Trip plans, home developments, etc.

We have made some more concrete plans for our big road trip. Today, Jim made arrangements to rent a car in Wenatchee, Washington on May 25. So we have to be there by then. Actually, it would be nice to get there before then, so we have some time to see Laurie. So here are the plans so far:
Friday May 16: Leave after work and drive to Buffalo.
Saturday May 17: Drive to Chicago, stopping in Cleveland briefly to see Grandma and Jidy and maybe have lunch if the timing works out. Stay with Alex and Rob.
Sunday May 18: Leave for "the west."
Sunday May 25: Pick up rental car in Wenatchee.
Sunday June 1: Leave San Diego.

The beauty of the trip is that it is up in the air. We can take time to see random things. Like, for example, the Corn Palace, which apparently everyone knows about except me. Or Wal-drug. Ditto. We also have time to see not-so-random things, like Mt. Rushmore. Although seriously? Someone deciding to carve a bunch of presidents into the mountains is pretty random.

On the home development front, we are getting the floors refinished a week from Tuesday. So we're still on target to get almost everything done before Mom arrives on May 9. This does not include the stairs. We are still waiting on a quote for those. Looks like we're going to have to at least get the treads replaced, and we'll have to caulk and putty and paint the risers.

And on a final note, I just want to add that I really love Quincy sometimes. Tonight, our friends who live in Quincy called us up and asked us if we wanted to get dinner in an hour. Of course we were up for it! We had dinner at a new place called the Fat Cat, or something like that (had something to do with a cat). The food was great, the company was even better, and at the end, we got to get ice cream cones at Frozen Freddie's. Jim has even found a flavor of ice cream that he likes better than chocolate: cake batter. But only Frozen Freddie's cake batter. He is not a fan of Ben & Jerry's cake batter ice cream. But it's cool to have friends who live close, and nice new restaurants to try out, and our homey ice cream parlor just a few blocks away.