Pizza! Pizza!

A couple of days ago a friend and I took a 90-minute roadtrip to Columbia, Missouri, the college town where the University of Missouri resides and where my friends and I lost a third of our brain cells due to the amount of alcohol consumed.  (I remember buying 24-packs of Milwaukee's Best long neck bottles for $5 and 40's of Pabst and Mickey's for $1.29 each.  Sigh.) 

Although I've spent some of the best times of my life there, I can't picture myself ever living in Columbia again, even though Money Magazine consistenly ranks the small city as one of the best places in the country to live.  Interestingly, I can easily see myself moving back to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, if I ever get sick of living in a large city...because I ain't ever going to live in the suburbs.
 
Just walking around Columbia was kind of weird...the city has changed in many ways but is still the same.  The Heidelberg, my favorite place to drink alcohol and home to the great late night happy hours (10:30 PM to 12:30 AM), cheap, strong, and large Long Island Ice Teas, and hot waitresses, is being rebuilt into this massive more modern-looking building after being burned to the ground in a fire a year or so ago.  And Osama's, this Turkish-owned coffee joint next the the 'Berg, is now a Lion's Choice, a fast food joint specializing in roast beef sandwiches.
 
The highlight of the day trip was going to Shakespeare's Pizza, Columbia's finest pizza joint.  Lots of people swear by Shakespeare's, saying it's the best pizza anywhere.  (You can actually mailorder a frozen Shakespeare's pizza wherever you live, although you can no longer have meat toppings if you do this because of the USDA regulations.)  I remember having Shakespeare's for the first time the day I moved into the dorms my freshman year.  I've always thought it was quite good, although I never thought it was the best.  I personally think the pizzas at Pepper's in Chapel Hill taste better, although this chick I dated disagreed after visiting me in Chapel Hill in 2000.  (But if you get pizza at Pepper's, you have to get the pie, not just individual slices since the pies are freshly made.)  But Shakespeare's wins hands down for its atmosphere...you can actually hang out and drink there and not just have pizza.
 
In other news, I've taken four large shits in the past couple of hours.  I feel like I've given birth, and I feel so light I think can dunk a basketball.