the vengeful cow blog

America the Beautiful - Day Seven

Posted by marshall Thu, 01 Jan 2004 19:00:00 GMT

Happy New Year!

We've spent the last couple of days with Andy and Ingrid in Dallas, and will be continuing our journey to Redlands tomorrow morning. In the meantime, here's what we've been up to recently. This is a pretty long entry; we're recording it as much for our benefit as for our readers'. :-)

On the way from Springfield to Dallas, we stopped at the "World's Largest McDonald's" in Vinita, OK. Apparently it gets the title of "World's Largest" from square footage, as it only seats about half the number of people as the locations in Beijing and Moscow, according to a plaque at the location. Most of the space is empty; it has a gift shop, a small display of McDonald's memorabilia, and a Will Rogers mini-museum, but the restaurant itself is rather unimpressive. According to this site, it was originally called the "Glass House" restaurant, and was turned into a McDonald's later.

We arrived in Dallas around 6:30pm on Tuesday and met up with Andy, Ingrid, and Ydna the cat at their condo. We went to Pancho's for dinner, where we RAISED THE FLAG for more sopapillas! While the sopas were indeed tasty, the rest of the food was sadly less than spectacular. The burritos at "Mexican Grill" places like Chipotle and Baja Fresh were far better. After dinner, we returned to Andy and Grid's place and I set up a wireless network so that Andy and I could use our laptops throughout the condo. 802.11 is such a wonderful thing.

On Wednesday (New Year's Eve) Lara and I visited the Dallas Galleria, a 3+ story mall about 5 minutes from Andy and Grid's place that my family used to go to from time to time. We enjoyed a Monte Cristo and desserts at Bennigan's, sitting next to the ice skating rink on the lowest level of the mall. The Galleria was generating "snow" that slowly and elegantly drifted down to the rink. If someone tried that in Pittsburgh, he'd get hurt; there's enough snow outside in winter that generating it inside as well would just be dangerous. We walked around the Galleria's various levels for a while, and then returned to the condo.

When Andy and Grid got home from work, we left for the evening's festivities. We met up with some of Andy and Grid's friends at the Olive Garden. There was a 30-minute wait on New Year's Eve, which according to them is unheard of for that location. Apparently there are 100+ restaurants on the street where the Olive Garden was, which keeps wait times down; at the locations in Pittsburgh, a 30-minute wait would be short, and on a busy night it could easily be well over an hour.

We celebrated the arrival of the New Year at a church that Andy and Grid's friends suggested. They had a very entertaining comedian, which we enjoyed a lot, but then the pastor followed that up with a rather disturbing speech about giving to the church. It was quite extended, and almost Tiltonesque in its promises of financial reward if one gives to their ministry. Churches need money to operate, that's certain, but the way that the pastor focused so heavily on money set off some warning bells for us. Perhaps that was just the topic that evening and further visits would clear some things up, but it certainly dampened the mood with doubts. Nevertheless, we enjoyed celebrating the arrival of 2004, especially because Lara got a phone call sometime before midnight from her sister Beth saying she was engaged! Jason proposed to her that evening and gave her the very ring she had been hoping for. We're extremely happy for them.

One more comment about New Year's Eve before we move on: the countdown to the New Year was being televised from Times Square, with a big "LIVE" banner across the top. At midnight, the ball dropped. Midnight Central Time. But I'm pretty sure the ball was actually dropped at Midnight Eastern Time, when it switched to 2004 in New York City. So how can it be live? Are they lying to us because saying "prerecorded" wouldn't be as much fun? Do they drop the ball four times, once for each time zone in the continental US? Somehow neither of these sounds like the correct answer. Anyone know?

We slept in this morning, and then decided to visit downtown. We had lunch at Grandy's, which so far has been the only place in Dallas that is even better than I remember it. Everything there was delicious, from the chicken to the vegetables to the BBQ baked beans to the dinner and "Sinnamon" rolls that I loved as a kid. Excellent. We then proceeded to the Reunion Tower downtown, where we spent the requisite 55 minutes in the revolving lounge to see the city. From there we walked to the site of the JFK assassination, where we were hounded by conspiracy theorists trying to sell us "souvenir" pamphlets. We also visited the West End Marketplace; unfortunately, most of the stores were closed due to the New Year's Day holiday.

For dinner we went to Crystal's, a big family pizza place that Adam, Grid, and I used to love to visit. They now have an all-day buffet: all-you-can-eat pizza, pasta, soup, and salad for $4.25! We ate in the theater section, where Finding Nemo was being projected. The projector was unfortunately misaligned, leading to a headache-inducing blurred picture, but apart from that it was a most enjoyable experience.

And that pretty much brings it up to the present. Tomorrow we'll get back on the road again. We've decided to take a route that takes us even further south than we had originally planned, due to reports of nasty weather around Flagstaff, AZ. We'll try to post another update when we next have Internet access.