The Peacocks of Austin

I did not realize there was a significant peacock population in Austin. I absolutely adore peacocks...and for me, even one peacock is a significant population, so you can imagine how happy I was to find myself at a park in which there were at least 15 of the creatures wandering around. The males were doing what they do best, wandering around in glorious iridescence with brains the size of shrunken soy beans vibrating their tail feathers at a frequency designed to communicate 'hey baby, can I fertilize your eggs and then abandon you?" It is hard to resist such a plea. I also can't resist taking their pictures even though every one of them looks exactly the same AND there are more photographs of peacocks than there are actual peacocks. In any case, it's this kind of thing that makes Austin so cool.

If only it weren't so g-d hot. It could do with a reduction in real estate prices too. The neighborhood that my brother lives in, Crestwood, is a cute little thing with a bunch of 2 bedroom/1 bathroom houses built in the 50s and now going for $300k+. That stings. The parks here are great though and there are so many adorable places to eat. Yesterday had breakfast at the Taco Deli and this morning had banana muffins that actually tasted like bananas. There's a place specializing in doughnuts that opens at 7:30 at night for some reason, and yet that is perfect timing because we needed them exactly then to get ready for our big drive tomorrow.

We got a babysitter for the evening and the four of us (Pepe, me, my brother, and his wife) went out to eat at a place called Contigo which is just this side of pretentious. If the food weren't so good, I don't think I would have forgiven them for it. I had rabbit with dumplings and it was divine, despite the carrots (something I'm still not convinced is a food) and we shared a bunch of different munchies, the best of which was cauliflower in gruyere and that is not normally the kind of thing I would expect to find exciting. We shared a bell jar of pecan mousse and it was better than it should have been. Unfortunately, I chose that moment to visit the bathroom and when I came back my brother had eaten all the candied pecans. I guess that's karma though since I engaged in quite a candied pecan holocaust at my friend Matt's house in Savannah.

We're mostly prepared to hit the road tomorrow. I'm drying a last minute load of laundry and once that's done, we can pack the suitcase in the car. We have the alarm set for 4:45 in the morning to get us out of here at 5:00...we won't be pretty, but we'll be moving. It is about 5 1/2 hours to the border from here and we'll be crossing at the Lincoln-Juarez bridge. Our nephew Jorge and his girlfriend Yoselin (?) will be meeting us on the other side and we will cram everybody into the car and get as far as we can. After we stop for the night, the next day we will drive all the way to Guadalajara! Matt, of the candied pecans, will be saving himself a lot of trouble by arriving in a plane only one day after we do, hopefully his trip will be more restful than ours has been.

I won't have access to the internet until Sunday night, so you'll just all have to wait with bated breath for the next stage in this adventure.

Oh...and the kids have, shall we say, matured a bit during the trip.