Austin

My facebook status on Friday read "I love (my town) but sometimes my inner hippie just wants access to the awesome resources they have." Actually it read that with two typos but was Friday afternoon and I was tired.

After my weekend in Austin, I feel exactly the same way. I like to visit Austin, go shopping and see some neat places, but I wouldn't want to live there. I'm at home in good ol' Aggieland with it's cowboys and conservatives.

Saturday morning we arrived at 10ish. I'm pretty sure we woke my brother up but he was a good sport and we all headed to the farmer's market. I was so made when I realized I forgot my camera as this would have been a fun place to take pictures. It was much more, uhm, flavorful than the one in Logan was. That one was mostly farmer's selling food, this one was all sorts of vendors - low pasteurized milk, cheese, raw honey, humanely raised and slaughter pork, and lots of breakfast vendors. The cinnamon rolls and breakfast tacos looked really good, but eventually we went with the samosas with mango chutney. Now Craig is after me to find a recipe to make them myself - luckily for me I have heard rumors of a Nourishing Traditions samosas recipe. I'll be looking into that. I also picked up some raw honey. It's expensive so I will be sticking with my gigantic bottles of Sam's Club honey for my cooking and baking but the raw has so much flavor it will be nice for tea. I still miss my Cache Valley honey though :- (

After the farmer's market, we walked over to Whole Foods. I had been to the other big natural food store in Austin but never this one and it while it was really cool, they aren't kidding when they call it "Whole Paycheck." I got three items - a medium size bottle of Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap, a small bag of rye flour, and 1.5 lbs rapadura. Those three items cost's almost $20. It's probably a good thing I only have access to that natural food stores every so often as I would definitely have trouble staying in my food budget. But I have been wanting to get both the soap and the rapadura for a long time. If I like them, I will look into getting a Azure Standard account set up so I can get them at a more decent price. I will admit that the rye was a impulse buy, but it was only $2.50 and I can't wait to try it in my favorite bread recipe.

We roamed the city for a while before landing at a refurbished trailer that serves grain fed antibiotic-free cow burgers and Blue Bell milk shakes. Leave it to Austin to make a hamburger joint hippie. But it was pretty good.

We toured the campus where we saw a Gutenburg bible and the first photograph, then stopped in at a museum to see Monster vs. Aliens 3D at an IMAX theatre but lost our appetite for the movie after seeing the increased cost because it was a feature and the long line of hyper children. Instead we settled for cheesecake at the lake, a trip to a toy shop, and a hike up to a scenic overview.
Ignore our odd apparel, it was colder than we expected so Craig wore one of Rick's surplus uniform lot items while I had to borrow a jacket from his roommate. But honestly, since we were in Austin, we didn't really stand out at all.

On one of our trips, we stumbled upon a loose peacock and stopped to shoo him back home to his nature reserve. Here he is safe again. That evening, I realized I had forgotten my brother lives the night owl schedule of a engineering student. At 10:30 when we were eating dinner, he was getting geared up for a night of fun while I was falling asleep in my mashed potatoes. But I let the guys stay up late and drink beer (bought at a whole foods coop :-) while I slept the night away.

Since we didn't have church till the evening, we had the whole morning to cook a nice breakfast and think up adventures. Of course, by the time we had a plan, it was after noon already so we hurried off to have fun before the day was over. We tried to fly kites, Rick with his fancy fighter kites and Craig with his Dora the Explorer one, and these pictures make it seem like we were successful but we were not. The wind was sporadic and we soon gave up.


Since kite flying was not in the cards, we spent the rest of the afternoon touring the Johnson Presidential Library. We had all both been there before but wanted to see the special space exhibit. By then it was almost time for church so we headed back to my brothers for some Sunday afternoon napage and a go on the Wii fit. I'm not a big fan of video games, but I really want a Wii now. I just don't want to spend the money on one. Isn't that always the way it is? I also wish I had snagged some pictures of Craig playing the tightrope walking game. It was highly amusing. But this weekend I spent more time enjoying myself then taking pictures of other people enjoying themselves. That makes for a good weekend, but a boring post. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not.