Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas ~ In Austin, Texas ~ Part 3

Trip Journal Day 3

Today was fun.  We had quite an adventure taking the Metrorail.   My mom has never ridden one on any city she’s lived in and she really wanted to do so.  We got to the station and realized that we missed the last one for that station.  We raced to two stations ahead to barely make it in time to catch the metro to downtown.  *Phew!* The ride was actually rather nice.  It was a mostly smooth trip and the stops were not terribly frequent.  The Lightrail in Sacramento has way more stops.  

We get dropped off in the heart of downtown right next to the Austin Convention Center.  I didn’t notice that until we left, but we were busy taking in all the other sights.  We walked along 6^th street which has all sorts of shops and eateries and bars and music venues.  I can understand why my ex-coworker moved here to play music.  I took several pictures along the way which will be posted sometime soon on my Facebook page.  

We walked by the Capitol building after lunch.  We found a Chipotle which was reasonably priced.  We were going to try the Roaring Fork, but it was too expensive.  I imagine that a lot of the restaurants in downtown are that way.  There were also several pizzerias and Italian food places.  I also noticed several Mexican restaurants other than Chipotle.  During lunch my brother chided me into trying the hot Chipotle sauce.  I dropped a bit onto my burrito and ate it.  It wasn’t that hot. Sheesh.  Oh, says he.  Well let me go ahead and pour some for you…lol… I went ahead and let him and my mouth burned for about an hour after that!  Ouch!

We stopped by Buffalo Billiards which had pool tables, dart boards and those mini shuffle boards you find in bars with the sand on them.  I would have loved to have stopped and play some pool, but my brother didn’t want to stop.  Even our mom wanted to play some pool.  That’s rare.

We did walk into a shop that we passed up when we first got there. I’m glad I asked to go in.  It was an amazing shop called Aaron’s Rock and Roll. It had band t-shirts from bands I haven’t thought of in a long time.  I was going to get a Depeche Mode “Violator” shirt, but they didn’t have my size.  I really need to lose some weight.  My brother bought a Tool shirt and I bought a few patches.  They were buy 2 get 1 free.  They had life-size replicas of Gremlins in the front window.  I would have LOVED to have one for my villains collection.  They also   had a massive selection of Nightmare Before Christmas stuff.  They had Lock, Shock, and Barrel in a collector’s box that I would have loved to have, but wasn’t willing to fork over $65 that I really don’t have to spend anyway.  It was a great store.

The best part of the day was going into the Smoking Caterpillar.  We didn’t stay for very long, but most people would rather get what the store was going to be before going in.  We managed to get our mom to go into the store.  She freely admits to be naïve.  But, we got her in even if only for a moment.  We had a chuckle about that.  There really wasn’t anything in there that we wanted anyway.  Not even incense.  

When we got done in downtown we took the Metrorail back to the station where we left the truck and headed to the Hobby Lobby.  I used to get most of my ribbon from this place when I lived in Boise.  Reno doesn’t have a Hobby Lobby, to my knowledge, so I was hoping that the ribbon would be half off.  It is every other week.  Unfortunately, this was an off week for the sale so I left without ribbon.  Oh well.  Next time perhaps.

After Hobby Lobby we headed to Freddy’s for ice cream.  Actually, they don’t serve ice cream.  They serve frozen custard, which to me sounds really nasty.  However, it was actually really good.  This place is like a really fancy Dairy Queen.  The ice cream … I mean custard… is WAY better than Dairy Queen though, and the food looks way better, too.  We didn’t have food as we had just eaten while we were downtown.  I don’t think I could have eaten another bite anyway.  The custard I ordered was a Dirt ‘n Worms which is basically vanilla custard with Oreo cookies and gummy worms on top with a generous helping of whipped cream.  Left the cherry off.

We headed back to mom’s house after that and I’ve been on the computer attempting to relax ever since.  I played some online games, answered some emails, and now my brother and I are upstairs listening to my Christmas station on Pandora which is supposed to be playing “twisted” carols although it is playing some rather “normal” sounding ones.  I try to go over those, but I already used up my allotted skips per hour.  Oh well.  

I was going to try to get together with a friend and ex-coworker, but it just wasn’t in the cards.  The Metrorail didn’t run as late as we had hoped due to it being a weekday and he didn’t get off work until 7pm.  No matter, perhaps we will meet up next time.  It is difficult especially during the holidays when everyone is so busy.  I think a visit during off holiday time is in order for the spring perhaps.  Actually, there is so much to do here and such a low unemployment rate that I am considering moving down here.  I doubt that might actually happen, but one never knows.

I know that my mom has a lot of stuff planned for tomorrow. I know I’ll be in the kitchen helping to make all sorts of baked goodies.  I am hoping to stay away from most of them as I really need to put a stop to all this pointless eating.  Sure, it’s the holidays, but that doesn’t mean that I get to gain ten pounds and not feel bad about it. 

Trip is still going just fine.