Clearly I’ll be bringing my running shoes. I plan to get new ones, but hadn’t had the funds to do so just yet. On the bright side my procrastination paid off – Asics just came out with the latest generation of the shoe I was planning to buy. So here it is: the Asics Nimbus 12!

The perfect cushion shoe for my over-pronating foot

So onto the other shoes. I have a pair of Puma’s that are perfectly fantastic, but it’s kind of challenging to keep my orthotics in them (yes, I am an old lady with orthotics! lol). I just bought these 4 with the intention of returning 3. If I hate all 4, I have like 20 other choices. So here’s the list of potential new sneakers for my collection:

1. Asics Gel-fieri

2. Onitsuka Tiger by Asics Ultimate 81

3. Onitsuka Tiger by Asics Mexico 66 (downside is that Zappos reviews say these have 0 arch support. Hopefully the orthotic will at least fit inside…)

4. Puma Street Kosmo (these also come in brown. I couldn’t decide. I can always change my mind!)

So there you have it. I can’t wait for this package to arrive in the mail so I can give a full review of these shoes!

I’m not going to lie. I had a lot of preconceptions about Texas. And given that I was in Austin (which I understand is not in anyway representative of the rest of the state of which it is a part), just about none of those were accurate. Did I see cowboys? Maybe one. Did people have GIGANTIC belt buckles? Nope. I didn’t see a single one! Was everyone packing heat? Not as far as I could tell.

In a way, this disappoints me. I mean I kind of wanted to see all these things. But at the same time, I felt pretty safe (vs. fearful of getting shot for making some hippy-liberal remark) and actually really enjoyed Austin. Minus the weather of course. Sweet Jesus, that heat + humidity was like a punch to the face every time you walked outside!! (97 degrees + 80% humidity!)

Here’s the summary/highlights:

Friday:

• We got in around 9. I was wearing capris and a short sleeved shirt, thinking this would be suitable for night time. False. I wanted to be in a bathing suit running through sprinklers.
• Our group of 9 somehow ended up at three separate hotels, each a solid half a mile+ from each other. We headed straight to one of them when we got in. I met Grant’s new girlfriend, and was expecting to see Danny and Sabrina’s new (6 month) kid, but I guess he was tired and cranky so Sabrina took him back to her hotel. Sad.
• We walked for what seemed like forever and got some food. Apparently there’s a lot of bats in Austin. We saw a few under a bridge on our way to the restaurant.
• It was J’s birthday so we hit up 6th Street for some drinks and shuffleboard. 6th Street is apparently like Bourbon Street – no cars allowed for several blocks, and just a long row of bars and drunk people. It was pretty cool!!
• Apparently you can get into a bar in Austin with a photocopied ID. That’s totally legit right? lol

Saturday:

• Got up ridiculously early and headed to Danny & Sabrina’s hotel. We got to meet their son, who is SO CUTE – little chunky monkey! Spent about an hour there before meeting up with the others.
• Grant brought his boat, so we headed to Lake Austin for some wakeboarding and swimming.
• Sabrina wasn’t comfortable bringing the baby on the boat, and I’m not sure what happened after that, but the three of them ended up driving back to Corpus Christi. Seriously? I was both upset and sad when I realized what had happened (seriously, I wouldn’t have gone to Texas if they weren’t going to be part of the weekend)
• J attempted to wakeboard for the first time. He made a noble attempt, but didn’t really ever get up.
• J and I shared a Hu-La-La at the Hula Hut off the lake. It was 2 kinds of Bacardi + fruit juice served in a fish bowl. DELICIOUS! We then shared a Texas style FEAST.
• Hit up the hot tub after we got home. J toweled off, and realized his stomach was red and in pain. He cried out “OMG I think I’m allergic to this towel!” Upon further inspection I had to explain to him that, actually, he was just sunburned. Yeah, he forgot to put sunscreen on his front. I applied sunscreen like 12 times. How do you forget that substantial of a section of your body?! lol yeah he’s magenta. It’s hilarious
• Headed to a couple of lounges, which were fun, but I was tired. Headed back around 1. (Several of the lounges played music straight from the 90s. What’s up with that?? I thought Austin was the homeland for new music? At least the last place we went was awesome. Like seriously the best place I’ve been to in a long time. I’ll have to find out the name of it so I can properly review it, but dude, this place had free skeeball!! And pacman! What not to love? Also, they had a Chuck Norris painting on the wall. Don’t mess with Texas!)

Sunday:

• Tired Caro and hungover everyone else decided to sleep in. Then we headed to Uncle Billy’s Brew&Que for some Texas style BBQ. Why I didn’t take a picture of my food is beyond me, but it was AMAZING. I got ribs with a side of glazed carrots and a side of mac n cheese. A great meal experience.
• It was father’s day. I had to get a gift for my dad, and he wanted something from Texas. Too bad we were scrambling to make our flight!! Thankfully my dad is the easiest person EVER to shop for, so I spent about 5 min in the gift shop and found some treasures: jalapeno hot sauce, ‘ass-kickin’ raspberry jalapeno jelly, hot beef jerkey, a ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ mug, and of course a shirt. Sadly they had no belt buckles, but I think my mom was really happy about that (she begged me not to get him one lol).

All in all a great weekend, and I’m the slightest bit tan to boot!

a fishbowl of liquor for two

Don't Mess With Texas

random sign at a parking lot

• Techy guy who wants to create his own “gadget”
• A modern recessionista – let’s face it: buying 3 new tires is cheaper than buying 4!
• Someone who wanted to ride a motorcycle but was afraid of being hit by a car
• Old guy who decides he wants to go back to the “good ol’ days” when real cars didn’t exist

I cannot think of a single other reason why someone would drive this

Also, the state of California requires that all persons riding in a vehicle with less than 4 wheels wear a helmet. I mean you look ridiculous either way, but adding a driver with a helmet to this equation just makes it a million times better.

The home page of the Vatican website has a link called “Abuse of Minors: The Church Response”

Really?!?

Is this such a prevalent issue that there’s a link to a statement on the home page of their website? Let’s get it together dudes. How about you all just STOP MOLESTING KIDS? Seems easy enough!

While I’m on my soapbox I feel the need to throw out there why I believe the Catholic Church has this problem in the first place. Priests aren’t allowed to get married. I feel like that invites pedophiles to join because no one even questions why they’re not in a relationship. It’s unfortunate too, because there are a lot of people who join the priesthood for honest reasons.

Maybe you’re wondering why Catholic priests are required to be celibate in the first place. That’s a bullshit reason too. Turns out that during the Crusades the Church wanted to acquire as much land as they could. Married priests usually had sons, and when they died, all their property was passed to their sons. As a way of gaining land, the church banned priests from marrying and even voided existing marriages. This gave them full inheritance rights!

So here’s my solution: let these priests marry. I think it would improve the overall composition of the priesthood. Namely, there would be less pedophiles.

For more on this topic, please watch South Park s6 e8 “Red Hot Catholic Love” lol

To play: google images, pick a few, print them for members of your group, and go have fun in Walmart.

(click to see the whole thing)

This is actually a rather tame card, but I’m lazy. Anyway, I’ll let you know what all I find

But still. Can someone please buy me the new Sony Cyber-shot TX7?

My very first digital camera was a Sony Cyber-shot. It was like 5.1 mega pixels, which back then was an insanely large amount LOL. I loved that camera. Tiny display and all! It worked well for many many years.

And now I see this. WOW!

• This thing takes 2 pictures, checks for blinking, and keeps the better one.
• I’m not a camera expert and always have to attempt to figure out which scene setting is best. This decides automatically.
• 10 pictures per second? Yes please!
• HDMI output so I can look at pictures or videos on my gigantic television? Sweeeeeeet!
• Sweep Panorama mode so you can actually capture an entire scene? Mind blowing.
• Specialized smile detection mode where you can prioritize whose smile you want to capture? Are you joking? Obviously I want that – I have a small niece!
• 0.3 second auto focus? Fabulous.
• In-camera touch ups. Touch the screen to cover up red-eye, crop, etc.

So yeah, I don’t have $400 right now. Can someone please get me this?

The weekend started out with a smooth flight into town. +1 to Southwest for getting my ass there on time. Let’s be honest though. For $300 per person roundtrip (J epically failed on booking in a timely manner and this was the price!), they BETTER get me there on time!

The guys and girls went separate ways Friday night, so J took a taxi to the Palms while I took another with all our luggage to the Venetian. This quickly became a problem for me as I had not fully read the email sent out by the Event Coordinators (EC) saying we had been upgraded from a suite in the Venitian to a suite in the Palazzo. The bellhop assured me all my luggage would join me in my room in 10 minutes, which is about how long it took me to get to the proper hotel. -1 to the Palazzo/Venetian for lying to me about the amount of time it would take to get my bags. Thankfully while I waited alone in the suite (the girls had gone downstairs for our reservation at Tao Bistro) there was an epic amount of snacks, booze and mixers for me to entertain myself. +3 to the EC.

I was kind of freaking out that I was going to straight up miss dinner but when I arrived almost an hour after the reservation, the ladies were just getting seated. -1 to the Venetian for making us wait an hour on a reservation and another -1 more for not even bringing menus for 15 minutes after we were seated.  +1 because the food was pretty good and because they sat our table of ladies next to an entertaining table of middle-aged men. Fun times for sure.

After dinner we were at a loss for what to do. It was like 12:30 or something equally ridiculous. We regrouped back at the room (shoes off, cups full, etc) and decided to meet up with the guys. So much for the plan of not leaving the hotel at all during the weekend – off to the Palms we went! (Minus one maid of honor )

We hung out at Ghostbar for a bit and then headed out. I’m not going into details, but let’s say I’m no longer a strip club virgin. When we emerged from the club we realized that it was LIGHT out. Yep – 6am! Cabbed back to the hotel right as the Grand Lux Cafe was opening. 6am late night breakfast? Yes please! -1 to the restaurant for taking 30 minutes to bring us our rather simple orders. +1 right back at them for bringing us the most delicious pancakes ever. So yeah, 7:30am bed time makes it exactly a 24 hour day. +2 to the EC for stripping me of my strip club virginity and for allowing for a 24 day of fun to be had!

So yeah after that night I slept til 3pm. I was kind of surprised that I woke up that “early” but was glad because it gave me a chance to head down to the Pool, where the EC had hooked us up with a cabana. +10 to the EC for the cabana. First off, Swati got up at 10am to get us an awesome location. This was one of the best ideas of the weekend. An indoor place to sit with the option to lay out in the sun, easy access to the pool, a mini fridge stocked with drinks/water, and our own TV to watch the Kentucky Derby? Sweeeeeeeet!

Saturday night was completely different than Friday. We did one large coed group outing, starting at Table 10. +1 to the Palazzo for this amazing restaurant. Great food, easy seating arrangement, and no wait to be seated. A whole lot better than Tao!

Speaking of Tao, I have to rant a bit. OK so one of the guys lost his shoes in the hotel (it’s a bit of a story, so rather than tell it let’s just summarize with the hotel messed up and lost his shoes). -1 to the Venetian. We were on the list for Tao but had to be there by 11pm to get in free. Of course the bouncer lined us up for “dress code check” and deemed this guy’s shoes unacceptable. Even if the bouncer had talked to the manager to get a waiver, we were still getting in after 11 and would have had to pay cover. LAME. The reason we stayed at the Venetian was to bypass paying cover for this club. So a big fat -25 to the Venetian for fucking up the plan.

We ended up going to Gilley’s across the street at TI. A country bar, this place had no dress code and let us right on in, so +2 for that and another +1 for the mechanical bull (pure entertainment!). Unfortunately for me, something wasn’t agreeing with my stomach. Despite taking mass quantities of Pepto, the situation was taking a turn for the worse. I ended up going back to the room by 1. Sadness. I guess the rest of the group found some other non-dress code clubs to go to for a few hours, as well as some tables to play.

Sunday was an 11am checkout followed by the buffet Cravings at the Mirage. OMG YUM. So for $24 I ended up with an all-you-can-drink champagne brunch. The food was tasty, there was a good variety, and the people watching was spectacular. +1 each to Cravings for a total of +4. We then walked over to the Aria, which although it was a hike was very nice. Gonna have to check out that hotel next time, since it’s obvious from my tally that I will NOT be staying at the Venetian any time soon.

All in all a GREAT weekend with a couple of little hitches. Obviously there’s plenty more to tell, but not here Congrats to the bride and groom and thanks for inviting me on this wonderful adventure!!

Final Tally (low to high):

-16 to the Venetian/Palazzo (don’t stay there, but do eat at Table 10)
+2 to Southwest (one more point for a smooth, on time journey home)
+3 to Gilley’s at TI
+4 to Cravings Champagne Brunch Buffet at the Mirage
+infinity to the EC for organizing this festival!

I’ve decided I want the emerald green one. It’s not dark purple like I wanted, but it’s different enough that I won’t have a problem finding my bag in the mass of black ones at baggage claim.

Check it out:

Add to that lifetime warranty and I’m hooked. Now to convince a certain person…

Seriously though, must find shoes! So back to the mall I go tonight. If I’m not too tired I might also attempt to give myself a french mani. We’ll see. Pics of that will definitely get posted because it’s going to be one of two extremes: extremely awful and I will post it for laughs, or extremely amazing and I will post it for pride. haha I need coffee!