There's No Place Like Home

Kansas!
Paul and I spent a few days in Overland Park, KS a couple of weeks ago. Highlights?
I saw cardinals for the first time!

And they have proper Blue Jays. Their Jays look very different from our Stellar's and Western Scrubs, but most interestingly, they sound completely different. Jays are corvids, and so related to our beloved crows and ravens, as well as the ever-present European Starling. I'm accustomed to our Stellar Jays angry squawk, and our Western Scrub Jays questioning screech, but the Blue Jays in Kansas sound like... regular birds. Whistles and tweets, almost.

On a side note, we've recently been getting Western Scrub Jays at our backyard feeder, and I love the yelling in the morning. It's like waking up at camp.

In addition to the two new birds, we also saw Paul's Dad and Stepmom for their birthdays. It was relaxing, of course, because there is not a lot to do there. We caught up with family, which is wonderful, and drank lots of wine. Saturday, I took over the kitchen with Paul's wonderful stepmom and baked snickerdoodle cookies. On Sunday, Paul and I ventured out into the Big City to see what we could see. What did we see?

First, I lived out a childhood dream, and died of Cholera.

Next, I found a beer, where we sat at the bar. It was superbowl sunday, which meant nothing to us. The Superbowl was to start at 2pm, and it was much earlier. Most screens in the bar showed pre-game bullshit (I don't even understand watching sports, but watching people talk about sports???? WTF?) but one screen was set to Puppybowl, which? Genius. Now, if the sports pubs would set half their screens to sports and half their screens to Puppybowl (or Puppy World Series, or whatever) then couples could actually go and enjoy game days together. And families. Who doesn't love puppies?

After fortifying ourselves with beer (for me) and sody-pop (Paul), we decided to tour the Big City... by car, because it was assbitingly cold, and it's miles between interesting things. After a bit of driving around looking at buildings, and getting out once to look at historical markers and an overlook, we decided it was too cold and too boring, so we went back to the house.

...Where we did some IT (did you know there are still people running Netscape as their browser?) and more relaxing and catching up.


Then? At the airport, I figured, "this is Kansas!" so I clicked my heels together three times and found myself at home. Hooray.