Notes from Dallas:

If you live in Texas, take Spanish as your foreign language. I took three years of French, and it was absolutely worthless for my purposes this weekend. (Though I do live in the only state in the union where French has any value.)

To find boxes, go to the 24-hour Wal-mart or grocery store in your area and follow the stockers. Cereal boxes are ideal moving boxes, since they can't be packed too heavy, even with books. There's a large variety of sizes in a grocery store. Watch for those with split bottoms, though. We wound up with several frozen pizza boxes that were inadequate. Talk to the manager. Find out when stocking is done, usually around 1 am.

Scott Chaffin might scoff at my fear of 635, but we were driving at 70 miles an hour at 9:30 pm Wednesday night and saw brake lights go on ahead of us. We were in the third lane from the left. A chair had fallen into the middle of the road. Not cool, and very hard to get around in a town full of rude drivers.

Eat chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy at Gennie's Bishop Grill in Oak Cliff for lunch. Slap me, but it was better than my mama's, and she was an excellent cook.

I will crawl across broken glass for my sister.