Shaun Lewis: the Man, the Myth, the Legend

It’s Tuesday July 5th. Not the 4th.

Well, the holiday is over and everyone’s 4-day weekend sabbatical from life has ended. I don’t know about everyone else, but I had one of the best 4th of Julys I’ve ever had. It was full of suspense, mystery, laughter (my cheeks hurt a little), fireworks, baking, movies, old Twilight Zone episodes and, of course, Steak ‘n’ Shake. All the makings of a fine holiday.

For those of you who don’t know, I went to Indianapolis yesterday to visit Kate — someone I’ve known for a very long time, but had never met (see Call Me or I Will Die). Needless to say, I was a little nervous about the whole ordeal. Luckily, I arrived home after the trip unscathed.

The Details

I woke up on Monday July 4th at 12:30 p.m. EDT in the afternoon. I have absolutely no idea why I woke up so late. I even set my alarm clock for 11:00 p.m. EDT in case I didn’t wake up at 10:00 a.m. EDT (which is when I usually get up). Naturally, I believe it was because God hates me. Because I had to be in Indianapolis at 2:23 p.m. EST, this didn’t leave too much time for hygiene preparation. I managed to make it out of my house at 1:00 p.m. EDT, but I still had to go to my grandma’s. So, I went there, ate some Independence Day food (porkchops, cornbread and mashed potatoes… not ACTUALLY traditional Independence Day food, but close enough in my book), and left her house at 1:30 p.m. EDT. Then, I went to Jason’s to drop off a watch he left at my house.

Jason was originally going to come over to my grandma’s to save me some time, but he couldn’t make it because his car wouldn’t start. I went over to his house and ended up helping trying to fix it for a few minutes. I didn’t leave his place until 1:50 p.m. EDT. This sucked because, once again, I had to be at Kate’s at 2:23 p.m. EST.

For the record, that did NOT leave me 33 minutes to get to Indianapolis, but it left me 1 hour and 33 minutes because of Indiana’s stupid time change.

Now, that’s almost exactly how long it takes to get to Indianapolis proper from Dayton, but the place I was headed was actually about 30 minutes away from Indy limits. It was a suburb of Indianapolis. I let Kate know I would be late and eventually, at 2:47 p.m. EST, I arrived at her front door, which was, to be frank, a little strange.

So, Kate and I met. It took 4 years from first coming into contact with her almost to the day.

Geez. 4 years. That really is difficult to fathom. I’ve known people longer, of course, but I’ve met them. This is 4 years of only IMs, text messages and PictureMails. So very long, that is.

Anyway, we met. Our first order of business was food. I was hungry when we arrived at the restaurant in which we were going to eat. Not overly hungry, but hungry enough. Naturally, we ate at Steak ‘n’ Shake. I ordered my Jr. Chicken Fingers Meal and Kate had a Frisco Melt, which, as she described it, was made from “the fat of the fat.”

I’m not really sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound healthy.

OH! And I got a Root Beer Float for free because I am extremely good-looking… or because the waitress forgot to ring it up. I’m pretty sure it was the latter; she wasn’t exactly the sharpest crayon in the box. She gave our food to another table before she brought it over to us. Still, she was nice and kept my glass full. Oh, and for the record, a to-go refill counts as a free refill on all Steak ‘n’ Shake soft drinks. Just throwing that out there for everyone who likes to take a little bit for the road.

After SNS, Kate and I went back to her house where we watched the Twilight Zone Marathon on the Sci-fi Channel. Quickly, both of us got bored with that because the episodes they were showing at the time sucked (we had missed the best ones! BLAST IT!) and we decided to watch a movie instead. The movie we chose was Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a Mel Brooks classic. When the movie went off and we saw the last of Cary Elwes and Dave Chapelle onscreen, Kate and I decided we should make some cookies.

Originally, the plan was for me to bring a recipe and we’d make those cookies along with cookies from a recipe Kate had. I forgot to get one before I left though so we had to look one up on the Internet before we began. The recipe I picked was called “Banana Split Cookies.” That sounds good, right? More on that later…

Kate didn’t have any bananas (yeah! I know! I was outraged too!) so we had to go to the store (Marsh) to get some. While we were there, she took me by her mom’s store. It was closed for the 4th, but luckily she had a key. The store is called Consigned by Design and it has a bunch of consigned furniture and home decor items. I know that doesn’t exactly SOUND awesome, but they are cheap (super cheap!) and Jason and I are looking for a couch for Columbus, so I though maybe I could find one. Also, Kate had an AWESOME chair I sat in and she said they might’ve gotten another in so we went to look.

While we couldn’t find another chair like hers (it was a psychiatrist-style couch and it was COMFORTABLE), I did happen to find the world’s greatest piece of furniture ever. It was modeled after a motorcycle and was freakin’ AWESOME! You can see a picture of it here. It would go good in Jason’s stepdad’s old house where he always had some type of transmission on the kitchen table… and $80, 000 worth of cash he buried in the backyard like a pirate.

Yeah, don’t ask.

After touring an empty furniture store and sitting in all the chairs just because I could, Kate and I walked to Marsh, which happened to be in the same shopping plaza. We found the 4 ingredients we needed and DIDN’T use a cart because there was no point with so few items. Then, we went back to Kate’s house to begin our baking extravaganza. Unfortunately, my recipe didn’t exactly turn out as we had expected. You can see the results of the dough and of the “finished” product here and here, respectively. It looks like cat vomit. Literally. Fortunately, we didn’t let those results dissuade us from attempting Kate’s recipe and after one bad batch of hers, we perfected the best cookies I’ve ever had (well… not QUITE the best, but close).

By this time in my trip, it was starting to get close to fireworks time (9:00 p.m. EST for Indiana). It was about 8:30 p.m. EST. So, it was still too early to go looking for them, but it was too late to do anything else. We decided to put in Orange County to kil a few minutes because Kate had never seen it. When 9 o’ clock (yeah… p.m… EST… I’m finished with the time game) rolled around, we hopped into Kate’s car and went searching for fireworks. Oddly enough, we found a really good display. We parked in a Kroger parking lot and although the explosions were slightly obscured by a line of trees, we had a good view. When the fireworks ended, we headed back to Kate’s, made one more batch of cookies and finished watching Orange County.

When the movie ended, I gathered my things and left. My drive back home took FOREVER, but I did manage to make it back OK. I went to bed pretty much when I got home because I was completely and totally exhausted.

But that was my trip to Indianapolis. To sum it up, Kate and I had an extremely fun time. My cheeks hurt from laughing and smiling so much — it was one of those days. Initially, I was a little nervous, but it wound up not being weird or awkward at all. I guess that’s kind of weird in and of itself, but oh well. We got along famously. She was pretty much exactly like I pictured and according to her, the same goes for me. In fact, there was only problem in the whole trip: she doesn’t like Wayne’s World.

Everyone can’t be perfect like myself, I guess.