Yesterday we went to Abilene.  I can hardly say Abilene without saying “prettiest town I’ve ever seen”.  Anyone besides me and my friend, Sarah, remember that song?  I’ve had George Hamilton, IV’s version of the song on my iPod forever.  In Missouri, since I knew no one, I had a very bad habit of running to the grocery store in horrible clothes with no makeup and just generally looking pretty bad.  I told myself I wasn’t going to do that here.  Not that it really matters . . I don’t know anyone here either.  I’ve been doing pretty good til one day early last week, before the air conditioner fiasco, I hadn’t planned to go anywhere.  I had on horrible clothes – a faded t-shirt with a hole in it and no makeup.  The radio was playing and guess who was going to be at Hastings here in Brownwood . . right then, with his new CD.  George Hamilton, IV.  If you don’t listen to country music, you probably never heard of him but if I’d been dressed decent, I would have gone right down there and bought his new CD, had it autographed and had my picture taken with him.  So then I said to myself . . I’m not going out in horrible clothes with no makeup again . . but I know I will.

Anyway, we went to Abilene yesterday (yep, decent clothes and makeup).  Vince knows exactly how to talk me into going anywhere with him.  He offered to eat lunch at a sushi restaurant.

Even though I charged the camera battery and made sure a memory stick was in it, I forgot to bring it so all the photos were taken with the cell phone.  We ate at Bonzai and it was so good.  Sometimes I’m almost disappointed when we find such a good restaurant because then I don’t want to eat anywhere else and miss out on other good restaurants.  The folks sharing our table told us about some other good places to try but I sure do love sushi and the hibachi grill.

Along the way and while there, we saw some sights that you normally would not expect to see in this part of  Texas so I thought I’d share some with you.

I love hay bales!  I didn’t expect to see any because of the drought but there they were!  Vince thinks they’re in an area that’s being irrigated but look at the weeds on the side of the road . . they’re green too.  Not much green in my yard except where my washing machine drains right out onto the ground.  I think that’s kinda weird.  It’s “gray” water and they say it’s ok.

Who would expect to see mountains in Texas?  OK . . to some of you, they’re merely hills but I think they’re mountains!

An erupting volcano!  Who knew these were here!  Oh . . wait . . that’s in the restaurant!

My parents!  OK . . I wasn’t going to say it but my dad just made a comment about my stash.  Vince and I were walking through Lowe’s and he grabbed my arm and said “Don’t look now but some of your friends from Missouri followed you?”  I turned to look and . . well, it was kinda funny!

And, lastly, blurry picture and all . . who would think . . on a late August afternoon in Texas, the outside temp would be a cool 108º?  And, I ask myself again . . why did we move here?

The packers were not very environmentally friendly.  They were very careful and other than my two Ott floor lamps, which were not packed by the packers but simply put on the truck with the furniture, we’ve not found anything that was broken so I shouldn’t complain.

But, this is how many boxes we’ve unpacked so far:

And this is how much paper we’ve unpacked out of those boxes!

Vince said each roll of that paper weighs about 20 pounds and there were probably 25 rolls of it there.  We’ve hardly made a dent in the boxes so we’ve hardly made a dent in the amount of paper used.

I had noticed a sign down by the Lake Brownwood Fire Department that they have recycling the last Saturday of the month so Vince went down there Saturday morning and dropped off all the boxes and all the paper.  I’m sure he’ll make several trips over the next few months.  They also told him where he could go in town to drop some of it off if he needs to get rid of it before the last Saturday.  The people here really are so nice — too bad everything is dead and ugly and the only green is cactus and mesquite trees and those frickin’ gigantic green grasshoppers!

We really didn’t have nearly as much stuff as they thought we did . . it was all paper!  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!