So maybe how it's going to go is that every 4-5 days I'm going to have a day of nerves. Right now it's a combination of D having left, a twinge of homesickness, bigger picture Where Is My Life Going stuff, and this font, which I assumed was not going to manifest after I cut and pasted.
On the other hand it's 70 degrees and sunny and that moderates the agita.
Where did I stop? J had people over, people I like a lot though I don't necessarily keep in touch with them. We drank a fair number of margaritas and afterwards I slipped out for a few minutes to walk around Hyde Park feeling overwhelmed by being here and to get a burrito at Taco Cabana.
I slept terribly. I explained to D that when I visited...wait I'm sure I already told this story. It's hard to go to sleep the first night in Austin because every time I've been here in the long while before, I've woken up back in New York, and there is always a fairly not-in-jest fear of that happening, the first night.
So Friday I came over to M and K' s house in a swell neighborhood I wasn't familiar with and hung out a bit before picking D up at the Holy Shit Far Away New Airport which is not new at all but new to me. 183 is too much road.
Dinner with old friends S and A. S I have know since 1999. Saturday was a little Austin tourism, Mount Bonnell for the best view of town from above, Mayfield Park because it's fun to bring people there and be all "surprise! Peacocks!" A boring nostalgic walk through campus, and a stroll by town lake.
The strange part was a few hours on South Congress which has turned from a nothing stretch of road to an insane pedestrian mall with people standing in hour-long lines for stuff that used to be no big deal to anyone. We sat outside at Güero's patio/music space and had Shiners. The local beer, not the face injury.
D liked it well enough but it was strange to me to be showing him my town in a form I completely didn't recognize. So the nice thing then was we walked around Travis Heights which looked about the same and then as we were driving off, I realized we were very early and parked by South First, which also used to be nothing but now feels kind of like parts of Austin as I knew them in the 90s. Much, much quieter.
Traffic has gotten pretty bad.
Oh and we had barbecue at Ruby's. I had thought D might want to go on a barbecue junket to one of those towns one goes to in order to feel like a barbecue martyr, but he felt more like seeing things in town, so yay. I'm not a barbeconnoisseur, so though I thought it was great, I was nervous my foodier friends would look askance, but everyone was actually fairly skance about it when I said we'd gone there. So hooray.
That's good for now. I'm meeting folks in a couple of hours and though I'm not very underfoot, I think it's nice to have your house to yourself after company so I'm going to zip up the suitcase and find a place to be.
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