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The Brown House

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. On Wednesday December 03RD 2025 me and my brother started our day at a popular deli in Far North Dallas – Deli-News. We’ve been there many times for lunch over the past 18 years. It’s actually located within a few miles of my brother’s first workplace in the Dallas Texas area – as well as his first home with his new wife at the time. I got the “New York Diner Classic” – “mounds of thinly sliced roast beef and topped with our special brown gravy and served open faced”. It was very good, and it should’ve been very good at $21.99. It was definitely high-quality roast beef. It came with a side. I chose their Potato Salad.

But that’s not what this post is about. After lunch we returned to Wylie Texas – specifically the historic downtown district along Ballard Avenue. We visited the “Thomas And Mattie Brown House Welcome Center” (known more commonly as “Welcome Center At Brown House”). It’s a historic Queen Anne Victorian house (built in 1905) that houses a museum, gift shop, and offices. It also serves as the official welcome center for the city of Wylie Texas. They are open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11 AM to 5 PM from November to March with extended hours from April to October. Admission is free.

The city of Wylie owns and operates the museum with part-time paid employees. Unlike our museum back home in Sebring Florida where we encourage (and hope for) financial support from visitors, members, and businesses – the museum in Wylie has its own allocated budget and can’t accept donations. But if you want to support them then you can buy something at their gift shop. All gift shop proceeds support the 501(c)(3) Wylie Historical Society non-profit organization.

Upon arrival – I immediately signed their guest book, and I also quickly revealed that I am also in the museum business. We got a nice tour of the museum – which occupies much of the bottom floor. (The top floor is for staff only.)

A dozen uniquely themed Christmas trees covered nearly every corner of the museum. I especially liked the patriotic tree that will likely stay in place as is until America’s 250TH birthday less than 6 months from now. I remarked to Tracy – a Guest Service Specialist at the museum – that I need to return on my next visit to Wylie in the summertime to check out what it looks like without all of the Christmas trees. Me and my brother had a very nice conversation with Tracy – maybe half of it as a visitor – and the other half of it as a fellow museum worker. I walked away with some great ideas (and dreams) for my own historic house museum back home.

Fun Facts: The Brown House was a private residence from 1905 to 1988. It was purchased by a local trust fund in 1989 to use as office space and create a library and historical museum. Their mission was to restore the house to the way it originally looked in 1905. Over a half-million dollars was spent to restore the house. The City Of Wylie purchased the house from the Trust in 2015. It was initially used for event rentals and special events. After several years of weather-related repairs (due to hail, snow, and ice storms) – it officially became the Welcome Center and Museum in August 2022.

On the next #TravelThursday – coffee, coffee, dessert, movie, cheesesteak, and cronuts. Let’s keep traveling together.

Tags Dallas, Texas, Thanksgiving, Victorian, Wylie

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A December To Remember

Welcome back to #TravelThursday. And Happy New Year 2026 ! I hope that this year is greater for you than last year. May you enjoy great travels in this new year.

I’m still looking back at my late-November / early-December trip to visit family in the Dallas Texas area. I’m up to the new month of December – Monday December 01ST 2025. This may be the first time ever that I’m in Texas in December. It was back-to-school time for my two nieces following the Thanksgiving Week break.

On that cold, dark, and dreary December day – stuck in the 30s with low clouds and mist all day long – me and my brother headed over to Starwood Cafe for brunch. He had breakfast, and I had lunch. I had their Monte Cristo with fries. I think I discovered the Monte Cristo at the old Bennigan’s during the 2000s. Nowadays whenever I can make it to a Cheddar’s (which is not very often) – I get it there. The Monte Cristo at Starwood is good. I’ve had it before. I enjoyed it via fork and knife. (It can get quite messy.)

After Starwood we went to a local coffeehouse called Armor Coffee. They have just 2 locations – the original one in Allen (where my family once lived and where my two nieces were born), and the newer one in Wylie (where my family currently lives – since 2019). Armor Coffee is owned by U.S. Army Veteran and West Point Graduate Mike Todryk and his wife – HGTV star Jenn Todryk (“No Demo Reno”).

After another Target run – we stayed in for the rest of the day.

There’s a diner in Wylie that I’ve always wanted to eat at ever since my family moved there. It’s known throughout Texas (with 45 locations) as Cotton Patch Cafe. I kind of relate it to Bob Evans serving Ohio comfort food. It serves Texas comfort food. My brother finally agreed to eat there, and we enjoyed a big lunch for $9.99 (not including drink and gratuity). I think we’ll return the next time I’m in town. My brother was impressed with the size portions for such a low price.

Later on that 2ND day of December – with the sun shining brightly and the temperature finally breaking-out of the 30s for the first time in almost 42 hours – we went back to the theatres to see our 3RD movie in 5 days. We saw “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” – the continuing story of the first two movies from 2013 and 2016 respectively.

After the movie and a Starbucks run we ventured over to my oldest niece’s high school. She’s a cheerleader in the 10TH grade, and their high school varsity basketball team was taking on a rival team from 38 miles away in the Denton Texas area. It was my first high school basketball game of my life, and it may have actually been my first basketball game overall of my life. (I don’t recall ever seeing the Washington Bullets growing up in the D.C. area, or the Miami Heat living down in South Florida.) Spoiler: The home team won in a come-from-behind victory !

On the next #TravelThursday I step inside a historic house that serves as the official museum and welcome center for Wylie Texas. Let’s keep traveling together.

Tags Dallas, Texas, Thanksgiving, Wylie

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Merry Christmas

I wish each and every one of you following me and reading my blog a very Merry Christmas.

My traditional family “Christmas” actually occurred 4 weeks ago in North Texas during Thanksgiving Weekend. For the past many years my brother has prepared a hearty home-cooked Breakfast for he and I, and then shortly after that we’ve opened all of the presents underneath the Christmas tree. Once they are all opened it’s time to watch football for the rest of the day and into the night – including for about an hour while we’re enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at around three or four in the afternoon.

(This year – we opened all of the presents underneath the Christmas tree two days later than normal – on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I got a bunch of gift cards, a very nice 365-day prayer book, and a Washington Commanders tee-shirt.)

On the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”) Christmas is done and over for me. Well – sort of. For the first 3 weeks of December I get to observe and celebrate bits and pieces of Christmas here and there by listening to Christmas music on the radio, watching Christmas shows on television, writing and sending Christmas cards and messages to family and friends from afar, and enjoying several Christmas meals with friends and neighbors. I’m especially looking forward to my third Christmas potluck dinner with 100+ of my neighbors in our clubhouse.

We all celebrate Christmas in our own unique and traditional ways. May you spend this holiday season with your loved ones. Make and share good memories that will last a lifetime. Honor each other. Love one another.

And let’s remember why we celebrate Christmas.

And she will have a Son, and you are to name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21 NLT)

The LORD saves.

Tags Christmas

1980s Animals Blogging Holidays Home Life Weather

The Legend Of Fluffy The Manx Cat

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date December 23, 2025
No Comments on The Legend Of Fluffy The Manx Cat

Today it’s the return of a Christmas classic that’s been featured on my blog before in various forms. It’s the story of the greatest Christmas gift ever – the arrival of a cat.

It started out as a morning like any other, but just a few hours later it would become a morning that forever changed the lives of me and my little brother, and our Mom and Dad.

Exactly 42 years ago this morning – on Friday December 23RD 1983 – me (age 16½) and my little brother (age 8½) looked out our living room window at the snow and the ice on the ground of our backyard. It was a bitter cold morning in McLean Virginia 2 days before Christmas, and we were happy to be warm and comfortable inside.

But there was a creature stirring outside that was not warm and comfortable. It was a lonely young cat with no tail that was wandering around aimlessly on our ice-covered backyard patio deck, and it was shivering in misery. Me and my brother decided rather quickly that it did not belong in the harsh elements of the outside at that moment, so we opened the door and she walked right in to our more sheltered screened-in ‘Florida Room’.

We gave her some milk to drink. She loved us for it. We gave her some love. We heard a strange sound coming from her that we hadn’t heard before. It was the friendly and inviting sound of her purring. We let her in to our warm and comfortable home. She never looked back. In fact she refused to leave after that. We pretty much named her ‘Fluffy’ that day, and she instantly became an important part of our family – the missing link if you will.

That’s a young me in 1985 holding a young Fluffy. I was about 60 pounds lighter than I am today.

She was the 5TH member of our family, and she was the start of nearly 30 years of felines in our family. Fluffy loved us all, but she clearly adored me the most. During her younger years she anxiously awaited me to open the basement / laundry room door for her first thing in the morning so that she could run (and beat me) to my bedroom upstairs for a long round of petting and purring. During her later years in Jacksonville Florida when she was slowly dying she literally came back to life over and over again and jumped and loved on me and ran upstairs to my parents’ guest room whenever I arrived for a short visit. She lived a long, happy, and healthy life (until April of 2001), and she provided lots of love to our family starting with that very first Christmas of 1983.

There have been other cats and dogs within our family over the years since then. Fluffy eventually gained a feline roommate with Barney (also known as “the cat that never liked me”). After Fluffy’s death Barney eventually gained his own feline roommate with Pumpkin. Boots was my own loving cat and housemate for 12½ years in Homestead Florida until his (expected) death on May 17TH 2007. He was the coolest cat that ever lived.

But it all started with “Fluffy The Manx Cat”. She was the Matriarch of all of our family pets (to this day). She was the Queen of her castle. She was the stability of our family. She was our family’s common denominator. She was the center of attention. She was the most lovable cat that ever lived.

Fun Fact: This WordPress blog is a spinoff of my former hit music based massivesmash.com web site that I created in 1995. That web site grew out of a previous web site known as “MANx On The Net”. That first web site was a spinoff of “MANx Cat BBS” (1993-1997) – a dial-up bulletin board system run via MS-DOS typical of its time that was inspired by and named after Fluffy.