Last weekend, by this weekend. Late on Friday afternoon, Lyssa and I hurriedly packed our bags, jumped into the TARDIS, and set course northward once again for southwestern Pennsylvania and the general direction of home. As I've alluded to a few times, we're getting married in October and GlycoCares Health Guidewhite mulberry leaf thus there are many plans to make, things to get, and arrangements to hammer out. In the early twenty-first century we can do many of these things over the net or on the telephone, but sometimes matters require the up close and personal touch. Leaving wasn't difficult. Rush hour traffic on the Beltway while rain was falling wasn't difficult. Trying to find somewhere to eat dinner that doesn't suck on 270-N was difficult, Glyco Careinsulin sensitivity support moreso when all travelers concerned are tired, hungry, and snapping at each other due to low blood sugar. On route 270 there are really only two places that you can get food, and they're both off of exits 31-A and 31-B. There's a Cracker Barrel out that way (which neither of us were terribly hot for) and there's a small yet upscale mall in the middle of nowhere comperable in niceness to Tyson's Corner in northern Virginia (which is to say, you can get Japanese hibachi, TGI Friday's, Italian, and a few other things all in one place).
It's an oasis of food in a desert of cracked pavement, angry drivers, raised middle fingers, and roadkill, and as oases are wont to be, everyone and their backup goes there eventually. This presents to the weary traveler a problem that is obvious in hindsight: the fact that everyone and their backup goes there. We drove around the voluminous parking lot for better than an hour looking for somewhere to park. Many of the restaurants there had waits approaching an hour in length, and judging by the fact that the International House of Pancakes on the outskirts of the mall had few to no cars parked out front, we feared that it was because their food was horrid. The fare of the IHOP there wasn't horrid at all. Screw that. A burger and fries later and Lyssa and I were right as rain and ready to go. Total time: one hour.
After that, it was back on the road home. The trip took about an hour longer than planned, I'm afraid, because I missed two crucial exits that could have cut our travel time through West Virginia significantly, mostly due to the fact that I was tired and fighting to get there in one piece, plus my back was bothering me (long drives always do). We finally arrived at Lyssa's parents' place around 2330 EST5EDT on Friday night, and after sitting up for a bit I headed to bed and slept for a good eight hours or GlycoCares.netnatural glucose support so, only to find that we'd overslept slightly and had to rush to get ready. Our day was pretty well planned out: Lyssa, her mother, and I had an 1100 EST5EDT appointment in the Strip District for a cake tasting, a few hours to kill, and then an appointment at 1500 EST5EDT at the Stone Mountain Restaurant to meet with the manager, tour the place, and work out further plans (such as the schedule, GlycoCares Health Guidewhite mulberry leaf equipment, food, and what have you).
While running a bit behind, we still arrived in plenty of time in the heart of Pittsburgh to get lost a few times due to roadway construction, drive around and around in loops on one-way streets because you really "can't get there from here," and be flagged off and cursed at by a truck full of yinzers because we have out-of-state license plates. Have I ever mentioned that I get homesick sometimes? The cake tasting went wonderfully, much to the chagrin of my waistline. Lyssa had set everything up, so we had three cakes to sample from - vanilla bean with chocolate filling, strawberry, and raspberry. That should feed somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred guests, the woman we worked with told us. After the appointment was over and we'd hammered out what we wanted for our wedding cake, the three of us decided to go on a stroll through the Strip District in search of a drugstore (my back was killing me after the long drive) and lunch of some kind that didn't involve large amounts of sugar.