kitchtrips

Oh, how the sweet smell of those summer memories fade
Sometimes I wish I, could relive those days
We laughed, we cried, we lived life wild
And when I close my eyes I see you one more time

We used to drive all night down them country roads
Chasing tail, raising hell with our brothers
Passing grandpa’s whiskey in that bonfire smoke
Telling tales and lies about lovers
Drinking one right after the other
Took a whole day and night to recover
From those American summers

– Moonshine Bandits & Burn County

Wednesday 31 August

Off the top…Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Another gorgeous Midwestern summer day – the last of August. Went out for my customary morning walk to clear the cobwebs after all the beer I drank at the Sox game last night. There are so many really beautiful parks and reserves around Wheaton, and even the tree-lined streets are nice to walk through.

A quiet morning after a couple of busy days is always good. Nathan is on a medley of Blue Bloods and CSI and he also found a channel that, completely randomly, is showing episodes of Sea Patrol, the (entertaining but not necessarily factually correct!) Lisa McCune/Ian Stenlake Australian Navy drama from back in the 2010’s that was always good for some action and beautiful scenery. How it migrated over here is lost on me, but I guess with the insane amount of channels they have here, they need to reach pretty deep for content.

We left the Airbnb – which is quite close to downtown Wheaton, and very close to Wheaton College, which is, according to Wikipedia, a private Evangelical Christian liberal arts college – and went over to Twin Peaks in Warrenville to meet Scott. Lunch with him at Twin Peaks is a tradition dating back to 2015, but obviously interrupted by the pandemic.

For the uninitiated, TP is somewhat like Hooters, but with much, much better food (I’m definitely not just saying that!) and the servers wear flannel and other ‘alpine’ clothing. They also serve giant beers, which I’d forgotten about until the moment our server Jules brought mine over to our table. For the record, I had Chipotle chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli.

Not much else happened this afternoon. I had a good nap and started another book.

Headed into downtown Wheaton for dinner at a restaurant called Wok n Fire, an Asian place (as you probably guessed by the name) that we had been to once before, many years ago, with Brian and Debbie. Like many places around Wheaton, there was plenty of outdoor seating.

I remembered the food was pretty good and it was this time, but completely soured by the fact that we had to wait the best part of an hour for it to arrive. Not sure what the issue was, but everyone around us was having the same struggles. I would have eaten just about anything by the time it came out. We ordered Japanese beers, and even they took so long to arrive that Nathan joked they’d gone over to Japan to get them.

Anyway, the food turned out to be good, even if the service wasn’t, and we headed home happy, enjoying another stunning Midwestern sunset.

Downtown tomorrow! And a very, very busy Labor Day long weekend to come.