... but Texas wants me anyway!

Well, no I didn't. My fam (or cousin and soon to be cousin-in-law (hopefully)) wanted me and my sister to come to Texas to visit. The feeling was mutual and we have just returned as of two nights ago. This is our story:

After working all day, running to an art opening I was participating in and dropping off biscotti I had baked the night before for the curatour,*breath* catching the subway to head to brooklyn to move into our (my sisters and mine) new apartment in Williamsburg, *breath* and then proceding to chill with some friends at a local bar, and continuing onto a house party near by till about 1:30 am, sleeping for about 2 hours and being rudely awoken by my cranky sister at 4 to get in the car and drive to the airport to catch our 6:30am flight to Texas, with a lay-over in Houston, *breath, breath* we finally made it to Austin around 1pm Texas time. My sister was then kidnapped by her very small but very pushy (napoleonic complex much?) friend who almost refused to give her back the whole trip. I was then left stranded at the Austin airport, I counted cowboy hats to kill the time; there were 8. Cuz Tom soon picked me up and the weekend comenced.

After getting over the Grakles (local bird) and the oddness of people gretting me with a smile, I settling into a very different lifestyle than there is here in NYC. First of all, most of the people in Austin are either children of hippies, or recent neo-hippie transplants. They might resemble what we would call 'hipsters' but this is the wrong term. For this bread of oddly trendy, yet somewhat downtrodden but optimistic folk are not pretencious, nor do they secretly have trust-funds. They are legit in more ways than one. They actually smell, some of them! And they all shop at thrift stores because they acutally care about conserving! (Austin is one of the greenest citites in the US) They also are extremely unpredictable. While at a liquor store (the size of a costco) Tom and I spotting what seemed to be a normal exchange of information. A middle aged woman asking a clerk what kind of Tequilla was best. The clerk, instead of simply answering her, he gave her a complete history of the drink! Including the provence of each. Tom and I could barely focus on what Whiskey to buy because we were so engrosed. Another wonderfuly Rockwellian moment occured during an ice cream run at 'Amy's Ice Creams. (It's cold stone, but better.) The swing music inspired the costumers so mcuh aparently that they broke out into a random jitterbug! Only in Austin. (it should become the new slogan, 'keep austin weird' seems, well, weird.)

The weekend's highpoint was being with Robin and Tom, seeing their wonderful home that they've created for themselves and experiencing a truely happy place. Even a cynical, skeptical, pesimist from NYC could smile and enjoy the strange high of it all. My sister and I found ourselves singing every hour on the hour, and smiling so much that NY would almost evict us if it new.

So many things were crammed into one weekend that it almost felt like a week! it was wonderfully, truely calming. Being around great people, like Robin and Tom is like therapy. Too bad I'm not from Texas.