early bird / late bird

So sadly, the Renaissance Fair did not pan out last weekend. Saturday was a little more rambunctious than expected, from J Black's Blackout breakfast/brunch, to the Most Amazing Bus Ride Ever, to tailgating, to scoring free tickets on the 24th row, back to J Black's to dominate the cork-room-turned-dance-room, then inevitably to Union Park to take the dancing up a notch. 

As you might suspect, Sunday morning came fast and hard. I had pre-purchased our tickets to thee ole fair so we spent about 30 minutes weighing the pros (fried food, midgets in costumes) and cons (rain, cold, removing ourselves from bed, wasting $26) before the gavel of Google maps brought our decision-making to an end: ye fair was three and a half ungodly hours away. And it closed at dusk. Which was in like 5 hours. So we agreed to try to not spend $26 all day in exchange for our laziness, and I spent the next three hours cursing ESPN for locking me out while attempting to pick up Miles Austin at 11:59 a.m. Oh, for the thirty-seventh time, did you hear he had the best game of his life?

I definitely learned a little lesson about pre-purchasing those tickets, which incidentally I did because it said there were limited quantities available at the discounted price (incidentally, there were not). I am a chronic planner and always think that the price will jump or someone else will buy whatever it is that I want if I do not buy it right at that minute. My neuroses has saved us a lot of money, especially when it comes to plane tickets and such, buuuuuut this weekend made me realize that perhaps there's some value in playing Brian's version of the Game of Life, which is to wait until the last minute to buy things for ultimate flexibility purposes. Because sometimes you get a lot of good deals that way too. Case in point, we wouldn't have wasted $26 this weekend. And, for the two UT games that we've gone to together, we didn't spend a dime because we didn't buy tickets in advance and instead just used tickets from people that were leaving the game around halftime (excellent plan, you must try it). That's at least $200 saved. 

Great free seats, no complaints. 

So, I decided maybe we should start keeping track of money we save/waste through our different tactics and see where things shake out. For all I know, maybe the early bird is getting screwed. (Note: that is an obligatory concession and I know it's not true, what? Game on.) 

get ye turkey leg

Here ye, here ye! To whom is the honour bestowed upon that she shall incur a multitude of merriment and festivals all in a weekend's time?

Translation: who's about to see her fiance, tailgate & hopefully sneak into the UT game, and go to a Renaissance festival this weekend?!

That's right. Me lady me-self.

I find it no small twist of irony that Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves will also be arriving in my mailbox today. This is destiny, people.

(There's something so, so right about this.)

behind the scenes

As I was uploading videos and pictures from this weekend at ACL, I ran across some videos from our girl's trip to Horseshoe Bay a few weekends ago. This is what happens when you put 9 girls in a lakehouse, give them a few cases of beer, and discover Michael Jackson's Number Ones in a drawer.

Me: We are a disaster.
Lundy: Such a sweet sweet disaster.

the brick exists!

I mentioned a while back that I'd bought my dad a brick to go along the Town Lake trail. Well, promptly afterwards, I lost all records of doing so and started to wonder if I'd actually ever successfully put in the order at all. So I emailed the foundation in charge of the bricks to confess my idiot self had no mental or electronic record of the order and wanted to make sure it actually existed. No response. 

So I finally convinced myself that I was going crazy and obviously hadn't ordered it at all. Maybe I'd gotten to the last page and never clicked "send," but regardless, there was nothing in my credit card statements or email confirming my little make-believe transaction had ever happened. For the last few weeks I've been meaning to (re)order another brick, because they only have so much space in this particular pavilion. It's not exactly cheap, so I had been dragging my feet. 

And once again, procrastination does me a favor. 

On Monday, an email appeared in my inbox with the subject "Your commemorative brick at Lou Neff Point." My brick! The brick that I had ordered! The brick that I had not at all made up and had totally purchased successfully like a normal functioning human being! I already had plans to go to the trail that afternoon so I took my phone to get some shots of it. It's in a perfect spot, right by the edge of the sidewalk where I like to think it will get more "face time." The pavilion is right behind it with an awesome view of kayakers and downtown! I couldn't be happier with it!

how many degrees??

It feels so fresh and so clean here in Austin, Texas; I even wore a JACKET yesterday! That's right folks, something with sleeves that's more than 1/4" thick. Weird. To other's it's a cold front, but to me it's signs of hope and joy and life beyond our volcanic summer. I even went on the trail at Town Lake the other day and didn't feel like I was inhaling rhinocerous breath...no, this was sweet sweet air! 

I've always thought summer was the best season, and I there's definitely a lot to love about lake days and CoPo nights, but I'm starting to think that fall is the best season change. It's like finding a toybox full of things I can't play with during the summer. I always forget how much I love jeans between March and September, and then I get a glorious reminder that I have 12 (count 'em) pairs just waiting to be worn or possibly let out and then worn. I forgot how much I love drinking wine on the front porch and when it stopped being 1,358 degrees last week, the turquoise bench saw its first fannies of the season, Carly and Stephen (two of my favorite & newly engaged friends). I also forgot how much I love concerts, which come back in full swing starting with Ingrid Michaelson's annual show at the Parish (I can't help it, I want to be her). Then there's ACL next weekend, and this year it won't be subtitled The Dust Bowl Days, it'll be Oh My God Zilker Park Got Sprinklers. And I'll have not one but two Keelys staying with me for the weekend! Who knew that was even possible? 

Come sit on me!

Another seasonal highlight that I used to not give two shits about but now feel is an integral part the fall: football. My fantasy football team is starting off the season in typical fine form. I usually don't start sliding off until critical weeks like 11 or 12, which gives me approximately 8 weeks to talk unnecessary amounts of shit. I get to go to my first UT game of the season tomorrow, where I'll continue my trend of tailgating too long and then accidentally getting into the game for free (the key is to get just less-drunk than someone near you so they decide to stay at the tailgate and unload their ticket on the nearest person...which happens to be me). 

I'm such an imposter. 

And the last gift Fall is giving me right now is new TV, not that I'm really committed to any particular shows, but whenever I do have time, there's always something new on and it's not total crap. I happened to catch Modern Family on Wednesday and holy jemima you have to watch this immediately. It'll be your best use of 21 minutes today. Go get 'em Tiger.

Recycling Fail

Right in my own parking lot!

a pinch of crazy + a lb. of unemployment

After all of our intense Excel-sheeting and timeshare-looking, the honeymoon is starting to take a slightly different shape from our initial interest in fleeing the country. Bubbling on the backburner has been an idea to do some extensive traveling right around our homeland, you know, the one with the red white and blue?

Since most likely, Brian and I will both be without jobs come next May, it's been hard to resist the urge to max out on our vacationing while vacation time comes without penalty! Thus, we're starting to wrap our minds around maybe more like a 2-month adventure around the U.S....likely, with the assistance of a teardrop trailer. If you've never seen one, they were really popular back in the 30s-50s and look like this: 

Essentially there's just enough room inside to crawl into bed, and then the kitchenette on the back houses a little stove, icebox, etc. Here's a diagram where you can see the inside and how everything manages to fit in such a small space. 

There's definitely not any room to spare, but it's the most cost-effective alternative that we've found that's a step above straight-up camping in a tent (which, let's be honest...do you think I could happily sleep in a tent for 8 weeks? Let's not talk crazy now). An RV would be great but they are gas guzzlers and cost a fortune, even to rent. The teardrop trailer is a nice little in-between that can be pulled by a sedan, can be re-sold after we're done with it, and would give us more protection than a tent but still save us from spending money on 60 nights in hotels. Because of its portability, you can essentially sleep anywhere you feel safe enough to do so - campgrounds, the side of the road, or even Wal-Mart parking lots (WM is super trailer friendly...another little factoid I've learned). There are obviously no showers, so you have to rely on campground showers, merciful friends, and a can of Psssst. 

Maybe a little crazy, but interesting, right?

A whole teardrop trailer sub-culture exists, which has been fascinating to see on websites and travel logs. And there are all sorts of accessories you can get too, like tents and dressing rooms, since you can't stand up in the trailer. 

Brian's uncle restores vintage cars and does all sorts of other mechanic/handywork that my feminine brain can't process, so we've enlisted him to start researching how much it would cost to have him build us our very own. Possibly painted to match the gold Honda. I'm just saying.

We'll see how the financial aspect of it pans out, but I've done a mock budget and I think we could get away with it for about the same price as 2 weeks in Costa Rica or somewhere equally awesome. So we'll see - there may or may not be a Google map already dedicated to potential routes. If we're going to be jobless and homeless and kidless - no better time to do something like this, right??