handed rather life-changing news, a good friend and I (whom you'll recognize from this post) decided that the next Friday, a night out was in order. Girl bonding was required.

Seven days prior, we realized that not many other folks were going to be around on this particular upcoming Friday night and the prerequisite "What should we do?" emails were exchanged.

At some point over the weekend before, I threw out a, "Why don't we go on a little road trip?" email.

To which my friend replied, "HELL YES."

And from there, five days before leaving, our "girl's night" turned first into an overnight road trip to somewhere in state to a three day long trip to nowhere. We were intent on driving where the whim took us, and decided only that we would travel west.

On the Friday morning in question we packed up her car and headed...south.

Because we could.

We had no plans, no reservations, just a few changes of clothes, gas money and travel-worthy tunes.

We traveled through five states and two time zones, and ended up in Nashville with just enough time to find a hotel and dinner, then change before heading out on the town.

Chicago


Self-portrait in Indiana


Louisville


Broadway St - Nashville

We drank a bit too much and were crazy enough to bring home stories we'll be telling and retelling for years. We high-fived a midget, y'all. And did a shot called the Johnny Cash. And took pictures down at the waterfront at 3:00 in the morning.

Saturday morning we were a bit overhung and sat in the warmth of the sun enjoying coffee before touring the Grand Ole Opry.

We don't look *too* hungover - just don't zoom in...

Saturday afternoon we literally flipped a coin to decide where we'd go for the day: Louisville. (We shoulda gone to Memphis, but eh...we did what the coin declared.)

We ended up with three or four pages worth of ridiculous shit we said scrawled onto a hotel notepad, because it was all just that funny. (Most can't be shared with the general public, but at one point, something made me say, "Whoa, I think that just put hair on my chest!")

We drove and took in the scenery and drank way too much diet coke. We laughed till we nearly wet ourselves and ate greasy drive-thru food. Sunday we headed back home, to temps thirty degrees colder than where we'd just been.

Tennessee hills


decrepit barn -- Kentucky


Dinosaur World -- Kentucky


Kentucky hills

It was everything we needed and more.

Check out the rest of my Flickr set here.

The winery

So we crashed this nice North Carolina Mom's Conference.

I mean, not really. It wasn't like they were excluding moms from outside North Carolina, or even peopole who weren't moms at all, its just that there were like four of us who weren't from that fine coastal state. So while the rest of the lovely group could sit in a conference room 50 yards from the Atlantic and focus on social media tools and making your blog more "findable" or something, those of us from the far north found ourselves going, "OOOH. OCEAN." and "Ohmigod was that the sun?!?"

It was hard to focus.

I mean, we tried. We watched videos presented by the Brunswick County Tourism Development Authority and tasted healthy yummy snacks served up by Eat. Think. Smile. We learned the technical ins and outs of how to make your blog better, as presented by Lisa of A Daily Pinch, and later, how to better organize your time online as presented by Molly of GO MOM!

But we squeezed in between those things every bit of North Carolina we could.

When Melissa won wine tasting passes for the Silver Coast Winery? Uh, yes please.

And so we ditched the afternoon session (sorry, lovely conference organizers) and took a cab to check it out.

This is what we pulled up to find:

How completely quaint and southern is that?

Now, learning more about wine was one of the items I listed in my Non-Life List Life List, simply because I knew nothing about it. I knew that I liked pinot grigio and um, that was just about it. I know quite a bit about beer, being from Milwaukee and having two brothers who work in that business and all, and find that I'm more apt to order a beer because I can "decipher" the menu. I know kinda what a lager will taste like, or a porter or an ale, and am more likely to try something by an unknown brewer because I know that what I order won't be completely foreign.

So not only was this a fun way to spend a few hours, it was like, educational, and stuff.

We even got our very own personalized tour!

Look at all those award winners!


Grape smushing machines


Tanks


Wine making tools

I learned that the reason red wine is dryer is because the grapes, once smushed, are left to sit in their smushed state with the skins on for a longer period of time. (And white merlot, which used to seem such an ironic enigma to me, is actually made with the same grapes as red merlot, only it sits in its smushed grapiness for less time, thus soaking up less of the red color from the skins and less dry-ness. I is smert now about wine.)

And I learned that out of the 10 wines we tried there was only one to which I gave an "eh" rating. "Eh" meaning it was one of the reds and while I'm not typically a red drinker, per se, it was still pretty darned good.

Waiting our turn


Tasting


All their labels are designed by local artists - loved this one!


red & white

Everyone we met at the winery was extremely nice and it was a wonderful way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.

I think I may need to order a case some of their wine.

Over the next few days I'll be sharing more of my North Carolina photos and stories with you. Cuz, um, its cold here and I'm sick of snow. If you'd like to view my entire set (WARNING: there are a CRAP TON of photos) click here.

I'd also like to thank the Ocean Isle Inn and all the conference sponsors for putting together such an awesome conference!

I wanna be a cowboy, baybee... (a.k.a. That time my friend touched a celebrity's ass.)

So Country Financial emailed me and asked if I'd be their blogger for the Jason Aldean show in Madison and I excitedly accepted. I mean, a night out, an opportunity to go backstage, meet a celebrity AND get to go to a free concert? With one of my oldest and dearest friends? YES PLEASE.

We were like giggly little high school girls again.



Me & Steph, before the backstage show

Literally.

See what happens when you don't get out often and you're given a Sharpie and big ol' empty poster to write on?
Yeah.

We headed out west, into the sunset and made it to Madison in plenty of time for the show. We were ushered into a small room, where a stage stood waiting for our backstage show. Before he answered questions and performed, every one had an opportunity to have their picture taken with Jason, and Steph and I got in line.

I will say this for Mr. Aldean - he was very easy going, very welcoming in a "Y'all come on in" sort of way. So Steph and I, we walk into the little curtained off area where the pictures were being taken, and he shook our hands and introduced himself, leaning in to catch our names. It seemed natural that we looped our arms behind his back and got in close for the photo.

It just wouldn't be "country" enough without the beer bottles in there.

After we walked out, I said to Steph, "Maybe that wasn't cool, putting our arms around him like that," but she wasn't listening. Her face was red and she was giggling.

"What?"

"I TOUCHED HIS BUTT."

"What?!? You groped him?!?"

"No! When I went to put my arm around him I like, kinda just accidentally BRUSHED his butt with my arm."

"An accidental butt-rubbage?"

"Yeah."

"Baloney!"

I went on to tease her some more and we had a good laugh about it. Mrs. Aldean? Steph swears it was an accident. She's pretty honest. Most of the time.

He answered questions from the crowd, where it was hard to miss a grade-school aged girl in the very middle of the front row. She excitedly waved her hand in the air, and when called on, asked him how he got started in music. I don't remember exactly what he said, but moments later, he and two of his band members played an acoustic version of Big Green Tractor. When they were done, he thanked us for coming and said he hoped we enjoyed the show.

Then he leaned down, to that little girl in the front row, and handed her his guitar pick.

That little girl was so excited she cried. It was the coolest thing for him to have done that.

Now...I will admit that originally I didn't know many of Jason Aldean's songs. Honestly, I looked some of them up on YouTube before the concert. Some I knew but didn't know they were by him, others were totally new to me. BUT...that concert last Thursday night was honestly one of the rockin'-est, most entertaining shows I've ever been to. (And that's saying a lot - this Milwaukee girl has been to quite a few, given that the Summerfest grounds are a stone's throw from my office and I've seen bands like Aerosmith and Cheap Trick in concert.) Jason Aldean has a few more stops left on his tour this fall, and I recommend you pick up tickets if he'll be anywhere near your area.

If he won't, you can still head over to the Country Financial Road Trips and Guitar Picks site and play a game or two to win free downloads of music by Jason or Jewel.

Its not as good as touching a country star's butt, but its pretty darn close.

A little Saturday road trip.

Before moving last fall, our family owned a duplex in the Milwaukee suburbs. Of which, the space we lived in occupied a mere 784 square feet. It was a beautiful house, full of 100-year-old wood work and charm, but we'd had enough of the Tetris-storage game.

When we bought our new, 2200 square foot current home, I joked that we would be living like hobos. We didn't own enough furniture to even come close to filling it. The first six weeks we lived here we had a TV on the wall of the family room and only the floor to sit on. We had only recently acquired our new king-sized bedroom set, or the guest room would have been empty, too.

We're still acquiring "stuff", like any family does, though we probably have more empty spaces than most people would allow. I, on the other hand, don't really care. Its nice to have room to breathe and the rooms will look lived in soon enough. But it occurred to me awhile ago that I might just want to make some effort at adorning my home before it gets overrun with bean bag chairs and deer mounts.

So when I tweeted

I had a grand idea. What could a family do together that would be adventurous and fun and might address my "too-little-furniture" problem?

Why, drive to IKEA of course!

There's not a store within 100 miles, the nearest being in Schaumburg, IL. It was perfect for a Saturday road trip, to be followed up with a stop at the Lego Store in the Woodfield Mall as a treat to the boys for being good in the Mommy store.

I'd never been there before, and though I'd been warned...I just had no idea. That place is freakin' HUGE. As in three stories of inexpensive home furnishings including escalators for your cart huge.

And on Saturdays? Oh my dear Lord in heaven save my sanity. That place is BUSY.

We had a short list of items we wanted to look for. (Actually, very short. We meant to measure the boys' closets before we left so as to buy some sort of organizer thingie, but we forgot.) In case you've never been, (riiiight - I'm probably the last person on the face of the planet to have never been inside an Ikea) you don't actually have to need anything. They have crap upon crap that's just right for, well, anyone who cares to go looking for it.


I put it together myself, yos.
And I swear mine looks
exactly like this.



I'll have to go back sometime when I'm more prepared, and more in the mindset to actually do some hard core purchasing. But I got some much needed oranization for my office and that counter in the kitchen that seems to be a magnet for papers and stuff. We got a step stool for the bathroom and a night stand and bedside lamp for the guest room. We found this wire thing that has clips on it - I can't find it on their site for the freakin' life of me - but you essentially hang it on the wall and clip kids' artwork to it, thus eliminating the chaos that can easily become the front of the refrigerator when you have young school-aged children.

Long story short, we survived Saturday IKEA hell and made it to the Lego Store just slightly before the time that my children would have begun to melt down from being overshopped and underfed.

They each (Hubster included) got to make their own Lego person, and took turns gazing into the displays of stuff made out of Legos. I was utterly surprised that they both didn't beg and plead to buy more, but we did decide on going to Red Robin for burgers, so that's probably what saved us. Next time, we'll have to plan better and take them to the Legoland Discovery Centre.

They'd be like, well, kids in a Legoland Discovery Centre.

The post where I guess I talk about food a whole lot. And Milwaukee. And beer.

I sometimes get caught up in writing "the perfect post". I get hung up on including pictures (I feel like I must take one, or dig through my disc archive for the just the right one I know I took that one time six months ago) or in telling a story "just so".

And I sometimes make myself crazy.

I know I shouldn't. I know I should let go and just write, but that's easier said than done. I know that sometimes I leave out a story that would be interesting or funny or just...a story...because I let it sit half done for weeks on end because its just not totally right.

So in an attempt to let go, I'm going to tell you about my weekend.

Because finally finally my husband's schedule rotation has allowed him to have weekends off.

If your significant other is regularly home on the weekends, let me just tell you - this is like being kissed by an angel and eating cookies for breakfast all at the same time. The cookies you buy for just YOU and that you hide from your kids. With a coffee from Starbucks that's JUST the right temperature. That you didn't have to go and pick up.

True to form -- when the Hubster is home we try and cram as much stuff as possible into our lives -- and you know that we did exactly the same thing on our nights out together.

The first Friday night he had off we went to AJ Bombers downtown. If you're not from the Milwaukee area, AJ Bombers is known for its burgers. Recently, the Travel Channel's Food Wars was in town, pitting burgers from Bombers and another local place (Sobelman's) - the episode is due to air in season 2 (and don't ask me when that starts, dude - their site doesn't even say). I had the Bomber Burger (a cheeseburger topped with a baked portabello mushroom that is stuffed with cheddar and muenster cheese). I may have needed an AED afterward, but it was yummeh. And their fries alone? BEYOND AWESOME.

From there, we headed to Buck Bradley's on Old World Third Street. If I had to tell a visitor to go to a sterotypical old-school Milwaukee bar, I'd tell them to go to Buck Bradley's. The building is made of the brick that gives us the Cream City nickname, and its old enough to make you realize why its on a street called "Old World". I think they should require their bartenders to have handle-bar mustaches. (They do wear those old fashioned long white aprons.) Its right down the street from Usingers and Mader's Restaurant and you almost want to oohm-pa-pa your way out the door.

The next Friday night we went to The Painted Parrot, which is in what we locals call "Dirty Stallis". (They actually sell shirts that say "I ♥ Stallis" on them, and don't go gettin' all pissy that I called it Dirty Stallis. I grew up there. I'm allowed.) They're known for their fish, and that's what we actually went to get. But somehow between the beers our group consumed while waiting for our table and looking at the calypso-themed paintings on the walls, I decided that a jerk chicken sandwich sounded even better. That and the nachos that are served (literally) on a garbage can lid. We did get to try the fish though -- double yummeh.

This past weekend was his third in a row not working, and I can tell you - I'm beginning to get spoiled. We had a sitter for the kids (again) on Friday night (egads!), and when he picked me up downtown again after work, I suggested that we stop by Ryan Braun's Waterfront Grill for a drink and an appetizer.

Now, first, I must admit a great fondness for Ryan Braun. Not only is he a great player, but my sons both idolize him. And they're both of the age where they'll completely believe me if I tell them that Ryan Braun always eats his dinner! or Ryan Braun never hits his brother! So anyway, its on the river, very near Lake Michigan, and its modern and manly (cement bar!) and was a great place to stop after work and have a drink and an appetizer. And watch the couples in the condos across the river retire to their balconies after work to watch the boats cruise down the river.

After Ryan Braun's, I suggested we head to Nanakusa for sushi. I ♥ sushi. I could probably eat it at least once a week. We tried a few different sakes together and we left with full bellies and the crazy thought that

"Hey! Know where else we should try sometime? The bar at Iron Horse!"

except we decided that the proper "sometime" was exactly that moment.

Now, in case you're like so out of it and you, like, don't know what Iron Horse is, its a motorcycle-themed hotel down the street from the Harley-Davidson Museum. I saw you just curl your lip up all "unh" like. Don't do that. You'll get wrinkles.

Its got a really awesome "vibe" to it. We had an after dinner drink at Branded, and it was just...COOL. I mean, go check out the pictures (cuz I tried to take some with the Hubster's cell phone camera, and nuh-uh - they didn't work out so well). What other hotel has "Motorcycle Shipping" under amenities? Just cool.

So...basically what I'm saying is that I've had a great couple of weekends with The Hubster. And not exactly many plans for this weekend, either. (Hmmm...wonder if we can drag the kids somewhere?)

That, and, um, I guess I'm available for Milwaukee travel writing.

Or something.

You know how I know you're from Wisconsin?

You order a weiss beer from a small town German Fest and you know how to pronounce "weiss".

View all photos in this set here.

(Kinda Wordless) Wednesday - the Shuh-Kah-Goe Edition

Sometimes life doesn't suck. Like Friday afternoons when you have to go to Chicago for a long meeting with a business partner, but then after the meeting they take you for an architectural tour on a boat and you get to spend 90 minutes in the beautiful midwestern sunshine with a drink in your hand taking pictures of pretty buildings.

You can see the rest of the photos in my set here.

Funny story for you, surrounded by some other BlogHer crap...

I've decided I'm not writing a BlogHer '10 recap because I pretty much said all there is to say after BlogHer '09 last year.

But something funny did happen to Melissa and I and well, I'm sharing it with you now.

So we were in the Expo hall on Saturday. We had gotten to the point in the conference where we were bone tired and still had some really great parties to look forward to later that night and we were both content to be a little low-key for the afternoon. There were no sessions that really appealed to us (or maybe there were but the elevators wouldn't let us get there, I forget) and we found ourselves stuffing our faces at the Jimmy Dean booth.

Now, you know The Sun, right? Well, The Sun was there. Like, the guy from the Jimmy Dean breakfast commercials. In his Sun outfit. (Aside: I have no idea how the man gets inside that danged suit. I saw no zipper. Maybe he's really an obese muppet...) If you wanted to wait around long enough, you could get your picture taken with The Sun. But the man had a ridiculously huge following. Like, maybe he has a blog...

Anyway, we're standing there, taking a survey with The Booth Guy to get our coupons for free Jimmy Dean breakfast products (which, btw, are really really good - I had this thing that was like a corn dog, but was actually a turkey breakfast sausage wrapped in a sweetened pancake...yum...) and I can see out of the corner of my eye that The Sun is standing there, posing for pictures and don't think much of it.

Then this woman comes up and says, "Excuse me, could you just move out of the way? We're taking a picture."

Oh, no problem, right? Melissa and Booth Guy and I move over to our left and on we go with the survey. ("On a scale of 1 to 10, how much would you say Jimmy Dean breakfasty stuff rocks?") A minute or so later, the lady is back.

"I'm sorry...if you could just scootch out of the way just a tad more...there you go," she says, gently guiding us a few feet more to the left. "That's gggrrrreeeaaaatt. Thanks!"

Thinking that its strange we're being ushered so far out of the potential frame of the photo, we turn to see Padma Lakshmi walking away from her photo op with The Sun. As in Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef. As in Padma Lakshmi who is absolutely beautiful and like this big. (Do you see the pinkie I'm holding up? Yeah, that big.)

Melissa and I looked at each other and both realized the same thing.

They didn't want our fat asses in the background of the Padma Lakshmi/Sun photo.

Somehow, this struck us as both sad and pretty damned funny. Our rear ends weren't even good enough for their 2 1/2 minutes of fame.

---

OK, OK, I'm not going to write one of those long posts with links to all of the awesome people I met - it would be long and really boring except to those people in said list. You know who you are you awesome people, you - virtual high-five!

BUT - I had the opportunity to share a room with three of the most beautiful, fun ladies I've ever had the chance to meet. I mean, what's fun in your college years (four chicks sharing two beds in a small room with one bathroom for several days) seems like an utter nightmare in your thirties. But aside from a little room stank, Melissa, Kelly R. and Kelly P. were marvelous and reminded me of a time in my life when all I had to worry about was straightening my hair and "Oh my God, I totally don't know what I should wear!" See me holding out my virtual wine glass ladies? *Clink!* Here's to you and your awesomeness.

---

I flew into NYC a day early to meet up with friends and do a little sightseeing. I was completely geeked out about seeing the city for the first time. Word from the (slightly) wise(r): If you take 247 pictures in the span of seven hours, and have plans to get up the next day for a long but completely awesome walking tour of lower Manhattan? Charge your damn camera battery. That is all.

You can check out the rest of my NYC photos here.

I only hope I'll see y'all next year, in San Diego.