While in Austin, every day I found myself on Guadalupe Street. Once to chauffeur my woozy BIL to get his teeth yanked, multiple times to buy overpriced records, and once to look at sordid pictures of my wife’s uterus. Apparently we are expecting a girl alligator:
What a croc...
My father-in-law, where we stayed, lives 40 minutes (sans traffic) from Guadalupe Street. When you consider that one of my top goals in life is to no longer own a car (or a house for that matter), you can see why Austin and its highway mania make me weary.
Before BIL lost all four wisdom teeth and became a vegetable for the remainder of the week, he gave me this fab idea: For three months, do something you’ve always wanted to do for an hour a day. At the end of the quarter, start over with something new. Here are my four:
- Learn and practice foraging
- Record one story/day for my languishing podcast
- Write a new song or song fragment every day
- Write a novel
What are your four? Also, since I am for once soliciting your input, which of these pics would make a better Christmas card for next year?
December 30th,2011 |
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Ah yes, another end-of-the-year spent in Austin, TX. Never been to Austin? This picture pretty much sums it up for me:
Bulgogi burgers? Wow. Sounds weird. Sounds fantastic. What a combo! Too bad it’s kind of terrible. And just like this fab purple building, Austin has mile after mile of funky one story sprawl. Fun, but no matter how much lipstick you apply, sprawl is still a pig. What I DO like about Austin is the cheap food and the live music. There is something to be said for eating good food while watching a master of his craft play a show on a Tuesday night.
For Christmas, my brother-in-law outfitted the family with clothes from his new neighborhood.
I’m pretty sure BIL is trying to get us beat up. Last year he bought me a “Who’s your Bagdaddy?” t-shirt from his old neighborhood in Iraq. Someone took a family photo (I don’t have it yet) of my whole family wearing Libyan garb. It’s sad that our only family photos consist of these types of hi-jinks. (Like this and this.)
Oh, and one more thing. Mrs. Neill and I are expecting a baby girl in June. So there’s that.
Today Asia was telling me about a game she made up called “Good girl and the mean janitor”. She says she used to play it with her friend Lydia. “Lydia always tries to get away from the mean janitor and go to Candyland, but she never makes it. She usually ends up in Smallville. You never want to be in Smallville because in Smallville you can get smushed by the mean janitor’s broom.” Grasping for a point of reference, I asked, “Do you have a mean janitor at your school?”. “No”, she replied, “Just a man named Tom that everyone calls Bob”.
So there’s that.
October 13th,2011 |
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There’s a golf course literally two blocks from my house. It’s not a game I play, though perhaps one day I’ll join the ranks of doughy geezers trying to prove that they “still got it”.
Today I read in the paper that the local golf course has closed for the season. I’ve often heard locals making fun of the course saying it was all ghetto and whatnot, so I thought today might be a nice day to take the dog for a highly illegal walk through the course, just to see what a ghetto golf course be lookin like. Here’s a pic I snapped. Straight outta Compton, right?
Things I saw:
- 9 turkeys hanging out together. Nine!
- Massive shrooms. I wish I knew which ones were good to eat. Mmmmmm, turkey and mushrooms for dinner.
- A tree full of cement. Who knew this was a thing?
Thing I wish I hadn’t seen:
- My dog rolling in deer poop.
