We're not sure where she came from. Maybe someone in the area thought it would be cute to raise a chick and thought a grown chicken wasn't so cute. Who knows. But given that it looked hungry, and that we have several bird feeders (with birds spilling feed on the ground) in our yard, we expect her to be back.
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| Washington Trip |
For lunch yesterday I met my friend Izzy at Sichuan Garden in Round Rock. The Austin Chronicle had a good review and we figured that would be as good of place as any. It’s in a shopping center at the corner of I-35 & 620. It doesn’t look like much and was fairly empty, but the thing we noticed was the two large tables, each filled with who we presumed to be Chinese people.
We both opted to order off the lunch menu. According to the review, it was best to skip the Chinese standbys, like General Tsao’s; unfortunately, most of the lunch menu was standbys. Still, I ordered shredded pork with bean curd which was good. Izzy said her eggplant in her garlic sauce was delish. The service was okay (but it was the server’s first day) and the soups were just okay. I was able to get in and out with drink, tax and a 22 percent tip for $8. Yummy food, low cost, I’ll be back.
In the evening, I was going to meet Doug at Zax’s for dinner and then we were going to meet friends at the Zach Scott for a show. Only when Doug got to the restaurant, there was no parking. Not wanting to deal, he suggested we go some place else. I met him at the Zach and we hopped in one car. Not sure where to go, we headed down SoCo. We opted to try Woodland; I heard JB from the JB & Sandy morning show talk about how good it is. Honestly, we weren’t that impressed.
My impression was that it was trying too hard to be laidback and cool and it just didn’t work. First, the beer selection was a selection of wanna bes, instead of what a beer connoisseur would like. The menu selection seemed limited. We both ordered burgers, which were $11-$13 and really weren’t that special. Neither was the service. Definitely a yuppie-trying-to-still-be-cool-and-laidback place. We left disappointed. We won’t go back.
I guess I can include the third new place I went to yesterday – Big Top Candy, although I didn’t buy anything. It’s an old time candy store with things like candy cigarettes, Now & Laters and huge jawbreakers, none of which I’ve seen since I was a kid. I was tempted to buy something just because, but wasn’t hungry and opted not to. However, just seeing all the candy from my childhood in one place made me smile. Just what I needed after Woodlands.
On Friday afternoon I met an acquaintance for tea at The Steeping Room. We had a few things to talk about and since neither of us drinks coffee, she suggested we do The Steeping Room. While the restaurant does high tea, we opted not to do that and instead selected from the dizzying array of individual teas. I ordered a chocolate chai frappucino and my acquaintance ordered the iced tea version of a mojito. Both were yummy. However, the reason this place is blogworthy is the service. My acquaintance ordered a chilled watermelon soup; however, she’s pretty reserved and didn’t mention that she didn’t like it. I admit, I didn’t even notice she hadn’t eaten it. After the bill was paid, the waitress came back to the table and said her manager noticed my acquaintance didn’t eat her soup and was something wrong. The waitress offered to take it off the bill. When that didn’t work because the credit card had already been run, the waitress gave my acquaintance a coupon for a free soup on her next visit. One little act of customer service gained two return visitors.
That evening, Doug and I went to another new place, Gypsy, on Barton Springs Road. This quaint northern Italian restaurant had great wine, food and service. The waiter was excellent, giving great suggestions and allowed us to sample a few wines before we made our selections. In fact we discovered a few new wines. We split a dessert, a chocolate mascarpone cheesecake – it was rich and almost too much. We had an ice wine to go with it that tasted like apricots soaked in honey. Yum!
We didn’t make it to a new restaurant on Saturday, although we did have an enjoyable meal at El Sol y La Luna. Not only is the food good there, the restaurant is quick (in and out in under 40 minutes), which was good because we were on our way to volunteer for the Zach’s production of Seussical. BTW, the production had great costumes and great performances.
This morning was our third new restaurant – Galaxy Café in the Triangle. Cute little restaurant and good food. I had the Mediterranean eggs, with feta and basil. While there was nothing “oh wow” about the breakfast, it hit the spot and we’ll definitely return. Maybe we’ll even make it back for lunch or dinner.
All in all, a good gastronomical weekend.
According to a recent blog update on Texas Monthly, Snow’s has increased it’s production from 300 to 800 pounds of meat on Saturday; the only way to ensure you get barbecue is to pre-order by Wednesday. The Statesman’s John Kelso wrote that the barbecue is selling out in 45 minutes and that people are coming Dallas, Houston and Laredo to taste the barbecue.
We said that we would pick up the meat at 10:15, so we left the house about 9 a.m. with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. We were looking forward to the best barbecue in Texas but were worried if they could keep up the quality when their production has almost tripled in less than a month.
It took us about an hour to get there by peaceful back roads through Elgin (FM 3000 is a cute little road). When we arrived, the place wasn’t too crowded, but it certainly had its share of confusion, like the aftermath of a natural disaster. The two ladies working the counter were explaining to people that all they had left was sausage. There was a line at the door when the restaurant opened at 8 and by 9 they were sold out. Needless to say, there were a lot of disappointed people who walked away empty-handed. While waiting for our turn, I peaked at their guest book and they had folks from as far away as San Francisco. Hmm.
Our order was already pre-wrapped to go and it took a bit to explain that we wanted to eat a bit there and then take the rest with us. Finally, we got it straight and went outside to eat and watch the pit masters. We were eager with anticipation.
Although the brisket looked dry, Doug thought it was deceptively moist and tender. I thought the pork was juicy. However, it seemed like I got the dry end of the brisket and he got the dry end of the pork so I didn’t like the brisket as much as he did and he didn’t like the pork as much as I did. We both thought the sausage was okay and the pork ribs were over done, bordering on being horrible.
On the drive home (via Taylor – another nice drive) we discussed Snow’s. Overall, we rated it okay but probably won’t be in a hurry to get back. As Doug pointed out, however, that most barbecue places have their off days and this might have been one of those. Also, it may have been that all the meat is scheduled to be ready at 8 and the extra two hours of waiting for us caused our order to dry out. It could also be that they couldn’t keep the quality up with the production increase. At some point, once the Texas Monthly hype wears down, we’ll try Snow’s again. Maybe then it will live up to being the best barbecue in Texas.
I'm now on the board of directors for the local chapter of the Association of Women in Communications. In preparation for this weekend's planning retreat, I took the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. I've taken these tests before, but I was curious to see if anything had changed since I last took the test in grad school. It hadn't. I'm an ENFP.
So what does this mean? ENFP stands for Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. According to the Web site where I retook the test,
ENFPs are introspective, values-oriented, inspiring, social and extremely expressive. They actively send their thoughts and ideas out into the world as a way to bring attention to what they feel to be important, which often has to do with ethics and current events. ENFPs are natural advocates, attracting people to themselves and their cause with excellent people skills, warmth, energy and positivity. ENFPs are described as creative, resourceful, assertive, spontaneous, life-loving, charismatic, passionate and experimental.
Only about 3% of the population are ENFPs. A couple of other things found interesting about ENFPs, and true about myself, include:
This is from a powders and frit class. I used frit (small pieces of glass) to recreate a scene from Hawaii. Aloha!
This was an enamel painting on glass class. You trace a picture on the glass and then paint in the detail. These are the dogs on the jetty at Port A.
Doug also took the enamel class; in fact, he got way more in to it than I did. This is Umlaf Sculpture Garden in Zilker Park.
My hand, from a textures class. You use kiln wash to make a design and then place glass on top. I made this for Doug's birthday.
Project one from the paper weights class. This takes a lot of cold working, which means using power tools to shape and polish.
Woven bowl -- pieces of glass that look woven together. There was also another project where the glass is actually woven together, but the piece isn't finished yet.
Strip bowl. You cut strips of glass and then turn them on their edge for a different look. 
The Blue Bonnet Cafe is a Texas legend, having been in business for more than 75 years. Texas Highways magazine voted the Blue Bonnet the #1 breakfast place in Texas and one of the top 10 restaurants in Texas. To be honest, I hadn’t heard about the Blue Bonnet until about six months ago when my colleague, Mike McBride, told me about it. It took several months to convince Doug to go (and actually putting it on our list) and then a month to find a day when we were up early enough and didn’t have a lot of things on our to do list to go. Today was the morning.
From our house it was about a 70 minute drive on twisting, hill country roads. Wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t imbibed a little too much at Robert & Tracy’s wedding last night and if our convertible didn’t have such a rough ride. Still, the drive is pretty.
We got there about 8:30 and while busy, we got a seat right away. It was a friendly, bustling place. It’s cash and checks only, but they do have an ATM. The portions were definitely Texas-sized. We both got omelets, which come with either grits or hashbrowns (we got hashbrowns) and your choice of bread. Let me recommend the Texas-toast. It’s easily an inch and a half thick of homemade bread. It was so yummy that we bought a loaf to take home.
The Blue Bonnet is also famous for its pies. We didn’t have room for dessert, but we bought a pecan pie to take home. Some of the pies, like the peanut butter pie pictured below, look out of this world, but we wanted something that would easily transport back to Austin.
We must have arrived at a good time because by the time we left, the line for seating snaked down the long entry way and out the front door.
The Blue Bonnet Cafe is worth the trip. As Doug said when we were leaving, this is a place we’ll cross off our list many more times.
Saturday was opening night of Doubt at the Zachary Scott. This isn’t a review of the play because I didn’t get to see it (but I hear it was good). Instead, I volunteered, which Doug and I do most opening nights. This one will stay in the memory for a long time, beating out the night the homeless guy wandered into the opening night party and started partaking of the free champagne.
The reason this opening party is memorable is because it was self catered, but not by choice. A normal opening night has volunteers running the bar before the show and at intermission, taking tickets, playing ushers, selling shirts, etc. After intermission, the volunteers help set up for the party, setting up tables, popping the cork on the champagne (Doug’s job), pouring the glasses. The food and all the goodies are set out by the caterer. Only this time, there was no caterer.The show was short, 90 minutes and no intermission. At 8:30, the house managers were worried. By 9, they were in a panic. By 9:05 they were at Schlotzsky’s, buying goodies and sending someone to Whole Foods. We had just finished pouring 150 glasses of champagne when the first volunteer came back with brownies and lemon bars from Schlotzsky’s. Working in the semi-dark, as quietly as possible so no noise could be heard in the theatre, we unwrapped the baked goods, cutting them in fourths, just to make sure everything was bite-sized and there was enough to go around. “Who here is good at making this try look pretty?” someone asked. We all just shook our heads.
Then the head house manager came back, carrying full trays of lemon bars and dreambars. He had bought out the restaurant. In the kitchen we were frantically cutting and prepping, as the show was about to be over. “Dara’s good at cutting,” someone said and handed me a knife. I had an ooyie-gooyie, crunchy, sticky mess in front of me. One platter filled, then another, out to the table they go. Make sure the powers of be know what’s going on – the staff talking over the walkie-talkie. Where’s the meat and cheeses from Whole Foods? No matter, it’s 9:30, the show is over, the audience leaves the theatre and comes to the party. We are still in the kitchen, cutting, waiting for the rest of the goodies to arrive. I have dreambar goo on the front of my shirt. Someone walks into the kitchen, upset, wondering how the caterer forgot. The head house manager swears he tried to get through to absolutely everyone he could think of to ask. The girl goes on. Maybe it’s not my place, but I said it doesn’t matter whose fault it is now, they can worry about it later, but right now we have to focus on making the party a success.
Evan Smith, editor of Texas Monthly, spoke to my PR Campaigns classes yesterday. Since he’s involved with I Live Here, I Give Here and several non-profits, I thought it might be good for him to talk to the students about the campaigns the students have been working on this semester (each team is working for a non-profit) as both a journalist and a donor. He was open, bluntly honest and funny; the students really enjoyed having him in class. A few things he discussed:
All of the above, I’ve told my students before. However, I always think it’s good when they hear it from experts, particularly the media. Evan had worried about being too harsh on the PR thing, and I disagreed. I told them I’m always sharing those stories and they need to learn how not to be an annoying PR person before they begin their career.
He also told stories about Texas Monthly:
He also told stories of job interviewing, gave the students specific feedback about their campaigns and was a great overall resource. I’m glad he took time out of his busy schedule to speak to these students; I know they got a lot out of it.
When you think about it, it's interesting how two people, when they decide to make a life together, combine their traditions, especially when it comes to holidays. In our household it's pretty much my way, basically because Doug isn't into holidays. Start asking him things like, "When's Valentines?" and he'll get mad.
Texans have spoken loud and clear. We have selected a winning license plate. According to the Statesman, the selection won't be official until later this week. I actually think this was the best design and voted for it myself.
We came out of Lone Star Kolache this morning, ready for a drive. Allegra was in the driver's seat and Dante was in the passenger's seat. Guess they thought they should drive and we should sit in the back.
