It has been 8 and a half years since I left Austin and my family for college in North Carolina. Wow. Compared to the 3 and a half years I lived in Austin during high school, I’m not even sure I can say this is where I grew up—not least of which because Austin is growing (and sprawling) at such a tremendous rate, I hardly recognize it.
This past year was one of the first that some mid-year event (like a graduation) didn’t bring us all together between the holidays. I did get to see my sister over her spring break (Point Reyes, Goat Rock), and my dad drove out for 4th of July weekend. But I missed seeing my mother and brother for a full year!
My only excuse is that the year has been extremely fruitful, for all of us. In broad strokes, I fought off a cease and desist letter, found a new job, started living with Stephanie, and moved to San Francisco. Meanwhile my mom spent a month in Ohio caring for my ill grandmother, my dad started a new job at IBM, Katie began her senior year at Ohio U, and Matthew graduated from college and started adjusting to life on the outside. And that’s just scratching the surface. The good news is that we all appear to be moving in such positive directions. The bad news is that plane tickets are so damn expensive!
This is what made our few days in Austin seem all the shorter. But even amid the rain and chilly temperatures, we managed to spend a very warm Christmas together, icing and eating cookies, playing DDR, and gorging ourselves on that wonderful Texas BBQ. Yesterday night before heading out to a nice dinner, the extended family got together for a picture.
Yesterday on Boing Boing, David Pescovitz posted a link to a Toilet Halloween costume, calling it “deeply depressing disturbing.” Even worse, the product description for the costume says:
A Child toilet costume is perfect for every potty mouth kid– Use as a modern day Dunce cap!!
Sheesh! Well back when I was a not-so-potty-mouthed-kid, my dad, brother, and I used to make realistic Halloween costumes out of corrugated cardboard and glue guns. And when I say realistic, I mean we carefully measured and enlarged the object we were building to precise scale. We’d go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and at the local mall (apparently the place to show off our costumes) and collect candy from the stores.
For the Halloween of 1989, I was toilet and my brother was a hammer, which caught the eye of a photographer at the Poughkeepsie Journal, and we made it in the paper:
Note the toilet paper, Comet, and Vanish on top of the tank. Also, note that I edited the caption to correctly read that I was the toilet and my brother was the hammer, not vice versa.
Went to Stephanie’s dad’s wedding in Kenwood on Saturday. Or I should say, I drove up in a Jag, as I had the esteemed privilege of chauffeuring Jean-Claude and Sabine to their reception. So of course I had to look good.
Made sure to get at least one shot of me in the suit for mom. Not bad, eh? After that, the jacket came off, as it was a beautiful and warm wine country afternoon.
Other than lots and lots of sparkling wine from Mumm, I got to eat a caramel-coated choux off a traditional French, just made that morning, saw it constructed with my own eyes, pièce montée.
Then on Sunday I went down to the city with Stephanie and her sister for some sightseeing, including a ride on the cable car—standing up at the front!
Today Katie and I took a trip around West County, first to the excellent Renga Arts in Occidental (cause she’d remembered it from an earlier post) and then out to Jenner, where the Russian River meets the Pacific.
