The test took about an hour or so, so it was still only around 9am when he finished. He asked what I wanted to do next (while we were up there). I suggested all kinds of fun things:
Incline Railway
Rock City
Ruby Falls
Ride the Ducks
Lake Winnie
Or even the Aquarium, even though that one isn't one of my favorites.
If you've never been to Chattanooga, you totally should. It's one of our favorite places to go.
Anyway, I was only mostly kidding - but if he had brought his nice camera it might have been a different story - but he didn't want to do fun things without his Dad and Brother there.
We decided to go find the Lodge Factory Outlet store. We had talked about going back at Christmas, because I'd wanted to buy J a Camp Oven for Christmas. We never made the trip then, and then back in March/April when we'd gone up for Ry to take his Basic-EMT test, it was too late in the day, or we were tired, or needed to get back....I can't remember exactly.
The trip to South Pittsburg took (us) about an hour. Turned out we had Highways turned off the GPS. Not sure how much difference it would have made, but we enjoyed the slower, meandering, scenic route.
The store was great - Cast Iron Heaven. Every shape and size Cast Iron pan and doo-dad and gee-gaw you could think of. We looked at everything, and then started over and did it again.
He'd decided he'd buy the Camp Oven for his Dad for a late Fodder's Day present, and how lucky, it was on sale about $30 off. They are regularly $69.00.
We didn't know until we got home and opened the box, it also came with a free "Cast Iron Camp Dutch Oven Cooking 101" book, which was funny because Ryan was looking at Cast Iron cooking books and I kept saying, No books, no books (Cookbooks are another thing I have/had way too many of and have had to weed out), I said everything you need is on the internet. He said well we need something to carry with us in case we can't get the internet. I said well print out what you want and staple it together and you have a book.
So he was pretty tickled to discover the free book in the one he'd bought, haaah.
I have more Cast Iron pans than I use as it is, so I wasn't particularly in the market for anything, but then I saw this set of Stainless Steel pans, regularly $300.00, marked $159.99.
I had been talking about getting a set of Stainless Steel, and moving away from the Teflon coated and/or Aluminum or whatever the pans I've been using are.
Not being a very good cook, I'm not very informed when it comes to cooking utensils, like nice pans, either, but I knew I had paid around $150 for my old T-Fal set, and that I trust the Lodge name, so it seemed like a good deal to me.
That it came with a bonus Cast Iron skillet made it even better (retail value $25.00). Plus a Bonus Silicone Handle Mitt ($6.00 value), plus when I checked out the girl gave me (2) free Hot Handle Mitts ($8.00 value).
After we finished shopping at Lodge, we walked along the main street and stopped in at Slick's Gun & Pawn shop to take a look around, and also an interesting store called Hammer's Department Store that Ryan would have no idea about, but was reminiscent to me of the old 5 & 10 type stores, like McLellan's or McCrory's or such.
The Dixie Freeze wasn't on the Main drag but I had happened to catch a glimpse of "Freeze" and the ice cream cone a block or so back from Main Street (I don't know the real street name, but it's the Main one through town, so I call it Main Street) as we'd passed through town. We were able to easily walk to it.
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They had meat & veggies specials, and also Diner type food like sandwiches and hot dogs, fries, etc. We had a Pork BBQ sandwich and Tater Tots, then I had a Dipped Cone (known as Brown Derby there) and Ryan had a Chocolate Milkshake. Yum!
J was home when we got back home. I knew he was coming in from the firehouse that morning, but he didn't get off 'til 8:00, and we had to be in Chattanooga before 8:00, so that's why he didn't get to go.
When we got back, it was still fairly early in the afternoon, 3 or 4'ish, and knowing J was going to be off the next day, too, I suggested we go ahead and go buy the OSB boards we needed to cover the carport ceiling so we could get started working on that early the next morning, before it got so hot.
After getting up at 4am, our trip to Chattanooga and South Pittsburg and back, and then another trip to the home improvement store in Cartersville, I was soooooo tired, I went to bed a little after 8pm.
The next morning - which may have been yesterday morning - I woke up around 6am. J said we should get started early before it got too hot, but I didn't think we wanted to be woke up at 6am on one of his few days off, so I put in a load of laundry and read for awhile, then started breakfast around 8:00.
That's the reason I thought today was Monday - J was off 2 days in a row, and I cooked a "Sunday" breakfast with bacon, grits, eggs, and toast - and then J had to get up and go to work again this morning.
I get so confused.
Anyway, we made some progress on the carport ceiling. Not as much as we would've liked, only got 5 (out of about 12-15) sheets up, but we got the more important ones up and was able to put in the wall jack to push the sagging center point back up.
It didn't rain Tuesday, but yesterday we got a bit of an early afternoon thundershower. Not a lot of rain, but enough to water the garden.
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