Austin

I don't have any pictures of my trip yet, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what Austin looks like-- a sea of people wearing Longhorns apparel. It's not surprising given that there are over 50,000 students at the University of Texas, not to mention all the faculty, staff, and alumni, and the fact that Austin residents who have no ties to the school (if that's possible) root for the Longhorns anyway like Bostonians root for the Red Sox. In addition to an abundance of UT pride, Austin also has a high concentration of cars with "Well behaved women rarely make history" bumper stickers. It's like hippie city meets Texas. Good times.

Last Thursday

ATM fee to take out cash to pay cab: $2.00

Cab fare: $26.25 + tip

Getting to the airport on time to make your 7:25 AM flight despite the fact that you woke up at 6 AM, five minutes after the train that you were going to take to the airport had left, because while you set your alarm the night before you forgot to turn it on: Guess it comes at a price

But . . .

Net net (at the end of the day): Totally worth it

My Morning (as a McSweeney's list)

If I were to actually order beer for my horses like the heroes in Toby Keith's catchy song about vigilante justice:

• Definitely pitchers. Cheap pitchers. Watery. Maybe PBR.

First song I heard this morning that could be made into a bad animal pun:

• "You Oughta Know" by Alanis

A short playlist of songs that always get stuck in my head because they accurately describe the 3 emotional states I go through during an average workday:

• "I Should Get Up" Teddy Thompson
• "Hunger" Nicolai Dunger
• "Worn Me Down" Rachael Yamagata

When I Grow Up . . .

. . . I want to be a recapper.

Check out my dream job. Too bad it's in NYC.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Oh, and I can. It looked a little messy to have two very short posts right next to each other and I thought to myself, "If only I could go back in tiiii-ome, perhaps by using the reversible clock that I am getting Meg for her birthday (ssshhhh, don't tell). Then I could write a longer post, one of length not less than six lines, to better balance the chi of the blog." I clicked my heels together three times, clicked on "Post and Comment Options," and here we are, back at 9:40 AM Mar 21 2006. I could stay here forever. (Or I could even go all the way back to 1990. Although that would be suspicious and you might guess that I couldn't really be writing this blog in the early 90's, a period of time when my computer time was limited to an hour per week of playing Oregon Trail on floppy disks. And the dead giveaway would be that the deep insights contained on these pages definitely could not have been written by an 8-year-old.) But if I stayed right here, in this artificially constructed moment in time, I'd miss seeing my little Speedster grow up. I'll see you in the future.

I forget what my philosophy on humor is (I know I have one, though, because I remember using a stapler to try to explain it to Sophie), but I think that last paragraph violates any principles I might hold; namely, it's not at all funny but it looks like it's trying so very hard to be in a way that is pretty painful, which can only mean one thing: I actually have succeeded in turning back time to circa 6th grade when I wrote a script called "Tire of Fortune" starring Matt Wajack and Vanna Orange. It's also possible that I've actually gone insane. It happened.