To start the year off right we went down to a restaurant we had been to several years ago. It is called Martha's Bloomers which is just outside the small town of Navasota, about 15 miles south of Bryan. You can look it up on the web at http://www.marthasbloomers.com/ and is named for two felines, Martha and Bloomers.

The human staff said that the cats run the place and so here you go with Martha meeting us in the driveway to escort us to the door. And then Martha (actually a male cat) shows us to our seat in the tea room.

Once seated we started with raspberry tea ... of course no wine on Sunday before noon in Texas ...

Then we enjoyed a wonderful lunch prepared in a very gormet style. I had the chicken salad in a wrap and Jo-Anne had the quiche loraine, and both had the tomato bisque soup. All absolutely top of the line fresh, neatly presented, and service superb! You can actually see the minced tomato in the soup ....

And to finish the cat theme all the windows are etched with cat images walking on a picket fence. A really neat place well worth returning to.

As the rest of the country was in a deep freeze, so was Texas. Friday night the temperature hit a low 17 degrees and didn't get above freezing on Saturday. Even though we "dripped" the faucets, all the water lines froze. Here is the intrepid maintenance crew with heat gun in hand on Saturday morning at 17 degrees trying to thaw the lines. It doesn't take much to see why the lines froze; red is hot and white are the cold water lines. These plastic pipes are on the floor of the attic, above our uninsulated porch; to the right of where my feet are begins the heated and insulated part of the house. There's just sheet rock between these pipes and the outdoors for 30 feet. At least our RV has an Arctic Pack that automatically heats the pipes and holding tanks!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!

Bruce and Jo-Anne, with Buster and Bandit are happy to welcome in the new year from our place in Bryan, Texas and make a toast to the New Year to all our friends and loved ones and wish them the very best in the coming year.