I usually wait a while before visiting a brand new restaurant to pass judgment. Well, as much as I pass judgment. I mean, I like to say I’m a food writer, not a food critic. And I believe that’s for the most part true… but… er, I think I’m getting off the subject here.
I didn’t feel I had to wait all that long before visiting Big Orange, though. I mean, after all, Scott McGehee and John Beachboard have their ducks in a row with Za Za. They know how to run a restaurant.
That being said… okay, I’ll just say it. Wow.
More stuff to click on
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Burger Joint of the Week; Big Orange.
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Maytag Blue burger
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Traveling with a Toddler: Houston to The Woodlands.

Breakfast again at the Embassy Suites. I have to admit, I am really impressed with their made-to-order breakfasts. Hunter ate four pancakes and was just overjoyed at having them available. I had another veggie omelet and oatmeal while Paul… well, Paul ate just about everything.


So we had a little ceremony. Hunter got to play with Punchy for a few more minutes, take some photos with the plant, hug it and say goodbye. We made a big deal about how Punchy needed to stay there, that the hotel suite was his home and he needed to stick around so he could make other people happy.

After the scramble to get the cart to the car, the accidental dropping of both her potty and my computer (the latter causing me a big scare, the former having happened at EVERY SINGLE STOP along our journey), we headed to Main Street and then down into the Museum District. We were bound for the Museum of Natural History, which Paul and I had visited in 2000 and which we were looking forward to because there was a butterfly exhibit there.
We drove around more than 45 minutes looking for it. I mean, the signs would point in a direction and then they would disappear. I suspect the museum is undergoing a facelift or something; we never did locate it.







Each station is different. There’s a government building, where you can spend your time doing forensics in the crime lab, or work as a police officer or city planner. There’s a stock market where you trade stocks. There’s a restaurant where you can “cook” and serve food. There’s even a TV station where you can be a producer or an anchor or a camera person.

After “working” at each station, you can clock out and receive pay for your work. The kids take that check to the bank, where other kids are working on exchanging the checks for cards that resemble cash. Those go to the ATM, where they go on the cards.

It’s a neat experience, where kids can play at real life. I thought it was phenomenal. The kids apparently loved it, too -- this was the most crowded part of the Children’s Museum, and everyone seemed engaged in the process.

After this, we went upstairs to the Tot Spot, an area specifically meant for kids 35 months and under. At 32 months, Hunter is almost aged out of this sort of playground, and she was by far the tallest child in the area. She and Paul took off their shoes and went to play in their socks in the area specifically designed for toddler play. They must have spent 45 minutes in there, and when the time was up she did not want to go. She’d had fun climbing over the varied terrain, playing with everything there was to play with on the level and having a good time.

After we put her shoes on, I pulled the gift out of the bag and handed it to her. At first she seemed confused. Then she concentrated, smiled and looked up at me with this overjoyed expression. “Momma, you found it!”
I wish I’d had my camera out. In the Children’s Museum’s gift shop, I had found the river otter we’d searched for so hard. It was $7. It was so worth it. She named it River Song (after one of her favorite Doctor Who characters) and wouldn’t part with it for the rest of the day.
We left out shortly afterwards, ready to head to The Woodlands for the final part of our vacation. After paying to get out of the Children’s Museum parking deck, we found our way to the interstate and headed up I-45 to our destination.
Of course, I took a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the planned community, just at a time when I really needed a restroom. I spotted a Culver’s and ran inside. I came out with a family sized box of fried cheese curds -- something I absolutely can’t resist. I had no idea there were Culver’s in Texas -- I thought the furthest location south was in Branson. A lucky turn, for sure.
We arrived a short time later at The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center on the southwest side of town. It was out in the woods (fitting). As we came up the drive we noticed the golf course, horseshoe pits and buildings dotted out on the edge of the golf course here and there. We pulled in, I ran in and got our informational packet and we drove over to our accommodations at Fairway Pines.
It’s an unusual set-up. I’m used to being able to park relatively close to the place where I’m staying. There’s a valet set up at the front entrance of the Fairway Pines between the buildings. We unloaded what we were taking into the resort (leaving behind dirty laundry packed into bags for taking home) onto a cart and I rolled it into the building with Hunter tagging alongside. We had a long way to go, too… about five sections down to our room on the inside of the wing, with the elevator to the second level about halfway down that length. Paul went and parked the van.









They handed Paul and I both these long two-pronged forks with big marshmallows on the end. We followed other guests over to a big firepit, where we helped Hunter toast the mallows over the fire. Then we walked back over, and the staffers took the marshmallows and sandwiched them between graham crackers and pieces of chocolate bars to make S’mores. There was no limit to how many you could make and consumed.



From there we went back to our room, grabbed a few things and headed out to the downtown area of the community. The Woodlands, in case you didn’t know, is a planned community created in the seventies. It’s very neat. If you want to live in the suburbs, there are houses in different neighborhoods where you can do that. Then there are apartments and town homes built to very specific designs closer in to the center of town. There are retirement villages, small complexes and such, all tucked back in the trees away from the road.
There’s also a massive Woodlands Mall and a big shopping area that strings along side the Woodlands Waterway, which offers a water taxi. There’s a shuttle that goes all around Town Center, with its collection of shops and restaurants and movie theaters.
We were on a mission. I’d been told I needed to try out Coal Burger, a coal-fired burgeria (burgeria?) right off the Waterway that had been noted for its green mission. I dropped off Hunter and Paul by the restaurant and went to park in a nearby deck.
When I came back Hunter was standing at the edge of one of the fabulous fountains along the way, gasping every time the lights under the water changed or the fountain spewed high. It took some effort to extract her from the area, with a promise to go look later.

Inside we ordered at the counter and had a seat. I went to get us a beverage -- and discovered that instead of the regular Coke or Pepsi products, Coal Burger serves Boylan sodas -- sodas that are sugar based and have no high fructose corn syrup. Winner! They also have China Myst iced tea.




But the burger? What a fantastic burger. I mean, it needed to be good -- with the big brag that the burger was made from All-Natural Niman Ranch Beef with big bold letters. And it was. Not much on the spicing, but it didn’t need it. The coal-firing had given it such a nice caramelized crust with searing that kept in the juices. We hadn’t asked for it to be prepared in any particular fashion, but it had come with the top patty cooked a medium to medium well and the bottom patty a solid medium rare. That was a little odd, but we liked it.

The burger’s almost wood-smoky notes were fantastic, and on the house bun it was just divine. The pickles really stood out to me too, dill-ish pickles but thick with a fresh crunch.

We had considered sticking around for a while in the Town Center area, but a small bathroom emergency sent us back to the resort, where Hunter got a bath and we all kicked back for the evening. The constant travel was really starting to take its toll on us, and Hunter asked to go to bed before 10 p.m. We had one more day before we needed to head home and get back to our ordinary world.
Labels:
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Friday, August 26, 2011
Coming home.
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B.J. Sams and I at Empty Bowls 2008 |
The station was Today’s THV. I spent eight years there, all of it on the morning show, producing Today’s THV This Morning. There are a lot of morning shows out there coast to coast, but this one was special. Different.
I started at Today’s THV in July 1999, just months before I married and after 10 months of drifting in Little Rock trying to figure out what I was going to do. I’d been in Jonesboro before that, a three year stint at KAIT-TV, where I got my feet wet in television and learned a lot about the world -- some good things, some very bad things.
When I came to Today’s THV I’d spent 10 months in different jobs. I’d been an executive assistant, a banking clerk, a radio traffic reporter, a receptionist, about 20 other things -- all while being a professional temp. I was waiting for my big break, and I thought it would come with KKYK-TV -- which my fiance worked for at the time.
I’d “settled” for working at Ron Sherman Teleproductions as a producer and production gal for about two months when I got the call to come back to Today’s THV for a follow-up interview. My first interview in September 1998, three days after I’d left KAIT, got blown when I was asked what a five o’clock news program should be. “Evrerything to all people,” I had said, and apparently I was wrong. The answer the management had been looking for was “caters to women,” and I failed.
But Lane Michaelson kept me in mind when a position came open on the morning show. It was supposed to be a temporary position -- three months as the third producer on the show while it went through an expansion. It had been 6-8 a.m. for a few years, but with CBS creating The Early Show for the Fall 1999 lineup the management had decided to start Today’s THV This Morning at 5 a.m., and they needed three producers instead of two.
It was a crapshoot, really -- leaving a job that was a certain steady paycheck for one that might evaporate a few months later. But I’d made myself a promise. See, at KAIT I had spent a year and a half producing the morning show. I enjoyed it -- the overnight hours, the quiet, the freedom to put together a show within a very loose frame. After the Westside School Shootings and the Manila Tornado I was given an involuntary boot up to the 10 p.m. producer spot -- which, frankly, bored me. I made myself a promise that if I ever ended up in television again and ever got the chance at a morning show, I would never leave it.
I guess it’s fortunate, then, that there was a stirring of the pot at the station. One producer left, another moved up, another… it came down to the morning show, and our lead producer Amy went to the 6 p.m. show, leaving me to step up. It wasn’t long before my co-producer and reporter Christa Olsen moved up, too.
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Robyn met Bobby Vinton on our 2005 Branson trip. |
There was the director, Jerry Don Burch, who had been at Today’s THV for close to 40 years at that point. He used to come in every morning at 3 a.m. with his lunchbox, then come start up the printers. There was Hal Mitcham the audio guy, Brian Frazier the graphics guy, Robert Settles and Jimmy Staton (who started the same week I did) and Badi Galinkin and Sidney Woodbury on the floor, with Gary Burgess as the floor director. Mark Denny was in master control.
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One of my favorite photos of Rich Gunter. |
We never got back to that number again after the first summer. But on the other hand, there weren’t a whole lot of new faces here and there, either. In the director’s box, Hal stepped up when Jerry Don retired, and Rob Hatfield came in to be the assistant director. Tim Sullivan became our man in the audio booth… they all developed nicknames, too. Tim was “Eric Clapton.” Hal was “Antonio Banderas.” You get the idea.
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Tom thought he’d blown his interview with Ray Stevens about 30 seconds in. |
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We called the Hogs with Dave Price. |

We had a lot of good times on the show. The station had this idea of creating this Weather Garden, and we took it and ran with it, filling it up with people and things and ideas. We came up with all sorts of neat promotions and contests and what have you. Probably the most famous of these were the Weddings of a Live Time we held -- three of them, crazy contests that culminated in nuptuals at dawn. Wow, huh?
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I got to meet White House pastry chef Roland Messnier when the Clinton Presidential Center opened in 2004. |
Yet some of my favorite times from the show were when the anchors just had a chance to chat and relax and share a bit of their lives with us. I quite clearly remember the day after Game & Fish Night back in the summer of 2000, and that Robyn was supposed to race in it. We showed the footage, and then she mentioned that it was her husband Keith driving the car. She handed baby booties to B.J. and Tom, her way of letting everyone know she was pregnant.
I do believe I was the first person who told Robyn she was pregnant with her third child, Parker. She had just returned from maternity leave after having her son Lowry, and she kept having this flu that would not go away. One morning it struck me that we’d been to this rodeo before, and after the show I told her “Robyn, I think you’re pregnant.” She told me it wasn’t possible… and the next day came in and almost hissed at me… “how did you know?” Well, we’d been there with Lowry and with Olivia before that… go figure.
Our viewers got to know them as BJRobyn&Tom… it’d all run together, and everyone assumed they were a happy family. But it didn’t start off that way. I recall how Tom really didn’t rub the others the right way at first, and the friction between them. Way back in the day, Robyn would sometimes show irritation working with B.J. and vice versa. It didn’t blossom overnight.
But when it did, it was great. There was a chemistry between the three of them that just made the show. Yes, producing the show sometimes felt like pushing around an elephant, but at least with the three of them it was like pushing that elephant around on a dolly, instead of plain brute force.
I used to remind Tom about his wedding anniversary. I got married exactly a week before he did -- and so I’d always make a point to tell him not to forget LeAnn on the 20th of November.
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I married Paul in November 1999. |
Boy, I am rambling on. I’d meant to just write a few paragraphs, but I suppose my time at THV just can’t be summed up that way.
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Tom with Yakov Smirnoff. |
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Rich and I on his retirement day. |
My last day was September 7, 2007. Walking away from the morning show was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I left behind my security, my friends and the career I thought I would follow for the rest of my life. I had no idea when I left that Friday morning if I’d ever enter that building again. I though I had a future in public relations, but hadn’t made up my mind. I was being courted heavily by the competition, but after about a week I realized my days in television -- at least on the reverse side of the camera -- were over.
You probably know the rest of the story… it’s documented on this blog. The places I’ve been and seen have been fabulous. I have, for the most part, created an entire career from scratch. I’ve gone through an interesting pregnancy and have started the process of raising a beautiful daughter. I’ve grown. As one of my friends recently put it to me, I’ve come into myself. I know who I am. Another friend says I’ve become my own brand. I can accept that too.










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The dedication of the new studio, I think in 2005. |
While talking with Matthew and watching the new producers Martha and Tyler and while catching up with Becca, I missed the big group photo apparently taken outside. But I did get this one. All those years, there was never a photo of me with my three anchors. I was always behind the camera and a little camera shy. I wanted to make sure there was one. This is it.
I thought I’d cry this morning, I really thought I would. I did cry, and profusely, the morning I left. I was pretty damaged back then. I didn’t know, couldn’t know, that in many ways I was emerging from my chrysalis that last morning. Most of the time I spent at Today’s THV I was a hermit, content to let someone else step in front of the camera and grab the glory. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I did. It’s part of me. I spent longer there than anywhere else I’ve ever been.
But this morning I realized not just how much that time meant to me, but that it is a time long past. I have grown, as have my fellow former co-workers. Life has proceeded apace and we have all moved on in our own ways. In just a few weeks I’ll mark my fourth anniversary away from the station, and it’ll be a happy one. I can finally hold my head high and confirm that I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams at this next segment of my life. Today’s THV This Morning wasn’t the zenith of my life. But it was important to me.
I may go back again. I don’t know. Going back this time, though… paved the way for more moments in my life. I have moved on. I am thankful and grateful for it all.
Labels:
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