| Listening to: My electric guitar |
It feels so strange coming back to New York this time. It's different than the other times I've returned and I'm not sure why. Coincidentally, it was weird leaving New York as well. I left early Thursday morning out of Newark. A car was waiting for me at 5:45 when the city was still asleep. We crossed over the George Washington Bridge and there was a strange sight down the river...black. The city wasn't exploding with lights like usual. It was dark and kind of eerie, which definitely gave me the tingles. I was in Austin for the last part of the week helping out with recruiting and I felt it was a very successful trip. I have more experience than the last time I went (in September) so I could answer people's questions better and give them more examples of what I do. It was nice knowing I was making a difference and hopefully getting more people to sign up for interviews.
*moving to my couch since it's really cold by the window!*
I got distracted by a new version of Guitar Rig that I had to play with. So back to the weekend...Friday night I went out with Giulio, Andrea and her friends to Trudy's. I ordered a tasty stuffed avocado with suiza sauce and a Mexican martini. Mmmmmm. It had been awhile since I had tex-mex and it was delicious! I had a great time catching up with Giulio and Andrea and their friend Phillip. We had a lot of fun that night.
The next day I hung around Austin, wandering around trying to find all of the Gibson guitar statues. I found about 7 or 8 of them but there are 50 of them.
Check out the story here Afterwards, I walked up to UT and hung around the campus for a bit. It was really odd being there during the day when all the students were getting their books for the start of a new semester. Soon after, Michael arrived in Austin and we headed off to one of my favorite BBQ spots, Rudy's. The meat and sauce was so juicy and filled with flavor...oh man...I promised Michelle that if I ate at Rudy's I would get a bottle of BBQ sauce so we could try to replicate the tasty meal, so that's what I did. It gave me some trouble (more on that later) but it was well worth it!
After lunch Michael and I grabbed a Mozart's Mocha Special at Mozart's on lake Austin. I love that place and it felt so homey to go back there. When we finished our coffee we headed over to book people and waterloo to look around. Michael was looking for a new book on the history of UT and I was tempted to buy Mole People but remembered that I brought a book for the plane. However, when I asked if they had the book, the person at the info desk told me there was a great documentary on the same topic (people living under NY). He said it was called
Dark Days and that DJ Shadow wrote the soundtrack for the movie. Michael and I were both very intrigued and went over to waterloo video to check it out. Unfortunately they only had it for rent but I'm going to try to find it at blockbuster or order it from netflix.
That evening we met up with Giulio and jammed at his place. Giulio has progressed so much with guitar and music composition. It's great to sit and listen to some of the stuff he has created. I'm amazed by his work and keep encouraging him to write more! So c'mon Giulio, dooo it, dooo it. We had pretty open plans for the night and we decided to meet up with andrea, her friends and jessica at the clay pit for some dinner and drinks. We got a private room for 5 but the place was HUGE! We felt like royalty because the room was so secluded and had the feeling of a castle with stone walls and dim lighting. The food was good but I was anxious to get some beers from the ginger man which was our next destination. We parted ways after the clay pit and the three of us (michael, giulio and myself) went to the ginger man with a quick stopover at an irish pub to down an irish car bomb. Neither Michael or Giulio had tried this tasty drink before so it was my honor to present them with a half glass of guiness and a shot of Jameson with bailey's on top. Mmmm, so good! We had a great night catching up and drinking some pints, none of which were US brews. We like our foreign beers. :)
It was sad to leave today, I wish I could've stayed another day but it just didn't work out for Giulio since he has to work this weekend. I was kind of bummed that we didn't go to Juan in a Million but I'll just have to save that for the next trip. When I got to the airport and checked in the security person notified me that I had been selected for extra screening. That sucked because I didn't realize that BBQ sauce was illegal to carry-on since it was more than 18oz...completely slipped my mind! They gave me the option of going back out, checking my bag and then coming through security again. I thought about it for a moment and almost said "screw it, just toss the sauce" but the line wasn't long and I had a little bit of time so I saved the Rudy's sauce by checking my bag. I got to the gate with just a few minutes to spare in which I was called to the desk and upgraded to first class...SWEET!
I think that's a pretty good weekend update but of course no update is complete without a picture of a guy in spraying a plane with deicing fluid. It looks like something out of star wars or a sci-fi movie. He's in this little cockpit that moves up and down shooting out a stream of deicing fluid. It was pretty entertaining to watch during my layover in Chicago.
