Three Beautiful Things 01-06-2024: Return of Sibling Outings, Our First 2025 Outing, Digging Deeper into What Makes Eric Rudolph Tick

1. Christy, Carol, and I used to go on outings that didn't include anyone else. Just us. We did them in the spirit of the Sibling Assignments we used to write in our blogs. 

We hadn't been out of a Sibling Outing for quite a while and Carol took charge of getting us back into them via a Christmas gift. She made each of us a folder. Each folder has twelve monthly calendars for 2025. Carol assigned each of us a month and a place to go. The person assigned to the month decides what our activity will be, where we'll dine, and what our transportation will be. 

Carol assigned herself January. She chose January 6th as our outing date. She drove. She combined the activity and dining spot and told Christy and me we'd go for high tea at Inland Cafe and Tea. It's located on Government Way in a strip mall across from the Fairgrounds, just north of Nosworthy's Hall of Fame, the former Ground Round. 

2. The Inland Cafe and Tea menu offers four adult high teas (and one for children). For our outing, Carol chose the Sunflower Tea. It included the following:

• a bottomless pot of tea for each of us -- we had, I'd say, about eighty different teas to choose from 
• a cup of soup -- today's soup was split pea and ham
• a scone with our choice of topping -- the toppings are lemon curd, clotted cream, fruit jam, caramel or chocolate sauce, or a seasonal topping
• two tea sandwiches -- the choices are pecan chicken, inland ham, egg salad, or cucumber with chive cream 
• a petite sweet (ours was a dainty cupcake)
• garnishments of fresh fruit

We had a relaxing time sipping tea, yakkin' away,  and eating our fresh, made in-house offerings. 

I thought our year of outings got off to a terrific start. 

If you'd like to go to Inland Cafe and Tea's website, here's the link: https://www.inlandcafeandtea.com/

3. As I moved into the last third of the book Lone Wolf, the story continued by telling what happened after law enforcement captured Eric Rudolph and the high stakes legal maneuvering surrounding his case. With Eric Rudolph in custody, the attorneys and investigators, and we, as readers, came to know Rudolph much more fully. He turns out to be a complicated, complex, idealistic, and, I'd say, egotistical man on a deadly mission to save the USA from its own decline and corruption. Rudolph sees much of this decline and corruption embodied in abortion which he opposed with deadly force.