As we sat in the car (Emma drooling in the back seat) and ate our first "butter burger" from Culver's this afternoon, I realized that fast food burgers in Texas are a bit different than other places and it may be time to talk about the pros and cons of Texas burgers.

Of course there are the standards: Wendy's, Carl's Jr, McDonalds, Jack in the Box, Burger King, but I suspect that you can walk into one of these blindfolded and have no clue where in the U.S. you are.

As anyone who has come to visit us can attest, the best burgers in Bastrop come from a place called the Roadhouse. www.kendrasroadhouse.com When we first moved here we drove by the place and I assumed based on appearance that it was just another run down building. Boy, was I wrong! It sits at the confluence of 3 state highways, across the road from a state park and golf course and down the road from Lake Bastrop and the Colorado River. The place is packed on weekends and serves great burgers on either a sourdough or jalapeno cheese bun. Real milkshakes, too. And (this is definitely a Texas thing) they bring you another glass of whatever you are drinking in a to go cup to take with you!

Down the road is Sonic Burger, which I had never experienced before we moved here. We have been there once since we arrived in 2006. Need I say more?

Down the road from there is Whataburger - a Texas original Not sure how I feel about it, but it is open 24 hours and I like their ads. www.whataburger.com.

In Austin there is a relative newcomer that knocks the buns off all the fast food places: it is called Mighty Fine Burgers. There are 3 locations and I have been to 2 of them. The beef is all natural, the fries are cut there and they make lemonade and milkshakes from scratch. YUM! www.mightyfineburgers.com

There are numerous "only in Austin" places that we have not yet been to, but will keep you posted as we visit them. In the meantime, pass the napkins and how about that lemonade to go.

TGIF

This has been a very long week at work. I think that the end of daylight savings time didn't help, but it seemed like every day at work something came up that discombobulated me or flummoxed me or just plain pissed me off.

Suffice to say, I am very glad that it is Friday evening.

Photo album

I get very frustrated trying to upload photos onto my blog. I took some really cute pics of the turkeys on the roof Saturday morning and they refused to load. I took pics of the new car (as yet unnamed) and they refused to load.

So..... I am going to add the link to my MobileMe Gallery and try and keep it up-to-date including captions (not my favorite thing to do).

Life is slowly returning to "normal"

We have been home from vacation for 13 days. I have been back at work for 10 days. I finally feel a little bit like going to work again. It took almost 2 weeks to get back into the work "swing of things".

I am still driving the "land yacht". Liberty Mutual is trying to mess with us as to how much they are willing to pay us for the Rabbit. It really irritates me: their insured was absolutely at fault, we did not play the "pain and suffering" card, nor did we get a lawyer to try and mess with them. All we want is a fair price for the car so that we won't have to take out too big a loan to cover the difference when we go buy another car. So glad that the man is handling this instead of me. I would probably have said something that could have been held against me in a court of law by now!

Saturday is car shopping day regardless. I would rather take out a loan for now so we don't feel "obligated" to the insurance company. "Sure, we turned in the rental car, so what. We still want a fair price for the car your insured totaled."

On a happier note: enough rain fell in the last 48 hours to bring Lake Travis up 8 feet by the weekend. Only another 22 feet to go to get to a "normal" level for this time of year.

Mothers and daughters

8 months is too long to not see one of my children. Jen is here this weekend and we are having a fun time, but more importantly we are re-forging the unspoken communication that we have always had but that has seemed to have faded recently.

I think this unspoken communication runs in our family. My mother had it with both my sister and me, my sister and I have it, Jen and I have it and I am pretty sure my sister and her daughter have it. It is that unconscious knowledge that either 1) the other person is going to call or is thinking of us or 2) the other person needs us to contact them for some unknown but important reason.

I still occasionally feel as though my mother is thinking of me. Maybe wishful thinking on my part, but at the time it seems so real.

A woman I used to work with said, and I think it is very true, we never get over the loss of our mother, we just learn to live with it.

Images of vacation

Home from Taos

We are home. It was a memorable vacation in more ways than one.

Taos is beautiful: high desert at 7400 feet, amazingly blue blue skies, clear, dry air, mountains that soar to 13,000 feet: dark green with trees with occasional splashes of vibrant gold from the aspens. Genuinely friendly people who love where they live and want you to love it too (but not enough to move there, just visit). And terrible, terrible drivers. They think that the speed limit is just a suggestion, and not a very good one at that. Why, what is the point in going 65 on that state highway when you can go 80?

Have I mentioned the food?? Northern New Mexican food is some of the best food I have ever tasted: blue corn tortillas, chile relleno stuffed with zucchini and corn, great local beer (Santa Fe Brown Ale, oh yeah).

But back to the drivers for a minute. It is ironic to me that even though NM has some terrible drivers, the woman that plowed into our back end (going at least 45 in a 15 zone) was from Colorado. Who knows, maybe Colorado drivers are even worse -- we were only in Colorado for about half an hour this trip so I can't say for sure. All I know is that we drove home from vacation in a 2010 Chevy Impala (aka the land yacht) and still don't know how much the insurance is going to give us for my little Rabbit (I LOVED that car, dammit!)

It will certainly be a remembered vacation. And every time I look at the photos of the aspen trees and the mountains and my car I will curse the Colorado driver and at the same time be thankful that I had a wonderful week away.