Day 9: Creative Juices Flowin'

I could not wake up today.  All I wanted to do was sleep, but my body was hurting so bad.  I finally pulled myself out from under the covers around noon, or so, and decided to walk around the block and find somewhere to eat for lunch.  I had already partially settled on checking out this Sweet Green place, so I ducked in there for a bite.  My summer obsession has been salads at Mucho Gusto, in Eugene.  I love this salad so much because the price is right, for one thing, and the toppings are fresh and delicious, and the pepita-citrus vinaigrette is to die for.  I can also go for the fajita salad at El Torito, in Eugene, because the grape seed vinaigrette is equally delightful.  Sweet Green appeared to offer a similar salad to what I'm accustomed to back home, save for it was called Guacamole Greens and came with a lime-cilantro vinaigrette.  It was decent, but it certainly made me long for my salad at Mucho!  Soon, I'm going to try another salad bar place.  I don't know the name of it, but the tagline is "An Uncommon Cafe."  I'm sure I'll have much to report tomorrow.

My afternoon consisted of mostly rest and reading the book When the Game Stands Tall.  The movie is due out this fall, and the book is tremendous.  The movie is going to be good.  I can already tell.  I highly recommend it if you're into motivational, inspirational stories told through the lens of sports, specifically football.

When Tom got home, he got some much needed down time and we eventually headed out to do some souvenir shopping for my nephews before we headed back to Maryland for trivia night.  As we headed out towards Maryland, it really began raining.  Yes, I'm from Oregon and I know we get a lot of rain, but the rain here is a little different.  It's much heavier rain than we usually get in Eugene, but it doesn't usually last quite as long.  So, it began pouring, then lightning started.  We could see flashes all over from the safe seats of the car.  Then, the thunder came.  It was quite a show.  We got a good look at it because these conditions had people nearly slamming on their breaks.  Traffic was pretty slow there for awhile.  Luckily, it did not take us nearly as long to get into Maryland as it did last Thursday. Regardless, Tom was heard saying, "The Lord does not want us in Maryland." Maybe we should start building an ark.  :o)

We arrived at the Hideaway around 8, which gave us a good couple hours to play trivia.  We met up with Tom's friend Caleb again, and another 'usual' named Kat.  Our name for this evening was Creative Juices Flowin' but there were some real classic trivia names last night.  I can't, for the life of me, remember our name last week.  Tom?  Can you remember?  Anyway, we played a pretty good game and ended up in second place.  Apparently, the first place team gets a $30 credit, and second gets a $24 credit.  So, we still ended up with 8 dollars off our tab.  That's definitely incentive for winning at this particular trivia place!  We all had our usual drinks; Tom with a craft beer, me with my 7 & 7's, and Caleb...I don't know what Caleb was drinking.  Before he goes home for the night, he gets a Long Island to-go to take home to his wife.  It's remarkable that this place does that.  That's definitely a perk for being a regular at a small town bar located a quarter mile from your house.  Cheers!

The Hideaway.