Ammon is in town this week for a conference/training.  I took advantage of my presently non-soul-crushing work schedule and invited him out to dinner.  Anticipating his capacity to eat large quantities of food, I took him to Hill Country, where we ate approximately three small to mid-sized farm animals.  With our hands.  Delicious, yes, but not for the faint of heart (fortunately, they had rolls of paper towels at the table, and a giant sink in the corner for hand-washing.)


Left to right: Chicken, beef brisket, pork ribs, beef ribs green bean casserole, German potato salad, corn bread

 

After dinner I showed Ammon my new apartment (he’d seen the previous apartment, but not this one), we chatted for a while (first just the two of us, then with Ashley on speaker phone), and then opened a mystery package that turned out to be a new peacoat I’d apparently ordered over the weekend.  The coat was the right color and fit well, and, while it lacked the awe-inspiring qualities of the coats I was coveting over the weekend (note that the use of the past tense here is more aspirational than true — just creating that link reopened the wound! sigh), it also lacked their awe-inspiring price tags (I just couldn’t bring myself to trade my big trip next year for one of these coats, although I do think I would cut quite a figure running around Russia in one of those fur collars).  Plus, the coat came in a nifty single-item garment box that was remarkable in and of itself (and makes me want to mail clothing to someone).  Eventually the phone battery died and we lost Ashley, so we said good-night and went to bed like responsible adults who have to get up in the morning to go to work.

It was great to spend time with Ammon.  It’s the most extended one-on-one time we’ve had, and I enjoyed the chance to catch up and continue to get to know him better.