Not Dead Yet

(by Linda Coleman) Yeah, I know. We told everybody about our blog, got y'all to look, then promptly abandoned the project. Every now and then, as we're traveling around this city, making snarky comments about the state of things, we say, "Hey, we should write that hilarious comment on our blog." Then, we forget to do it. Call it TBTB--Too Busy To Blog.

Well, last night, we were at a party and ran into a friend who asked what happened to the blog. "Didn't you used to have a blog about Dallas?" the friend asked. "I really enjoyed reading that."

Wow! We actually have a fan! Maybe more than one. So that encounter was enough to encourage us to re-re-launch the blog. For now, anyway.

The title of this blog post comes from a bad experience at one of our favorite restaurants. I'm not going to say which one, because we usually get really, really great service there. Today, though, we got such lousy service that we started doubting our very existence.

"I'm a ghost," James told me, as I returned from the restroom. By that time, we had been ready to leave for about 15 minutes, but the waitress hadn't been by with our check.

"Maybe we're dead," I ventured.

"Right," James said. "If we tried to leave without paying, we'd find out we're not dead."

Several more minutes went by, as we watched our waitress walk right by without seeing us time after time. She was all kissy-face with the people sitting across the aisle from us, chatty with a table behind us (8 minutes of chatty--James timed her), but she walked right by us, as if we were...

"Dead," I said. We're probably dead."

And we discussed every movie we'd seen, where some character is dead and doesn't know it. I was pretty sure we weren't dead, despite the waitress constantly walking by as if we didn't exist. I was pretty sure we did exist. I was pretty sure I existed, anyway. I'd just been to the bathroom, and I'm pretty sure dead people don't do that. Also, my stomach was awfully full from the omelet, grits and two slices of toast I'd just eaten. I'm no expert on existence beyond the grave, but I'm pretty sure you can't eat and wouldn't feel full if you did.

Besides, we were definitely alive when we walked in. We were shown to a table, and the waitress was attentive then. If we were dead, the transition between this world and the next would have happened while we were at the restaurant. So, if we were dead, there would be an ambulance, a flurry of activity, maybe a TV crew and a health inspector trying to figure out why we suddenly dropped dead after a meal of omelets, grits and toast.

Then, after about half an hour, the waitress finally noticed us.

"How's everything going?"

I felt like saying, "Oh, yay, we're not dead!" but I didn't. James told her we were ready for our check and she gave it to us.

James left her a ghost of a tip, and we headed out to the grand opening of Twelve Hills Nature Center.

Twelve Hills Nature Center
This afternoon was the grand opening of Twelve Hills Nature Center, described on their website as "an urban preserve located in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas". It's really nice out there, and we plan to go back and hike the trails when it's not so blazing hot. It was a nice opening, attended by such local luminaries as city council member Dave Neumann and state representative Rafael Anchia. If I were in a really snarky mood, I'd title this section "Twelve Hills is for the birds!" because that's kind of what Dave Neumann said, calling attention to the variety of bird calls that filled the air. But, of course, he meant it in the nicest way, encouraging us us to take ownership of the place, helping keep it pristine for the benefit birds and the people who watch them. We lasted out there about 20 minutes before heading home to the comfort of our air conditioned house, but we'll definitely be back soon--maybe earlier in the day, or in the cool of the evening. Twelve Hills is located near Rosemont Elementary School, about three blocks north of Davis on Mary Cliff.