My friend Angela came in from Cali to visit. I admit I had some trepidation about the whole trip.
First there was the fact that I never know what to show people to do in Dallas
and
Second I had not seen her in almost ten years.
It's funny, we figured out that we worked together in Cville for about 2 years and haven't seen each other in almost 10. We've kept in touch through emails and phone calls, but just never connected a trip together.
I think part of the reason, was what I was going through during that stage of my life. And after talking this weekend, it seems it was a dark time for both of us, so maybe we helped each other out more than we each think.
Most of the trip seemed to revolve around food. We took her Saturday night to the Brazillian steak house Master Grill (two thumbs up). Afterwards we toodled around Firewheel Mall and ended up having coffee and shopping in Barnes & Noble.
Sunday Robely and Angela went shopping up at the outlet mall, while I stayed home and tallied reports for my Bloodbowl league. Angela wanted Tex-Mex so we tried to go to Dos Banderas downtown, but they shut early on Sunday, so we ended up at Cristina's Mexican Restaurant in Firewheel (also two thumbs up). After dinner we gave her a driving tour of downtown Dallas, which she seemed to enjoy, but her Robely both were wiped out from shopping.
Monday we decided to head up to Durant for the casino (excuse me- Choctaw Entertainment Center). They had a new Star Wars bingo machine. While I was throwing my money away Robely and Angela found some Indian dancing to watch. This made Angela happy, as she had hoped to see "real Indians" at the casino. I guess Robely isn't real enough or something. The two of them also had a blast at the visitor center, planning a future touristy trek through Oklahoma. Come late afternoon we headed back to the Messoplex and stopped for ice cream at Braum's (I swear Robely must get paid to advertise for them!) and dinner at Texas Land Cattle (quickly dropping on my list of places to eat). They also had me stop at the outlet mall so they could do some more shopping and insisted that I get something. (I ended up with two nice shirts from Casual Male- snazzy)
Tuesday was back to work for me, while Robely and Angela went downtown to visit shopping Mecca- Neimann Marcus. They also ran around and did some touristy things. A sad but true point was that Robely took Angela to the JFK memorial and Angela knew nothing about any of it. Oh the folly of youth! I thought everyone had seen Oliver Stone's JFK at least. Well at least Robely provided some edu-macation for her trip. We were kind of undecided for dinner thinking BBQ was about the only thing we left out of the Texas fare. But I think we were pretty much colon stuffed full of meat at this point. So I made the executive decision of Razzoo's (a local Cajun chain). It was adequate, but Angela didn't seem to thrilled (actually she seemed scared) by the place.
After dinner we headed back to the house and Angela and I poured some brandy and really talked. It was a good talk, and sort of a shame it took me three days to open up to this point. And they kept me up too late discussing and saying our goodbyes (luckily Robely took her to the airport at 6 in the morning). So it turned out to be a great trip and look forward to doing it again.
