My son needed to get the oil changed in his car so we slipped into the Wal Mart located in the what I suspect is a semi-retirement community for Carny-folk (not that Carny-folk shouldn't semi-retire anywhere they choose), called Callaway, FL. We dropped off the car for the lube service and considered taking a stroll through the Wal Mart itself only because I suspect that we could have taken a few pictures to submit to PeopleOfWalmart, but instead, we decided to grab some lunch.*
I had always thought Beef O'Brady's was just a local outfit in my parents town of Brandon, but come to find out, they are in 23 states including Texas, just nothing near San Antonio. Too bad. Turns out they do have a few locations near Panama City Beach, and luckily for us, there is one just across the street from the WalMart in Callaway.
Beef's is a sports bar type of set up with loads of TVs everywhere, including individual monitors at most of the booths and tables. This allows you to watch whatever you choose, from ESPN, FoxNews or your favorite soap if needed. My son reports that Beef's is always good for showing the pay-per-view events like boxing and UFC events.
The menu is loaded with lots of the usual neighborhood bar & grill like options (think Applebee's, Chili's, Friday's, Bennigan's, etc.) and we decided to start with an order of the Onion Rings served with some sort of orange looking tangy and spicy dipping sauce. Good stuff. The rings were just the way I like them and we made extremely quick work of them.
My son ordered a sandwich called the Watterson apparently named after one of Beef's first customers. The sandwich is made with roast beef, with Swiss cheese on rye, loaded with lots of salad. I love it when people are not afraid to put loads of mayonnaise on a sandwich! He added a little serving of potato salad which was pretty good.
Although the menu had numerous possibilities, I immediately honed in on The Reuben and was pretty pleased with it. The sandwiches are not puny little two-bite affairs that leave you wishing for more. I also had the potato salad which was very creamy and enjoyable.
Our waitress was very friendly and even though the place was still doing a brisk lunch hour business, things were served quickly. As we were leaving, she swapped our tea glasses for environmentally friendly Styrofoam cups - okay, maybe not so green, but in this Florida humidity, it was appreciated - and sent us on to retrieve the vehicle from Wal Mart.
Good food, good service and an atmosphere perfect for game day or just lunch, we could use a Beef's in San Antonio. If you get a chance, give Beef O'Brady's a try - it's a Tasty Treat.
*No offense to Carny folk, citizens of Callaway, or awkward appearing shoppers of Wal Mart; I'm just hackin' on ya.
The other day my wife and I were driving somewhere and a conversation about car seats came up. She was telling me that kids are required to be in car seats until they are in Junior High School or something like that.
I don't know how it is in other places, but if you drive around San Antonio on any given day you can spot carloads full of little kids who are not strapped down, or my favorite, the goofy mother (who usually isn't wearing a seat belt, herself) holding the newborn baby in her arms. Setting aside the obvious stupidity of these people, I am drawn to the other extreme of just how far do we take this whole car seat thing?
I sorta figured my wife was exaggerating this whole car seat issue but then, we walked into Wal Mart and I see a display for car seats including this one.
Seriously, up to 100 pounds? I know actual adult people who weigh 100 pounds or less. Okay, not many, but still, are you telling me that the actual cars being manufactured today are so unsafe that you need to have a guy with one of those measuring sticks like they have at Disney, to make sure you qualify to ride in the car?
This is actually a pretty smart idea. Say your kid has been getting in trouble at school. Wanna bring him down a few notches in front of his wannabe gang member friends? Pull up in the school pick-up line and strap him into his car seat for the ride home. He'll really be the BMOC.
I come from a big family - we had seven kids! And this is before anybody thought of minivans. Can you imagine trying to pack a bunch of car seats into the family sedan and still have room for nine people, a dog and a cat? As it was, I think a few of us had to sit on the floor boards and one kid had to lay on that back shelf where the speakers mount below the rear window.
We have come a long way in terms of safety, and I'm all for it. This from the kid who nearly fell out of the car once when my mom was driving through an intersection. But really, has this car seat thing gone too far? What's next, driving helmets for the morning commute?
So you can just imagine that when my wife informed me we required a visit to Wal Mart at 3 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, I might have been hesitant to take part in such a ridiculous maneuver, but in the spirit of, well, Christmas, I grabbed my camera and off we went.
The Wal Mart near us was packed. Packed so much that people were actually parked off-road like it was some sort of NASCAR event. Course, I've never been to a NASCAR event, so that may not be a good description. And maybe this is just a Texas thing. The wife says, "Well, Dear, there are no parking spots." The husband says, "The hell you say! This piece of landscaping will do just fine."
Anyway, I was shocked; shocked to learn that even Santa has succumbed to the evil Wal Mart. No, I don't think Wal Mart is evil at all but I do think that Santa could at least drive around in a red truck if he is going to do his shopping in broad daylight.
Actually, we drove behind the Wal Mart and came out on the other side by the garden department where there was plenty of parking. Apparently not too many people are purchasing lawn mowers or fertilizer for Christmas this year. And once inside, even though it was clearly crowded, there were no old people being trampled or fisticuffs over flat panel TV's, so really, it was sort of a let down.
Important Note: If you know who is in charge of the lights at the intersection of Westwood Loop (the road that goes from Wal Mart all the way to Alamo Ranch) and Culebra, please inform them that they should put turn signals up. Without a protected turn lane, people are backed up in both directions forever. It is easier to simply go straight across the road and make a U-Turn, which is what I started to do until my wife gave me the Starbucks Signal, letting me know that she was in need.
And with really no fanfare at all we made it safely back to our home and began preparations for Christmas with our kids. Our son is home from Florida and our daughter and son-in-law will fly in tomorrow morning from New Jersey. And we will eat.
Enjoy your Christmas Eve.
We were over at the local Super Wal Mart walking in so we could purchase important consumer items when something caught my eye.
It was a guy riding a Vespa while pulling a trailer with a sign on it. In this case, he was advertising some Kodak products on sale inside the Wal Mart. The trailer had speakers and a TV screen on the back. Not only was their broadcasting in both English and Spanish, but the screen in the back was showing live picture feeds from inside the Wal Mart of customers in the camera section.
When the Vespa driver saw me film him, he stopped to chat and he told me all about it. He (and another Vespa driver in the lot) work for an advertising company - sorry, the name escapes me - and they do a fully coordinated product ad on behalf of the advertiser, in this case Kodak, with the permission of Wal Mart. Very cool.
So we head off to the Wal Mart to grab some essentials (Chinese products covered in lead) and as we are walking down the aisle that contains youth related products, I come upon some sort of display which requires a big poster of teen idol Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter. I'd tell you her name outright, but technically, who knows what it really is?
She was born Destiny Hope Cyrus, but got that name changed to Miley Ray Cyrus, but goes half-time by the name of Miley Stewart, Hannah Montana and/or Miley Cyrus. 
Apparently, someone at Wal Mart has had enough of the name game and has decided her new name is: Senorita Needs-a-Shave.
Strange, taggers really piss me off, but the defacing of that poor child's poster made me giggle. I hope the culprits are caught and punished, severely.
A concert might be in order.
Forget the drought - we got an actual ten minutes of solid rain this afternoon. What we have is an area of the yard that simply refused to grow grass, no matter how much rain or watering we gave it, even after sodding the place. So this morning while my wife was doing some trimming of the hedges in the front of the house and I was mowing the back near the offensive dirt patch in the back, I decided enough was simply, enough!
This is what the ugly, dirt covered, no grass having area looked like shortly after I started. You'll note that by the time I thought to grab the camera (always - always have the camera handy), I had started to place some rocks around the offensive area.
I had to till up the old dead sod (dirt really) that was a little higher than it should have been, and push that dirt down toward the other side to try to level things.
Next, we made a trip over to Wal-Mart to grab some mulch. I know that we could have gone to Fertile Gardens or one of the other local nurseries and gotten some mulch by the yard, but to be real honest, I didn't want to have to move several loads by wheel barrel to the back of the house when I could make a few sort trips with bags in the wagon.
Here we are spreading out the mulch, and if you are keeping score - yes, I had to go back to Wal-Mart for another several bags. Here is a little hint from me to you: When the calculation chart says you need 14 bags of mulch to cover the area, you really do need 14 bags, not 8. That might save you a trip if you try this yourself.
Okay, end product. We took some of the plants and such that we had on our deck and in the yard and filled in the mulched area. It ain't Garner State Park, but at least I won't have to mow the dirt anymore.
What did you do to your yard this weekend? Tell me about it.
Right next to my hometown of Brandon is another small but growing town called Valrico, Fl. It seems that over the years, the place has just merged into one extension of Tampa, and thus, requires the shopping amenities available to such a populace.
And lucky for us, because we do what everyone does when vacationing in Florida; we go to Wal Mart.
And as it turns out, so does Santa Claus. Yes, kids, it may sound strange, but Santa shops at Wal Mart just like the rest of us.
Let me dispense with the formalities and tell you flat out, my recent purchase (a month ago) of the Hamilton Beach BrewStation 10-cup Coffee Maker I bought from Wal Mart is a piece of crap and, it sucks. I only tell you this so you won't make the same mistake I did.
First, you should know that my wife prefers coffee from a percolator type pot. We used to spend about $75.00 every year purchasing a really fancy one from JC Penny, but after a while, I figured why spend so much on one that had the auto-brew timer when I could just buy the regular percolator and wait the five minutes it takes to make coffee. So, for the next few years we used a regular plug in percolator and the coffee was good, but for whatever reason, our last one fried and it was time for a new one.
We get into Wal Mart and I tell my wife that I would prefer to buy the $15.00 Proctor and Silex carafe coffee maker and just replace every six months like normal people do. Here in San Antonio, we have seriously hard water. If you don't own a water softener system (and we don't) your dishwasher, your coffee maker and everything else goes to crap unless you are constantly conducting preventative maintenance to clean the calcium build-up out. Lots of vinegar.
Anyway, my wife points out this spiffy Hamilton Beach BrewStation gimmick where you don't actually have a carafe, but instead, a holder where the coffee collects and you simply retrieve that fresh mug of coffee directly into your cup! Brilliant!
So, first mistake is, we get the 10-cup version. Ten Dixie cups, maybe! I kid you not, fully loaded, it makes three normal sized cups of coffee. But, what the hey.
For the first week, the coffee tasted kinda burnt. I thought the burnt flavor would wear off, and actually, today, a month later, it finally tasted pretty good. Unfortunately, today was also the day when the thing just stopped functioning by any standard of acceptable performance.
Now imagine this. I set the thing to brew all ten Dixie cups of coffee, and after about ten minutes, I walk over to the machine to see that it has brewed two Dixie cups worth. I look inside, and sure enough, the water in the reservoir has ceased pumping. I look and the red light indicating power is still on, so I turn it off then back on. Like clockwork, it brews two more Dixie cups worth of coffee and I recycle the power again, and get two more. What the hell?
So my wife and I enjoy our regular size cups of coffee, thus emptying the BrewStation, and my wife tells me it should be cleaned. I whip out the coffee cleaner stuff and as expected, it will only brew the cleaner stuff two Dixie cups at a time. Forget it. My life is too short to deal with this kinda crap. I'm pretty sure we'll be out purchasing a new percolator today. I somehow suspect this was planned well in advance by my wife.
And in case you are wondering, no, we don't have the box it came in or the receipt. That pretty much spells, "You own it" in Wal Mart lingo.
What kind of coffee maker do you use? Tell me about it.
I don't know why things like this catch my eye, but as we were looking for something in the pet section at Wal Mart, I saw this goofy picture of a father and his thrilled kids enjoying their new fish aquarium.
We have fish and I have looked at them. But honestly, is it this exciting? This exciting for the whole family? Are these people thinking about dinner?
This is interesting. Apparently, when you move up to the 55 gallon sized aquarium, the fish aren't as exciting to view, but you get a mom and a new sister. What happened to the other little girl? Did they trade her in? Is this a step-mom and her daughter from a previous marriage? Is that other little girl in prison somewhere? Who knows.
The important thing is, these people are easily entertained - not unlike your host.
You'd think that we would have something better to do than jump in a little truck and head southwest of San Antonio just for a little drive, and today, we did. We drove through our neighborhood seeking out garage sales, and I must report that the pickin's were mighty slim. So, on a whim, I said, "Let's go to Lytle", and my wife simply responded with , "Let's go!" 
We took Loop 1604 from the GNW and headed south through Atascosa to I-35. At this point I usually insert a comment about how nice it is to drive just a few minutes and be out into the country. I won't repeat it this time, but you can appreciate the feeling (unless you live in a really huge city, or you already live out in the woods and are only reading this blog during your monthly visit to civilization).
Directly west of San Antonio along Highway 90 is a town called Hondo which we have visited before, and today, we ended up there for lunch. I'll tell you about that later. But to orient yourself, check out the handy map provided by our friends at Google Maps, and appropriately annotated by Bill Gates and I using PowerPoint.
I had originally thought of this as being a very brief trip down to Lytle, perhaps lunch at some undetermined restaurant, a few pictures of the things we find interesting and then back home. I also can tell you that I was eager to see first hand the evil Cabaret that has opened outside of the greater Lytle Metropolis, and get a picture of it. I did. You can read more about that over at Strange in SA.
From I-35 south, we headed down 132 which is also US-81 and for those that live there, Main Street. Lytle looks like a typical small town farming community, but a lot nicer than many of have seen in South Central Texas.
Of course, I love the older buildings along the main drag, but the mixture of new homes tastefully interspersed among the older neighborhood just a few blocks in town was a welcome sight for someone who would like to move outside of San Antonio, but not feel as though either everything will be brand spankin'-cookie cutter-new, or completely run down shacks inhabited by folks hiding from the law. Think Christine.
If you need to mail a package or a final resting place, you can do it in Lytle.
Okay, one final shot at the goofy Cabaret thing. The place is not only out of town, but by my calculation, it was also in the next county. When someone in Lytle says, Not in my backyard, they ain't kidding!
Just a stones throw down the road from Lytle is a tiny place called Natalia. It is probably much bigger than what you pass on 132, I mean, there is so much farm land out there and just wide open space, but to the Saturday afternoon drive-by, Natalia looks pretty small.
Sure, they have the post office and even their own memorial to those who have served. Very nicely done and well maintained. This alone is worth a trip to Natalia.
I noticed this tiny little chapel and I swear, I think I have seen this thing in another small town. And if you look at the picture, it looks as though it has been moved. Who knows? I know it is tall enough to walk in, but seriously, you'd have to go outside to change your mind.
Further down the road is the town of Devine. I really enjoyed this little place. We have some friends who live just on the other side of I-35 and it is easy to understand why they are willing to make the commute to San Antonio for work.
And these people put on a serious flea market! We didn't stop, although we seriously thought about it.
This is sort of interesting. You know how sometimes, some guy will open up a business and it does so well, he decides to open up another one right across town? Well, it turns out that some lady named Ruthie knows a good thing when she sees it. Hence, two lounges less than a mile apart. Technically, that is across town.
Devine does have your standard items - the water tower labeled appropriately, and a big huge bank. We actually stopped in the parking lot of the bank and purchased some Girl Scout cookies. The taste just the same out in the country as they do in the city.
One thing that you don't see everyday. A motorized wheelchair junkyard. I guess I just didn't realize there was such a market.
There is an intersection of Highways 132 and 173, and when you head back north, before long, you will make your way to Hondo - and that is what we did. The drive is wonderful. Open farmland and the occasional house. About half way to Hondo, you can begin to recognize the change in landscape. Off in the distance you can see the beginning of the Hill Country. On such a beautiful day, it is a crime not to own a convertible anymore.
I only post a handful of pictures on these little reports, but I often take close to a hundred pictures in just an hour or so. I have a method where I transfer the full-sized photos onto a portable hard drive, then delete the images on my 1gb disk for the camera. Apparently I forgot to clean up the disk, so by the time we got to Devine, my disk was full. First stop in Hondo was the Super Wal-Mart where I purchased two 1gb SD disks for $18.00. How did the people of Hondo survive before Wal-Mart?
Once in Hondo, we were simply famished. I'll tell you about the vittles next time.
I had always thought Beef O'Brady's was just a local outfit in my parents town of Brandon, but come to find out, they are in 23 states including Texas, just nothing near San Antonio. Too bad. Turns out they do have a few locations near Panama City Beach, and luckily for us, there is one just across the street from the WalMart in Callaway.
Beef's is a sports bar type of set up with loads of TVs everywhere, including individual monitors at most of the booths and tables. This allows you to watch whatever you choose, from ESPN, FoxNews or your favorite soap if needed. My son reports that Beef's is always good for showing the pay-per-view events like boxing and UFC events.
The menu is loaded with lots of the usual neighborhood bar & grill like options (think Applebee's, Chili's, Friday's, Bennigan's, etc.) and we decided to start with an order of the Onion Rings served with some sort of orange looking tangy and spicy dipping sauce. Good stuff. The rings were just the way I like them and we made extremely quick work of them.
My son ordered a sandwich called the Watterson apparently named after one of Beef's first customers. The sandwich is made with roast beef, with Swiss cheese on rye, loaded with lots of salad. I love it when people are not afraid to put loads of mayonnaise on a sandwich! He added a little serving of potato salad which was pretty good.
Although the menu had numerous possibilities, I immediately honed in on The Reuben and was pretty pleased with it. The sandwiches are not puny little two-bite affairs that leave you wishing for more. I also had the potato salad which was very creamy and enjoyable.
Our waitress was very friendly and even though the place was still doing a brisk lunch hour business, things were served quickly. As we were leaving, she swapped our tea glasses for environmentally friendly Styrofoam cups - okay, maybe not so green, but in this Florida humidity, it was appreciated - and sent us on to retrieve the vehicle from Wal Mart.
Good food, good service and an atmosphere perfect for game day or just lunch, we could use a Beef's in San Antonio. If you get a chance, give Beef O'Brady's a try - it's a Tasty Treat.
