This one goes out to Mom

Yeah, sure, sappy, I know. Go fuck yourself. My mom is in the hospital for the 13th time since September. Or was it August? I can't remember when she started dialysis, but it was around then. 3 A.V. fistulas, a peritoneal port, 6 cardiac caths, a couple infections, surgeries to install and remove the above, time for monitoring, recovering, etc, etc. She's been through a lot. And she's still not done, although it now seems that they've got a handle on why the fistulas keep failing so consistently, it's a 2% of the population kind of problem. Now she's going to rest for a couple months and they're going to do something different for a dialysis access.

She might murder me for posting this, but oh well, at least then I won't have to worry about my student loans. This was right before they took her back for surgery today.

Home, where the laptop is

Phil the wonderdog, and his owner Todd.


So, it was a fairly disastrous weekend, with a few redeeming moments that made the trip to Austin just shy of a total waste. So I blogged about Thursday evening, and then took my laptop into the kitchen for some browsing and conversation. I plugged in the laptop so it could charge, and then when I got up I tripped over the cord and knocked it onto the floor, breaking the screen. So, sans laptop, I didn't blog or process pictures the rest of the weekend.

Steves was there, somewhat improbably.


That afternoon, there was an alley cat and a movie premiere. I got DFL in the alley cat, and saw half the movie, which looked pretty good, and then decided to strike out towards the action. There were free drinks somewhere, I could smell them. Come to think of it, that might have been the empty beer in my hand. Oh well.

The bikes piled up before the alleycat. Yay dfl!


That night, my luck was a little better. We got in to a party with free tequila, but then, standing in a long line waiting for drinks, Sarah decdided to go see Devo, who I don't care about, and so we all left the party with the free booze and I went and walked sixth street for a couple hours while they were at the show. That's where I saw the coolest thing of the whole trip.




There was a guy standing between two van de graaff (lightning) generators, all covered in chainmail. The lightning striking him was modulated so that the lightning was a speaker. The lightning noise was the music.

F'ing amazing.


From there, I wandered until my feet hurt, then sat a little, then wandered a little, in a "diminishing returns" situation until I was walking a block and sitting on a curb for five minutes, and then getting up and moving along. Somewhere in there was pizza and a coke. Then Devo was over, and everyone went back to the party with the free drinks, where, after I'd had one beer and one shot of tequila, they ran out of booze.




Back at the house to sleep, only to wake up in the morning to no computer and no internets. Saturday was half-decent DJ's during the day followed by a rather nice evening hanging with Todd (my host, remember) and his girlfriend Kelli. Fairly interesting people, the both of them. Todd really really needs to show his paintings in a gallery. I know people, professional art people (gallery people), who would kill for paintings like his.

Oh yeah, cmay was there too.


Sunday morning, we woke up and drove back. Contained in that sentence was another highlight of the trip- driving north on I-35, big puffy clouds overhead, radiohead on the stereo, and finally, for a little while, everything was right with the world. Now I'm home.

People at the "Mess with Texas" show right next to the capitol. This was a nice moment when I was sitting on a rock.

SXSW update....

So we're still here, still haven't seen any shows, and if it weren't for our gracious and intelligent host, we wouldn't even have had and free beer. Austin is really going to have to kick it up a notch to save itself from this one.

Beginning of the night, all dressed up, still hopeful.


We went to the party 45 minutes early and there was already a line a couple hundred people long. For some reason, when you tell people free beer and hot DJ's, they line up like it's the cure for stupidity. And then stand there. For two hours. While people cut, and get to go in vip.

On the way, the night looked promising.


Seems to me it's an intelligence test. It sounds like a good idea to go stand in line for a little while and get a bunch of free shit- booze, music, hot, scantily clad women etc. There's a limit to how much you can stand there though, and here's where the intelligence test comes in: the smarter you are, the sooner you leave. When we left, there were still 200 people standing in line, not about to get in.

The line, when we got there. Seemed like we'd get in.


Now, they were at capacity when they stopped letting people in, I'm sure. But after a bunch of people leave, why not let the people at the front of the line in? Instead, they were only allowing VIP's, which unfortunately, we're not.

The same line, 45 minutes later.


So, we gave up after about an hour of just standing there. In our defense, there were maybe 20 people in front of us; it seemed possible, when they said they were at capacity, that we might get in after some people left. Then we came back to the house, (Todd's house) and drank beer and talked late into the night with todd, todd's friend who works for SNL, and his girlfriend, who's name I've forgotten. Longtime blogreaders and friends will know this is because I'm horrible with names.

This was as far as we got. Then we gave up and commenced drinking.

In austin. on a couch.

So, throwing yourself at the mercy of the universe occasionally does work out. I'm on a couch here in Austin, TX, mere miles from downtown and the famous and ever popular SXSW music fest.



The whole journey started this morning, when Sarah twittered about going to SXSW today, to catch some band. So I called her and asked if she could delay an extra half hour, to give me time to get my shit together ( I thought we were leaving tomorrow). She told me she didn't really have shit together either, and so I had time, meet at her house, and everything would be cool.



It took for-ev-er to get out of OKC though- one thing after another kept going wrong, or errands that should have taken just a few minutes took an hour, and on and on. It was like the karmic forces of the city didn't want to let us go. Finally, after something like 2 hours of running around, we were ready to go.




The drive down was good- there was a nice sunset, some McD's, a little nap, and not a few pictures. I drove the last 40 minutes, and after a couple tries, parallel parked the car on an off street east of downtown. We got on our bikes, and not two minutes later were yelled at by some cops. Nice job austin PD, making people new in town feel welcome.



So, jetting away from that situation (nice thing about bikes in a city- there's little chance for someone in a car to catch you), we found ourselves right in the middle of the maddness, on the mainline, we hit the central nerve, etc, etc. Only to be greeted by a sign outside all the official venues: no photography without a press pass. Bullshit I say. The good news is that for the most part we're going to be frequenting unofficial parties and venues; apparently that's where the best parts are.





Went from there to the long branch, which was a cool little joint. Nice atmos, good music, interesting clientele (if you could call them that). I had a couple beers, and that (and a short ride back to the car, and a short car ride) brings me to the present tense. Oh yeah, and there's a crazy jumpy dog in the house we're staying at.