Monday, June 9, 2014
free breakfast in the hotel (included with the price of the room): peach yogurt, oatmeal with cranberries and 2% milk. back to the room. made plans for today: eat a waldorf salad at moonshine or get something at second bar and restaurant, maybe return to barton springs pool before the flight. opened the windowshade, found pouring rain. with no umbrella there was no way i could arrive dry at moonshine or second. changed clothes and plans. now maybe visit the capitol building. checked out of hampton inn, no problems, changed plans again after speaking with the front desk staff. drove the rental car to bob bullock texas state history museum, parked ($8). driving in austin is very frustrating because the lights are not timed and they seemed like 60 to 90 seconds each. i found myself spending a lot of effort at not getting too distracted by boredom while waiting for lights. watched Texas: The Big Picture in imax ($9, 45 minutes) by tim mcclure. it's overly dramatic, but i still enjoyed it. the writing, narration, music, and production quality (everything, basically) was excellent. some scenes were over a decade old, but they still seemed to work well. i noticed that during the part proclaiming texas diversity no mention was made of gays, lesbians, or disabled people. during the part highlighting (promoting) offshore oil drilling it felt awkward in light of the giant gulf oil spill event a while back. i felt this was time well spent. i got to learn more about and see other parts of texas in air-conditioned comfort. no more rain. drove to auditorium shores, snapped some photos of the austin skyline, butler park, and the long center for the performing arts. walked around a bit. very humid due to the recent downpour. hungry. drove to elizabeth street and s 1st st, getting a little lost along the way. lunch at elizabeth street noodles, banh mi, and boulangerie: bun with grilled pork ($14) and fried spring roll ($3), iced vietnamese coffee ($4). dessert: pistachio eclair ($3). total: $25.98 after tax with a $4 tip. i'm a little astounded at the prices, but the food and drink are of excellent quality, and the space is exceedingly charming. they have some atypical animals on the menu, including octopus and escargot. the spring roll wrappers seemed to be housemade (because the seemed thicker in parts than factorymade ones). stumptown coffee, bee teapots, vintage old asia wallpaper, the design on the drinking glasses matches the design on the pitchers, the sauce bottles seemed to be custom, custom (?) vintage asia dress uniforms for the front of house women. so many charming details. the female nudes art in the mens restroom i interpreted as homophobia. took part of my meal to go in order to eat the eclair. lick ice cream was in my plans at this point, but i was full. couldn't think of anything else to do in an hour, so i got gasoline (about $27) and dropped off the avis rental car ($125.83 for 3 days with AAA discount), no problems, arriving at the airport a little early. got an arnold palmer ($2.15) at annie's inside the security checkpoint. virgin america flight 221 austin to san francisco, seat 14c. listened to comedy: hannibal buress, j.t. habersaat, marc maron, mike wiebe. listened to old school rap playlist: mr. wendel, mistadobalina, rebirth of slick (cool like dat), same song, i'm housin', don't sweat the technique, who's gonna take the weight?, no time to play, now that we found love, you played yourself, reality used to be a friend of mine, the creator, joy and pain, whoomp! (there it is), rump shaker. Dinner at home: Patrick made me ramen noodles with mushrooms and cabbage. Unpacked.