Austin Weird Watch, Athletic Division

Go, me! Finished the Cap 10K and I'm only moderately sore. Moderately.

The Cap 10K is a pretty fun race, especially since it doesn't matter if you decide to actually mosey around the course, which is what I did with my friends. And since 16,000+ people were there, made life easier. Hard to have a competitive time if you wait 15 minutes for the port-a-potty. Plus a leisurely pace makes it easier to snap pictures of the costumes, bands and assorted well-wishers. (The costumes, by the way, were on the runners, not the spectators. Austin is the kind of town where there were several people wearing giant guitar costumes.)


My favorite spectators were the ones who were seated in lawn chairs and drinking heavily while cheering. Some were friends of Joanna's, so we stopped by and had mimosas and breakfast tacos. They were fun, cheering for everyone including the cops, volunteers, late finishers and some guys on a golf cart ("Yay, Lazy People!! Whooohooo!") I'm quite proud that our group finished ahead of Sid, a 96-year-old guy who was flagging a bit, but still cheerful as he finished with his arms around the shoulders of friends.

Oh, and the soreness (she said, defensively) is primarily in my feet, since I didn't think to buy new shoes until a day or two ahead. And my calves, a little.

Austin Weird Watch: South By South Weird

Just a few quick observations:

1. Did all the hipsters call each other and say, "Dude, wear your skinny jeans, funky tennis shoes or beat-up boots and a band t-shirt. Oh, and the hair this year is an asymmetrical cut, dyed black with random blonde streaks. See if you can get a bindfolded 4-year-old with blunty sissors to do the cutting. L8ter!"

2. I'm really glad to be in a neighborhood that's near all the action, but I can't say I'm thrilled to be able to listen to bands from 11 am until I fall asleep. In my house.

3. I like hip-hop as much as the next 43-year-old white woman, which is to say, not a whole lot. Maybe enough to not be a complete redneck dork. But I could hear the performances from Auditorium Shores (again, in my house) and, damn, hip hop doesn't travel well, accoustically speaking. THUD-uh, THUD-uh, THUD-uh gets pretty dull after a few hours.

4. Here's a conversation I had a week ago, while trying to decide on a restaurant to celebrate Hubby's birthday.

POM: Where do you wanna go?
Hub: How about Hill's?
POM: [to friend, on the phone] Hills ok?
Friend: It's a venue.
POM: Damn it.

Lather, rinse, repeat, until we settled on Little Mexico, which has no performance space and is a family-oriented place. So there were no hipsters until we were about to leave, at which time we spotted black, asymmetrical hair with blonde highlights. Check, please!

5. You know where else you can get a meal in Austin, during SXSW, without having to wait forever behind a bunch of badge-wearing hipsters? Luby's.

6. All the crusty homeless people have relocated away from downtown and landed in South Austin. Thanks, APD! Because the tranny junkies and Big Bus Stop Guy really needed to enjoy the company of all the Crazy-Eyed Teen Punk Homeless With Puppies crowd.

I used to give money to those guys until one dude screamed at me anyway, which didn't matter nearly as much as the fact that I've never yet seen one of them with a full-grown dog. Just puppies. I try not to think about what happens to the puppies that they never seen to reach maturity, at least not with their original owner.

On the other hand, I'm such a sap I always give a buck to the veterans or the guy whose sign just says, hell with it, I wanna beer.

7. I hate grupsters. I was wearing a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee (ok, my decent jeans were in the wash and I blew out the knee on the old pair chasing after a toddler) and the other moms at the playground were giving me the Not One of Us stinkeye. I wanted to say, no, no, look! I'm wearing Keds! Not Vans! Not Chucks!

But then, I don't have a lot of time to interact with other moms at the playground because my Sweet Baby Girl thinks it's just too much fun to play the game called, Catch Me As I Leap From A High Place, Mommy! Whee!

Actually, all she says is, I jump to you! Which is all the warning I get.

Eat Locally

And it doesn't get more local than this--these are eggs from our backyard flock. Whoo!

Barbecue Fun

Given the depleted state of the Pissed-Off Family, it's a pleasant surprise to be able to announce that the barbecue went off quite well. Everyone loved the food, the kids all had a great time, and I don't think anyone was poisoned or mortally offended.

I wasn't exactly on top of my game, given that I was tired and achy for much of the event and Hubby was also somewhat tired, having gotten up at four o'clock in the freakin morning to start the brisket. But, it went well and my kid wasn't the whiniest one there, or even the second-whiniest.

Oh, and Lucy, the cancerous, food-stealing, screen-shredding, chicken-killing dog had a fabulous time, stealing (and devouring) a dozen or so kolaches, a strudel and God knows what else. She was so stuffed that she looked like she was ready to drop a litter any minute.

I worried briefly that she'd managed to eat herself to death and then realized that she's already lived months past what the vet predicted. I suspect for a basset hound to die of excess strudel comsumption is something of a badge of honor, especially compared to cancer.

Austin Weird Watch: Overheard...

at the Zilker Kite Festival:

Irritable Dad [holding the kite string spool and addressing a girly 6-year-old in a pretty dress who's holding the kite and looking muddled]: No, hold it up! Higher! Turn it around! Other way!

[Fumbling continues.]

Irritable Dad: SWEETIE, I NEED TO SEE BARBIE!

Pestilence, Redux

Apparently my claim that the Valentine's week illness around here was a Horseman of the Apocalypse was just too much for the God of Irony to resist. So, for the following two weeks, we've had a whole lot of pestience around here and it's still going on. It's been a rodeo of pestilential horsemen, with clowns and barrel-racing and every last one of us has been to the doctor at least once.

To sum up: Sweet Baby Girl had a cold with high fevers, vomiting and coughing. (And, lemme tellya, nothing gets a bleary-eyed POM moving faster than realizing that the child, in the grip of the middle-of-the-night sobbing, has been struggling to utter the word "bucket." I think I actually scorched myself a bit, merely from the friction of my pajamas moving against the surrounding air.

I had a cold, with the same symptoms (but take away vomiting and substitute nausea) that turned into a sinus infection and tonsilitis. My tonsils were so swollen and painful that it felt like I was swallowing knives for two whole days. And said tonsils were so swollen that if I slept on my back, my airway closed and I couldn't exhale.

And Hubby has the same cold and an eye infection that has one eye so swollen he looks like a freakin' pirate.

And, you know what makes this whole situtation even more fun? Houseguests.

Oh, didn't I mention that we had houseguests? The worst of the viral rodeo wasn't until it was just my mother-in-law staying with us, which meant that she got a lot of one-on-one time with her granddaughter while I did things like sleep and go to the doctor. And I wasn't running a high fever until after the big barbecue.

And guess what we're doing this weekend? Yep, another barbecue, one that we've been planning for weeks and people will be coming from out of town for. Greeaaat.

At least nobody's going to come stay with us.