Destination: Austin

Hmmm. Let's begin with a technical confession: the software I use to loads photos on to blogger isn't working, which sucks, because I have gazillions to share. I'll have to load them later when I have patience and T. is not annoying me by prowling the kitchen, wondering whether to eat the rest of the tortilla chips, or glug milk straight from the carton.

We spent the last few days visiting our friends, A&E (so appropriate an abbreviation for them) in Texas. We timed the visit specifically so we could go to the Houston art car parade (pictures! lots of them! imagine Wacky star shaped cars and cars with huge, pink poodles on top, and funny rollerskating characters!) It's surprising Portland doesn't have anything like this, but maybe the freaks here have grown too comfortable and don't need to announce their freakiness anymore. In Houston, the land of the air conditioned tanning booth ("Darque...so good you can almost eat it"), the freaks need a once-a-year event to rally around. I felt right at home.


My fave of the art cars


M peach bush...a bold move in W-loving Houston


Who wants a tasty cupcake? Me!

We saw a few of the crazy cars later, all the way in Austin, when we were crossing South Congress. "Hey! We know those cars!"

Besides eating and drinking our way through Texas, we did some super cool stuff, including hanging out at the TGI Friday's on the river. Hey! That's not cool. Except we were there to wait for the moment just at dusk when a colony of 1.5 million bats that lives beneath a nearby bridge made their way out into the night sky. I was anticipating they would come out as a cloud and begin swarming the area around the river. Instead, a slow and orderly stream of them rushed East, beginning at one end of the bridge and made its way toward us. It felt choreographed, as if each bat knew when to take its turn and fly off, away from the fading sun. The whole thing took almost 20 minutes. It was stunning. I've never seen animals so seemingly conciously organized.

They were certainly more organized than the four of us, who by this time had each consumed two ultimate margaritas and at least one fried mozzarella stick. We headed to a local music and soul food joint and shoved our faces full of fried catfish, cheese grits and beer and listened to a great, twangy, swingy band. We clapped and hooted and hollered. We closed the place down. Then more beer at the Spider House. I floated my new story idea by E. "Hey! Do you think it'd be a funny story if there were this big old dude, and he was in the bathroom, sick with food poisoning, and he heard someone breaking into his house?" She laughed, perhaps politely. And after all the beer, we topped it all off some the sugariest donuts in all the land at Ken's donuts. Wow. Can you say "shitfaced"? How else can you explain that I ate two of those sugar bombs in less than five minutes?


Donut zombies

As if I didn't eat enough, now I can think of nothing but tamales and tequila. I can't complain about the cuisine here at home. I get all the strong beer and coffee I want, the salmon is fresh, and the berries are divine. But sometimes...I crave heat. And now that I've had some, it's gonna be hard goin' back.