2012 January 25 Friday

2012 January 25 Friday

The day started with this beautiful skyscape taken just before sunrise.

As usual, coffee with the guys from 7:30 to 9:00 and then the women had coffee from 9:30 to 11:00.  While Ella was at coffee I started working on the pasta salad for our “Suppers With Friends” group in the evening.  I cooked the spiral macaroni, drained, added some Italian dressing and let it cool.  Once it was cool, I added chopped fresh mushrooms, carrots, celery, and tomato.  I was going to add bell peppers until I realized that the pepper I had was ‘out of date’.  Once Ella arrived home we went to H.E.B. in Burnet for some peppers (red, yellow, and green).

By then it was lunch time.  We’ve eaten at the Whataburger, the McDonalds and The Highlander so we wanted to try something different.  We’ve been in and through Burnet a lot since we’ve been in Texas.  However, we’ve not strayed far from the two intersecting highways (29 and 281).  So we drove around town a little looking for a local restaurant.

When you go to a new area do you like to eat at national chains or local restaurants?

There are at least four Mexican restaurants in town.  However, I was really hoping to find chicken or fish for lunch.  If they are there, we didn’t find them.  We ended up at Storm’s of Burnet which I guess is a local burger chain.  I just asked for the day’s special (which is what I like to do when trying a new place).  What I got was a gawd awful big burger.  Seriously!  There were four beef patties in that thing.  It was topped with lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayo, ketchup and about a half a jar of pickles!  Ella had a regular burger which also came with all the fixin’s (the only differences were that I’d ordered mine with no onion and she’d ordered with no mustard).  She had a generous order of onion rings and I had the French fries.  With a couple of fountain drinks (and tax) it came to a little over $16.  I’d rate it as far better than McDonalds and Burger King but not as good as the Mushroom Swiss burger I had at the Central Market in Austin.

What is your favorite restaurant chain and why?

          Our forwarded mail package from the UPS Store came today so we spent quite a bit of time sorting through for bills and ‘important’ mail and tossing junk mail.  The few bills that we received had already been paid.  That is something that happens a lot when we only get our mail once a month.  Almost everything is auto-pay or we can go online and pay so we don’t get much in the way of bills in the mail.  These happened to be some doctor bills for appointments Ella had before we left Iowa.

That brings up a question.  Why do doctor’s take so long to send out bills?  We pay the co-pay at the time of service and then they bill the insurance.  But it seems that they always have some other thing that the bill for a month or so after the service rendered.

Have you had that same experience with health care providers?

              As I mentioned earlier, we had supper with some friends.  This is actually a program of the church we are attending here.  You sign up   and they dived you up into groups of three or four families.  You then take turns hosting a monthly evening meal.  It is a great way to build community within the congregation.  As it happened, we were grouped with the pastor and his wife and one other couple.  We had our first meal at the pastor’s home and we have scheduled the next one to be at our RV.

Do you belong to a club, church or other organization that does something along the lines of the “Supper With Friends”?