I have certainly had a fun filled couple of days lately. Two days ago we planned for spending the day in Lane, a small town in Kansas with a population of about 300 people, and home town to Drew.

We woke fairly late and our first stop was to a sandwich place nearby for a bit of grub. We then drove the picturesque 30 minute drive over to Lane and stopped in the local bar, a warehouse looking building with no windows and the most un-bar like looking bar I have ever seen. If you had sent me by myself to find it I would have definately missed it.

On the way to Lane Drew was playing with a sat nav that a friend of his has lent him for the weekend. He punched in the address for his parent's house in Lane and then laughed himself silly every time the poor little sat nav told him to go in one particular direction and he cheekily went a different way to the suggested route, of course knowing the route to his parent's house like the back of his hand.

We had a couple of drinks in the bar in Lane, which I was advised is a 3,2,1 bar (or something like that). They only have a license to serve alcohol that containes 3% alcohol or less. I had an alcoholic lemonade, played some tunes on the juke box and people watched as the locals came and went.

After a while we made it up to Drew's parents, who live on a beautiful lake. We chatted for a bit and then headed down to the Lake for a swim. It was all very 'Dawson's Creek'. Very beautiful indeed and the water was literally as warm as bath water. I swam for about 15 minutes and then thought it might be fun to do my song for Kansas while swimming in the Lake! Please bear in mind that I had been swimming for 15 minutes already before singing, which might explain the slight shortness of breath! Please also bear in mind that I am in fact wearing a bikini - despite what it might look like in the movie!

I sang my song, then left the lake to sit on the pontoon for a bit in the sun. It was cooler than it had been for many days, and there were some greyish clouds in the sky and the rumor of a thunder storm.

We dried off and went up to the house to tidy ourselves up in time for dinner. As we walked up to the house, what did I see displayed proudly on the back of the house? One of the very same stars that I have seen on many houses here and wondered for days what the significance of them was. I had even told Drew that I was tempted to knock on someone's door to ask them. Drew's mother has had this star on her house for at least 5 years and he never even noticed. So we asked her, and she confirmed that it simply is for decoration.

Dinner was fabulous, a seafood crumble type thing, the recipe of which had apparantly been taken from a spy novel whose author was something of an amateur chef so wrote in minute detail the recipes of dinners that the star of the book would create. It was delicious and was followed with a lovely cup of tea (something that had been certainly lacking on my travels) and a blackberry cobbler.

Happy and full we left Drew's parents house and headed to the Elks - the local club that Drew is a member of. The average age of the patrons in the club was probably about 65 and they were all extremely generous in their round buying. It is very difficult for people under the age of 45 to buy a round in the club, as the seniors often beat you to it, being the ones of course that empty their drinks first. I was bombarded with drink after drink and finally left the bar very merry indeed.

The next day I woke feeling surprisingly chirpy considering how much wine I had consumed the previous night, and after a long chilled coffee on the front porch we jumped in the car and headed into Kansas City. We headed to the Nelson-Atkins museum, a fine looking museum with collections from all over the world, Egypt, China and also some Native American pieces too. I was looking at the dates of the articles in the cabinets and noticed that the time frame was referred to as BCE and CE, instead of what I know as BC and AD. I wondered if this was something new that had happened in terms of referring to dates. Recently I saw a program on TV called "Do you think you are smarter than a fifth grader" (roughly 10 year olds). I wondered if this was a new thing that if you asked a fifth grader they would know the answer to, but seeing as it has been many years since I was of fifth grade age, I was out of the loop.

So, I asked one of the staff members of the museum and found out that BCE stands for Before Common/Current Era and CE means Common/Current Era. They have marked the dates like this so as not to offend people who do not believe in the birth of Christ and therefore might be offended that things are dated to that event. Except, I thought after she had given me the explanation, although you might be changing the way you say it, the event that you are indeed referring to 'before' or 'current' is still the birth of Christ! What a load of politically correct nonsense!!

I didnt let it spoil my experience though, and very much enjoyed a bit of culture on my trip, until my tummy started letting me know that it was ready for a re-fill. So we popped into the car and drove five minutes to the Plaza area of Kansas city. It is very beautiful and full of boutiques, restaurants, street side cafe's and so on. It is said to have been built as a replica of Barcelona. We found a lovely italian restaurant that had a sunken patio and sat outside while listening to a band performing on the street. The food was excellent and the band was really good, much better than the sappy italian musak that the restaurant was piping out.

We had ordered spaghetti with a meat sauce, which we were advised came as a portion big enough for two. We both had plenty of pasta and there was still enough to take home for a snack at dinner time.

We headed back to the car and wearily wove our way home. We decided a chilled night on the porch was in order so sat in the cool of the evening drinking german beer and watching all the night creatures coming out to play. I tried to get a picture of the lightning bugs, but there were only one or two out, unlike on my first night here where there had been what seemed like hundreds, making the whole front garden light up. Some friends came over and we passed the evening away telling silly stories until it was finally time for bed.