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First Texas BBQ!

Blog Instead of being asleep at 23:05 on 10 March 2007, kitt created this:

After the disaster of lunch, where we walked first to the close BBQ joint, then to the close grill, then around the corner and down the street for Mexican food (only to discover they couldn't seat eleven people), then back to the taco grill (only to discover they ran out of food at 12:45, the first day of SxSW) and back up the street to a lovely upscale lunch cafe with fabulous food, I glad dinner was a much easier affair.

Cal and I dashed off to the Iron Works Barbecue restaurant for dinner and had to wait all of maybe 10 minutes for food. Cal had been there the night before, had the brisket, and decided to try another item on the menu. He ended up ordering a pound of pork. It was good pork. Really good pork.

So, apparently, Cal had never seen me eat barbecue or french fries before. The only reason french fries exist in this world is to get ketchup from the packet or bottle to my mouth. If the ratio of tomato to potato isn't at least one to one, either the fast food joint gave me only two packets of ketchup (the scrooges!), or there's a tomato blight in this world and I'm not eating another fry.

After my fourth or fifth grab and squirt! of barbecue sauce from the lovely, easy-to-dispense bottle with the high power, double action tip, Cal commented casually, "That's a lot of sauce."

Friend, you don't know the half of it.

Driving away

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 01:28 on 9 March 2007

As I arrived at the hotel last night/tonight (it's 1AM), I spent a few moments trying to unload my two bags I had in the seat with me. My backpack caught on the seatbelt connector, making the easy exit from the shuttle van much more of an ordeal than it needed to be.

Fortunately, my bag struggle gave the driver enough time to walk around the van and open the door for me.

After exiting the van, I walked to the back of the van for my other bag. To my surprise, the driver walked back around to the front of the van. I thought this odd, but went ahead and opened the back of the van to get my other bag.

I had my hand on my bag just as the driver put the van into gear and started driving away.

I quickly clenched and held it still as the van pulled away out from under the bag. The other passengers in the van, the ones with three other bags in the back of the van, the van with the back door wide open, started hollering at the driver to stop. Two car lengths later, he stopped the van.

In a daze, he hopped out of the van and walked around to the back. I'm not sure what he was thinking when I tipped him anyway.

Somehow I feel this is going to signal how this trip is going to go: not the way I want or expect it to go, but everything will work out just fine.

Journey to SxSW

Blog Instead of being asleep at 22:02 on 8 March 2007, kitt created this:

I'm on my way to Austin tonight. Seems odd to be heading off on a trip without Kris. I'm not sure why, it just does.

I managed to find my Southwest Rapid Rewards ticket and book a fairly good flight from San Jose to Austin. The total flight time is around five hours (figuring-out only mid-flight there were two stops, one in Los Angeles and one in El Paso, neither of which I realized when I booked the flight). The departure and arrival times are fantastic, fitting in with my class schedule and most of my weekend plans and event schedule, so I'm pleased with my $7.50 roundtrip ticket.

What I am surprised about, however, is what I'm doing with the dead time on the way to Austin.

I have a five hour flight (well, three one and a half hour flights, but who's counting?), in which I can ben remarkably productive. I have my laptop, my list of projects (somewhere here...), my list of cards, and two laptop batteries that should together last me about seven hours.

Yet, I slept during one flight. And not just slept, but gone to the world, close my eyes, open them an hour and a half later, only to realize we're on our initial descent. Kris is the one who can sleep like that, not me.

Though, my having the entire row to myself helped, I'd guess.

I want to be productive. I need to be productive. Yet, I feel disjoint, unconnected.

Maybe I just need some down time. A moment to be alone. Alone in a crowd of a thousand people.

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