Three Beautiful Things 01-09-21:Up the River, City Limits French Dip, Prepping for Sunday

 1.  January 9th. Christy's birthday. 

For her birthday, Christy requested a sibling outing. As I wrote on my last post, we had originally planned to take abundantly cautious measures and make a trip to Spokane, but postponed that idea because of Covid closures in Spokane.

Instead, we piled into Christy's brand spanking new white Subaru Outback and headed up the Coeur d'Alene River. As it turned out, Christy gave her new car the pothole test. She opted for us to drive on the Old River Road once we got to the Bumblebee Bridge. The Outback passed the test. There weren't too many of us on the road or in the area. We saw the pickups and toy trailers of snowmobilers and one family was having a campfire near the road, seated in fold up camping chairs and enjoying a fairly mild January day.

We made two or three stops to get out and take pictures. But, aside from that, our trip featured a lot of yakkin' about a lot of different stuff, quite a few laughs, and couple hours or so of just having fun.

2. We left the river road and headed over Dobson Pass and came down into Wallace. We stopped at City Limits and Christy and Carol went inside to order our lunch to go. Christy and I ordered a French dip and Carol ordered a Cobb salad. We took our food back to Kellogg to Carol and Paul's house. 

I got to thinking. 

Since March 13th, the last time I ate at Sam's, I've eaten one breakfast outdoors at Le Peep with Mary in CdA, have brought home pizza on two occasions from Yoke's, and I shared a pizza from Papa Murphy's with Christy. Debbie and I ate some great snacks at Diane's one evening. 

If I'm not mistaken, every other meal I've eaten in the last nine months or so has been home cooked -- either Debbie or I cooked it here at home or my sisters cooked the meals. 

I've loved this arrangement. I've enjoyed cooking. I really enjoyed what Debbie prepared for meals while she was in Kellogg. It's been fun and tasty to have returned to having family dinners.

But, I would never have the ingredients at home, the sandwich roll, the thin sliced brisket, the Swiss cheese, nor the cup of Au Jus needed to make the French dip I ordered at City Limits.  I hadn't had a French dip sandwich since Byrdman and I went to The Dipper in CdA on Feb. 28, 2020. 

I loved my sandwich. It sent my memory traveling in two directions. First, I loved the French dip at Billy Mac's in Eugene and I thought about the many, many fun Thursday nights meeting up with friends there. I also let my mind remember a string of visits to City Limits, some of them were family outings and included Mom, some of them were outings Debbie and I went on, but all of them were special to me. Now I'll just wait patiently until the time is right (for me) to go back into the City Limits. I will enjoy dining, yes, and I'll really enjoy drinking some of their fine beers again.

3. Back home, I tuned into the Portland/Gonzaga basketball game, but only paid attention to it in spurts. The Zags clobbered the Pilots 116-88. Most of my attention was on looking over the recipe for the marinara sauce and meatballs I'd be making on Sunday, making sure I understood how the recipe worked and sketching out what I needed to purchase at Yoke's on Sunday morning.