Spontaneous

Spontaneous: adjective
1. coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned.
2. (of a person) given to acting upon sudden impulses
3. Antonym: Erica B.

I'm not a "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of girl. I like to plan. I like to organize. I thrive with schedules. I often make plans for planning sessions. And God forbid the plan or schedule change last minute. I don't handle that well either.

Something strange came over me on Saturday night. A phenomena, I am confident. Something that must be documented as it will likely only occur a few times in history...

I, Erica Anne, was spontaneous!

It had been a LONG time, too long really, since Mr. Wonderful and I had been on a double date with some of our closest friends, Michael and Jess. (The same Michael and Jess that you met in March when we all went to see my boyfriend in concert at the rodeo.) So earlier last week we made plans to go to dinner on Saturday evening. We decided that since it was a long weekend and we had extra free time we should go somewhere that we don't normally go.

At Mr. Wonderful's brilliant suggestion, we decided and planned to go to Royer's Cafe in Roundtop, Texas. Mr. Wonderful and I have been a few times before, but this was a first for Mikey and Jess. We were all anxiously awaiting our double date and again made plans to meet at their house at 4:30pm on Saturday.

Roundtop is about an hour and a half from Houston, just outside of Brenham. It is a TINY town with one blinking light in the middle of town, and if you look down for a second you will miss the whole town. The city is known for its antiquing, but Royer's Cafe has certainly made a name for itself as well.

The restaurant is quaint and full of character. There are probably only 15 tables in the whole restaurant, and the food is out of this world! The boys each enjoyed a steak that beats any fancy steakhouse hands down. Pappas Brothers has nothing on this place! Jess and I split a sampler platter with delicious pork tenderloin, stuffed quail and angus pasta. After we stuffed our "regular" stomachs with great wine and fantastic food, we proceeded to stuff our "dessert" tummies with pure deliciousness - homemade pies! (Just wait til you see the pictures. Any respect you may have had for me will be thrown out the window!)

So, while we were eating dinner we were explaining to Jess where Roundtop was located geographically. The boys were talking about how we were halfway between Austin and Houston. One thing led to the next, and somehow this conversation led to all of us deciding SPONTANEOUSLY to drive to Austin for the night! Jess had never spent any time in the city, and none of us had been downtown at night to see Sixth Street.

We left from Royer's with more-than-full bellies around 8pm and headed straight up 290 towards Austin without any further plans! Funny thing, though - when we were first formulating this thought of heading to Austin, my biggest concern was staying the night somewhere and not having any deodorant for the morning! Jess's biggest concern was that she did not have her full makeup bag with her! The guys just laughed in our faces. And then they assured me that Austin would have a place to buy deodorant!

We arrived in Austin about 9:30 and found our way to Sixth Street. We enjoyed having a few drinks and listening to live music at a couple different bars/pubs. And we got lots of laughs from people-watching. We had one fun sighting - while walking up Sixth Street we passed Chad Womack, Bachelor Brad Womack's twin brother. No one else recognized him (apparently I was the only closet Bachelor watcher in the group!), but after Chad was out of earshot, I mentioned it. Michael decided to double-check my observation and yelled "Chad!" down the street after him. In an effort to save some face, the rest of us did not turn to look, but Michael said the guy that I said was Chad turned around to look! Ha!

About 1 AM we all decided we had had enough. I think Sixth Street was just starting to get really going, so our age became evident! We were unsuccessful finding a hotel room anywhere in the Austin area (kinda of hard when you're spontaneous on a holiday weekend that is also t.u.'s first home football game of the season!). So we decided to just drive back home.

We did fine driving, with the guys only switching off once. We saw two drunk drivers on 290, so there were a couple of scary moments. One guy was so bad that we called the Waller County Sheriff's office to report him. (Michael called the dispatcher back later and sure enough two cops had him pulled over on the side of the highway!)

We had a great time, though. We love our friends Michael and Jess, and anytime we have with them is always special. We all decided that a weekend getaway to Austin is definitely in our near future!

So I didn't just survive my spontaneous Saturday night, I LOVED it! And as such I am proposing an addition to Webster's definition:

Spontaneous: adjective
4. resulting in lots of fun and great memories; can be addictive.

(Pictures are forthcoming!!)