Advice for people in Texas who have friends from up north come for a visit

Do not stand out by the car saying goodbye for three hours.

It is cold outside. Granted, it is not as cold as your friend from up north is used to, but it is still cold. Either say goodbye and mean it and get in your cars and drive away, or at least go back inside. Go find a Whataburger or an IHOP and get some coffee. Do not stand outside in the cold.

I have dinner once a month with about fifteen friends. After the dinner was over, there still seemed to be a lot for me and my out-of-state friend to talk about. Rather than the two of us staying at the mostly empty table for twenty, we took the discussion outside for a bit. And, there seemed to be always one more thing to talk about before we left. Then we realized that we'd been talking for over two hours. We really had to go. We said goodbye.

We talked for another half an hour.

Okay, that was dumb thing to do, but that was how the day ended. After I did finally make myself get in the car and went home, I sat in a tub of hot water until my skin wrinkled. At least my home was only twenty minutes or so away. My friend had to drive an hour or two to get to a motel near his next destination.

It was a nice day. Not the beautiful perfect day that we had last weekend, but it didn't actually rain either. My husband met us for lunch, and then we went to the aquarium, and then we went to look at some building my friend wanted to see and took some pictures. Not a bad day at all.

And I did finally manage to make three of the four scarves I promised him. I'll have to mail him another one in a week or so. Maybe I'll get a little better at it, and his wife can have a nice looking one.