Pluckers

Sunday night we all went to Plucker's for dinner to welcome Theresa to Austin.  It was yummy.  The best part of the dinner was when Logan decided he was thirsty. 

First he tried to drink Ian's drink through a straw...

Then...he decided the straw was too hard, so my beer looked easier.  Although, the bottle was bigger than him!



6th Street

When Theresa told people she was coming to visit Austin, she was often told to be sure to go to 6th Street.  I was told the same thing when I told people she was coming to visit.  So, we decided to head there last night.

We went out early to hit up Happy Hour at The Iron Cactus. Cheap margaritas and yummy Mexican food. Can't beat that! Plus they have an upstairs outdoor eating area that was really nice! 

Next we decided to wander up and down 6th street to peek in at all of the bars to decide where we were gonna go.  Outside of each bar was a guy telling the drink specials and that there was live music.  As if we couldn't already hear the live music.  And...as if they were the only bar with live music, when in reality all the bars had live music!  We decided on The Dizzy Rooster...mostly because they guy at the door said there were $1 tall boys.  Can't beat 16oz of beer for $1!

Theresa and Shawn spotted the beer pong table right away...and they were off! 

We did find some other guys to play beer pong with, so T and Shawn didn't have to play 1-on-1 all night!  The guys were nice enough to pose for a picture for me after the game...but the main reason for the picture was to get a shot of the guy behind them with the crazy beard!

It was a fun time!

Monday Night

Main Event Entertainment.

Like Dave and Busters...but better!

Monday's they have a special deal.  For $9.95 you get unlimited:

Bowling.

Billiards.

Mini-Golf.

Lazer Tag.

Rock Climbing Wall.

AWESOME!

Plus, 4pm-7pm is Happy Hour so there are cheap drinks and 1/2 price appetizers!  Good appetizers!  We had so much fun! Mimi couldn't come because she's sick, but Ian, Mom and Eric joined us and we had a great time!

Things I learned last night...

 Theresa likes to pretend she's a Longhorns fan while visiting Austin.  FAIL.

I miss my bestest more than I thought I did.

Eric thinks these shoes are cool.  He wants bowling shoes like them for Christmas.

Mom is probably the most hilarious bowler ever.  Not kidding.  We couldn't keep ourselves from laughing at her.  But...she's pretty good too!  It's crazy!  Shawn was trying to duplicate her form...FAIL.

Glow in the dark Mini-Golf is fun.  Especially the 'spinners' throughout the game.  Your spin could make you have to golf with your eyes closed or with the wrong end of the club.  I got to be an obstacle for Theresa once.  Good times.



Basically we had a great time.  Shawn, Theresa and I stopped at the Cheesecake Factory on the way home for dessert. Yummy!  I went outside of my comfort zone and tried a different flavor or cheesecake.  Banana Cream Cheesecake.  They give you a sliced up banana to eat with it too...and of course delicious whipped cream.  Yum.  It was good.  But I should have gotten my usual. 

Chocolate Tuxedo Cream Cheesecake

It's like eating heaven.  I'm sure of it!  Tell me you don't want to eat that?

When we got home we watched some Big Bang Theory.  There are two episodes that involve Sheldon and Will Wheaton.  Hilarious.  Look them up.  You will laugh.  A lot.

WHEATON!!!

THERESA IS HERE!

That is all.

 We are excited to see her!

Even though she ended up not getting in to Austin until 1:20am!

Fun starting now!

UT Austin

If you were to visit Austin, one of the first things you would notice is how obsessed this city is with the University of Texas at Austin LONGHORNS!  They are seriously crazy about it!  Everywhere you look is a sea of orange on game days and I would say 75% of the cars have little silver longhorns stuck to the back.  The trucks have huge longhorns on the front.  It is a bit much.  Needless to say, we are not planning on joining this craziness....however, someone Mimi works with got her a Longhorns outfit for Logan.  He hadn't worn it yet, but yesterday we were planning to go to Plucker's for dinner (a wing place here...yummy) and since it was a Longhorn game day she put him in his outfit.  He looked so cute, as usual.  We ended up not going out to eat (due to the crazy delays in Theresa's flights) but we got some pictures of him at home so we would remember.  He wasn't totally cooperating for the pics, but Shawn and I tried!



Bacon & Feet

Ok...so those two words don't really go together, but they are two of my favorite things!  I don't particularly like bacon and feet at the same time, but I LOVE bacon and I have always had a thing for feet.  Especially baby feet...and Logan has finally discovered his!



As for bacon...

Last week Mom, Eric, Mimi, Logan and I went on a trip to the Whole Foods in Austin. 

It is huge. 

It is awesome.

While we were perusing the meat counter, Eric and I discovered some pretty amazing looking bacon.  He loves bacon as much as I do, and we were pretty impressed.  It made us hungry!  So we decided to do a sampling.  We bought two pieces of each kind of bacon...the guy working the meat counter probably thought we were nuts!  Then the next morning we had bacons, eggs and toast for breakfast.  Delicious!  Surprisingly, the BBQ bacon was my favorite (which is quite surprising if you know me because I don't like BBQ sauce).  Anyway, it was a great breakfast...or as Eric said, "Best Breakfast Ever!"

On a very exciting side note...Theresa is coming to visit tomorrow!  Woohoo!!

Sleepy Dog

Marcie fell asleep yesterday in our room and this is how she was sleeping.

So funny!  Her tongue was sticking out like that for 15 minutes or something.  She's so cute :)

Flu Shot

You would think, seeing as I am a nurse, I would always get flu shots.  I have never felt the flu shot was really worth all that much.  There are so many strains of influenza...so many!  The vaccine simply protects against the most common strains from the previous flu season.  Seems fairly worthless to me.  Plus, I tend to get some pretty unpleasant localized allergic side effects from vaccinations.  So...truth is I have never had a flu shot in my life (that I know of)...until now. 

My hospital is making is mandatory this year.  If you don't get the flu shot by the end of October you will have to sign a release and then wear a mask while you work the entire flu season.  No thank you.  Those masks make me feel like I am suffocating!  So, I just got the flu shot.  Boo.

Ramblings

We have had Marcie for a week now.  She is really becoming part of the family :)



Last night Shawn and I met Mimi and Ian at a place called Main Event Entertainment for $5 unlimited bowling and happy hour.  We had so much fun!  Mimi and I pretty much sucked at bowling...Ian thought he broke his finger at one point...the people bowling next to us were pretty funny to watch.  All made for a good time! The people at the front desk put your names in the bowling screen for us...Guess Mimi's name was too hard for them to figure out :)

 Another cool thing was that the score board showed the speed of each ball you threw.  It was fun to see how fast you could throw it, or in Mimi's case how slow ;)  We had a bit of fun with that while Mimi was off feeding Logan and we started using her turns to see how fast we could get her 8# ball down the alley.  Ian was the fastest...at around 18mph.  He was trying to 19mph, but never could get it!

Logan had a fun time watching us bowling.  He was totally happy sitting in his chair kicking his legs and looking at his feet!

A few times during the night, the bowling alley would switch to a Cosmic Bowling, but only for 20 minutes or so. It was kinda weird. Logan loved the black lights and the disco ball though!

After we bowled three games Logan was finished.  He was ready to go! 

We certainly had a fun night! 

One thing I really love is having fresh flowers around the house.  I would love to have a flower garden some day, but I really don't have much of a green thumb.  I just have to buy pretty flowers from the store occasionally.  So this week I saw some beautiful Orange Lillies at the store, which are one of my favorites now since I used them in my wedding.  They just make the whole room brighter :)

The Social Network

Shawn and I went to see The Social Network yesterday.  We had been hearing the buzz for awhile now and I really wasn't all that interested.  Then, last week, the buzz reached two of our favorite shows:  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Justin Timberlake, who plays the character of Shawn Parker (the founder of Napster) in the film was on The Daily Show and then Aaron Sorkin was on The Colbert Report.  If you do not know who Aaron Sorkin is then you are missing out!  He is a fantastic, amazing writer.  He is responsible for the screenplays of such films as A Few Good Men and The American President as well as the television series The West Wing, which is one of my favorite shows EVER!  Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for The Social Network and that alone put me into the group of people that would be seeing the film.  I am very glad I did as well.  It was really interesting and entertaining.  The film is presented in such a way that you have to draw your own conclusions as to what really happened.  The three different versions of what happened are all presented.  Mark Zuckerburg (the creator of Facebook) has his story presented as a series of flashbacks while he is giving his testimony in two separate lawsuits at the same time.  One suit against him is by his former best friend and business partner in Facebook, Eduardo Saverin.  The other is a suit against him by three guys who claimed Zuckerburg stole the idea for Facebook from them while they were all students at Harvard.  It was all really quite fascinating.  I doubt I could really explain it so basically you just need to go see it.

Random thoughts

Marcie is settling in very well!  She sleeps in Eric's room and hasn't had any accidents in the house overnight.  Today she even barked to wake him up when she was ready to go out.  What a good dog! She already knew the command 'sit' when we picked up her from the shelter, but I have already taught her to 'lay down'.  She's a quick learner.  We spend a lot of time out on the patio...she loves it out there!



Mom and I had Logan over the other the night for a few hours since Mimi had to work late, and Ian decided to come over and hang out as well.  He wanted to meet Marcie :)  Here is a great picture of Logan totally crashed out asleep on Mimi's lap.  Love it!

Last but not least...I got to watch a beautiful sunset off my patio the other night. 

Nature. 

Amazing.