2. birthday(s) and sun-rays

It’s been a little over a week since the last post, and not much has changed. The heat’s as persistent as ever, the clouds are as puffy as ever, and the rains are as scarce as ever. It’s been clear skies the whole time we’ve been here, aside from some accidental raindrops that the heavens dropped on our windshield as we were driving home one night. There weren’t more than 15 of them, though. Yesterday, however, was the first time we had overcast skies pretty much all day. It cooled it off enough that we could leave the sunshade down in our car and the steering wheel wasn’t burning hot when we got in to go somewhere.

It got quite cool one day last week. We were out running errands, and in the midst, stopped off of Lovers Lane for our Chick-Fil-A fix (no joke, that’s where it is). When we got out of the car, it was around noon, and we braced ourselves for the heat. Instead, we were shocked to find it noticeably cooler than we had expected. I think I even remember a soothing breeze in there somewhere. When we checked the temperature, we were even more shocked to find that it was 92 degrees. Never would I have thought of 92 as “cool”. But that was then.

Jill and I continue to enjoy settling in to the

land and culture here. As of yesterday, we have been here a month exactly. In that time, we’ve discovered a few more things that make living here quite neat.

First of all, there are the U-turns. Along the main highway that we use, as you get off onto the access highway that parallels it, there are lanes set aside for those people who haven’t yet learned the area and need to go back the way they came. The nice thing about these U-turns is that you don’t even have to wait for the light to change. They’re completely separated from the other lanes. Just follow it around, and your course is corrected.

Secondly, we discovered with some friends that there is an X-box Kinect in the Swiss Tower common room for Tower-dwellers to use—an excellent tool for exercise as well as fun.

Another valuable aspect of life here is the Swiss Tower community e-mail list. Through this list, anyone can post an e-mail with a need or a question, and within a few minutes, someone answers. All sorts of free stuff shows up on this list, too, but you have to be fairly quick to nab it. With smartphones and (therefore) mobile e-mail, people are fast to reply. We’ve completed our apartment with two lamps and a futon, all by replying to the list—and all for free. And the best thing we’ve come across so far just happened to coincide with my birthday:

We actually celebrated the day before my actual birthday, and it worked out nicely. For the majority of the day, we enjoyed the water and the sun at Hurricane Harbor in Arlington (with the help of plenty sunscreen to keep from being baked alive and flip-flops for when the ground was way too hot to walk on). After our fill of slides and pools, we headed out to catch a delightful dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. Once we’d gotten our food, Jill went over and told the waiter something I couldn’t hear and came back with a grin. It didn’t take long to figure out what she’d told him. Servers began to gather around, and I braced for the song. But first, they got me up in front of the restaurant, tied a paper towel around my head so that the two ends stuck out like giant ears, and gave me a paper towel tail, a bucket and a spoon. They then announced that, while they sang happy birthday, I was to hop around the restaurant like the energizer bunny and bang on the bucket with the spoon. So I did. And while I didn’t end up getting a free dessert afterwards, they did give me a complimentary birthday “Eat at Joe’s” mason jar, which I appreciated…considering.

Our plan following Joe’s was to go catch a drive-in showing of the 3^rd Transformers south of Dallas. But, having enabled mobile e-mail on our smartphones, we saw that someone in Swiss Tower was giving away free tickets to a musical for that night. Thus we came upon a better evening activity than a drive-in worth much more for much less.

We replied to the e-mail and claimed the tickets, headed back to Swiss to change into nicer attire (which is when I realized I was still wearing the paper-towel bunny tail), and picked up the tickets. Then we made our way in the evening warmth to the Fair Park Music Hall, where we enjoyed excellent seating for Guys and Dolls. And it wasn’t even my actual birthday until the next day!

On my actual birthday, we continued the festivities by visiting the GIANT Half-Price bookstore here in Dallas, going to see Transformers 3 (at an indoor movie theater), and eating at Jack in the Box, where I did end up

getting a free birthday dessert (via coupon) without the singing or hopping.

So while the heat remains, I’m happy to say it has done nothing to get in the way of some dandy birthday celebrations. More of what happened post-birthday soon!