No Rest for the Wicked

It's been busy for us lately.

Last Thursday, we attended an appreciation hamburger supper at the clubhouse. There's nothing like hamburgers cooked fresh on an open grill. We were able to visit old friends here at RCW and make a few new ones. They even treated us to a few games of free bingo with cash prizes. You can't beat that!

We rose early Friday morning and hit the road once again for East Texas. This was not a pleasure trip. Donna suffered a loss in her family, so we made the long trek to the piney woods to pay our respects. Family is important, and I always enjoy seeing family, whether it's Donna's family or mine. I just hate when the event is a sad one.

We always try to make the best of a bad situation, so we spent our first night in Fairfield, my hometown. And when we are in Fairfield, we usually eat at Sam's BBQ, and we did this time as well. I really love that BBQ, the potato salad, the homemade bread, and everything else they serve. I grew up on that stuff, so it is more or less my standard. Now, I understand true BBQ aficionados might find some things to nitpick about the BBQ at Sam's, but I like it.

On our way home Sunday, we stopped in Brownwood for lunch at Prima Pasta. That has become one of our favorite Italian places, and we stop for lunch there when we pass through. The facility is nice, the service good, the prices reasonable, and the food quite good. We've yet to have a bad meal or experience there.

Seems like every time we go to East Texas, we end up driving in the rain. And not just any rain, mind you, but pouring down drown a cat rain. When we left Conroe Sunday morning, the sky opened and just dumped all its water on us. It was pretty bad until we got north of Madisonville. We were glad to get back west of I-35.

I hope we are home for a while now. I need to get back into my walking routine. It's been sort of hit and miss the past month with our trip to Colorado and our 2 trips to East Texas. I feel better when I'm able to walk on a regular basis.

Last night, I stepped out back to look around, as is my normal habit around dark. I always see something, usually deer. Last night, a buck scampered through our yard as I watched. Then a few moments later, I saw a pair of wings glide in low from my right and then light on the corner of the neighbor's house. At first, I thought it was a hawk. But then I looked more closely and saw that it was an owl. I called Donna outside for a look, and we got a kick watching it twist its head around. Pretty soon, it flew off low across the neighbor's yard, then down the street toward a clump of trees 4 or 5 houses down. In all my years of working outside, living outside, camping, hiking, and such, this was my first sighting of an owl in the wild. Pretty neat!

I love autumn!