Busyness

I got this written but never posted a while back. Life's been very busy.

A few weekends ago we celebrated my Mom's birthday. She turned 60 and was gone on her actual birthday so we celebrated a few days late. Dad made yummy fish tacos and as always, he made the cheesecake. Our family's cheesecake recipe is the best I've ever had. Mom wanted a smoker for her birthday. Our family is weird in that we like getting big cooking appliance type things as gifts. We get to ooh and ahh over the new toy and figure out new recipes and what we're going to make. Since mom has every kitchen tool imaginable for indoors I guess she decided to branch out to outdoor cooking appliances. And of course it made the guys happy too. Bryan got the whole thing assembled and Mom's already used it once. She sent smoked chicken home for Mike who pronounced it good. Mike was even willing to share a few scraps with Apollo who then started dancing around the kitchen whenever he saw Mike pull the chicken out of the fridge. So the chicken must be good and our dog is spoiled.

That same weekend we went out with our friends Lyndsay and Alan for dinner. There's a backstory to this dinner. A few weeks ago Mike and I were home and had Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on. We like to watch the show and always wish the restaurants would be closer to us. Well, the first place up was located in East Dallas and was a burger joint. As we watched them make these burgers and everything that went in them, Mike's eyes got big and I think he started to drool. And we just knew our friend Alan would love a place like that. We got online and found they had veggie burgers and a new location opened up closer to us. So the four of us went on Saturday evening to the Twisted Root Burger Co. Sure enough, as we walked in Alan told us that he had just found his new home. Mike got the Western Burger and Alan got something that was a combo of buffalo and venison. Lyndsay had the cheese burger and I got the veggie burger (what a surprise!). The food was good and the decorations were a riot. We loved all the bumper stickers and various signs around the place. Such as the one requesting that we not steal their condiments, then informing us that stealing in general is bad and then suggesting that the government already steals enough. There were also plenty of "graffiti" style notes up in the bathroom. My favorite was the one pointing to the emergency alarm (the type with flashing lights) that said "if this is flashing then you may want to stop peeing and run". Since it's not every day that we get to go someplace featured on Guy's show, we decided to take pictures.