...and speaking of comedy

My brother's improv troupe, Murphy Improv, has their debut performance tonight in Austin.

Austin garage sale today

My brother's film production company is having another garage sale to raise money for their next film project.

If you're in Austin, you should swing by:

Today, 8am-2pm

5210 Martin Avenue, in North Central Austin.

95% packed

Nearly done. Just the miscellany of daily life is left: food, computers, bedding, clothes, toiletries, a handful of this or that to put into the last few boxes. A bunch of the crew showed up to play sherpa. They are a great group of people. I'm glad to have known them and to have brought them all together. Do things fall apart without a center?

Right now our apartment is so empty that every room echoes. We have more stuff inside that we evacuated with. Hitting the road in about fifteen hours.

About to shower and play my last games in Austin.

Brazilian Steakhouse

Last night, John and Jen took us out to go eat at Estancia Churrascaria, a Brazilian steakhouse. In short, it was a damn fine place to eat.

I had never eaten Brazilian-style steakhouse before, but evidently everyone and the grandmother has heard of all-you-can-eat steak "with the swords." Yes, all you can eat. They served us two courses: a salad and a meat course, both unlimited. The salad bar was very nice, with delicious artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, huge mushrooms, hearts of palm, lettuces, cheeses, fruit and more. All very fresh, crisp, and never empty.

To get meat, we had a signal for the servers. Each diner has a laminated card with a red side and a green side. When there's green side up, men in pantaloons with Brazilian rotisserie on swords appear out of nowhere to slice freshly cooked meat at your request, directly onto your plate- a small set of tongs makes up part of your silver service. We had leg of lamb, beef ribs, chicken breasts, pork sausage, bottom round, and two or three kinds of house special seasoned beef.

Finally, I had the best flan I've ever had there. Amazingly rich, creamy, and possessing the right balance of egginess and caramel.

If you ever get a chance to eat at a churrascaria, do so.

Packing

Packing for the move is like a Reverse Katrina, a little.

Now, all the books and CDs are packed. None of the games or RPGs are yet, and the movies are waiting for their cardboard shuttles.

I'm going through boxes of mementos I haven't opened since I packed them a year a half ago- stuff that got emptied out of drawers and into boxes for salvage. Some is crap, just receipts and papers that I didn't go through. Some is valuable, either financially, for providing memories, or for utility.

We found the vintage 60"x40" Apocalypse Now poster. It was hiding behind the didjes.

I'm finding correspondence from my college days, and photographs I've forgotten about, along with disposable cameras I never developed- who knows if the film is still good after several years?

The apartment has stacks and stacks of boxes, cardboard edifices of things. It's eerily reminiscent of moving in, leaving home, and facing the unknown... and all the memories they stir up.

Moving date set

You read it here first, people. We're getting a truck on Friday, July 27th.

Penske rocks! Cat basically filled out a request for a quote, and they gave us a call and offered us a discount. w00t!

Time flies like an arrow...

...fruit flies like a banana.

By the time you next have to pay your rent or the house note, we'll be back in New Orleans.

I suspect my dance card will fill up faster than usual. Call now to reserve your spot.

T minus two hours

Soon, I leave to work. Gotta run some errands first, and after three months full of free time, I really don't like having to adjust my schedule based on external factors. Times like this make we wonder how everyone else takes care of errands outside of nine to five, and why more "normal" service providers don't have later hours. Imagine a mechanic that stayed open until midnight!

Moving party!

A few months ago, Cat and I were interviewed twice by a social worker about our Katrina experiences for some study done by the University. Last night, the three of us got together for dinner and catching up, and she offered to help us move... and find boxes.

Many hands make for light work, as the adage tells us, and a few people have asked me if there's a big send-off thing that might happen for me before leaving. So we might throw a moving party. Get enough people over here, bribe 'em with some combination of pizza or beverages or games, and make it the social event of the season.

Working the the Coal Mine

I have a job.

My temp agency/staffing people/recruiter/whatever have come through and found a position for me at a local Austin company- I'm going to be rolling out laptops to end-users for a month. The timing is right (only a month-long project), the location is actually within the city limits (and about ten or fifteen minutes from my apartment), and the pay isn't insulting. Sadly, it doesn't seem like the actual work will be very interesting, but working directly with a lot of end-users scratches an important itch for me.

For some reason, a drug test is good for a year, but a background check is only good for three months. That seems backwards to me, but what do I know? I'm not a professional nationwide staffing agency. The notion of a drug test to do work (particularly for computer monkey work) makes me standoffish and slightly offended.

Yes, I had to pee in a cup and give it to a man. Small comfort that I've never worked a job having to handle other humans' bodily fluids.

Our lease is up at the end of July

People keep asking when I leave Austin, so here's a handy flash countdown clock.



And there you go.

Back in Austin

We have arrived safely! Food, gaming, and state-of-life updates tomorrow.

Forthcoming didj jam

The Austin Didjeridoo Group is going to get together next Sunday, March 18th, at the Bull Creek District Park. Our usual time is from noon until three or four.

Directions:

Get to Highway 360 and the 2222. Drive north on 360, and make a right onto Lakewood, which should be the first light north of 2222. Drive down a twisty, possibly one-lane road and pass a place to park. Keep driving until you cross water- and I don't mean a bridge. On your left you'll see large rocks and a place to park. Park there. Once you park, you'll see the blue picnic tables just inside the park, unless some group beats us to the tables. You'll probably see and hear us!

Anyone is welcome to show up to listen, learn or play.

Didj Sunday in the Park

Robert, Steve and I got together this Sunday for a didj jam.

Here's a nice group photo.














From the top:

• Robert's Yucca
• Robert's "Twins"
• My small blue Mindblower
• My baby, the same eucalyptus didj I've had since college
• My new Woolybutt that Cat's cousin brought me from Australia
• My resin Rob Thomas didj bought on craigslist
• Both halves of one agave stalk, handmade by me
• Steve's homemade agave
• Steve's "Barbie Didj," fiberglass over chickenwire
• Steve's Woolybutt
  

Robert














Steve














Want to hear and see me play? Please enjoy this video, courtesy Robert's camera:


If you're on a feed and the embedded video doesn't show, try this direct link to the video. Huzzah, YouTube!

I really need to go back and tag my earlier posts. It's such a pain in Blogger, though.

Making Comics

Last Sunday, comics guru Scott McCloud came to local comic shop Austin Books as part of a whirlwind fifty-state tour to promo his new book, Making Comics. I haven't finished reading it yet, but his earlier book, Understanding Comics, is well worth reading if you've ever had a passing interest in comics. It's truly a literary treatment of What Is Comics and Why. Cat had it in an Art History class as a textbook.

I assure you that any blurriness in the photo is due to my own motion, not any sort of elaborate photo trickery.

I own all three of these. Start with the first, if you haven't already.


Photo credit: Lea Hernandez.

Filmic Proclamation

My brother's short film, The Trouble with Jumpsuits, will be at the world-famous Austin film/music/media fest South by Southwest. This means that I may actually get to see his movie.

You might want to take a look at the schedule, too.

License to drive

I recently got my Texas driver's license in the mail.

I had put this task off for quite some time, for a variety of reasons- not wanting to deal with bureaucracy, trying to schedule time to go to governmental offices with nonconducive business hours, not wanting to have "TEXAN" branded on my ass.

I knew that I would have to surrender my Louisiana license to get a Texas license, something I learned when Cat got hers. I hadn't wanted to give up my Louisiana license, with my New Orleans address where we had lived for five years and change. It made me feel good to have the ability to display it to people who have forgotten about Katrina or the city, sort of an in-your-face reminder of what we all have gone through- of what some of us are still going through. Losing the bit of State-issued plastic that identified me as a New Orleanian made me apprehensive. Would I ever get it back? Was I selling out? Was I turning my back on my home, my family and my friends? Did I really want to be a Texas resident? Have I taken one more step further away from New Orleans and normalcy?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again- all this would be different if we came to Austin (or anywhere else) by choice.

The days leading up to my birthday found me a little apprehensive; not just because of the relentless beat of the passing clock, but because I knew that not getting the paperwork done before my birthday meant I'd need to jump through additional hoops to get a license. Namely, pass a driving and a written test as though I was a first-time driver.

The DMV (or the "DPS" as they call it in Texas) near me has late night hours on Tuesday. Of course, this is the guv'mint, so "late night hours" means open until 7pm. Thanks to the death of Gerald Ford and the resulting day of remembrance, the first Tuesday in January found me at the door of a closed and locked DMV, no license to be had. Happily, the second week in January had no dead state officials, so the office was open to receive my twenty-four dollars.

Texas is really backwards- I had to wait two or three weeks to get my license. In Louisiana, you can walk out with your the same day you get it.

At any rate, I no longer have a suspicious (and temporary) bit of paper as my sole legal identification. I was semi-obsessively checking the mail every day; not having real photographic ID can do that to you, thanks to contemporary "security measures." Oddly, once I had the cheap-feeling bit of plastic, losing my Louisiana license was no longer an issue. When I get back home, I can run to the DMV, slap down the Texas license and say, "Give me my real one back."

I'm still a New Orleanian, and I will be a New Orleanian wherever I am.

I'm dreaming of a white...

Zamboni's birthday? National Religious Freedom Day? Teacher's Day in Thailand? Death of Ennis Cosby? Take your pick, a lot happened on this day in history.

At any rate, it's snowing here. Yes, snow. Yes, Texas. Yes, snow in my presence so I can no longer deny the phenomenon as a conspiracy of meteorologists!

Hook them, Longhorns; Hook them, I say

We're back in Austin.

Driving out a week ago, I slept fitfully the whole way, recovering from a touch of food poisoning from Denny's. "Moons over My Hammy" indeed- more like Moons upside down and out My Hammy. Driving back in today, I woke up a little congested from allergies. Again, Cat did the lion's share of the driving while I used up pocket tissue and allergy meds.

Sick out, sick in. If this were a novel, I'd have a clever metaphor for you.

Driving to/from home [fixed]

Posting via cell, between Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Picked us up a muffaletta for the drive. Cat says: like a mouthful of heaven. I agree and savor mine because I already miss the garlicky olive relish. Hard to sleep last night-cried and thought about the future and the past. Home is good but different and familiar and strange, more than any homecoming has the right to be. I know nothing stays the same and nothing should; I know it more now.