Wow, that last post made no sense. I think I could have written something more coherent if I was drunk (on alcohol) and passed out on the street well out of range of the nearest wi-fi hottiespot.

I was so excited about nothing in particular on Friday that I forgot to mention this: As I was going out for some caffeine-based hallucinogens, an adolescent duck waddled up to me and started following me around and quacking. Apparently one of my neighbors has a pet duck that follows people around. It was...a new experience. I think that's all I can really say about it.

I got $50 out of an ATM a few days ago. Yes, that's fifty dollars. Five-oh not one-five. The only ATM I've been to around here gives out $10 bills too. So is a $10 bill a yuppie meal ticket also? Maybe the discounted version? That's not really very special. But to me, it means the world!

Yesterday, I went to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. The exhibit tells a pretty complete story about the state up until around WWII. The area now known as Texas was part of Spain, Mexico, and an independent nation before becoming part of the United States. Their reasons for declaring independence from Mexico were similar to the colonists' reasons for breaking away from Britain. When Santa Anna rose to power in Mexico, he changed the government into a dictatorship. The people residing in Coahuila y Tejas, many of whom were Americans looking for land, didn't like that, so they rebelled. They had their own revolutionary war where the vastly outnumbered Texas militias defeated Santa Anna's formidable Mexican army. Another interesting similarity that I just realized was that Sam Houston was the leader of the militia forces and went on to become the first president of the Republic of Texas, just like ol' George Washington. With that background, I can see why Texans love this place so much.

Something I thought was really interesting was a display with maps showing things weather phenomena across Texas. Tornadoes are more of a northern Texas specialty. Central to eastern Texas tends to have more rain and higher humidity than the western part of the state. This explains why Austin is so green.

This greenness is great because that means there is a lot of great hiking to do. A really popular place is Barton Creek, where I went this morning. The hiking trails follow the creek (which was mostly dry today, sigh). What is funny is that the trail goes right under one of the major freeways in the city. The trail is pretty rocky and feels as nature-ish any other nature preserve miles away from civilization. But here you are, hiking along and suddenly, up above you, there's a freeway. I saw another armadillo today but I didn't get a picture because it was too far away. It sounded like it was jumping around in a bush or something. Maybe it was spazzing from a stupid coffee drink?

Hmm, it looks like none of this makes much sense either. Oh well.

I'm sitting here in my apartment on a Friday night typing this up because I'm a very exciting person who does all sorts of exciting things. That is the way I feel about myself right now because I just drank a double iced latte and I'm shaking like So-Cal last week. I can barely sit still. This is not good.

Things have been pretty interesting over here. Interestingly boring. Work has become interesting. But after working during the day, I come back to my apartment to work on more work stuff. So my work day consists of doing Texas work from 9am to 6pm and then going home and doing Cali work until midnight. It's just like old times. If one were to say that I don't have a life. One would be correct. One would also be correct I asked how many iced lattes it would take to turn me into a certified spaz.

It's heating up here in Austin, but I must be getting used to it because I thought it was "nice" outside today. I even open the windows in the morning to let the humidity drift in. The temperature usually reaches somewhere in the 90's, but the humidity tends to be around 75% so we don't get off easy with nice weather. There's usually a breeze though, which is nice. I love warm air blowing on me while I'm sweating like a pig on a spit. People here know how to cope, though. Last week, when I went to Pedernales Falls, I made use of the rest facilities after my hike. To my surprise, the park bathrooms were air conditioned! It felt really nice in there so I stayed in the restroom for and extra-long period of time to cool off. To make things better, I used one of those dryer thingies to dry my hands and it blew refreshingly cold air on my recently-washed sweat-free hands. Then I put my sweat-encrusted face in front of the dryer and boy did that feel cool. But my fling with the bathroom was cut short because I needed to get back to my apartment (for work, bah). I would have stayed in there all day if I could have.

So I'm going to go back to being excitedly boring. It's a horrible feeling to be really excited and have nothing to do. So I think I'll lay down and squirm. That sounds like fun.

Sometimes, when the dog bites, when the bee stings, or when I'm feeling sad, I simply remember some pretty cool stuff, and then I don't feel so bad. Here's a few of them over here in Austin.

There's a Jamba Juice about 10 minutes away from where I live. w00t! And it's right inside a Whole Foods! This place is really cool. (Because the air conditioning is on.) Someone once called Whole Foods "Whole Paycheck". I wholeheartedly agree. (Because I'm an agreeable person. I've never bought anything from Whole Foods before.) There are some cozy, bird-poop covered picnic tables just outside so Jamba Juicers can suck fruits and ice out of a Styrofoam cup and Whole Foodies can eat their soy patties in 100% organic whole wheat pitas out in the heat.

Not too far away, there's an REI. I don't know what it is about REI, but it feels like you're outdoors when you go into one. That is, until you walk into a wall, because there are no walls outdoors. I try to avoid the walls though. The coolest part about this REI is that it has maps for some of the state parks around here. Well, there were other cool things, like they have a bike clinic every now and then. Tomorrow, there is a shifters and derailleurs clinic, but it was full by the time I signed up for it. That's not so cool, but I'm on the waiting list so maybe, just maybe, I can get in and figure out what's wrong with my bike.

There's a bunch of state parks nearby also. I went to one of them Sunday morning: Pedernales Falls State Park. It's about an hour away from here. (Google Maps says it's 1:30, but seriously, 1:30 for less than 60 miles?) The park has several, almost separate, attractions. I visited the falls at the very north end of the park. There is a pretty large section along the Pedernales river where you can see water rushing across the rocks. The water (I'm guessing) created holes in the rock so when the water level is a bit lower (as it was when I visited), the area is full of little pools. I'd call them tide pools but there aren't any tides over there. It's a fracking river. Anyway, there are frogs near those pools. Most of them jump away when scary ol' me gets near, but there's always one prima donna frog who sits there and lets me get really close with my camera to take a picture. I also hiked along part of a hiking path. It goes by the primitive camping grounds and up to Wolf Mountain. But the trail just loops around Wolf Mountain and doesn't go to the top. The view would have been amazing. Near the start of the trail, I saw one of these bad boys:

That's right! A real armadillo. Actually, I saw two of them but one ran away really quickly. I was lucky that this one managed to be fairly photo-worthy even though my zoom was at its maximum and my arms were stretched out as far as I could stretch them. And I couldn't see into the LCD screen because the sun was too bright. This was a pretty lucky shot. The little fellas kind of waddle around, but they waddle pretty quickly. Maybe like a duck with four legs, a long tail, a snout, cool ears, and armor plating. And no feathers. The coolest dumb thing I did that day was to wear sunglasses because now the top part of my face isn't as tanned as the bottom part of my face. However, I found out that the SPF 15 chap stick that I got is really cool. There's menthol in it.

Of all the pretty cool things, however, this one is the prettiest: There's a Fry's, CompUSA, and a Best Buy within 10 minutes from where I live. How cool is that? Pretty cool. Whoever designed this part of Austin knew I would be coming. Not too far away, I think there's a Circuit City and a Radio Shack nearby too.

And now I don't feel so bad. But I still look like a raccoon. Be cool.

When something lucky happens to me, I wonder if it's compensating for a sub-lucky event that occurred earlier or if I'm due for some bad luck coming up. I believe that there is a finite amount of luck in the world (most of it is stored in fun-shaped marshmallows guarded by a neurotic leprechaun) so for each act of luckiness, there exists an opposite act of unluckiness. Note that it is not necessarily a equally opposite act of unluckiness. Rather, over a lifetime of an individual, the amount of luck consumed (by lucky happenings) will be exactly equal to the amount of luck produced (a by-product of unlucky events). Note that this can be viewed the opposite way also, where lucky events produce luck and unlucky events consume it. The viewpoint taken depends on personal preference and the size of size of the grape in the most recently consumed box of Grape Nuts. (In the absence of grapes, the quantity of nuts can be used in place of grapes.) I also believe that on birth, a finite amount of luck is issued to the newborn and this total amount cannot be exchanged or returned for a refund. Thus, everyone has their own set amount of luck. No one can get more luck, no one can give away excess luck. However, the introduction of teleportation technologies (scheduled for next Thursday) will change all this.

Given that, I used some luck yesterday. I left work at about 3pm to go over to the airport. When I arrived 15 minutes later, I find out that my flight to Denver is delayed by 24 minutes. No biggie right? Well apparently that would make me miss my connecting flight to Austin and the hyper-intelligent self-check-in computer couldn't find another flight plan for me. I picked up one of those eerie black "courtesy" phones next to my touch-screened check-in buddy and listened to a beautiful mix of classical music and people yelling all around me. About 10 minutes later, someone picked up the phone on the other end and wanted to help me. Someone's trying to help me? That can't be right. So I tried to stall. What were his true intentions? I talked about my latest problem with my travel plans for today and I before I knew it, I was on hold again. Ah ha! So he wants me to listen to the hold music. There must be a subliminal message in there. I listened carefully for it, but I didn't hear anything. There were so many people trying to prevent me from uncovering the Secret of Hold Music Island that I couldn't decipher any of the cryptic message. But Mr. Helpful inside the telephone picked up again and told me that I could book a direct flight (at no cost to me) that would leave at about 6:30 and get in at almost midnight. Hey, not so bad. I guess I didn't need to unravel the clues hidden within the hold music to resolve my problem.

At that point my luck meter dipped quite a bit. Well, it felt like it did but that might have been more of a feeling of relief. I had to do something unlucky to get my luck meter back up, or maybe get a luck potion +10 at the local Merchant Shop. No such luck. I got a new ticket for my direct flight and proceeded to the security checkpoint. There, I had the joy of discovering that I was a lucky winner of an extra security check! Wow! What did I do to deserve such an honor? A grumpy TSA official moments away from his break leads me to a chair that could use some of that leather repair kit that they sell on TV and tells me to sit down. He proceeded to wave his magic wand all over me muttering strange curses like, "Now stand up and spread your arms." Maybe this was my big chance to be turned into a frog! Well, here's a secret: those magic wands they use are fake. They're like light sabers from Toys 'R' Us. I didn't get turned into a frog. He let me put my belt and shoes back on while him and another thug dug through my bag of undies. Well, I had more than underwear in the bag, but I think it would be funny if they opened up my bag and found it full of tidy whities. Of course, then they'd know that I was a terrorist because Saddam Hussein wore underwear too. OK, maybe I'll just stick to filling my bag with googly eyes. As luck would have it, I passed the security check and arrived at the get two hours early, where I typed up this nonsense.

Being oh, so lucky, I decided to go to the bathroom. That's when things went down the loo. Not literally. Well, literally, but not really. No, I didn't pee my pants, although it's definitely something I'd do in a situation like this. I took off my glasses and one of the lenses falls out. Bah. Then, while looking for it, I almost step on it. But I didn't. Whew. Fortunately, I had my contacts with me so I put them on. Because I was wearing my contacts, I couldn't sleep on the plane so I watched all of Planet of the Apes, a.k.a. Marky Mark and the Monkey Bunch.

When I got to Austin, I left my rental car in long term parking because, being brilliant, I didn't know how long to book the car for so I got it for a month. Also due to my extreme intelligence, I forgot where I parked. I thought it was in lot B, row 4, but my lovely blue Cavalier wasn't there. Actually I walked over to lot C first and looked there, but I was just looking for lot B at the time. When I found lot B, I couldn't find my car. Then I remember that Lot B and C were both full when I parked, so I parked in the lots further back: D and E. Well I knew it wasn't E because I would never park in lot E. So it must have been lot D, row 4. And lo and behold my car wasn't there. It was in lot D, row 3. Why was it that I remembered lot B, row 4 so clearly? Well when I parked, I didn't remember to look at where I parked and started walking towards the terminal. By the time I realized that I should have looked, the closest sign I saw was lot B, row 4. (Lots B and C are a lot closer to terminal. Get it? A lot?) So I remembered lot B, row 4 and also I remembered that my car was close by. Well, at least I found my car and managed to get back to my apartment. It only took 45 minutes of wandering in the sticky-damp-humid night. It doesn't seem to get cooler at night over here, just darker.

So there's my lucky day. I wish they had Jamba Juice over here so I could get a Luck boost with my Green Tea Stomach Ache Blast. Or I'll get hit by lightening 500 times.

As I write this, I'm sitting here in the airport at Denver, Colorado. Why Denver? Well I wasn't cool enough to have booked a direct flight back home, so I get a nice bonus trip to Denver! Yay! Not only that, I also get an extra two-hour stay in Denver! Woohoo! Denver is flat. If I remember my history classes correctly, the folks who thought the world was flat came to that conclusion after visiting the Denver airport. And it was dark and cloudy outside when they visited so all they could see was the two feet of flatness in front of them. Well, that's a highly accurate history lesson for you.

There's a guy sitting next to me playing a FPS and cursing. I can't think of a better place to be right now.

And it's getting better! Some alarm just went off. And now it's quiet again.

Work for the past week has been a workological roller coaster. For a while, there was some work to do, mostly tools (CAD tools, not chain saws and Redeemers(tm) you fool) to play with, but playing has gotten boring so I'm back to banging my head on my non-existent headrest. There will be something to do next week, they say. Next week. Next week.

Something I've discovered about my apartment (aside from the tasteful, pink blankets) is that I'm too small for it. The couches in the living room are too tall for me. The couch itself isn't that big, but the cushions are huge and don't have a low coefficient of sinkability (most commonly used in the Couch Uncomfortability Function). As a result, I'm too high off the ground to be watching TV comfortably. I could sit on the ground, but the coffee table is too high so I feel like a typical NBA baller peering over a 10-foot wall. This is also uncomfortable. Finally, the light switches are above my shoulder height. This caused a great deal of stumbling when I first tried to enter my apartment during a time of darkness (ie. night). But most everything else seems to be good enough for me.

For the two weeks I've been in Austin, I've managed to eat at a different restaurant whenever I eat out (not terribly often). But yesterday, I managed to eat lunch and dinner at two places where I've eaten before. There's this Tex-Mex type of place called Taco Deli which has some pretty good tacos and wraps. Not the same as Rojoz, of course, but still good. That's the second time I've gone there, and this trip proved that I didn't have a chunk of tasty food stuck in my teeth when I went there the first time and loved it so much. For dinner I went to Madras Pavilion or Madras Palace or Madras Planet or something. I forget the name, but it's Madras Psomething. The "something" is not pronounced the same way "something" is usually pronounced. I could find out the real name because the a paper menu I grabbed yesterday is just a zipper away from my left hand. Well, maybe more of a zipper and a rummage. In the time it took me to write these last three sentences, I could have found out and graced this post with the true name of this tasty Indian eatery. That place was pretty good too. They had these big dosai's. I mean, they're REALLY big. But a dosai is mostly hollow so it just took up a lot of space on a plate. A lot of tasty space. They served coconut rice: little bits of coconut and some other nut cooked with the rice. That seems like an interesting thing to try and mess up on my own.

I've been cooking from time to time too. Actually, it's more like kooking. I have this dish called Random Stuff In A Frying Pan. I'm not too sure how to describe it. It's just whatever I remember that I've bought, tossed into a frying pan and cooked until I won't get food poisoning 11 out of 14 times. The other famous dish that I've been making is something I like to call A Tasty Bowl of Cheerios. Being the busy traveler that I am, I came up with an all-new variation of that that I call A Tasty Bag of Cheerios. The recipe is similar to A Tasty Bowl of Cheerios but you substitute the Tasty Bowl with a Tasty Bag. The secret is that you don't eat the Bowl or the Bag so you could even use a Box for even more fun.

But I didn't go that far today, I brought A Tasty Bag of Cheerios with me on my trip. And I had some TCBY frozen yogurt at the airport - Moose Track flavor. It has mini penut butter cups in it, thus proving my long standing suspision that moose are made out of peanut butter.

I had a fascinating conversation with one of my personalities a few nights ago about trees. If a tree turned itself 90 degrees clockwise from where it was originally standing, no one would notice. Trees have probably been turning themselves 90 degrees from where they stand for more than 24 years now and no one really noticed. It's amazing what you can talk about with your semi-comatose self.

Yesterday I decided to check this out for myself, so I tried to go on a hike. There's a creek called Bull Creek that has a whole bunch of green belts all over Austin. Never got too far karate I suppose. I went to two of these Green Belts, an upper green belt and another green belt. I hit the "another" one first. The website for that one said it had some nice, well-maintained trails and that it did. There were brush-lined trails, stone steps, and rain-controlling, erosion-reducing lumps (really, I have no idea how else to describe them). It wasn't as neatly manicured as Yosemite, but I liked it this way better. It feels closer to the good earth. Now that I think about it, it was a bit too neatly groomed so it only made me THINK I was right there on Mama Nature's lap. But that's good enough for me. What I thought was really cool was that some of the stone steps look like they came from an ancient temple swarming with booby traps. I felt like Indiana Jones but without a hat or a theme song. I wonder what it'll take for me to get a theme song?

Unfortunately, this hike was cut short by a flowing body of water. The trail leads up to the creek with a fire hydrant in the middle of it. Seriously. I could see the trail continuing on the other side, but there wasn't a neat little bridge for me to cross and keep my footsies dry. So I took the path more wussily traveled and went back the way I came. Only after reading the website when I got home did I realize that I was supposed to cross the frigging thing. The whole hike took, oh, about 30 minutes.

Really, I should put up some pictures. The thumbnailing program that I use is pretty crappy. When resizing, it doesn't do any anti-aliasing so the pictures end up looking jagged. At least I think that's what's missing.

Feeling cheated out of a hike, I decided to go on another hike. This one was at Upper Bull Creek. The trail is a bit strange. It starts off behind a middle school. The trail head is marked by a green high-voltage box. And it's behind a middle school. This trail was REALLY raw. I was so close to nature that I could taste it. Then I realized it was because I had a tree branch in my mouth. Whereas the last trail was neatly maintained, this one was hardly visible. There were branches and shrubs all over the trail. I had to crouch and duck a lot on this trail. It might be kind of fun to bike, but only if I was three feet tall and riding a BMX bike for midgets. There were times when I didn't realize that I had stepped off of the trail until I looked around and discovered that I was still on the trail, just that the trail didn't look like a trail.

There were spiderwebs between the trees too. I bravely fought off the giant arachnids before they made me into supper though. I think I finally understand the web feature of the crypt fiends.

Before long, the trail brought me to a cozy algae-infested pond. There were two little piers built by boy scouts. I saluted the pier and then stood on it. Standing on a pier looking out at a beautifully slimy pond gets boring after a while, so I kept going. I thought I was following a trail, but as I went along, I think the trail snuck away and left me out there. Boo hoo. I went a bit further and couldn't tell what was trail and what wasn't anymore so I turned around.

When I returned to the pond, I found another path that I apparently should have taken. This one was a bit better, but lo and behold, I encountered another flowing body of water. This one was a small waterfall. Oooo. But right as I was about to turn around and go home, one of my more adventurous personalities piped up and persuaded me to cross the river. It was pretty shallow so crossing it wasn't much of a problem. I mean, it was so shallow that I could put my shoe in the water and only the sole would be wet. There was a nice, clearly-defined trail on the other side of the river. I walked this for a while before I ran out of water, so I went back home feeling oh so proud of myself that I crossed a river. But the website doesn't say anything about crossing a river, so maybe I wasn't supposed to. Argh.

And it turns out I was right: I never noticed any of the trees turning themselves 90 degrees clockwise. Score one for personality three. Good job big guy or girl.

Man, work is really tough. It's not like I've been busy. Quite the opposite, in fact. I don't really have anything to do. Or rather, I need to go find things to do. It's tough sitting there trying to find all the information without having access to oh, just about nothing. The stupid workoholic in me is going absolutely nuts.

One thing I noticed while driving around Austin is that it's surprisingly green. In the north-west part of Austin, there are large plots just full of lush, green trees. It looks a bit like ritzy Los Gatos but with fewer houses and more trees. In fact, I don't think the number of trees here can compare to anything in the South Bay. Parts of North Austin feels like Rocklin. There is a lot of areas that are still being developed and the major roads are full of shopping centers separated by grassy fields just waiting to be paved and parked on.

Well, anyway, my first week is all done. Now for the weekend. I'm probably going to check out a few parks. I kind of want to see what 6th street is like. There's supposed to be a pretty lively nightlife there, and everyone knows how much I love nightlife.

Oh, I'm going to be heading home next Friday. Yeah, long trip. But I'm returning here on Monday.

This was pretty boring. Maybe tomorrow, I'll get in my Big Bird costume and start a one-bird protest in front of the neighborhood Fry's for no good reason. Oh, you didn't know I had a Big Bird costume? Well I don't. But there's a party store next to Fry's, so it'll all work out.

Well, I arrived in Austin last Sunday and it's so hot that I couldn't type this post. OK, fine. That's like saying Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father. Yeah, yeah, it's true from a certain point of view...that nobody holds.

Anyway, these past few days have been a moderate blast. Or it felt like I was standing within a 100-yard radius of one. I took a flight to Phoenix first and then to Austin. The phlight to Foenix was nice because I caught a glimpse of those weird, lone spiky mountain things that I so often associate Arizona. But aside from that, I kept wondering to myself, "Why didn't I take a direct flight?" The answer was always, "Because I forgot the middle ground where...I'm an idiot!" But I chose to ignore it and then went back to chasing down the floaters in my eyes.

I had a $6 hot dog at the Phoenix airport. It was fancier than your standard-issue hot dog (bratwurst in an onion bun topped with grilled onions and peppers) but for that price they should have included a $3 bill on the side. Ah, the good ol' days of Top Dog.

My flight out of Phoenix was delayed for an hour due to "maintenance issues". But those "maintenance issues" turned out to be that they forgot to replace the spent nitrous oxide canisters in the plane. Or so I think because we the flight to Austin was 30 minutes shorter than expected. (So we were still late, by 30 minutes. Bite me.)

When I got to sunny Austin (at 11pm), it was raining. Not only that, there was some badass lightening. It was pretty bloody humid when I got off of the plane. I got my luggage and then I proceeded to claim my rental car. It turns out that my other co-workers who came on this trip got Ford Focus's. I think the rental car dude saw me and knew I was a pimp extraordinaire so he hooked me up with...a Chevy Cavalier! w00t!

Check out that pimp ride! I even opened the doors so that it looks like I'm showing off my whip. Sorry Xzibit, my ride's been pimped. You can go home now. Actually, the doors were open because the car smells like someone smoked a carton of cigarettes one month ago and never opened the windows until a poor, unfortunate dumb ass (pronounced "KUS-tuh-mur") came by and tried to drive it. The drops of water all over the uncovered hood of the car just proves that it was raining when I arrived. Or I poured water on there to get some sympathy.

But, really, it was raining. I tried to follow my awesome rental car map to get home but it wasn't all that awesome. Actually, it wasn't that bad, just not very detailed. I ended up missing a turn on the freeway (where it randomly splits in half) and kept going. At some point I realized that I had missed the turn so I turned around and went back to the airport so I could figure out where I was. I stopped and looked at my awesome map and realized that, had I kept going, I would have ended up where I needed to go anyway. Bah. So I left the airport again and set out again. I also had some Mapquest directions so I followed those, but I followed them wrong. I missed the turn again (Ha ha!) but it was OK because I'd end up where I needed to go. Of course, because I missed that turn, I shouldn't have tried to follow my Mapquest directions anymore. But my super intelligent side kicked in and I ended up going a mile or so out of Austin before I realized that I should have turned back. There's more, but I'll skip it. Did I mention that it was raining? I also couldn't figure out how to wipe the windshield (you need to push the stupid lever up), roll down the windows (the controls are by the shifter), defrost the rear window (push the tiny, inaccessable button) and bite my ear at the same time. It was kinda scary.

An interesting thing about Austin's freeways is that the freeways have smaller access roads running parallel to them. From time to time, the left-most lane branches off to the freeway. The advantage to using the freeway is that the access roads have stoplights at cross streets. But it seems like the civies in Austin accounted for idiots like me. At if you get in the left-most lane of an access road approaching a cross street, that lane will let you make a U-turn either under or over the main freeway and dump you out on the access road on the other side of the freeway going the other direction. Kinda badass. I took full advantage of those U-turn lanes.

After more than an hour into my 25-minute trip, I arrived at my hotel, parked next to some hawgs and checked in. The hotel was pretty nice.

Two TVs, two double beds, a bathroom and a place for my laptop to sleep. Who could ask for more? It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but the shower head is about six feet above the tub, and the tub is only about two feet tall.

So I changed, washed up, and headed off to sleep. About an hour later, the fire alarm went off. Craps it scared the craps out of me. I jumped up, fumbled for my glasses and then the alarm stopped. I cursed in Wookie and went back to sleep. Of course, about 30 minutes later, the fire alarm went off again. This time, I got to where I was tripping over my suitcase before the alarm stopped. Some drunk kids set it off, I think. Bah.

Monday morning rolled around and I went downstairs to catch the slacker edition of a continental breakfast (a bowl of dry cereal and the last English muffin). Then one of my ex-coworkers and I went out to "explore" the city. She recently moved to Austin for her new job so she had some idea of what is where. We checked out the Whole Foods in downtown Austin, where Whole Foods started, I think. The place has a multi-story underground parking lot that's pretty nicely filled up. My favorite part of the store was the beer alley: a cold walk-in beer-chilling refrigerator that was cold and not hot. We then had some really spicy Indian food for lunch. It was "medium spicy" but I couldn't eat much of it. I must have had about three or four glasses of sugar water to stop the fire in my mouth. Then we went to an ice cream and fruit bowl place. I had a bowl of fruit with chili-lime-salt on it. It made the fruit taste like salted plums. Tasty. Finally, we went over to the Arboretum, which sounded a lot like park or a tree-infested recreational area, but it turned out to be a Stanfurd Shoppingu Centre clone with the humidity knob turned higher. What's that? Do I hear a "bah" coming? Bah. That night I watched part of the Miss Universe pageant. I stopped when I realized that a certain former queen of Naboo wasn't eligible.

Tuesday was the day I've been waiting for: the start of work. So two of us get there at around 9:30 in the morning. No one gave us a start time, but my manager said about 10 would be a good time to show up. We waited for a bit before the third dude showed up. And then we waited for another while before the last dude didn't show up. But someone came by to take us to our building where we got our offices (shared with one other person), laptops and introductory handshakes. Then we waited to meet with our director or someone. After that, we waited some more to meet with our director or someone. And then, we waited around to meet with our director or someone. By then, it was about 3pm. If you noticed, in the course of getting stuff, we didn't get badges. So we couldn't leave the floor, not even to eat lunch. So we took off to move into our apartments. Sweet. That was a good idea because they had cookies there. But the people in the leasing office had no idea which units we were in so we waited while they tried to figure it out. After that, we waited some more while they tried to figure it out. And then, we waited around while they tried to figure it out. Then they told a joke:

Leasing Office Person 1: Knock Knock.
Leasing Office Person 2: Who's there?
LOP1: Some guys who want to move in but we don't know which apartments they need to move in to.
LOP2: Some guys who want to move in but we don't know which apartments they need to move in to who?
LOP1: Uh, I dunno...
LOP2: Isn't one of them living in apartment 1337?
LOP1: Hmm, I think so. Hey what do you know? We had their apartment numbers right here this whole time.
LOP2: Oh. Well thanks for eating all of our cookies, guys.

OK, it wasn't that bad. The people there were really nice. There was some confusion because we thought we had to contact the corporate housing office for our housing assignments. Which makes sense. And nothing makes sense. So everyone was confused. Anyway, the place is pretty nice. Here are some cool pictures:


As you can see, there's a place for my laptop to sleep, just like in the hotel. But this time, it needs to share a bed with me. Awww. The ever-important cable modem is there just waiting to stream bits through that pipe. The shower head over here wasn't designed for Andre the Big Guy. The tub wasn't designed for Mini Moi.

The bathroom is interesting. Actually, just the doors. There is a door from the bedroom to the bathroom and a door from the dining area to the bathroom. If both doors are slightly open and someone tries to go into the bathroom (therefore opening one door all the way), the doorknobs get stuck and neither door can open all the way. Brilliant!

And here's the best part about this place:

Yup, a pretty pink blanket! It matches my toenail polish and lipstick.

As for today, at about 3am, I woke up to hella bright lightening and really heavy rain. And then the day was really, really nice. Ah, Texas weather. At work, things started to go more smoothly. So that means no more interesting stories. Fine fine fine. Not really smoothly. And there are stories. But I'm getting tired of typing.

About them Texas stereotypes, everyone says y'all. It's just so natural. People here are pretty friendly. I'm not sure what it is, but when a salesperson at the North Austin Fry's (I live a few minutes away from there...w00t!) says, "Y'all need any help?" to me, I don't feel like I'm being assaulted like when a Bay Area Fry's salesperson says, "Me help customer, yes?" Random people seem more likely to not only make eye contact, but also utter a non-offensive greeting like, "Hi". Now if only Texas hospitality included turning down the heat, that'd be great.