Austin, TX...

Chris and I went up to Austin yesterday just to do something different and get away from the Alamo. As most of you know, Austin, Texas has evolved into one of the hippest places in the country over the years. It's the self-proclaimed, "Live Music Capital of the World." It may be true. SXSW and the Austin City Limits music festival are there each year -- that's a pretty good start.

There isn't much going on in Austin on Friday afternoons. I'm sure into the evening, things pick up, but we weren't there for that. We walked by Emo's and Stubb's to see if any good bands were playing later that night, but we didn't really see anything interesting. I was, however, accosted (is that too strong a word?) by a supposed drifter.

Chris and I stopped on a corner to wait for the walk signal, and this fella who seemed kind of homeless (he had a good sun tan), started playing air guitar and singing. He started talking to us, and where could we go? The signal said "DON't WALK"!! Then, sure, Chris' phone rang. He did what anyone would do, he answered it. That left me all alone with this dude. He said he'd been drunk for two days. "Not today, but yesterday." He claimed to be a Marine, or an ex-Marine, I don't remember. He showed me some battle scars on his arms (no, not from needles). He said he was about to catch a Greyhound (remind me never to ride a Greyhound, ever) and needed another $3. "A cop already gave me $5." I thought to myself, "yeah, I bet he did. The only five he gave you was in seconds. As in, 'you got 5 seconds to get the hell out of here.'")

He then went on to try and prove that he wasn't homeless and wasn't going to use the money for booze. Mind you, he didn't say any of that. What he did say was, "look at my shoes, these are $200 leather shoes." I looked down, they did look nice. They looked kind of new, too. He said, "look at my shirt, this is a nice shirt." And it was. Nice being that it was new. I could tell because black tshirts can look old pretty quick. It looked as tho he had just pulled it right from the rack. I did notice he had a Sharpie marker clipped on the inside of his collar. I suppose that's a tool he needs when he partakes in arts & crafts and makes his "homeless" signs. This wasn't making sense to me. He had on a new shirt, new leather shoes, could afford to own an air guitar and also pay for the licensing fees to sing a classic rock song in public, but he had a marker for a "homeless" sign and needed $3 for the Greyhound. See, confusing, right?

Anyways, I claimed I had just used all my money to pay for parking. Which technically wasn't true. Chris did. But, I didn't think he accepted Visa, so that's all I could think to say. By the way, Chris is still on the phone at this point. He finally pulled me away and we went in another direction at the next intersection.

During all of this, I got the second compliment in as many weeks about how blue my eyes are. One from a front desk clerk girl at a hotel in Tucson, AZ, and now from a supposed homeless guy in Austin, TX. Before that, it'd been many months, maybe more than a year since someone complimented my eyes. I don't blame them, my eyes are very blue, and deep like the ocean. You should look sometime.

After we got rid of this guy, we went to a pub and got some beer. And Irish nachos. I don't know what made them Irish. Maybe the green jalapeños. Then we walked 8 blocks to the best record store in Austin, Waterloo. It was pretty great. They have listening stations with iPods in them. The iPods then have the 6-8 albums on them at that kiosk. Very cool. Chris bought an Elliott Smith tee. I bought a Waterloo Records tee (it will be cool to wear NOT in Texas) and a black tee that simply says "CASH" on it in block lettering. I've wanted that t-shirt for a couple years, but I didn't want to appear on the "Johnny Cash is dead so now it's cool to listen to him" trendy bandwagon thing. Now that that's over, I feel it okay to wear.

Our plan was to check out Will Ferrell's new movie, "Blades of Glory" at the Alamo Drafthouse (they serve you beer and you can order from a menu!) but it was sold out all night. We decided to just head back to San Antonio early and hit up the theatre there...we really were set on seeing that movie. We ended up buying tickets for the 1015 showing. We had 2+ more hours to kill.

I haven't been to Pei Wei (asian kitchin) for awhile, so yeah!! After we sat down and began eating, two girls came by, each put their fortune from their fortune cookies on our table, say "here!" and leave. Well, there were phone numbers and MySpace addresses written on them. I looked over towards the door as they were leaving and one of the girls was looking back, smiling. Chris and I were both like.."what the..."

Turns out one of them is 16 and the other is 18.

"Blades of Glory" was silly, ridiculous, but extremely funny. Not Ferrell's best, but definitely worth seeing.

It was a fun day. I'm going to miss hanging out with that guy. California is calling. I am moving outta Texas six weeks from tomorrow.