Thursday, October 11, 2018

Three Beautiful Things 10/10/18: Breakfast with Hiram, The Snow Stopped!, Christy's Ham and Bean Soup

1. My cell phone, resting on a stand next to my bed in the room I'd booked, woke me up with a notifying beep that I'd received a text message. It was Hiram. He informed me that his hotel was near an IHOP and I texted him back that I'd see him there as soon as possible. We had a very good breakfast together, highlighted, for me, by his news that he and Molly have rented Olivia a clarinet and that Olivia seems to be fully enjoying the school she started attending this year. Hiram was about to embark on having a day off and was hoping to find a place to do some fine dining and he was also going to be paying a visit to a music program in a local high school. Next stop? Carol and Paul's former stomping grounds. That's right. The President's Own will give a concert in Glendive, MT.

2. About forty miles out of Billings, I pulled over at a rest stop and took a short nap. Thanks to my racing mind after enjoying the concert and the post-concert conversations, I hadn't slept as much as I needed to and this little bit of sleep helped me a lot. My only bit of trepidation about making this stop was that it had started snowing. I still had about 430 miles to go to Kellogg and I didn't like the prospect of having a snowy drive for the next several hours. I woke up. It had continued to snow, but it was low impact snow, not really sticking to anything. It's worst impact was impairing visibility.  Once I was back on I-90, however, the snow stopped and never came back. In fact, I experienced some comfortable periods of blue skies and the roads all the way to Kellogg were in good shape and the fall scenery was gorgeous. 

3. Christy had served ham for the family dinner I missed back on Sept. 30th and today she used the bone from that meal along with and a pack of ham hocks to make a superb ham and bean soup. Christy volunteered to give me a container of this soup, so when I returned home she brought me soup, biscuits, and a dinner salad. It was a perfect meal. It warmed me up and filled me up and by 7:30, after driving for over 16 hours over the last two days and after being so stimulated by the concert and by conversation at Walker's, I went to bed very early, watched some poker on PlutoTV, played games on my tablet, and by 9:00, I crashed. 

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