Pancakes in Peace

FINALLY! I found a new breakfast place!!!! The food is great and I won't go bankrupt buying it, the service is practically invisible but my coffee never runs out.

The atmosphere is very comfortable - metal chairs, vinyl booths and covered tables. And most important - normal patrons.

At the "other" place, everyone eating seemed to be in some sort of meeting and definitely had an agenda. This would have been fine except that they all talked too loud and the conversations were never interesting. Basically, there were only two kinds of patrons - the businessmen and the churchgoers.

The businessmen were annoying because they spent all their time talking about how their (fill in blank with any item for sale) was the best (item) served in the state of Texas and they were sure of it because their wife had said so.

The churchgoers were annoying (and somewhat circumspect) because they consisted almost completely of groups of men whose religious discussions always seemed to center around how to make their wives obedient. I nicknamed them "The Stepford Christians."

The new place - so far, no businessmen, no Stepford Christians - at least not that I've overheard.

I did, however, overhear a very interesting conversation at a table of retired farmers, where one of them had apparently been offended by the offer (for $20) of a professional to mow his yard where there was a steep incline. He had refused and set out to do it himself. What he managed to do instead was stall his mower, then get it stuck in neutral, and roll backwards down the incline and into the lake. It cost his $100 to fix the mower and $150 for a new cell phone since it was in his pocket when he took a dip and apparently didn't think to jump off before hitting water.

Ah, there's no place like home.