Late, but here as promised

So this has taken me a little longer than I wanted to post, but here it is. This is the recount of my drive from Milwaukee to Austin with Kelly.
First, Kelly flew up to Milwaukee last Thursday with all sorts of weather related travel issues, which in the end resulted in her luggage not making it to Milwaukee until Friday morning. Meanwhile she, Eric and I had gone to Classic Slice for dinner, and happened into Dan who lived down the street. It was interesting in that he found out I was leaving, and commented on the Wisconsin - Texas exchange program. (I had been back approximately the same length of time that T-Bone had been in San Antonio, and he had just returned to Wisconsin.) After dinner at the slice, we went and met up with Matt and Ken at the Safehouse. Nic, Danielle and Elliot eventually joined us for a few cocktails and some exploration of the establishment. I think it was Matt's first time to see his elf game as a wall scale puzzle, which was cool.
Friday morning, we got up and headed to the airport to get Kelly's luggage, and then went back and I finished packing, and started loading up the car. Around lunch time I had almost everything in the car, and I had an errand to run, so we went to meet up with a freelance client of mine, and then headed off to Soup Brothers for lunch. We had the chicken vegetable soup, which was good, but not the best that I have ever had there. After lunch we went back to the house, and I did a little final packing, and a mediocre job cleaning the room. I hope that Crystal and Eric aren't mad about it. From there we took off around 1:30, and started driving. Our goal was to make it to St. Louis with enough time to make it to the Harry Potter Book release at the Borders near the hotel.
When we got to the hotel we realized that we didn't have the address for the Borders, but we got it by asking the pizza delivery guy in the lobby at the hotel. So around 10 we went up to the Borders and Kelly got her ticket for the line for the book she had pre-ordered, at two hours early she got CC which was about 1000th in line approximately. So at this point we went to the technology book section, and I read a book on Flash CS3, and Kelly read some plays I believe. At about 11:30 the Borders was trying to drum up excitement by forcing everyone into the Mall lobby to listen to someone on a bullhorn who was not as loud as the constant murmur of about 2 thousand people talking. Upon realizing that we still had a while to kill we went down to the Applebee's, and just caught their bar in time to have a cocktail. In doing so we were presented with the most awesome of epiphanies. The manager of the bar told us that a few blocks away was a Walmart that would be stocking the shelves at Midnight. So after going back to check on the progress of the line at Borders, (they were up to G by 12:30), I left Kelly to stand in line, and call me if she had the book in her hands while I went to find this fabled Walmart. I naturally went the wrong way at first, mostly because I hate St. Louis, but shortly found my way to the Walmart where I walked in, and was handed a book, called Kelly, paid, and was back in my car in under 3 minutes. I am not sure how late she stayed up, but I know she was reading the book most of the night.
On Saturday morning, I had planned in an hour excursion from the trip because on a previous trip through Missouri I had seen a pack of Llamas beside the road, and I happen to know that Kelly loves llamas. So I had researched a little and found the Animal Paradise, so I set aside some time in our travel plans to stop in at the park. It was a little lame at first, but quickly became awesome. The guard/gatekeeper had suggested just dropping the food because some of the animals bite, but the only ones that bit at us were the emus, who tended to be very aggressive. It was awesome though, and there are some photos up in the gallery.
When we left the animal paradise, we headed on to Ft. Worth, where we spent the night at my brother's apartment. It was the first time that Robert and Amanda had meet Kelly, and we all sat around and talked for a while after dinner, which was really good. In the morning, we had breakfast, and then said our good byes and headed off to Corsicanna to visit with my Grandparents. In doing so Kelly also got to meet my Aunt Linda and her family, which was pretty cool and unexpected. It was an opportunity to test the waters, as she is going to have the opportunity to meet almost all of my family at once at my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary at the end of August.
From my grandparent's house, we headed on to Austin, and had the opportunity to truly be living together. I put almost everything I own into my storage facility and only kept my clothes and a few other things into the apartment because I will be moving again in a few weeks when the house purchase closes. I am sort of excited about this, and looking forward to it. I have since started working at my new job, and today we went to see the house, so I got to walk through, and I think it will be a good place for us. Well, thats enough rambling for now, I will try to get back to it again soon. I have not been on Eve recently, and it will probably be another week or two before I really can. I am headed to Houston this weekend to see my folks, which I am looking forward to, I haven't seen them since Mother's Day, which was a while ago.