Gosh, this seemed like it was going to be a nice calm week when I made my last post. Yeah, right…

Takaza got the word on Tuesday that he was going to be going down to his employer’s St. Louis, Missouri, branch to help out with some training there. Once they got the scheduling worked out, I went to work to figure out how I could get down there economically and we could hang out for the weekend. Flights were out at this late date – the cheapest I could find was over $100. Amtrak, though…they even had a schedule that worked for me. A nice bonus was that I found a great website that posts discount codes for Amtrak (typically these are the ones that are mailed out to their Guest Rewards program); that netted me a quick 25% off.

So, for $60 I’ve got a business-class seat on the Route 305 – State House train from Chicago-Union Station to St. Louis, departing at 5:15 PM on Friday and getting in (theoretically) at 10:43 PM. I say theoretically because, looking at the last week, the train arrives somewhere between five and thirty minutes late. Eh, it’s worth it, I think. We’ll be down there through Sunday afternoon, and Dan will be at the regular Friday night Furry Coffee gathering. On Saturday we’ll be hanging out with ramalion and K and hopefully tygercowboy and company as well. Sunday we’ll do lunch with my sister’s family before driving back to Chicago.

Also, in a nice “Power of the Internet” moment, I just spent the last ten minutes or so using Google Maps to talk Dan through a detour off of I-270 around a nasty accidenton the Illinois side of the Mississippi River that had stopped traffic for miles. It was very odd to be talking to him and relating what he was seeing real-time to landmarks I saw in the satellite photos.

Going back a bit earlier in the week, I did have my physical health assessment at the gym on Monday, as I mentioned. The good news is that I’m not quite as bad off as I thought I was – I weigh a little less than I thought I did and my nutrition is “average” where I thought it would be “poor”. The bad news is that apparently, for a 37-year-old I have the body of a 50-year-old, according to their “Body Age” testing thingy. Yeah, that’s something to work on, I reckon. I’ve got another appointment on Monday evening to set up a program for cardio and strength training, and then I’ll be good to go. I’m such a creature of habit – once I can get a good regimen going, it’s pretty easy to stick with.

Oh, and finally, two cool items from today’s paper of interest to roho, genet, and feren: a comparison of stir-fry restaurants in the Chicago area, and a nice review of my favorite tea house, Infini-Tea.