Skipping school. Playing hookey. Calling in sick. It feels like I am breaking a rule or something, but I am well within my rights. In fact, I rarely use a sick day, a PTO day or any other day when I am gone and everyone else is at work. And when I have done that lately, it’s been to accompany loved ones to big, important medical things. It’s frankly about time I take a few days for non-surgical reasons. So here I am, at the beautiful and historic Ashton Hotel in downtown Fort Worth. We had a very good, slightly strange day yesterday, and today, we’re planning to head to the zoo. But let’s recap.
Cas is on Spring break this week. He got to do some of the tedious adulting stuff earlier in the week, too. He manned the checkbook when we had a repair person come out and fix a thing at our house, made a trip to our local warehouse store for paper towels and Kleenex and such, and on Wednesday, he drove me back and forth to work while my car got new brake pads. Woo-Hoo! What a fun vacation! Nevertheless, when my Wednesday at work ended, I put a sign on the library door explaining that it would re-open Monday and I got the heck out of there. Thursday started well enough. I made a bit of food, and we went about the business of managing two more errands on our way out of town. Somewhere along the path to Fort Worth, a chunk of road debris suddenly flew into our path and skated under Cas’ car. It was quickly gone again, but it apparently sheared off the head of just one bolt on its way back to the rear bumper. We didn’t know a single thing was wrong until we got off the highway and stopped moving at highway speeds. There was a rattle. The rattle showed up just a little bit on our way to the Kimbell Art Museum. We figured it would probably still be there when we got out of the museum, so we checked out some art. It’s a nice collection, and we had a good time moving from paintings to sculptures to an outdoor fountain. We also made sure to locate the one thing in the space that was painted by Michaelangelo. It was something he did when he was around twelve or thirteen years old, and it’s called “The Torment of Saint Anthony.” I work with twelve and thirteen years old olds daily, so thinking of it from the perspective of someone who knows how middle schoolers operate, it’s even more impressive. But we were starting to get a little hungry, so with a nod toward the great masters, we headed for the door.
There was still a rattle, and it had gotten worse. But also, we were hungry. So the plan was formed. We stopped for a sandwich at a place one of my mother-in-law’s “foodie” friends recommended: “Local Foods Kitchen.” Five stars, by the way. Amazing food, though the atmosphere was a little chaotic. While we ate, we researched auto repair shops in the immediate area. We ended up choosing a spot called J&N that got us in and out in under 20 minutes with a new bolt, a rattle-free vehicle and a smile, all for ten bucks. Mischief managed. We need to go leave a Google review, because that place was… well, to borrow a term from the kids I teach… it was clutch.
After that, it was late enough in the day to check in to our hotel. We did that, dropped our stuff off and headed to a spot just down the street that has a bubbles-themed happy hour. Half price sparkling wines at a spot called “Grace.” Seems appropriate to celebrate our vacation’s beginning with a toast. From there, we headed to a few other spots, ending up at Thompson’s Bookstore, which is a bar that has a speakeasy walk-through-the-bookshelf bar downstairs from it. Seems strange to have a secret bar under another bar, but they seem consistently busy in both bars, so it must be working out. They print the password on the bottom of the receipt you get at the main floor’s bar, so to get downstairs, you have to walk to the bookshelf and speak the password to the man guarding the bookshelf. Yesterday, it was “When it’s a jar.” The password is a punchline to a punny joke. Great. When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar! Nyuk Nyuk. We only used the password to take a stroll through the downstairs so we could scoot out of the secret exit.
Something we discovered in our moving around town was that this weekend, Fort Worth is hosting an event that is touted as the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing. And now, I feel like a dummy, because I didn’t know catching fish was a competitive sport. I have follow up questions. Is there a trophy? Maybe a gold, silver, bronze kind of thing? Who competes? Did they make it through several levels of competition to get to the big show that is the Bassmasters Classic, which is what this thing is apparently called? I am having a good time trying to predict who is in town specifically for the fishing competition and who is just a garden variety tourist. We will certainly see more of this today as we head to the Zoo. In the meantime, hang a Gone Fishin’ sign on my door, because I am off work and on an adventure with Cas.
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