Happy Anniversary

Friday, July 25th, was our 16th anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been so many years. We're starting to be like the commercials of those older couples where the sense of past is evident. Our kids are now 9 and 6 and there's definitely some wake behind our boat.

When I got home from work on Friday night, Helen and the kids were freshly bathed after returning from one of the nearby county water parks. Helen was dressed up and had a nice dinner ready. It was almost like Ward and June Cleaver, except Ward wore suits to work and I wear shorts and sandals.

After dinner, we all finished watching Rocky and a family favorite - Sugarland at SummerFest which we recorded off of the MHD channel. Before we got HD tv, my friends with HD told me that they rarely watch non-HD anymore. Now, we're the same way.

On Saturday, I played tennis early and the family went on a run\walk. The rest of the day was my favorite kind of day - uninterrupted organization. There were no other kids coming over and bothering us and no prescheduled activities, so we had a productive day of getting things done.

We went through all the boy's clothes to figure out what we need to buy for the new school year. We got the boy's rooms decluttered and I fixed a number of nagging things around the house.

Today, we plan on attacking the playroom - the mother of all clutter. The garage sale\giveaway that I've been pushing for the last 2 years may finally get done. I really wanted it to be one of Helen's goals for the Summer, but she gets overwhelmed by unwieldy things like that, so I'll have to keep inching it towards the finish line.

On Saturday night, Helen and I went out for an anniversary dinner. We have a reciprocal babysitting agreement with a neighbor, which is great. We setup the babysitting over a week ago, but struggled as the day approached to figure out what to do. We wanted to go out to a nice dinner, but nothing was really appealing to us. We finally settled on a restaurant near us called Grace 17:20.

I'm notoriously anti-foofoo, so I was a little skeptical going in. But everything was so good. The ambiance and the service were great. The ingredients were obviously fresh and the flavors were wonderful. We decided that there's a difference between going to a nice restaurant where the food is prepared by a "real" chef as opposed to a seemingly nice restaurant with somewhat expensive food prepared by an $8 an hour cook.

Where are you?

I made a big push to get our road trip blogged and afterwards I kind of slacked off. As I've mentioned before, our summer schedule is not conducive to blogging - plenty of "we" time, but not enough "me" time.

We've been busy getting acquainted with our new niece, Brooke. You can read all about her on my sister in law's blog. I'll get some of our own pictures up soon. We're almost done redoing Derek's bedroom into a big kid room - there are some pictures of that as well. Otherwise, it's just been the usual busy summer schedule of fun activities, movies, pool, tennis, and friends.

Sadly, it all comes to an end in less than 2 weeks when Helen reports back to school, but shhhhh...we're not allowed to talk about that...it makes her cranky. No more tv or late night movies during the week, so we'll scale back our Blockbuster plan from 3 movies at a time to 1.

The summers are so nice for us and it's sad when they come to an end, but we appreciate them so much more than if Helen didn't work at all. The summers definitely make the job of teaching "doable".

Road Trip 2008: Day 17 of 17 (Jackson\Home)

Sunday June 8

We ate breakfast at the hotel in Jackson, Mississippi and then hit the road for home. We stopped in Birmingham, Alabama for lunch. There was a Wendy's, a Krystal, and another restaurant called Milo's at the exit we chose. We had never heard of Milo's, but there were plenty of cars in the parking lot. It was a hamburger restaurant like the other two and I figured it must be pretty good if the locals are choosing it over the more well known restaurants.

I ordered a cheeseburger with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise only for Derek - his usual preference. The order taker looked at me funny and asked if we had ever eaten at Milo's. I informed him that we had not and he proceeded to tell me that Milo's is famous for their special sauce and that the hamburgers just come with the special sauce by default. Derek looked skeptical, but you gotta go with the house special.

We read about the history of Milo's on a poster in the restaurant. "Milo" started his restaurant after World War II and the special sauce was perfected over many years. He knew he had it right when the customers kept asking for more of the special sauce. The special sauce was kind of like a gravy with grilled onions and pickles thrown in to compliment the flavor.

I thought it was pretty good. It was different. The order taker told us that we would either love it or hate it. I could see how you could develop a craving for it. Helen managed to get it down, but wouldn't do it again and felt that the special sauce fought back once it was down. Derek cried that he was looking forward to "just a regular hamburger". I praised him for trying it and then got him a "regular" hamburger, which he devoured. Adam had the chicken fingers and avoided the whole controversy.

We concluded our 17 day 3000 mile trip in the late afternoon and found that the pets had not forgotten us. We took a deep breath and began the task of unloading and cleanup. We had cereal for dinner, went to bed, and I went back to work the next day.

Road Trip 2008: Day 16 of 17 (Dallas)

The Kennedy motorcade made a left and followed the path of these cars towards the underpass

There's a white "X" painted in the middle of the street where Kennedy was shot

Derek is a Whataburger fan

East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore

Closed...thwarted again!

Last night on the road

Saturday June 7

June 7 was Helen's 40th birthday and she didn't seem to mind spending it on the road. For better or worse, her 40th was a non-event. Leading up to her birthday she was too busy trying to finish out the school year to reflect much about the significance of turning 40. When I asked if she wanted to do anything special - she said, "not really". I haven't been able to see that turning 40 has affected her in any way.

I think Helen would enjoy if I were to sweep her off her feet and do something special, although she can't really envision or verbalize what that something special might be. Unfortunately, neither can I. We're both unbelievably even keeled - you might even say emotionally flat line. Generally, I think it's great and love the predictability and enjoyment I derive from the general day to day without needing anything "special". In many relationships, it's the "special" days that screw everything up because of the expectations involved.

We knew we wanted to see the Dallas area, but we weren't sure what we wanted to see that was unique to Dallas. We read that Dallas is the shopping mall capital of the world with more mall space per capita than anywhere else, but shopping's not our thing. We decided on the 6th Floor Museum located in the book depository building where President Kennedy was shot. It seemed like the most uniquely Dallas thing to do.

The museum was really busy. It was a Saturday, so that may have been why there were so many people or everyone else picked the museum as their thing to do in Dallas as well. I wonder where it ranks in terms of popularity compared to other Dallas attractions.

The museum doesn't allow any type of photography inside so we were limited. It was an incredible experience. To me it was the place on our trip that evoked the most emotions. There were many beautiful places and NASA was cool, but this place was special. It was almost overwhelming for me to stand on Elm Street and see the "X" that marks the spot where Kennedy was shot and to look down from the windows in the book depository and see just how close a shot it was. You could have thrown a rock and hit him.

The museum was extremely well done - exhaustively covering all the angles of the events leading up to, including, and following the assassination. It really gave you a feel for the charisma and hope that Kennedy brought to the nation (kind of like Obama now) and the despair that followed. I did not realize that this was Jackie Kennedy's first public appearance following the death of their premature son, Patrick - only to have her husband die in her arms. I don't know how she went on.

There was a special exhibit sponsored by Kodak that detailed the various home movies and photographs of the event. They detailed the background on each of the every day people that photographed the event - what they were doing that day, what type of camera, etc. It was surreal to see all the normal family video mixed in with the brutality of the assassination. I think the museum purposely left the family stuff in to give you the shock effect - much like the nation was shocked. The most famous home movie of the event is the Zapruder film.

Adam and Derek seemed to enjoy it as well. Everyone gets a tape player as they enter the museum for the audio tour. Derek was finished before all of us. It was a good experience for him after learning about the Presidents in school. Helen stayed with Adam and smoothed all the times where he felt personally affronted when something would go wrong with the player or he would get out of sync. And, of course, he was too cute with his mouth hanging wide open as he listened and made his way.

We headed out of town for home. We stopped at the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore, which is where the Texas oil boom started. It was a neat town with a bunch of decorative oil derricks all over town. They decorate them all for Christmas - I bet it's really pretty.

For lunch, we finally stopped at a Whataburger. There aren't any in Atlanta, so we've never eaten at one, but they're all over Louisiana and Texas. They started in Corpus Christi, which is where their headquarters is. Derek kept bugging us to stop at one, but we would put him off in order to eat something more authentic. When we finally stopped, Derek thought we were joking. It was actually really good. Probably even better than Wendy's - our favorite. Whataburger is more expensive, but the ingredients seem really fresh and a notch above other fast food.

We weren't sure how far we would make it, but we thought we would get farther than Jackson, Mississippi. Not. We tried a couple hotels, but they were filled for some reason before finally settling on a Hampton Inn. Nothing special...but at least they had a free breakfast.

Road Trip 2008: Day 15 of 17 (Austin\Arlington)

Doors to the Austin City Limits set

Austin City Limits stage

Various artists that have performed on Austin City Limits over the years

Texas State Capitol in Austin

Interesting facts on Confederate Memorial located on Capitol grounds

Symphony performing in Capitol rotunda

Nice view from Capitol downhill towards the city

Riding the "Dillo" around Austin

Round Rock Donuts - yummy!

Inducing a carnivore's coma at Louie Mueller's BBQ in Taylor

The photo for this poster of Stevie Ray Vaughan and his brother were taken in the spot where the poster hangs

Gotta love the no-frills menu

Not very enticing from the outside - we were very disappointed to see the white sign on the door saying they had run out of food for the day

Dr Pepper Museum in Waco

Rangers game in Arlington

Friday June 6

We enjoyed a nice breakfast at the Marriott Residence Inn in Austin before hustling to check out and make it to the 10:30 tour of the "Austin City Limits" studio on the University of Texas campus. Amazingly, we found parking and located the studio quickly enough so that we were only a few minutes late. They only give tours on Friday mornings so we were lucky that we happened to be in town on Friday.

We all really enjoyed the tour. There were about 15 or so other people taking the tour. We watched a short video about the show and then did a question and answer session with our host where we learned about things like how the acts are chosen, how to get tickets, and what stars are nice and not so nice. Our host then showed us around the room where they had pictures of a lot of the artists that have performed on the show. There are two pictures of Willie Nelson - one from the first time he performed and one from the last - a neat contrast.

After the Austin City Limits tour, we took the free "Dillo" trolley to the Capitol, an impressive structure that sits atop a hill overlooking the city. I heard that there's a law that forbids any building from obstructing the view of the Capitol. It's neat how you see the Capitol from a long distance as you travel on the main street approaching the Capitol. The grounds are impressive as well with beautiful landscaping and numerous memorial statues and structures including many related to people and places we had previously learned about on our trip.

Inside the Capitol there was a symphonic group performing in the expansive rotunda. We enjoyed the music and the beautiful architecture as we toured the building including the house and senate chambers.

After the Capitol we hopped back on the Dillo in search of Zilker Park, which is supposed to be a beautiful city park. We took a couple different trolleys before figuring out, after talking to a nice co-ed, that you can't get to the park directly from the Dillo. We would have had to walk a mile or so - we passed. It was still fun seeing the city on the Dillo and meeting some nice people. We talked to a very nice lady who echoed the feeling we got about the city - that Austin was growing too fast. There were construction cranes everywhere and there were bumper stickers that said "Welcome to Austin - now leave". It seems that all the good things about Austin have attracted a lot of people - inflating prices and congestion and jeopardizing all the things that attracted people to Austin in the first place. But, overall, we really liked Austin.

As usual, we got out of town later than we had planned. We headed towards Dallas and thought it was only a couple hours away. It was closer to 4 hours.

We stopped just outside of Austin in Round Rock at the famous Round Rock Donuts. We noticed a line of cars at the drive thru so we headed inside only to be stopped when the drive thru worker told us that the inside closes at 3 pm. We wanted to get a look at the inside to get a feel for the place, but we reluctantly settled for the drive thru line. We eventually got our donuts and they were impressive. They could have been more fresh and we thought the donuts from the Blanco Bowling Club Cafe were better, but they were still very good.

After donuts, we were really looking forward to Louie Mueller's in Taylor about 30 minutes east. We pulled into Taylor and the town looked pretty run down. We initially drove by Louie Mueller's after mistaking it for all the other vacant run down looking buildings in the town. We finally found it only to see that there was a note posted on the door saying that they had run out of food for the day. It's kind of neat that a place would prepare a bunch of food and once it's gone - it's gone. Nevertheless, we were downright dejected. Before our trip we fantasized about all the succulent brisket and barbecue we would eat in Texas, but somehow our schedule and other logistics had conspired to keep us from our desires. Here we were at the door of the barbecue mecca only to be denied.

Just as we were about to leave another car pulled up and some people went inside. I followed and was met by a worker named Lance who seemed to be in charge. He was super nice. I told him about our road trip and how we had read about the place in RoadFood.com. He informed me that the people that had just come in were long time customers and had called ahead to reserve the last of the food. But, taking pity on us, he held back a couple pounds of brisket from the other customers and set us up with some other sides, as well. What a great experience - the brisket was awesome, the people were great, and the atmosphere was perfect! We all just ate and hummed in a meat induced coma sort of way as we gave each other looks that said it all - this is the best!

We stopped in Waco on the way to Dallas and drove around Baylor University. It was a nice and tidy campus, but not much going on. Then we drove to the Dr Pepper Museum as Waco is where Dr Pepper was created in 1885. Dr Pepper is my favorite soft drink and, during our trip, became Derek's favorite also. The boys used to balk at my Dr Pepper (preferring Sprite instead), but during our trip Derek became a Dr Pepper fanatic. I think it started at the crawfish boil in Pierre Part when one of the older kids was drinking Dr Pepper.

I knew the Texas Rangers baseball team was playing a home game and we wanted to see a game, but we didn't get into the Dallas area until after 9. We still decided to head towards Arlington, which is where the Rangers play, just to check it out. Arlington is west of Dallas, but considered a suburb along with Irving, which is where the Cowboys stadium is located.

As we approached the stadium we saw the lights were still on so we decided to go in. We bought some cheap tickets and arrived in the 8th inning. The visiting Devil Rays were leading 3-1. We grabbed some snacks and watched as the hits started coming and by the time the game was over an hour or so later the score was 12-3 Devil Rays. Derek and Adam thought it was cool that Derek's little league team was the Devil Rays also. We ate lots of junk and had a good time.

The Rangers Ballpark in Arlington is newer, like the Braves Turner Field, but not as open as Turner Field where there are open breeze ways giving you a view of the field and a "breeze" as you walk around the stadium. Still a nice park.

The new Cowboys stadium is going up next to the Rangers stadium. It's very impressive. We drove by the current Cowboy stadium in Irving the next day and saw why they are building a new stadium. The one in Irving looks terrible. It looks great on TV from the inside, but looks rusty and dilapidated from the outside.

We tried a couple of hotels nearby, but heard that everything was sold out in the area. Six Flags over Texas is also next to the stadium, so I guess all the nearby attractions were causing a run on hotel rooms. We drove north and then east towards Dallas and picked a Drury Inn based on the Drury Plaza hotel we stayed at in San Antonio. It was OK, but not the Plaza.

Road Trip 2008: Day 14 of 17 (Austin)

President Johnson and Lady Bird enjoying the wildflowers on their ranch

Learning about preparing food in the "olden days"

The Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead - neighbors of the Johnsons

Hill Country view

Derek on the University of Texas campus

University of Texas Bell Tower

View of Capitol from UT campus

Bats, bats, bats - notice the trails into the distance (just above the guy's camera)

Thursday June 5

We spent the night in Fredericksburg, about an hour west of Austin, so that we could visit the Lyndon Johnson State Park in Stonewall and see more of the "Hill Country" in the day time.

We had been to the LBJ park the night before - after closing and, of course, it was empty. When we returned the next morning we were surprised to see that the visitor center parking lot was pretty packed. There were even cars from out of state, which surprised us since during our time in Texas trip we rarely saw any out of state license plates.

The LBJ state park is across the Perdenales River from the LBJ ranch. The visitor center at the park is where bus tours of the LBJ ranch depart from. It's a beautiful area with rolling hills of wildflowers and trees. The park includes a couple of old homesteads built by German immigrant families who were neighbors of the Johnsons.

The Sauer-Beckmann Farmstead is maintained as a living history farm with people acting out the roles of the original homesteaders. We learned from one very nice lady, acting as the mother, about how food was prepared. She maintains the garden, cans many of the fruits and vegetables, and cooks one meal a day for the staff using only the tools and techniques that would have been used at the time. We all agreed that we're lucky to be living in the present day - it looked hard to live before tv, refrigerators, and grocery stores.

The visitor center had lots of nice exhibits and a good movie about LBJ. Before visiting the area and learning about LBJ, I always thought of him as a slippery politician type and would not have put it past him to have been involved in the JFK assassination. After learning more about the man and his accomplishments, I think LBJ was a good guy. He did several hard manual labor type jobs before earning his degree and seemed to always have a soft spot for the hard working people of America. I'm not a "big government" New Deal kind of guy, but I thought his heart was in the right place. He passed more education and race relation legislation than any other president. He was deeply conflicted about America's involvement in Vietnam and distraught at the number of young kids losing their lives. Also, for his funeral, he told Lady Bird that he knew all the hi-faluten people would be there, but that he also wanted "the ladies with their slips showing and the guys with grease under their nails" to come as well. So, instead of being suspicious of his involvement in the JFK assassination, I think Johnson was heroic and graceful in how he guided America after the tragedy.

After the LBJ park we headed east towards Austin. We stopped in Blanco for lunch. We had heard about the Blanco Bowling Club Cafe in RoadFood.com and thought we would give it a try. Blanco is a typical small town without much going on. When we saw the restaurant from the outside, Helen questioned whether we should go in. That's the comfort that RoadFood.com gives - we probably wouldn't try a number of these places based on look, but boy were we glad we did.

We got there about 2, so it was a little late for lunch and the place was empty except for someone picking up a takeout order. Adam staked out the counter in the front for us. The guy that waited on us was super friendly. He told us what the house specialties were. Derek was excited that hamburgers were one of the specialties. I ordered the country fried steak based on RoadFood.com recommendation. While we waited on our food, the waiter showed us around. I asked him why it was called a "bowling club". He proceeded to take me through an adjoining room where there was a bar and a number of tables and a big curtain like room divider. Behind the room divider were several bowling lanes. The waiter told us that on Thursday through Sunday people came in to bowl. It was 9 pin bowling without automatic pinsetting. It was a really cool place and the food was great as well.

A group of "old-timer regulars" came in for afternoon coffee and sat down at the table behind us. The waiter gave them free cake with the coffee and we enjoyed listening to them banter. One of the guys was having fun with Adam. He told Adam that he recognized him from school, but that Adam probably didn't recognize him because he sat behind Adam.

We mentioned to the waiter that we had heard that they had good cinnamon rolls and when we went to pay at the register, the waiter handed us a bag full of these huge cinnamon rolls and donuts - for free. The total bill was $23. It was a great experience and we had not even tasted the cinnamon rolls and donuts, yet. They were melt in your mouth good and we were sad when we finished them off.

After lunch, we drove to the Blanco State Park and checked it out before leaving town on a stretch of road called "the Devil's Backbone" for it's treacherous curves overlooking the Hill Country canyons. We were a little apprehensive, but it didn't turn out to be bad at all. It was a pretty drive, but nothing treacherous.

When we got into Austin we drove to the University of Texas campus. We saw the infamous bell tower and walked around the pretty campus. Afterwards, we drove to see the Congress Avenue bridge bats make their nightly exodus. We arrived a little before "bat time", so we walked along the river. It's a beautiful area with paths that connect open spaces all along the river for miles. There were lots of people and dogs out running, walking, and playing. It's a very active city.

As night approached we returned to the bridge to find many more people eagerly awaiting the bat flight. We knew we were in trouble when we saw a number of people with umbrellas. At about 8:15, the first few bats emerged and over the next 15 minutes or so, a million plus bats made their way into the evening sky. There were trails of bats for as far as the eye could see in many directions. We all got hit by some bat droppings, but the droppings were really small because we could only feel the drops and couldn't see them.

After the bats, we drove to the hip South Congress Avenue area, aka SoCo. The area does a promotion, called First Thursday, on the first Thursday of every month where the shops stay open late and run all kinds of specials. It just happened to be a First Thursday the night we were there. The place was hopping. It was kind of like the Buckhead area in Atlanta - on steroids. We thought about stopping to eat, but the vibe was more young and party-like rather than family friendly.

By then it was getting late and we needed to make a decision on a hotel. We wanted to see the famous 6th street area at night for the live music, so we headed there. We finally settled on the Marriot Residence Inn. It was pricier than I would have liked, but the manager dropped the rate about $50 when I balked at the original rate.

It was about 11 pm, but everyone was up for walking to 6th street. There were lots of clubs, music, and college students. Derek balked at a couple of places where I thought we could get something to eat because they didn't look kid friendly. We finally settled on a cramped pizza place where we had some tasty slices and listened to some classic tunes.