Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Better late than never to join in! Since David Nunez says I’m not allowed simply to say “sleep” when asked the question, “What would you do with four hours free in Austin?”, here are my thoughts.

Geocaching – I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, but never gotten around to it. Looks like Austin is a real hotspot for caches, and seeing as how there’s one practically in walking distance to my house, it’s crazy that I’ve never done it.

The Capitol – I’ve never been. Can you believe it? Bad Texas. Bad, bad, no biscuit.

Revisit my past – see what’s the same and what’s different on the drag. Maybe stop at Dirty’s for a burger and some tots.

Zilker park – I’ve only ever been a few times and really enjoyed it each time.

The lake – hang out by Lake Austin or Town Lake or Lake Travis (all the same body of water, really one big river, just delineated by dams). Especially in the summer, the water temperature is really nice and much balmier than chilly (and overrated, IMO) Barton Springs’s year round 65°.

I think that the trick is to take the tourist point of view of the city in which you live. If you have four hours free, you may be tempted to take a nap, or do the laundry, or yard work, and miss out on what your city has to offer.

On a side note, it’s sleeting like mad here right now and the power keeps trying to go out. Yesterday it was in the 70s and we were all wearing shorts. Hub and I are charging up our laptops and cell phones so that our net access won’t be affected if the power goes out. Nerds!

After laughing our way through the movie, we decided to get a late-night meal at Magnolia Cafe. We sat down and perused the menu, then hub nudged me with his eyes and said “Problem customer”. I looked over to where he was indicating – a guy in a girl in a booth by the window. They were complaining about the service. Suddenly the girl lashed out with a barrage of “Fuck”s, mostly directed at the manager who was talking to her. The manager told her to get out of the restaurant; she didn’t appreciate being cursed at. (Scene from Clerks: “You’re not allowed to rent here anymore!” “Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah!” Man, that cracks me up for some inescapable reason.)

The man at the booth then started spouting about his First Amendment Rights(tm). People just don’t seem to understand that the first amendment doesn’t give you carte blanche to, say, yell “Fire!” in a movie theater (although we should have done so during the movie tonight, as it would probably have been more entertaining than Final Destination 2) or go into a private business establishment and start verbally abusing the staff.

So the manager went to call the cops. In the time it took for them to show up, the couple plus their two friends in the booth next to them went outside and started pacing around.

It is important to note at this point that I had noticed a large and visible bulge in the small of the back of the man in the booth. I do have some experience in noting if someone is ‘printing’ or not, and this guy was printing.

I started to get nervous. So did hub. We looked for the waiter so we could change our order to go, and began to understand why the original couple was complaining about the bad service. I checked out the bathroom area for a back door – no luck. If we left, we were going to have to walk through the four pissed-off pacing people in the front of the restaurant.*

Well this was a dilemna. Just then the cops arrived. I only saw one car, but later discovered that three units responded. For about thirty minutes, the cops talked to the PPP* as we watched and waited for the front to clear. Hub said not to worry – it was APD, and if anyone started to get crazy, the police would just shoot them. Finally, the PPP’s friends drove off. That left the original duo – the guy who looked like he was packing and his foul-mouthed woman friend. Anxiously we waited while they wandered back and forth in front of the plate glass windows, the woman waving her arms around in an agitated manner. Finally they left too, and one of the cop cars did, leaving two behind to pull up and chat with each other. We made it out without incident and are safely home, where hub is now lovingly playing with his guns.

Was the guy carrying legally? I don’t know. I do know that hub was, and that he’s very relieved that he wasn’t involved in a situation where he might have to use his weapon. He also swears that he’ll never go out in public with only one mag again. Magnolia Cafe. Who’da thunk?

*”Pissed-off pacing people” has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

We had a quick trip to Fredericksburg these past two days which was cut short by an acute case of homesickness. We did manage to eat at a couple of places that I felt needed comments, as well as stay in the best B&B in town. I’m not quite sure I want to say where we stayed because I’m greedy and would rather keep it a secret.

For a late lunch we stopped at the Lindenbaum, which was eerily deserted. We waited. And waited. And waited. After 5 minutes or so of hanging out at the front door without seeing a living soul in the place, we decided to sneak out and find a place that wasn’t run by ghosts.

The place turned out to be the Auslander. I ordered the wienerschnitzel (I thought you pronounced it “veen-er-shnit-zul” but the waitress called it “ween..” – who’s wrong here? and it better not be me). I also ordered two sides, red cabbage and German potato salad. I hadn’t had good German food in a long time and was greatly anticipating my order.

It came out, looked good, so I started cutting into it. It’s important to note that my allergies were bothering my so my nose wasn’t up to snuff. Hah, up to snuff. I slay me.

After 3 or so bites I noticed an aroma. Spoiled meat. Meat that had been sitting in the sun for 2 days and was rotten. Stinky Meat. My weenurshnitzul was kaput, and I had just taken 3 big bites of it. Apparently cutting into it let loose that magic spoiled aroma, and it started to permeate the table to the degree where I couldn’t eat my sides (‘sok, the German potato salad was consisted of vinegar, potatoes, and cornstarch, and had the uneasy appearance of chunky snot) and I was too disgusted even to have a sip of water.

I told the waitron that the meat had gone bad, and she took it off my bill, but that didn’t help my stomach troubles all night long. Sure, I could have had a tummy bug, but it’s a strange coincidence, n’est-ce pas?

Around 9:00 I dragged myself out of bed long enough to realize that all I’d eaten that day was an uninspired side salad and a few pieces of rotten meat, and since we were staying in the Burg, we needed to get moving fast if we were to eat anything at all that night. We headed down to the Fredericksburg Brewery, where my order was “Schinken Schnitzel- Veal Cutlet pounded thin, lightly breaded, sautéed, then topped with Black Forest Ham and Swiss Cheese and laced with a Dijon Cream Sauce served with Sauerkraut, German Potatoes”. It was very very good, and I managed to eat another 3 bites or so before my stomach started chanting “Attica! Attica!”. Doggie bag, please. Went back to the room and went comatose for the night.

For lunch today we stopped at the Peach Tree Tea Room, a name that made hub quake in his boots. Just after the waitron (who had an unccanny resemblance to the zombie-Linda in The Evil Dead [haHAHAHAHAHAHahah *CLANG* heeheeheeheeheehEEHEEHEEHEheehee *CLONK* etc.]) described to us the velvet chicken soup in loving terms that had my mouth watering, she came back to the table to tell us they ran out. We ordered a bread variety appetizer (the variety was that you had 2 choices of focaccia – pepper filled or walnut-something filled). I ordered the special quiche of the day – jalapeno and potato. Which meant there was a little crust, a tiny grating of cheese and a dab of egg, huge massive chunks of bland potato, and one little bitty slice of jalapeno.

Well, what the hell, it was nourishment. We ate, went shopping in the 50 degree rainy weather, then retreated to our suite.

About that suite – it’s over 1300 square feet with 2 huge rooms, one of them has an entire wall filled with floor to ceiling bookcases full of books, of course. They stock the room with pastries and fruit and juice and milk and cereals and coffee and heavy cream and a bottle of wine and chocolate mints for at night. The bed’s got a memory-foam top on it and 360 count sheets. When you walk in you see that the owners have filled up an ice bucket for you and set out a plate with jalapeno jack cheese, crackers, and hard salami. It’s just amazing, and they charge about half of what they should. I think we’ve been spoiled. Email me if you want to know what it is, because I can’t bear the thought of it getting booked and us not being able to get in.

I called the vet to check on the kitties who had their teeth cleaned this morning. Wrong, only one got her teeth cleaned. The vets decided not to do the other one when they saw her bloodwork. Turns out her pancreas-related numbers are FUBAR, and the vet thinks she might have pancreatic cancer.

Perhaps I need to send those freaking chain letters on after all.

There’s a whole movement dedicated to keeping Austin weird. This menu demonstrates a typically non-weird restaurant. My favorite is the Hill Country Poor People in Silly Hats Made of Arugula, with the Braised Mixed Field Hands in Curdled Lhasa Apso Saliva as an appetizer.

It’s impossible to find good Tex-Mex in Austin. It’s like there’s a great divide between here and San Antonio, which is a little over an hour’s drive to the south, and contains some of the most sublime Tex-Mex known to man. Here, good food at any random Tex-Mex restaurant is the exception, where in San Antonio it’s the rule. Living in the most whitebread section of west Austin takes us even farther away from where the good Tex-Mex restaurants seem to congregate.

I know that there are those of you who are at this very moment crying foul, that Austin has fantastic Tex-Mex and just look at Chuy’s, for example. To this I say: feh. Chuy’s sucks, positively reeks compared to any hole in the wall San Antonio dive. And you can’t get good barbacoa in this town either. Hub and I have to sate our barbacoa cravings when we visit San Antonio or Houston. I’m too much of a gringa to eat the lengua or tripas that he enjoys, though. Just call me Guera.

Strange dream for the day: I had a dream that hub, the 2 year old, and I went to New Orleans. They went out someplace and I had to pee, so I sat on the toilet but something went wrong and it got all over the floor of the bathroom and closet and living area. Hub came back, and I heard him put the key in the door and I yelled for him to wait just a minute but he didn’t, so he saw the huge mess I had made and got angry with me. I got even angrier with him for ignoring me when I told him to wait and it turned into a huge fight.

This is obviously related to the fact that the toilet upstairs overflowed and leaked through the wood plank ceiling into the kitchen yesterday. I’m getting a little bored with the New Orleans dreams, though. I’d like to visit Las Vegas tonight.