Last night, I went with
bethje to my mom's house for the first time in a few years. I didn't mean for it to be that long between visits, especially as it isn't all that far away, but I'm terrible at getting around to going places without a specific reason. When I first moved out of my mom's place, I still had a part-time job around there, so it wasn't only easy but pretty much necessary to go back there frequently. After that, though, visiting kind of fell by the wayside for me. I should probably make more of an effort in the future.
Anyway, we received some late Christmas presents, a book on Rene Magritte for me and some knitting books for Beth. I finally paid off my sister for the presents she'd gotten for my mom (I'm so used to doing all my financial transactions online), and we went out to eat at
Ron's Original Bar & Grille. This place used to be called Ron's School House, and we went there quite a bit when my brother and I took Tae Kwon Do lessons in the area. I hadn't been there in years, though, and now there's quite a bit more on the menu, plus a lot of take-out beer. I'm not a fan of beer, but the food there is still good. I got an Oval, which is a sort of mini-pizza, and a staple of their menu for some time. I'm not sure why they call it an Oval, but hey, why not? Also, I saw my sister's new house for the first time.
Incidentally, I've never quite understood the tendency to mention visiting where you grew up as "going home." I guess to me, home is wherever I'm currently living. In another way of speaking, though, I'm not even sure I feel like the places I've been living are "home" as such. They're other people's homes where I stay. Maybe that's just my nit-picking mind. Maybe living in two different places for so much of my life (my parents had joint custody after their divorce when I was ten or so), it's hard to view any one place as home.