You are now entering The Colony! There is a reason cows run into the street here.

The Colony, TX.  7:45am.  Some random stupid park on Lake Lewisville.  I say “park” loosely.  What is a park anyway?  Besides krap spelled backwards?  I digress, back to stupid park.  We are there to register for the Liberty 10k with only moments to spare before the start of the race.  They ask for a $25 check written out to the Knights of Columbus.  Great, we have starving children living on the streets and we’re supporting England.  Next stop is to line up on the mud soaked grass to cheer on the little geebers finishing the 1 mile fun run.  Yay they’re done.  Now get out of here and let the professionals do their thing.  The 5k and 10k runs start together so everyone leap frogs over each other to get a good starting position.  This is not the Boston Marathon people, calm down.  The 300lb dude next to me starts doing arm stretches so close to my face that I fear he is going to blind me.  Finally the air horn goes off (side note: I love air horns and think everyone should own them instead of guns) and we start trotting.  Once the 10k runners and 5k runners/walkers split off, we were finally able to gain some momentum.  Now I’ll be honest, I did see something about a trail on the Liberty 10k’s website describing the route.  However, I had no idea almost the entire 10k would be run on a gravel path not even overlooking Lake Lewisville.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Dallas area, we’ve had quite a bit of rain in the last few days.  The gravel path was dirty, filthy, nasty and stupid uncomfortable.  It gets better.  It was nearly 100% humidity and the first water stop was at the 2.5 mile marker.  We’re thinking ok that’s great they’ll have water every couple of miles.  No.  That was it.  So Jason and I run along this boring, never-ending, useless trail having roughly 3 heart attacks each from exhaustion and the lack of water.  We were Positive Polly and Optimistic Oliver cussing the city of the Colony the entire run.  We also stopped to walk about 5 times.  A 10k we should have easily knocked out took us just under an hour for an average pace of 9:45.  Thanks, KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS.  AND M NIGHT SHAMALAN.  Even the onlookers who usually yell words of encouragement just stared at us like we had just run over their dog.  It was like they had never seen an organized sport before.  They still haven’t because there was nothing organized about it.  After we were done with the race we tried to yell upbeat motivational phrases to the runners still trickling in (“You’re almost done!  At least you don’t live here!  Oh you do?  Sorry!”) and this one wildebeast (we’ll call her “Roger”) made a gigantic spitting sound from the back of her throat to acknowledge us.  Keep it classy, the Colony.  Hey, at least we got a cool shirt with an eagle on it?

Post race swag. At least I can wear the shirt to the White Trash Party at Zen. Enzo likes it.

Thankfully, Jason took me to Norma’s Cafe to celebrate our epic fail run.

Special was fried chicken and waffles. Noticed this midway through meal. That information WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL YESTERDAY

Texas flag booths! Independence from Russia! Or is that in March?

Happy Days Set

He even let me order a cinnamon roll.  And then made me pay for it.  I got their veggie omelet and J-Dogg got the chicken fried steak (they’re famous for it!).

For a $1.99 ain't bad.

How you like yo steak?!?! Fried please. Con Pollo.

Got my veggies for the day. As my dad would say, "nice job Splatt."

Kind of Limp Bizkits

The veggie omelet was baller.  Tomatoes, onions and green pepper mixed with two kinds of cheese served with hash browns and whole wheat toast.  Jason loved the chicken fried steak but said the biscuits were not as good as Little Gus Cafe.  There are two things my family was known for growing up: going out for breakfast on the weekends and watching Cops.  Luckily, I have trained Jason to do both.

Important Update: My iMac died last week at 2.5 yrs old and is currently at the Apple store awaiting its destiny.  New motherboard?  Maybe.  New cable?  Possibly.  Just buy a laptop and get it over with?  OKAY!

I’m off to Whole Foods to buy essential ingredients for a Kaboomtown picnic.  Hopefully the rain will go away so Addison will shoot firework ver nice how much!  Happy 4th  America!  You’re the best!  Except The Colony, you are a dumb trumpet.

Selim’s Doener Kebap
4816 Belt Line Rd
Addison, TX 75254

Hidden Gem

You know those places where the waitstaff doesn’t speak English, the trash cans are always full, you swear they’re doing a drug business out the back, they mysteriously close for a month to “renovate” but nothing is done, and you keep going back because it is so awesome?  Yeah.  That’s Selim’s Doner Kebop.  On the outside it’s spelled Doener Kebap, on the inside it is referred to as Doner – just another reason why I love this place.  They don’t even give a care.

You order at the counter and if you don’t get the Doener wrap or Doener pita then you are a dumb trumpet and you might as well go eat sweet and sour chicken at May Dragon.  I think the biggest language barrier is when people DON’T order a doener and the dude is like “I don’t know…I…you like Doener?”  You have a choice between chicken doener and veal doener.  Imagine Bambi on a spit and then go with the chicken doener.  After you pay you go sit down and they call you back up like you won Bingo.  You need to tell them what toppings you want.  I liken this to painting the Sistine Chapel.  It is an artform.  You can totally F it up if you don’t know what you’re doing.  If they look at you funny take back whatever you ordered because it was wrong.  Pretend like you don’t know English and let them pick for you.  Or trust me – lettuce, banana pepper, onion and special sauce.  You can also ask for a hot sauce to add too.

The Greatest Decision Making Ever Done Happens At This Counter

The doener kebap is the number one fast food item in Germany.  The Germans gave us Dirk Nowitzki and the Beetle.  Do I really need to convince you any further?  The tortilla wrap they use is phenomenal.  The pita is certainly worth garbling about as well.  The doener and fries combo meal is like Siegfried and Roy – an unmatched duo in Dallas.  One time I didn’t get the fries and it felt like I had been savagely attacked by a tiger.  Too soon?

I don't even care if I eat bits of foil it's so good

Please, dear kind loyal readers, trust me on just this one thing: Go to Selim’s Doener Kebap and tell them I sent you.  It will confuse the shit out of them.