Belated big congrats to my cousin Brendan, whose beers for Feral Brewing Company recently won a stack of awards at the Australian International Beer Awards. There is a nice little write-up online too. For the sandgropers – do yourself a favour and head out to Feral at Baskerville for an ale, pilsner or my fave, the Feral White 
We finally bought a dining setting! A nice large square table with 6 chairs for $400, what more could one ask for. It fits nicely in our space, and will end up being the basis of my home office, which it looks like I may be needing very soon. It has also meant that we are no longer turning into gimps with horrible posture using our laptops on the couch. And will come in very handy when we finally have visitors 
And we just bought some cheap shelves from Target on the weekend so I now have my scrapbooking supplies in some sort of organised order. Yippee!
So last weekend we were at South by South West (SXSW) in Austin, specifically the Interactive festival. This was something I had wanted to go to for a few years now, and as soon as I knew we were headed to Houston (ie last year) I bought tickets and booked a hotel. It was pretty crazy, as I knew it would be. For several weeks the town of Austin gets over-run with people from all parts of the tech, film and music industries. The Interactive portion included panel sessions on a variety of technology topics, as well as a whole bunch of other stuff like book readings, trade show, sponsored parties etc. Our experience was, as usual, somewhat mixed..
We left home on the Friday morning with dogs and dog food/beds/toys/etc, and dropped the boys off at the dog ranch. It was a particularly miserable rainy day, which meant that on the way to Austin we couldn’t really stop and take photos of the gorgeous bluebonnets (state flower) by the side of the road. The drive was quite good and took us around two and a half hours at max.
Yes, I have been a bad blogger. I am now 3 weeks behind in my art challenge too!
The past few weeks have been busy, we had a mad fun time in Austin, my volunteer job has been consuming and I have just tonight been offered a full time job. More info to come, hopefully over the weekend
It’s official. I now have a work permit! Next on the list – get social security number, get drivers license. Think about getting a paid job, hee hee…
Also, Dan and a couple of dedicated guys are in the process of trying to establish a Houston AFL (Australian Rules Football) group. If anyone in the area is interested then check out the Facebook group Houston Lonestars AFL club.
And lastly, daylight saving has just started here. Yippee.
So we finally made it to a Houston Rockets game, and what a game it was – vs Phoenix Suns. We managed to get fairly okay seats. Getting there, getting parking and getting in was all fairly simple. The whole performance of the night was entertaining, from the national anthem to the time-out amusements, dancers, etc. Was also great people watching, I could hardly focus on watching the game
It was great to see Shaq in action. Here he is making a very shaqalicious dunk.
It was a pretty close game and it came down to the final minutes, so the crowd was definately getting into it.
Week 9 – what was the last brave thing I did?
Drive on the freeway of course! Haha, it is slowly bothering me less and less, though I still have moments of sheer panic and terror
Week 8 – what was the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Why, the funniest four-legged creatures on earth of course
Today we went to the BBQ contest at the Houston Rodeo. And yes, I do see the irony in my going to this event. We got there early so there was lots of parking and still fairly quiet. It was overcast and bloody windy most of the time we were there which made it rather unpleasant.
The setup basically consists of a whole bunch of tents/booths setup by cook-off teams and sponsored by various companies, and were accessible by invite only. If you didn’t have an invite (like us) you could wander around and observe, get a free feed at the Chuck Wagon, buy food and drinks from vendors and watch live music. You could also wander over to the Carnival and go on rides, play games, buy more food, etc. I imagine it gets very crowded and messy after dark.
It was a fun way to spend a few hours people watching and eating. Dan certainly did more of the latter. Here he is scoffing the free feed of brisket sandwich and beans:
Here he is getting stuck into the leg of some type of animal:
He also ate half of my pizza pretzel and caramel funnel cake! We are still thinking we may go back on one of the Rodeo days too, will see.
Yes I have been a lazy blogger. Oh well, life has been busy. Last weekend I had my vege-Mexican cooking class at Sylvia’s. Sylvia herself was a really interesting teacher and the class was well attended. She cooked up a variety of meatless dishes (enchiladas, sauces, rice, dessert) and we ate them (and more from the restaurant) afterwards. It was a shame this was at 3.30pm though, because that evening we went bowling and I was super full. Of course that didn’t stop me from kicking ass. I decimated everyone in the first game (haha) but dropped it in the second (I am blaming a sore hand).
Work has been chugging along and interesting, to say the least. I have been working fairly closely with two other gals and we have bonded over lunchtime movies and Girl Scout Cookies. Of course I hadn’t tasted a GS cookie before, and now I have sampled 4 flavours -Shortbread, Thanks-A-Lot (fudge shortbread), Lemonades (lemon shortbread) and Peanut Butter Patties (my favourite so far). Still have 7 to go! I have also been introduced to yoghurt covered (salty) pretzels, which I have become quite partial to. My mission is to share the love with Tim Tams, Twisties, Vegemite and other Aussie delights.
Planning has been continuing for our upcoming trip to Austin for SXSW and also Washington DC in May. We have booked the dogs into a kennel for the Austin trip in a few weeks – it is not so much a kennel, more a dog ranch with rather nice cabins and a pool. Hopefully they will be fine.
And lastly, I came across an article on 25 random things about Houston which I think is a good read, and which I am more and more coming to recognise. The ones related to driving and freeways are still the most fascinating to me (and yes – I finally drove on a freeway all on my own, haha) and are the ones that will totally freak my mum out when she comes to visit
