Kathy and I had a date scheduled last Friday. I asked her on the phone that afternoon if she was interested in going to catch X-Men at the $2 theater in town. “Well, I had planned a little surprise, actually. I hope you like it.” I reassured her that I was sure I would, hung up, and proceeded to wonder what she had in mind. After I got home, we turned over the kids to Rene Johnson, who had evidently coengineered the surprise, and Kathy started driving us toward Canyon Lake. We traversed The Devils Backbone on the way, a section of state highway that winds along the top of a beautiful ridge of hills northwest of San Marcos, and which is home to a succession of seedy bars and BBQ joints I kept telling Kathy I thought she was taking me to.

We ended up at Hill Country Resort, a complex overlooking where my mom has a timeshare which overlooks the lake. “I thought we could eat at the snack bar, play some miniature golf, and go swimming,” Kathy said. Unfortunately, the snack bar had closed, so Kathy asked me to get our suits from the car while she double-checked the membership number in the office. “They’re in the suitcase!” she shouted after me as I headed to the car. I opened the trunk, found the suitcase, noticed the snacks, Doonesbury book, and changes of clothes that were therein, wondered briefly about their presence, resigned myself to the fact that I never know where things are or why they’re there, and headed back with the suits.

When I got back, Kathy was still in line, and said “Well, if you haven’t guessed yet, we’re staying the night.” My first thought was “No, we’re not,” but then I realized that was the surprise she had in mind, and the suitcase abruptly made sense. She assumed I had figured it out by that point, but I was, of course, still completely without a clue.

A highlight of the evening was going to visit the Louisiana Grill, which had opened nearby two weeks previously. When we walked in, nobody paid any attention to us for several minutes until an 8 year old boy materialized and said he’d go try to find us some menus. Another woman then wandered by and showed us to a seat, followed shortly thereafter by the 8 year old who had come up with a pair of mismatched menus. As we were looking at the dining options, a big, boisterous man came out from the back shouting “Who wants wine?!?!” with an iced tea pitcher full of the red liquid. “It’s free!” he went on, and began to distribute it to the interested parties. “Actually,” I heard him say from across the room to another patron, “it’s not really wine — it’s grape juice with Everclear in it! I’ll get the good stuff for you all next week.” Well, it turned out that the big guy was Keith, that he owned the place, and that 3 of his waitstaff hadn’t bothered to turn up that evening, which is why he was shorthanded. But the food was good, the view of the lake and sunset were great, and we thoroughly enjoyed our dinner and our last big outing before little Maggie arrives.