I Should Visit Waco More Often
by William Jackson on 2005-02-21
As some have already discovered, I traveled to Waco to visit my familythis past weekend. So many exciting things and blogworthy happened, thatI had to take notes because I did not have access to a computer. I alsohave pictures.
To begin, my brothers are the coolest brothers. When I arrived at theresidence of my parents, my parents were not there, but these guys were(sans the short one). We cleaned the house, then went to the library. Ofcourse, none of us went to the library for books. We went to the libraryfor computers. I was going to use one, but I exercised some self controland moderation, and instead browsed the fiction section.
We also went to the library because in the parking lot there is a waterstore booth thing. “¡La Mejor Agua!” One quarter buys one gallon. Bringyour own containers. Well, one quarter buys one gallon and one cup, asmy brother and I discovered. Surprisingly. When the gallon jug was fulland the water didnʼt stop.
Back at the house we learned why none of us would ever see a DashboardConfessional concert. We donʼt know the words to all the songs. We werewatching some concerts on a DVD, and if they are any indication, you arerequired to know all the words to all the songs to be admitted. Maybethe restriction only applies to the first twelve rows. Or girls. I thinkyou have to take a test to get in, one of those fill-in-the-blank testswith just a song title at the top and blanks on the rest of the page.Not my style.
We still needed to eat dinner. For some reason I always eat fish sticksand tater tots when I visit Waco. The aforementioned fish sticks andtater tots were cooked and cooling when Daniel suggested wemake cookies or brownies or something. I suggested we eat first, but mybrother was afraid eating dinner first would spoil his appetite formaking cookies. We risked it. With dinner out of the way, and noappetites spoiled, we began mixing up some deluxe peanut butter cookies.
First we broke the hand mixer, then we broke the other hand mixer, sowe had to resort to using the KitchenAid megamixer. We should havestarted with that. It was so awesome. We got peanut butter all over thecounter and the wall and the side of the refridgerator. They turned outgreat. The recipe said it makes 36 cookies. It didnʼt make 36 cookies,but they sure tasted like 36 cookies.
At this point I had taken some photographs with my 35mm camera, and theroll of film was full. I had an unexplainable urge to get them developedimmediately, but it was 19:30, and I couldnʼt think of anyone who didone-hour processing at that time on a Saturday night. But a guy can try.
We drove to CVS first, because it was closest. My brother was going tostay in the car while I ran in to drop off my film, but I convinced himto come with.
Youʼre going to want to see this. Iʼll probably have to flirt withsomeone to get these photos developed.
CVS? More like, CV No! That cute girl at the photo desk let me down.
Our next stop was HEB. I sprinted across the parking lot and into thestore, apparently drawing the attention of several security guards. Iran up to the photo desk and quickly regained my composure. I asked theman on duty if he did one-hour processing at that time, and I think hetwitched. Then he gave me a look that could be interpreted two ways:“Are you some kind of idiot? Who would do one-hour processing at thistime of night? Certainly not me!” or “Well, are you going to saysomething to me?”
It turns out that his twitch was actually an affirmative nod, and Ilooked like an idiot because I just looked at him for fifteen secondsbefore saying anything. Anyway, he took my film, said it would probablybe ready in thirty minutes, and I left. When I came back 45 minuteslater he was looking for me. He handed me my pictures and said, “Whattook you so long? I said it would be done in thirty minutes!” And that,my friends, is why HEB will always be the coolest store in the world.
To the mothers in the audience, I also learned that there are two waysto get leftovers eaten: put them in a clear container so your childrencan see what it is; or put them in an ice cream container.