We are home!
I am sitting at my desk surrounded by all of the usual post-travel rubble, but I don’t even care. Tonight I’m still on vacation. The real world can just wait until the morning.
The boys were real champs the whole time we were gone. We tucked them into bed at 8:00 tonight and they have been asleep since 8:07.
After four days and four nights of sleeping in, maid service, shopping, reading, and eating every meal out; I feel like the most pampered person on the planet. It was great… but I think I’m ready to jump back into my normal routine.
The first night we ate at an authentic Texas B-B-Q place called The Saltlick. We had ribs, potato salad, berry cobbler; the works! I noticed when we walked in that most of the tables had fresh wild flowers arranged in funky cowboy boots. I was all set to get a picture of them, but as luck would have it we were not seated at a table with a cowboy boot arrangement. I just didn’t have the guts to ask the family sitting next to us if they would mind leaning back so I could take a picture of their center piece.
The rumors are true. Everything in Texas is bigger, including the boots.
The state capitol was only a few blocks from our hotel, so one night we wandered around taking pictures. This building is approximately 15 feet taller than the U.S capitol, because… it’s Texas and it must be bigger (no, I did not measure! It may just be a rumor).
One afternoon I spent $5 to tour the Austin Museum of Art, and was really disappointed to discover the whole museum was featuring a collection of minimalist art. Minimal art is my least favorite genre. It manages to combine two things I dislike the most; pretentiousness and laziness. The philosophy behind minimal art is that the art itself is not as important as the idea or emotion that the it is supposed to represent. Sometimes the artist chooses to explain what the art represents and sometimes they simply leave it to the viewer to interpret the meaning. I stood and stared at a single red chalk line on a white piece of paper and wonder, “What could possibly be significant about this?” But maybe I’m just and uncultured philistine.
The concert was great! We were only a few yards away from the stage. The music was loud and fast. We all raised our voices and sang along with the songs we knew, and cheered like crazy when we didn’t know the words. I could feel the music thumping in my chest and my ears were ringing for a good 45 minutes afterwards!
It’s getting late and my bed is calling to me.