"Okay, here's the plan," Patty said. We'd been sitting in TGIFridays since work finished for the day chowing down on appetizers and smoothies. I guess it was more of a summit than a meeting. We didn't all work at the same place - Patty and Casey worked for an insurance company, and I worked across town in a dental lab - but our husbands all knew each other. Even though we'd all become friendly, our husbands were the reason for this particular meeting.
Casey's husband works in IT and he was forever buying gadgets. Well, his ongoing project was to wire the whole house up to a central computer so that it would do anything - turn on the lights from work, make your breakfast, yadda yadda. The offshoot of this being that since he had acquired such massive computing power it was also perfectly suited to host a LAN party - not that I speak the language, but I'd been hearing about it for weeks. To our husbands it was all gee whizz, but to the three of us it was just a total geek-fest. Not that we mind what our boys do - it's far more desirable than getting sloshed every weekend and coming home drunk. No, our husbands were simply big kids with disposable incomes and a whole marketplace replete with built-in obsolescence. Being the sophisticated ladies that we are (!) we decided that the boys could have the basement of Casey's house for the whole weekend and we'd - well, we'd do something less nerdy.
"You finally found something you want to do?" Casey said. We'd been mulling it over for the best part of two hours.
"Let's fly up to Minneapolis and go to the Mall of America," Patty said, with a smile that positively radiated with an ain't-I-smart glow. Patty was every bit as childish as her husband, Tim, a writer for one of the two local newspapers. Well, childish isn't really the word, I guess, but they sure liked to goof around.
"I already suggested that!" Casey said.
"You said drive up. That's a seven hour drive. You think I want to be stuck in a car with you for seven hours?" Patty said.
"Eat me, Bitch," Casey replied and chugged down her smoothie.
"Not that I agree with Patty - you know about being stuck in a car with either of you - but flying up there would be cool," I said. "Yeah, that's a really good idea."
"Yeah, and Orbitz has the best deals. That's where I got the - "
"Tickets to San Francisco," Casey and I both said.
"Well screw you guys," Patty said. "So what d'you think?"
"Hell yeah!" Casey said.
"I'm in," I said. So, after that, we realized that it was going on 7:30, and it would probably be a good idea to be getting back. I left already excited by the trip. I'd never been to Minneapolis before, and I love malls, so this was perfect. I wondered why I hadn't been the one to think of it.
Getting Fred to agree with it was a snap. When I mentioned it during supper he was all for it. "Sure, go for it," he said. "You won't see me for two days anyway. We'll all be locked in Tim's basement and the only thing you'll hear will be the screams of dying Jedi."
"And you'll smell like last week's laundry too," I smiled. "Another good reason for me not to be here."
"You guys have fun," he said. "I know I'm gonna."
"If I'd have known you were this much of a geek before I married you - " I started.
"You'd still have married me."
"Yeah," I smiled back at him. "I probably would have."
A week later, we flew from Midway to Minneapolis, just the three of us as planned. It was a short flight, but Casey still managed to nod off, and she was a bear to wake up when we landed. After getting our baggage, she was fine, but almost had a heart attack when the cabbie charged us $15 for the five minute ride to the hotel. We almost had to drag her into the hotel, kicking and screaming.
We checked in, and went straight to the room. Since there were only three of us, we thought it was a neat idea to get a suite. It had a king-size bed in the bedroom and a big fold out couch in the living room, and best of all, a huge jacuzzi in the master bathroom. "This rocks," Patty said. All in all, the $200 plus spending money wasn't a bad deal at all.
Casey flopped on the bed, and I said, "Okay, what's the arrangements? Who snores?"
"Casey," Patty said. Casey threw a pillow at her.
"Patty, you got the room, so you can take have first dibs on the bed. Do eenie meenie minie mo with us."
Patty whittled it down to Casey, leaving me with the couch. "Fine," I said. "You can have Casey. I didn't want to sleep with you anyway."
"Oh, you did too," Casey said. We laughed.
Actually, we laughed a whole lot that weekend. We found that other than the Mall of America, the Twin Cities is just as dull as any other city not called New York, but it was cool being in a different place regardless. We spent Friday night at the mall checking out the stores, then had a few drinks at one of the bars on the top floor, then took off back to the hotel for the night. I slept like a rock.
The next day, we scored Twin tickets and went to the Metrodome in the afternoon, then went right back to the mall again to pick up some of the stuff we'd looked at the day before. We were pretty much done by 10;30, and we had decided earlier in the afternoon that the jacuzzi was just too good to waste. We had a morning flight back to Chicago the next day and we didn't want to get snockered, which is what we probably would have done.
We got back to the room starving. We hadn't eaten since breakfast, other than a couple of ballpark hotdogs that afternoon. Casey began filling the jacuzzi while Patty and I debated supper. I wanted pizza, but Patty - notoriously fickle Patty - couldn't decide. "Call the front desk," Casey called out from the bathroom. See who delivers."
The front desk clerk gave me a few names - all pizza places - so after much hand wringing, Patty settled on a veggie lovers from Pizza Hut, which suited the rest of us just fine. We changed into our swimsuits, and broke open the case of wine we'd brought back, and climbed into the tub, collectively sighing.
"What d'you think the guys are doing right now?" Casey asked.
"Drinking, swearing, and grabbing their joysticks like crazy," I said. "You know - guy stuff."
"They are so geeky," Patty said while Casey poured the wine. "D'you know Tim has seen Lord of the Rings ten freakin times?"
"It's like genetic or something," Casey said. "Ray's dad's got this big ass train set in his basement. I mean this sucker takes up half the basement. He's been like building it forever."
"And Fred's dad builds model airplanes," I said. "You're right, Patty. It's got to be genetic."
"But!" Casey said, "They DO make decent money, so here's the first toast of the night: to big ass geeks." We toasted our dorky-but-loveable hubbies, and went on our way.