Don't Hurt Me Bro!

or as they say in Chinese... 不要傷害我好朋友!

Tonight, I took my neighbor, (no not that neighbor), Donna, out to dinner for her birthday. We tried a new Mexican restaurant in our local tiny mall, called Hornduck Tavern. It's so fancy shmancy, the only thing I found on the Internet was their Temple Texas location, and a karaoke singer with them featured on her Facebook page. I'm serious. It looked the same but the menu wasn't Mexican....or as it's referred to here...Tex Mex.

The food was great, and the place was packed on a Tuesday night. The main dining room was still being remodeled, but the accommodations in the lounge bar were just fine.

Another event to celebrate was Donna and I both signed leases on apartments in a brand new adult complex gated compound that offers amenities more fitting our lifestyles. Only a few units are ready and we will be the first to move in. For me, I get an actual garage and a kitchen with a granite counter top. The granite part isn't important, it's the whole counter top concept that had me sold. I won't have to roll out pastry on the bathroom floor my dining room table.

Donna likes the sprinklers over her bed in the event one of her boyfriends gets too hot to handle...she seriously told me that.

We both like the idea of the pool being heated year around, and the concierge service that includes coffee and pastry on the house every morning. Oh yeah, and someone named Huey will come collect my trash off my front porch three days a week at 8 a.m. We will have a movie theatre which won't stop me from going to the theatre with the hand dip ice cream counter for first run matinees.

There's a ton of stuff that I probably won't partake in but it's nice. I took my daughter and the kids over on Easter Sunday to see if we could get in one of the units. As soon as my daughter walked in, she said "and the reason you have to think twice about moving here is....?"

OK, so Donna and I finish our double whammy celebratory dinner, and decide to get one of these Chinese massages in the mall. You've seen them, right? They usually set up next to the people who sell the beauty products from the Dead Sea. Grandma J told you all about her experience with the Dead Sea people...remember?

Donna goes first.......

..... and I wait because the other masseuse is in the middle of molding this man into her new sex toy.

Yeah, of course you think I'm kidding...but she was really getting physical and scaring Grandma J.

In the end, twenty minutes of a good Chinese massage was worth making a spectacle of myself in the mall. Have you ever had one of these mall massages?

IF IT'S SUNDAY.....

......then this must be Saturday....part II, III and IV

It's been one of those days when you don't stop from sunrise 'til sunset.
Like floating down a lazy river in Texas. Because, if you remember, rivers are the infrastructure of choice when it comes to travel in Central Texas.

Here is where it begins and ends......


I have highlighted my travels this past Saturday for you on this River Map of Texas.
That's home there in Killeen, and after my early morning book signing trip, see Saturday, Part I, I headed to the City of Lampasas for my granddaughter's basketball tournament. The population of the town of Lampasas is about the same as one basketball team with four alternate players.


The family wouldn't miss a tournament for the world.

Neither would this guy...who doesn't have a horse in the tournament. He likes basketball, any basketball.....plain and simple.

We watched my granddaughter shout orders to her teammates on the court...

and from the side lines.

After traveling back home...I changed clothes and headed out to a birthday party for one of my neighbors in the Compound....Donna. Donna invited everyone to her daughter's home to celebrate. She is one of the Aqua Aerobics members, and more specifically, Donna is the one who said Theodore Kaczynski, the Una bomber, was her pen pal.

Donna gets two birthday cakes...one huge one to serve to the 85 guests, and one small one for the candles. It seems last year Donna blew so hard she ended up spitting all over the cake...and no one would eat it.

After Donna opened her gifts of cigars, booze and bath salts, I bid her farewell and best wishes....even though the sun was setting, my day wasn't done.

See here on the map? I headed north on the faux river known as the I35 corridor past the city of Waco to Bellmead Texas, which is really still Waco.

I arrived just in the nick of time to watch the first of two baseball games for my grandson.

This one, with the goofy smile!

And remember the basketball player?

She was there too....to talk on her cell phone cheer on her brother.

The last game was yet to be played, and it was after 9pm. Since it would be after 11 PM when the game would end, and the next game was early Sunday morning, the team parents decided to get hotel rooms so they could party make sure the boys got a good night's sleep.

I had other priorities.......

Making sure He didn't spend the night alone.

SWIMMING IN THE POOL...
..at the compound

After my morning coffee, I put on my bathing suit and wandered out to the pool. The pool is about 30 feet from my back porch, so it's convenient to go over there several times a day. And that's what I did today.

This morning it was empty for a short time, which allowed me to do some laps in my awkward combo stroke. Then a few of the "guys" showed up. I keep waiting for the young, cute, tanned hunky guys to show up, but then I remember, this is a senior complex. After a while the guys started showing off, and then it got a bit scary so I left.

I skipped back over a while later for the aqua aerobics class. Not bad, but there's more yakking about who's doing it right than actual aerobics. As much as I enjoy this exercise class, I make a point of not remembering names.
After dinner I went back over for a nice evening swim. I ran into Donna.
This is Donna...OK, pretend this is Donna. Donna's a talker, and a little funky. That's OK, whatever floats her boat. She starts telling me about a phone conversation she had with her son on Father's day. She said she told her son she has a new pen pal....Theodore Kaczynski, the Una bomber, who is currently serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole. She laughed, and of course I laughed too because, she was joking right? I mean even if it wasn't exactly funny, it's only polite to pretend and not be rude. So, yeah, I laughed right along with Donna.

Then Donna said, "I have to be careful or my son will have me locked up". I said, "Oh, I know, sometimes I'm afraid my kids will too." Donna looks at me with a straight face and asks, "How many times have you been admitted"? I'm like, "well none", she said, "They've taken me away three times." I guess she saw the stunned look on my face, and said, "oh don't worry, I only get loony when I forget to take my meds."

So, I slowly eased myself away, bid Donna a good night, and called it a day. Life is grand around the pool at the compound.