Austin

My favorite wife and I drove to Austin today, leaving just after 2:00 pm and arriving more than five hours later. It's a 3-1/2 hour drive, but the traffic in Austin is much, much, much worse than Dallas traffic. My god, how do people cope?! I was ready to pull out the heavy artillery and blast cars off the roadway so I could pass. And, as far as I could tell, it was caused not by an accident, but by idiots who insist on changing lanes and then switching back again. I will not drive IH-35 through Austin again. I will take a much, much longer and more scenic route to get to this beast of a city and will then sneak in through the back roads.

OK, now that I've completed that rant...we ate dinner at an interesting little place on South Congress, the Magnolia Cafe. It's an eclectic place, with a mix of vegetarian dishes, meat-eaters' delights, and just some unusual but pleasant-sounding dishes. We both enjoyed our meals, mine a nightly special of rib-eye with potatoes, seasoned with blue-cheese butter and my wife's an interesting combination of butternut squash with a crust of pecans and brown sugar over squash that I believe had a mix of Indian spices...with a large side of an almost-vegetarian green curry to which my wife added chicken (she said it wasn't necessary). The place is inexpensive and has a decent selection of inexpensive wines by the glass.

We had hoped to go to Guero's Taco Bar, but the place was packed with hip young Austinites who were more willing than we were to wait in line for dinner.

Tomorrow, a 2-3 hour meeting for me about mid-day, then we will commence our barbeque expedition. And I'll promise to stop my gluttony and start my exercize regimen next week.