second annual road trip

The last weekend of January was our second annual road trip to Indy to visit our friend, Tracy.  Last year's road trip was chronicled here.  Tracy lives in Indianapolis, Julie lives in Kentucky, and Susan, Nancy, and I are in Chicago.  The five of us met at Tracy's around 1:00pm, and we were drinking wine by 1:03pm.


One of the many tidbits I learned about my friends is that Nancy is a singer.  Who knew?? Not me.  Here is Nancy giving a wonderful rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" (I only had to ask twice before she burst forth in song).

I think our dinner reservations were for 7:30 or something like that, so we had quite a while to drink wine.  So drink we did!  We drank and chatted for a few hours, then it was time to get ready for dinner, and then the required group shots.  I put the remote on my camera, and we had a mini photo shoot of ourselves.  I had to laugh when I saw the pictures, because like I said, I had a remote, so all the five of had to do was sit there, and move a bit, and make sure we were "smiling with our eyes", but so many of the pictures feature a blurry Nancy who must have thought that Tyra Banks was right there in the room taking her picture.

Nancy Julie Susan me Tracy

I think our pre-dinner wine guzzling may have gotten the best of us.  Our dinner was relatively quiet and tame.  Well, tame except for the orders of shrimp cocktail that contained a heavy dose of horse radish that had Nancy sounding like Meg Ryan in the diner scene of When Harry Met Sally and had Susan claiming that her eyebrows were tingling.
I think that next year we may have to consider staying in for dinner, that way we don't have to halt our wine consumption, and can continue our silly streak for the entire evening.

ROAD TRIP!!! (AKA "scared straight")

On Saturday, 6 of us lovely ladies began our road trip to Indianapolis, IN to visit our 7th lovely lady: Miss Tracy.
Things started off just fine. Aimee and Susan picked up Jodee and me, and we made our way to Tinley Park (most desirable city in the nation to live according to Nancy) to pick up Nancy, and then make our way to Indy (Julie was coming in from Kentucky). Well, Nancy went out the night before with her high school friends, and in order to soothe her comedic ego, Nancy drank, and drank, and drank some more. (Nancy's HS friends don't find her nearly as entertaining as we do). So, when we arrived, Kayley was about to exercise her newly acquired knowledge. "Daddy, should we call 9-1-1 for Mommy?" Nancy was sick with what she called the stomach flu (yeah, we didn't fall for that either).
Nancy was able to get herself together, and off we went in Nancy's minivan to Indy. We were smooth sailing down Interstate 65, when we needed to stop for vitamin packed nutrition. Through the drive-thru at McDonald's we went, french fries for many of us and chicken for a couple of us. Aimee took over the driving at this point because poor Nancy's flu was not out of her system yet. "On the road again" we sang as we hit the open road. Ahhh, the wind in our hair, the gossip and giggles coming from the back of the van, we were on our way, baby! Then, that is when it hit. Nancy got a whiff of all of those lovely scented french fries, and the barfing began.....into the McDonald's bag, onto the stragglers of french fries that I long for. Aimee rolled down the window and basically drove with her head out of the window because if she heard Nancy throwing up, Aimee would begin to gag. We went into emergency mode, grabbed a garbage bag that was used as luggage so Nancy could have something a little more leak proof, and we found wipes so Nancy could clean up. Crisis averted without ever even pulling over! Hell if we were going to let Nancy get her stuff together! There was wine to be drank in Indy! Tally Ho! Well, after seeing how bad off Nancy was, I think the rest of us were 'scared straight'. No one wanted to feel bad the next morning. So, when we arrived at Tracy's, here is what took place: texting, checking e-mails, and drinking TEA! I know, right?

After touring Tracy's kick ass townhouse (seriously, 2 bedrooms and a loft office, and 2 1/2 baths..OMG), we gave Tracy her plethora of birthday gifts, and then we had our xmas gift exchange. All of the gifts were awesome!

Finally, we started in on the wine and appetizers. Oh, how I love appetizers. Then, we got ready to take Indy by storm.

On our way, we made a pit stop at a gas station so that we could pool our monies to buy many powerball tickets. I swear, I was absolutely positive that the 8 of us (Tracy's sister, Kristen joined us for the evening) would be splitting the $65 million jackpot. We were even planning what we would be wearing on The Today Show for our interview.
Our first stop was to a wine tasting bar. It was really cool. You put money on a credit card type thing, and then go around to the many wines, and push a button to get tastes of the wine for yourself. I loved the concept and plan to get rich by opening one of these wine clubs in Chicago. Who's in?

After the wine bar, we ventured to Palamino's for dinner. And let me tell you, any Palamino is a pal-a-mine-o. Ho! I love that one. Dinner was delicious and many of us ended dinner with a fabulous Chai-tini. Oh how I wish I had one of those right now.

After dinner we came home and got comfy in our pj's and took a picture as if we won the powerball jackpot. As you can see, there is lots of flannel and sweats, and roomy stuff. Well....except for Jodee....she was in this sexy little number.

Ahh Jodee, always the fashionista, even in sleepwear.

Our road trip was great, lots of fun and lots of laughs. Tracy's new home is awesome, and I'm so jealous. Her new couch is pretty spiffy too!