May and June have been and will be heavy with travel, so we’ve decided to have the letters I and J span together across both months. In keeping with the above we set out to complete our reading challenges for I & J in the same day. We accomplished this in the city of Denton.

The first thing we noticed as we entered Denton was that they are very clever in their naming of businesses. Our all-time favorite was Stinky’s Smoke Shop. It immediately put us in a laughing mood and Barbara almost wanted to start smoking so she could patronize old Stinky. (Luckily, she held back the urge). Next came Arsenal Tattoo. We pictured the owners tattooing, not with an electric device but by taking a weapon from their Arsenal and shooting the ink pattern into the customer’s body. After passing Call to Arms Gun Shop and the Sleepy Lizzard we came to the runner up for best/funniest name at Big Fatty’s Spanking Shack. We hadn’t even left the car and we’re already in a great mood!

We arrived in time to eat an early lunch and found the perfect place.

New restaurant: The Juicy Pig

How do we resist that name? The owners had commissioned a mural in the parking lot and here are the results. The children sitting at the bottom of the picture are the owners’ kids and we got a kick out of the names of the actors once we realized they were More Love, Compassion, Tolerance and Joyfulness.

“I” Reading challenge: Find an independent bookstore in the city that we visit. Try to support the store.

We completed this by going into Patchoulli Joe’s Books & Indulgences. One thing we love about independent bookstores is that the people working there really seem to love reading and always can recommend something. We bought a couple of books to support them.

Last but not least….

“J” Reading challenge: Have a cup of Java and take on the identity of your favorite author or fictional character when asked for your name at the coffee shop. See if anyone notices or comments.

Our plan was for one of us to give the name Agatha and the next one to give the name Christie and see if they ask us about it. Our story was that Agatha Christie was our mom’s favorite author but it backfired because all we ordered was coffee and so no one asked our names!

All in all a delightful day.