careful, icarus

Today was mandatory family fun-day, and I think most of us had at least the minimum required amount of fun before the sun threatened to destroy us all. Since I woke up at nine a.m. for this, I'm glad that I enjoyed myself. We went to the greater Des Moines metropolitan area for a day of sophisticated pleasure -- wine tasting at an Iowa winery, lunch at some Italian place that sadly wasn't the Olive Garden, and a take-no-prisoners game of minigolf in which the weather had the upper hand.

I've meant to go to the winery for ages and have never made it, but my parents decided that today was the day. My mom actually went there a few weeks ago, somewhat by accident after her car load of fellow garden club members stumbled upon the winery on their excursion to see a hosta garden (linked for your edification, since I don't know my plant names either). While I'm sure that our visit wasn't nearly as fun as a bunch of little old ladies (and my mother, whom I am too smart to lump into that category - and since the mean age of her garden club is approximately 74, she's practically a baby by comparison anyway) descending upon them, we still spent a nice twenty minutes or so there. My brother hates wine and so stayed in the car with his laptop, but we tried three dry reds, a mead, and a port. I find most Iowa wines too sweet, which apparently has to do with the varietals that they're able to grow; they can grow French varietals and some hybrids, but there are a lot of grapes that can't cope with either the heat that is normal of Iowa summers, or the sheets of water/ice that will be under them winter. However, the port was okay (for port, which I mostly drink as a joke), and there were a couple of reds that I actually liked. Now if only people would stop buying cough syrup and telling people it was an Iowa sweet table wine, we'd be in business.

After the winery, we had lunch at some Italian place in Jordan Creek before progressing to mini-golf. It was the nicest court I've been to, but since it was 91 degrees (with a heat index somewhere above that) we were all wilting by the time we finished. I came in second, a few strokes behind dad, despite an awesome hole in one that wasn't enough to save me. It's just too bad that the day was too hot for a continued tour of golf courses - but after sitting in a McDonald's to cool off because the truck can't cool down fast enough, we all decided that we would just go home.

And the rest of the evening was uneventful; we had takeout pizza from the best convenience store kitchen ever (so what if it's probably all a health violation - that pizza is amazing), and then I messed around on the computer until now. I'm starting to fall asleep on my laptop, though, so I'll publish before I say something stupid. Goodnight!