We’re planning a road trip.

There’s breaking news this morning from our Let’s Get Marcy Out of the House department. WE’RE PLANNING A ROAD TRIP! This time Sam wants to head west to the Rocky Mountains, which is fine with me because mountains are entertaining and attractive, and I’m always excited to go damn near anywhere. Since I don’t have the wherewithal to hike or engage in any mountain-inspired outdoor activities, I promised Sam I’d bring along a sack of crunchy things and a couple of books and hang out near the car so he can shlep up and down various trails as much as he wants. And then we’ll go to a restaurant.

Unexpected storms are heading our way today. They’ve stopped for breakfast in southern Oklahoma and should arrive in the Dallas area within the next couple of hours. So far I have no idea if we’re expecting substantial rain from this event or not, but any amount of free water is welcome around here because Texas is still stuck in a drought. The red star on the following map indicates Howdygram headquarters in Mesquite. If you zoom in, I’m the senior citizen in the blue robe waving her cane. Wave back if you want to, okay?

Sam will be home from the supermarket in a few minutes, which is a good thing because I’ve had an insane craving for a large volume of lunch meat — specifically, Hillshire Farm super-thin chicken breast, pictured below for your possible interest. This is actually one of my tamer cravings, since I usually I go for a crazy explosion of flavor, such as: 1) chocolate soy milk, Mexican Velveeta and green olives; and 2) pickles and biscuits.

Let me know if you want to stop by for a snack today because visitors are welcome with advance reservations. Thank you.

Our road trip retrospective, the final chapter.

The project du jour at Howdygram headquarters is LAUNDRY. We’ve got mountains of it, and my goal is to finish everything before Sam gets home from work tonight including a pile of bath towels and two sets of sheets. The folding party starts at 7 p.m. sharp so if you’d like to stop by I’ll make a really nice bucket of soup and we can watch three “Hardcore Pawn” reruns. Click here if you’re interested. Thank you.

And now, the final installment of our road trip retrospective!

On June 25 we drove from Nashville to Little Rock, Arkansas ... a 350-mile, six-hour shlep along I-40 that took us through Memphis and across the Mississippi River shortly before lunch time. We eventually stopped to eat at Sweet Pea’s truck stop, an authentic dive on the outskirts of Wheatley with dingy wood paneling, excellent club sandwiches and billboards advertising “We Welcome Smokers.” I’m pretty sure they’ve hosted every smoking trucker on earth.

We arrived in Little Rock just in time for an early dinner and selected The Whole Hog Cafe based on six pages of customer reviews on TripAdvisor. The food was awesome! They serve the best barbecue we’ve ever had and even give you teeny containers of free sauce to take home. Afterwards we drove all over town trying to find a Baskin Robbins with the help of our GPS, which eventually routed us across the Arkansas River and past the state capitol to a gas station near the Little Rock Zoo. Apparently every Baskin Robbins in Little Rock is located in a gas station with a sign taped on the window. It’s amazing what I’ll do for sugar-free ice cream.

After breakfast the next morning we spent three hours at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, a huge and beautiful building downtown on the riverfront that’s packed with gigantic photos, memorabilia, interactive exhibits, videos and films, President Clinton’s bullet-proof limo, a replica of the oval office and a restaurant on the lower level. Clinton is my favorite modern president and I’d been wanting to see his museum for years. It was worth the wait, and as an added bonus they offer cheap admission and exceptionally friendly tour guides and staff. I hope we’ll be able to go back one day.

We left the museum around noon and drove back to Howdygram headquarters in Texas, a six-hour drive on I-30 through Hope (President Clinton’s birthplace) and Texarkana. I’m glad Sam and I had a chance to travel like this! Even though we used my new wheelchair at the larger venues (museums) I managed to stay mobile and relatively pain-free the rest of the time. Glorioski, hot damn and yee-haw!

In case you’re interested, Sam went back to work today after a three-month leave of absence and it’s mighty strange to be home alone again. If I get bored I might have to stand outside and flag down a few neighbors.

Thank you for reading this.

Elvis, Opryland and the world’s largest roach motel.

It’s definitely been a busy Sunday here at Howdygram headquarters. After a nice afternoon drive to Plano we came home to watch Tiger Woods win the AT&T Invitational, which turned out to be a genuine sweat festival at the Congressional Country Club in 100° heat.

Afterwards we enjoyed four consecutive hours of Olympic trials on NBC. Tonight’s activities included swimming, extremely fast women galloping around in bikinis, and men’s and women’s gymnastics. Sam and I love watching gymnastics, probably because we both always sucked at gymnastics big time in school. I also can’t gallop in a bikini. (I’ve never even OWNED one, for which all of you should be mighty grateful.) The London Olympics get underway on July 27. In addition to all the popular competitions — track and field, diving, archery, rowing, weightlifting and so on — we also get stuck with plenty of dumb crap like canoe sprinting, table tennis, trampoline, fencing, badminton, beach volleyball and water polo. Seriously.

And now for part two of our road trip retrospective! On June 21 we left Vicksburg heading north on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile, two-lane scenic highway maintained by the National Park Service that features exceptional vistas, no billboards, no litter and 10,000 years of American history. There also are no stores or gas stations and most of the time you don’t even see another car. This is swell until you get a craving for Cheetos and can’t figure out where to buy them. At lunch time we stopped in Tupelo, Mississippi, for Mexican food at D’Casa and a peek at Elvis Presley’s birthplace, briefly careened into the northwest corner of Alabama because Sam promised it would be fun, and then headed back into Mississippi and on to Corinth for more Civil War history.

The roach motel pictured above is actually the Quality Inn on Route 72. We checked in and out in less than 15 minutes after discovering that our non-smoking room smelled like an ash tray and included a large number of cockroaches darting around in the bed and dresser drawers. After I stopped screaming we moved next door to a beautiful Hampton Inn behind the Exxon station.

The following day Sam and I visited a variety of inspirational sites such as the Corinth Contraband Camp, amazing exhibits and artwork at Corinth’s Civil War Interpretive Center and spent several hours at the Shiloh National Military Park across the state line in Tennessee.

The little town of Corinth was actually cuter than we expected, with a completely restored downtown area, gorgeous real estate and a number of interesting restaurants such as Bill’s with all-you-can-eat catfish and tasty cole slaw. Corinth is also home to a nice big Wal-Mart, where we had to beg the pharmacy for replacement insulin (see my earlier post) after we figured out that my new medicine cooler wasn’t working.

On June 23 we drove the last leg of the Natchez Trace Parkway northeast to Nashville, where we had reservations at the Hyatt Place in Hendersonville and tickets for the Grand Ole Opry ... which turned out to be a ROTTEN SCAM.

The Grand Ole Opry moved to a new venue about a year ago when it was bought out (and ruined) by the Gaylord entertainment conglomerate. The problem? THERE’S NOWHERE TO PARK! The Opry is on the same property as Opry Mills Mall, a massive shopping venue that also includes the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, the Gaylord Opryland Resort, the Opryland Event Center, a 20-screen cinema and two dozen restaurants. Seriously, how can these chiselers sell thousands of tickets to the Grand Ole Opry on a Saturday night and not provide anywhere to park? After driving around in circles for almost an hour Sam finally stopped in a fire lane, bolted into the box office and demanded our money back for two $45 tickets. Immediately thereafter we spent a large chunk of the aforementioned refund on a gourmet Chinese dinner at Fulin’s in Hendersonville. (For your possible interest, I found out later that the Opry isn’t actually a concert venue at all ... you just sit and watch a live two-hour radio program with commercials and the performers are a bunch of geezers who can’t get a gig anywhere else. Holy crap.)

The next day Sam and I visited Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum, where they’ve got dozens and dozens of amazing one-of-a-kind vehicles on display dating back to 1924. The 1928 Martin Aerodynamic pictured above looks like a Dr. Seuss invention.

Stay tuned for another road trip chapter tomorrow, okay? I need to go to bed now.

The south will rise again. Believe it.

This is the day I know you’ve been waiting for … the first installment of our road trip retrospective! I suppose the best way to get started would be a chronological album of photos, so grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable. If you don’t drink coffee please feel free to select a reasonable alternative.

Our first stop was an authentic Cajun lunch at Marilynn’s Place in Shreveport, Louisiana, about 175 miles from home. Sam and I both had “po-boy” sandwiches. I had shrimp, he had crawfish. My shrimp po-boy is pictured below alongside Bozz Baucum, Marilynn’s owner and chef, a very happy dude with a great accent. After lunch we drove a bunch of back roads across the entire state, which included small towns, real bayous and a stop at the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, located at the base (Selman Field) where my dad had been stationed for flight training during World War II. We crossed the Mississippi River and arrived at our first overnight destination in plenty of time for genuine southern cuisine at the Chinese Buffet of Vicksburg, which was everything we expected (cold egg rolls and too many kids). Afterwards we enjoyed a junket to the Ameristar Casino and I won myself a seriously lovely $120 jackpot on a penny slot machine.

Vicksburg has a lot of very nice riverboat casinos that attract a swinging local crowd of heavy smokers, where the average age is 70 and most are in wheelchairs.

On day two Sam and I visited the Vicksburg National Military Park, a 16-mile driving tour on the site of a 45-day siege during the Civil War that involved 77,000 Union soldiers and 33,000 Confederates. After trying to capture Vicksburg from every conceivable direction General Ulysses S. Grant eventually achieved victory by starving the entire city and forcing a surrender. The battlefield is an amazing experience. You can actually feel the ghosts!

Other activities in Vicksburg included swell food at Rusty’s Riverfront Grill, gigantic murals depicting the city’s history at Catfish Row, beautiful back roads and views of the Mississippi River, and a profitable afternoon (this time for Sam) at the Rainbow Casino, where we enjoyed a surprisingly excellent food at their excellent buffet. Frances the hostess was excellent, too. She brought me sugar-free pie — I love sugar-free pie! — and promised “the south will rise again.” Sam and I believed her.

Please stay tuned for the next installment of our road trip retrospective, probably tomorrow if I set aside enough time to sort through the photos. Sam and I have been busy watching a lot of crappy science fiction movies this week, such as Wild, Wild Planet (1965), a dubbed Italian dreck-fest that included a mad scientist turning people into teeny dolls with teeny diapers and teeny transfusion IVs, miniature sets with Jetson-style cars flying around on strings and idiot astronauts who hurl insults by calling each other “helium head.” Basically, this is a Technicolor version of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), the worst movie ever made.

I think I’ll rustle up some grub and watch a few Boston Blackie reruns. Thank you for reading this!

Happy birthday, Sam!

Good morning and howdy from Texas! Excuse me for a few minutes while my cane and I attempt a couple of handsprings to celebrate the following two momentous occasions: 1) Sam’s 53rd birthday (today); and 2) the Supreme Court’s decision (yesterday) to uphold Obamacare.

Thank you for your patience. Please call 911.

And now, an apology. It took me a little longer than expected to get back into my usual Howdygram routine due to the typical assortment of back-from-vacation baloney, such as: 1) following up an overcharge from the Hyatt Place in Nashville; 2) how did I end up with a rash in my left armpit; 3) figuring out which post office held our mail; 4) contacting Amazon so I can return the lousy insulin travel wallet that tried to kill me in Corinth, Tennessee; and 5) why the hell did AT&T decide to add $32.35 to our June bill for no reason whatsoever. Details concerning items 4 and 5 appear below for your possible interest.

Regarding the lousy insulin travel wallet pictured above, this useless contraption is advertised online with phrases like “refrigeration not needed,” “keeps insulin safe without the need for refrigeration” and “lasts four times longer than an ice pack.” In a word, this is horseshit. I followed instructions to the letter and all of my insulin got ruined. By the time we got to Corinth, Tennessee, I had to throw out four brand new insulin pens, find the closest Wal-Mart and grovel for a prescription refill, buy an Igloo cooler and then keep it filled with ice from assorted motels in three states. A few minutes ago I read some fine print on the manufacturer’s website, where they claim their travel wallet will only maintain the temperature of insulin at 79°. That’s a far cry from “refrigeration not needed” and “lasts four times longer than an ice pack,” since unopened insulin has to be stored at 46°. The Howdygram would like to thank Amazon for agreeing to a full refund with free return shipping.

Where AT&T is concerned, apparently a number of “promotional discounts,” which I never knew I had, expired this month, so the Einsteins at AT&T just went ahead and started charging full price for everything, including the complimentary Internet upgrade they offered me back in April. I seriously despise these people.

Our road trip retrospective begins with my next post, so come back soon, okay?

Holy crap. We’re home!

We pulled into the garage about an hour ago after a six-hour drive from Little Rock, Arkansas. Our first order of business is showers, unpacking toiletries and ordering dinner from China City. I’ll get started writing Howdygram posts later tonight and tomorrow with all the essential details from our 2,100-mile road trip.

For the record, I tried to write a post from our new iPad but it doesn’t work very well with the blog interface, the keyboard is a little too small for any serious typing and I couldn’t preview any of my work. What the hell. I know you’ll forgive me.

It’s time to order food. More later, okay? Thank you for reading this!

Nothing I do has ever been worth $120 an hour to anybody.

First, please accept my apology for not writing posts for the last couple of days. I didn’t intend to ignore you; it just happened. I guess I was preoccupied with other crap, although at this point I honestly can’t remember what that other crap might have been. It’s hell getting old.

My Mac technician finally showed up today to install the latest operating system and sync our computers with our new iPad. This turned out to take a lot longer and cost a lot more money than I’d planned, leading me to conclude that I’ve been in the wrong business all these years because nothing I do has ever been worth $120 an hour to anybody. After shelling out $360 for three hours of labor, during which Betty talked about her mother and juggled an endless flurry of incoming calls on her cell phone, I am proud to announce that emails now show up on our iPad. I promise to let you know if it was worth the money as soon as I get over the shock.

For your possible interest I’m pleased to offer yet another installment of our popular Holy Crap Gallery, this time featuring three former cutie-pies who haven’t had much luck with their aging genes. I think Kathleen Turner and Linda Ronstadt are the scariest of the bunch.

Incidentally, Sam and I had a swell and profitable junket yesterday to the Choctaw Casino in Oklahoma! Following an okay lunch with sugar-free pie, I hauled in GREAT BIG WINS (more than $60) on a couple of new penny slots and then Sam hit a jackpot on the best slot machine God ever invented, the Cash Wizard (see below), after which we bailed out immediately and drove back to Texas so we wouldn’t be tempted the blow the money.

This week we’re busy tending to a lot of essential baloney as we get ready for our big ROAD TRIP, such as prescription refills, getting a new pair of jeans shortened, figuring out which shoes to pack and selecting obscure towns to stop for lunch on the way to wherever we’re going. A map of our travel route appears below.

Indicated here are: 1) Howdygram headquarters, our starting point; 2) Vicksburg, Mississippi, where we’ll visit a huge Civil War battlefield, a great museum and several riverboat casinos; 3) another Civil War battlefield in Shiloh, Tennessee; 4) Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry; and 5) the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also on our schedule is a visit to Monroe, Louisiana, located on the map between points 1 and 2, where my father was stationed in 1943 for basic training in the Army Air Corps. Apparently the only remaining building on base has been turned into a World War II museum and I’m feeling compelled to check it out. I even have a fantasy that I’ll find a photo of dad on the wall. No kidding.

I’d better get myself ready for bed. Tomorrow Sam and I want to road-test our new Garmin GPS (delivered from Amazon earlier today) and visit the Dallas Farmer’s Market.

As you can see, this is NOT the kind of farmer’s market that sets up in a parking lot once or twice a month. It’s a permanent complex of buildings with indoor vendor stalls and restaurants that’s open every day of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving. Sam and I haven’t been there before, so stay tuned for an in-depth review. I apologize in advance if you’re convinced this will be boring.

Shalom, y’all.

Here’s something frightening. I ordered myself a bathing suit today.

I’ll begin this post with breaking news from our Fifteen Minutes of Fame department. Former “child star” actor and reformed drug addict Todd Bridges and his wife have filed for divorce after 14 years of marriage. Just between us, it’s almost impossible to give a crap about this.

In other news, I placed an order today for more Taco TVP (textured vegetable protein) from Shelf Reliance. This stuff is AMAZING AS HELL. It’s really inexpensive, rehydrates in THREE MINUTES and actually tastes like — and is almost as slimy as — the beef filling from Taco Bell! It’s fabulous wrapped in a low-carb flour tortilla with hot sauce and a fistful of shredded cheese. Sam loves it, too, except he prefers normal tortillas. I ordered two four-pound drums to make sure we don’t run out for the rest of our natural lives.

Here’s something frightening. In anticipation of our big road trip next month I ordered myself a BATHING SUIT, pictured below for your possible interest.

It was only $20.99 on sale for 30% off plus an extra 40% discount with a promotion code. I really don’t mind horsing around in a hotel pool when I’m vacationing in another state, the bathing suit is dirt cheap and nobody knows who the hell I am. And not wanting Sam to feel neglected, I ordered him a pair of black trunks so he won’t be tempted just to sit on a deck chair and laugh his ass off.

I just decided to celebrate TVP, new swimwear and Todd Bridges’ lousy marriage by ordering dinner from China City. Thank you for reading this.

Welcome to Dallas ... un-hip, out of shape and smutty.

Wow. I’ve been sitting at the computer reading all of my favorite news websites — ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Yahoo, the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Observer and the Fort Worth Star Telegram — and realized it’s already 4 a.m. and I have no desire whatsoever to go to bed even though Sam’s been unconscious for at least three hours.

What the hell. Happy Memorial Day.

Y’all might be interested to know I’ve discovered a new website — Fab.com — an “Ikealike” marketplace for clever yet reasonably-priced crapola including gifts, gadgets, housewares, artwork, peculiar lamps and furniture. The photo at right features “Beardo,” the knit beanie with a built-in beard designed to keep your face warm. It’s a steal at $28 and available in several go-with-everything colors. I’m considering this for the Howdygram’s official headgear.

I did some online shopping last night to prepare for our road trip next month. Just between us, it used to be a lot more fun to plan for a vacation. In decades past this usually meant researching the nightlife and buying a pile of new clothes and shoes. Now it means wheelchair gloves, an insulin travel cooler and how the hell am I supposed to fit all these pills in my purse. Here’s what I ordered ...

I’m especially excited about the wheelchair push bar (stop laughing) from Wrightstuff.biz that’s designed for tall people, fits over the handles of a wheelchair and adds about seven inches of height. (We don’t want Sam to wind up with a creaky back.) The insulin cooling pouch is really swell, too. It keeps medication “refrigerated” without ice! Apparently you just soak the pouch in water for a few minutes and it keeps the contents cold for up to three days even in extremely hot temperatures. I think this was a great buy at $26.50 from Amazon. I ordered a blue one. I actually wanted red but it cost $2 more for no apparent reason.

You may have noticed that online magazines love to publish bullshit lists that rank cities across the United States on a variety of meaningless and unsubstantiated criteria. Even worse, they all hate Dallas. In recent weeks we ranked #15 on Men’s Health’s 100 Smuttiest Cities in America, the results of which were calculated by the number of adult DVD rentals, dildo sales and strip clubs. And according to Travel+Leisure we just came in dead last on their list of America’s Top 35 Hipster-Friendly Cities due to a shortage of snooty boutiques, dog parks, free wi-fi and Tweet volume. This is actually kind of amusing, however, since the median age of a Travel+Leisure subscriber is 49.5 years. They don’t exactly know how to attract hipsters, either.

But GLORIOSKI ... all is not lost! Dallas just landed in first place on Bundle.com’s study of dining out in America, since we apparently spend 91% more doing this than any other major city in the United States. (It’s not that our restaurants are so terrific; we’re just too busy roping cattle to defrost a chicken for dinner.)

And finally, the data presented above might explain our placement last week at #47 on the American College of Sports Medicine’s Fitness Index, where they point out that Dallas has too many fat diabetics and not enough golf courses, farmer’s markets and baseball diamonds. Also, almost nobody here rides a bicycle to work. Although we do rank high on tennis courts, we don’t use them because it’s 110° outside and we’re probably standing in a buffet line.

Thank you for reading this.

Vegetables, chair caning and Civil War battlefields in historic Vicksburg.

Sam’s flight home from L.A. on Sunday was uneventful, thank God, and exactly on time. I had to leave a little earlier than usual to pick him up, however, because my route to the airport took me through Irving, Texas, where round four of the Byron Nelson Championship was underway at the TPC Four Seasons Country Club, and the final day of Dallas Comic Con was wrapping up directly across the street at the Irving Convention Center. I managed to avoid all the traffic. I am a genius.

Breaking news. WE’RE PLANNING A ROAD TRIP! Sometime in June we’ll be heading east to Vicksburg, Mississippi, home of Civil War battlefields, the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum, Mississippi River sunset cruises, the Cedar Grove Mansion and a bunch of large riverfront casinos.  The map below indicates: A) Howdygram headquarters in Mesquite; and B) Vicksburg.

At first we were thinking we’d need one overnight on the way but I just figured out that Vicksburg is only 5½ hours from Dallas so there’s no reason we can’t do that in one day. Pictured below are sweaty people buying vegetables at the Vicksburg Farmer’s Market. I have no idea whatsoever why the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau thought this would be an asset to their home page.

Sam and I may also consider a number of exciting scheduled June events recommended by the Vicksburg CVB, including: 1) the Mississippi Outstanding Teen Pageant; 2) the Dexter Allen Blues Band concert on Clay Street; 3) an Intro to Microsoft Excel workshop at Mississippi State University; 4) the Seven Step Method of Chair Caning hosted by the Southern Cultural Heritage Center; and 5) the Milt Hinton Memorial Jazz Festival. The aforementioned Milt Hinton appears below.

Although Vicksburg appears to have a little of everything where dining options are concerned, the only restaurants right now that interest me are the Panda Buffet on Iowa Boulevard next to Wal-Mart and China King on the I-20 Frontage Road. I’m probably not joking about this. Please don’t tell Sam, okay?

Thank you for reading this.