I like Denton

I’ve been enjoying a few days’ break in Denton, TX. Every time I come here I think, I could really live here. Although my parents live here, I grew up in Central and West Texas and have never lived this far north in the state. But it’s what I call a charming town and because there are 2 major universities (University of North Texas and Texas Women’s University), there is a lot of buzz.

One of the things we always have to do is visit Recycled Books which is probably the finest used book stores I’ve ever found. They’re in the old Wright Opera House building – the link above gives you some info about Recycled and a little history of the Opera House. If you’re ever in the DFW area, I know there’s Half Price Books, but if you loved used books, cds or dvds, it’s definitely worth the drive to Denton for a visit.

Here are a couple of photos of the Old Denton County Courthouse whose predecessor’s bricks were used for the Opera House. I really miss the trees and green, albeit fleeting sometimes, of Texas. Guess I’m just an out and out unashamed to say Texas girl!

I just happened to be in Denton for the Jazz Festival. We went early and didn’t stay too long but it was fun to wander through and, of course, get some kettle corn. We did get to hear a couple of bands and there were several stages throughout the city complex. I have to say the vendors were pretty same old, same old – all beads, pottery and iffy oil paintings (or prints thereof). There were, however, some very skilled jewelry makers and some very skilled potters. Too bad they got lumped in with all the others. Anyway, it was fun to wander through, lovely weather, not too hot or humid, a bit of a breeze. Pretty fine.

And to wrap it up, I had a REAL hamburger (which doesn’t exist as far as I can find in Central Illinois). The Denton County Hamburger House, right on the square. Nice atmosphere – lots of antiques – and comfortable, probably because they weren’t so busy. The hamburgers were great, just what I’d been missing, and real potato french fries. Yummers!!!!

The drag of the trip has been the ongoing battle of the totally inept customer service of the local Best Buy store. My mother had purchased a high price computer from them, paid to have them set it up (they never gave her back her original set up discs) and paid to have the in-home “Geek Squad” service. Back in February, it died. Not only would they not provide the in-home service, they have been messing her around for almost 3 months now. Shameful. She even wrote a letter to the store manager, main customer service and HP detailing the 3 pages of ineptitude, inefficient and total lack of courtesy of their service center. Not one response from any of them. Yesterday she got a call that her computer was ‘ready,’ whatever that would end up being, so I went with her. Now my Mom is perhaps the sweetest, gentlest person on earth. In other words too nice to get any decent service from these people. She wanted to make sure all the programs were loaded this time (they weren’t before) so he said he would ‘check’ for her. (Does that sound like the computer was ready?) Sure enough, the major program were not loaded so he tried to give her the run around (I won’t go into all the details) so I jumped in and told him he’d jolly better figure out how to get them loaded and if he couldn’t maybe his manager could address things at a higher level. Do you believe in miracles? He mysteriously found the disc that “just happened to be there with someone else’s computer” which he was able to use to load the programs. Sigh…. (By the way, just in case you’re wondering, I’m not nearly as sweet and gentle as my Mom.)

We got it home and I had to reconfigure some of the stuff so it worked like she wanted it to but at least she’s got almost everything working again. For how long, I don’t know.

Suffice to say that if you’re ever contemplating buying a new computer, don’t do so at Best Buy if you expect to have any service after the purchase, especially if you don’t know much about computers. Shameful.