Hotel San Jose
"I'd crawl over broken glass to sniff the exhaust of the truck that took her underwear to the cleaners."
- Patrick, a very drunk Dubliner now resident in Austin, describing his wife Andrea last night.
Posting from the San Jose hotel, Austin, Tx, the morning after an excellent birthday night out. In Dallas we had to scrape ice off the car, but down here it's like the height of summer in Scotland, and we wandered around last night in t-shirts quite comfortably. We hung around the hotel bar for a while waiting for Jonathon, who never turned up, but wound up talking to the aforementioned Irish/Texan couple who talked a mile a minute, bought me birthday drinks, and after a quick slice of pizza across the road, took us to their favourite dive bar, the nearby Horseshoe lounge. On the way we passed a goat in someone's front yard, and a large cannister of liquid nitrogen just hanging out on the pavement.
God, I love Austin.
Anyway, we didn't get obliterated, just nicely drunk, and got to bed around 1am. This morning I just have a slightly fuzzy head rather than a full-blown hangover, which is just as it should be.
The San Jose isn't the swankiest hotel we've ever stayed in, but it certainly is the coolest. Tastefully minimal decor, friendly staff, and lots of cute little details, such as the iPod dock on the clock radio, and the warning sign on the heater controls being written in haiku. Pretentious? Aye, but so what? I'm having fun.
It's raining a little bit this morning, but it's still warm, and the pool is heated so I think we're going to a have a quick dip before going for some breakfast. Big cheesy grins all round!
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Merry Christmas from Texas
Although it's technically not Christmas in more in the UK, but I'm trying not to think about that since my body clock is still as confused as confused can be. Despite being delayed for 24 hours, our journey over was as smooth as smooth can be, with both flights departing and arriving pretty much on time, and even a decent selection of in-flight movies on the trip across the atlantic, including the sentimental-but-good Little Miss Sunshine. We were stuck in the middle row, but being at the front of economy class meant extra leg-room. We had no windows in sight, unfortunately, making the flight a somewhat abstract experience, particularly when landing in Dallas, when we thought that sudden bump was us entering a bad path of turbulence, then realised that we were, in fact, on the ground.
Christmas dinner was spent at one the house of one of R's many brothers, and a good time was had by all, despite the presence of a great number of over-excited nieces and nephews. Right now, though, I am craving vegetables and brown bread, having eaten so much enough fatty food over the past few days to give an elephant a heart attack.
Tomorrow we hit the sales, and then on Thursday (my birthday) we are heading down to Austin.
Hope you are all having a fun and low-stress festive season!
Labels: austin, movies, texas, travel
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSaturday, December 23, 2006
Feliz Navidad
Hello. Remember me? I used to blog here once upon a time. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you. Right now we should be 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean on our way to spend the holiday season in Texas with R's family, but the thick blanket of fog that has shrouded London for last couple of days has delayed our departure until tomorrow. It's a bit irritating, but I'm not too wound-up about it. There's not much that anybody can be expected to do about it, other than book us on the next available flight. We're just trying to have a nice, chilled Saturday. It looks like the weather is improving, so we're not anticipating any further trouble, and we should get there for Christmas day.
R and I have already exchanged presents, since there's no point in flying them to the US just to fly them back again. Amongst other things, she got me the excellent documentary about the Pixies "Loud Quiet Loud", which we watched last night. We haven't bothered with a tree this year, since we're going to be away, but we did put the fairly lights back up in the window, and for the first time I started to feel quite festive. I think I've been a bit stressed out about the million-and-one things I had to do before we went away, and the extra day's delay has helped me relax a little.
I've started thinking about New Year's resolutions already. I wasn't going to make any, since they are largely the same every year and are never honoured, but being in an unusually "glass-half-full" mood, I suppose that if you make them, at least there's a CHANCE they'll be kept, and my documenting them the embarrassment of not doing so might inspire action. Or depression. But anyway... in 2007 I shall endeavour to:
- Make more music.
- Lose some weight.
- Procrastinate less.
- Blog more.
Do wish me luck.
Despite resolution #4, it may well be the New Year before I blog again, so have a good one and see you then... link | 0 comment(s) | links to this post