A New Game to Play

I know I haven't blogged since Saturday morning before I left for San Marcos. One day turns into the next and before you know it you're thirty-two sitting in front of a computer wondering who's slowly dyeing your hair grey one hair at a time.

Jackson's coach, Darren, is the older brother of a guy I played basketball with in high school. He and Chris go to church and play ball together so they stay in more contact than I do. Still, it was good to see Darren.

As it turns out, I did met somebody who played college ball years ago with Darren. When Brian and I played golf a couple of weeks ago, we ran into a guy at the pro shop who was from Boerne and played at Concordia Lutheran. Knowing that's where Darren played, we played Six Degrees of Darren Masur; it didn't take long.

The ride down to San Marcos was more fun than the game though. I stopped at Sonic in Belton and ordered the foot-long cheese coney and a medium vanilla shake I so richly deserved. A few minutes later, I caught myself singing along to Stevie Ray, eating said coney, and working the cross word puzzle. I realized that I hadn't felt that happy in a while. Just me on the open road belting some tunes and eating a dog.

Which brings to to another story this from morning. My bad habit lately (yep, just one bad habit have I) is reading too much in the car while driving. Lately, I've been able to read the entire paper on the drive in to work. Well, this morning, I was working the cross word puzzle in light traffic on Central Expressway. A truck two lanes over started honking at me. Now while driving in Dallas, the first rule is never make eye contact. You don't know if you're gonna get a smile or a bullet right between the eyes. So I kept driving.

The driver kept my pace, rolled down the window, and whistled at me. It was my friend who lives in Austin. Actually, it was my friend Bonnie's husband, Mark, who is my friend but probably wouldn't be were it not for marrying Bonnie. I figured he was in town on business and was headed downtown at the same time I was. He pulled off the expressway so I followed his truck. Except once we got to a grocery store's parking lot, it was not my friend Mark. It was some random stranger who looks like Mark and apparently thought I look like one of his friends. We had a good laugh and wondered what the odds were that we would mistake each other for other people.

I was just glad he didn't cap me.

That effectively ended my good day. The rest of it was boring work stuff for the next eleven hours. Twice a month I have evening meetings that keep me here late.

Just think, had I been born thirty seconds earlier or later, you'd be reading a blank blog since I would have been two hundred yards in front of or behind Mark, But Not Mark.

Don't you feel lucky? But then, maybe you, too, can play Six Degrees of Darren Masur.