Dinner at Chilis

Melissa, Raul Matthew, and I met my father and Lucy at Chilis for a late dinner tonight. I thought we might have the luck of having Ashley Toor as our server, but she had just been “cut” from the floor 15 minutes prior to our arrival. She was still kind enough to come out and chat with us, and she assigned us to David who took good care of us. I got the Southwestern Cobb salad and the Blackberry Ice Tea.

It was good to touch base and catch up on the latest developments. My father has been busy in his new position as an appointed judge on the Ft. Worth city circuit. I didn’t know much about his position given that he has been doing this for just a few weeks now, but he explained that he is responsible for accepting pleas and setting bail for those who have received citations in the Tarrant County area. While he holds court in a court room downtown, he sometimes also works from inside the city jail where judges accept pleas around the clock. In a city in which over 200,000 citations are issued each year, it’s no wonder there is a need for night court and the 24/7 services like that at the jail. The more serious crimes and repeat offenders are channeled to the Tarrant County court system rather than to the circuit for the city of Ft. Worth. I don’t know much about the structure of the legal system in terms of how criminals move through the process, so this was an interesting conversation. Lucy and Melissa mainly interacted with my son as he was working through his activity book, so I missed that part of the conversation at our table.

My father and I also chatted a bit about technology, and he mentioned that the new version of Dragon Naturally Speaking, a program that automatically types what you say, is a significant upgrade from previous versions, especially when used with a quality microphone. He recommended a brand called “Know Brainer.” It runs about $150 and is an aftermarket adaptation of a Radio Shack microphone. This would be cool as I could just speak my blog entries, letters, e-mail, syllabi, and whatever, instead of having to type it. I’ve tried this program in the past, but found myself frustrated with having to edit the text when it confused words like “in,” “an,” and “end.” This new version touts itself as being 20% more accurate than the previous version.

After dropping Raul and Lucy off at the Courtyard by Marriot hotel, Melissa and I chatted about how it seemed odd that the weekend graduation had finally arrived. I commented to Melissa that tonight was like the outer bands of a long-expected hurricane finally reaching shore. I think my outlook for this weekend is more positive than this metaphor of natural disaster suggests, but there is still an edge of anxiety for me given that I’m the center of attention for this whole event. I guess I wouldn’t make a good king. King Raul’s. Sounds like a Creole restaurant in New Orleans, or something. Off to bed. Tomorrow is already here.