Trapped In Hotlanta

As I type this, my original flight home should have just been touching down in South Bend. Sadly, instead of triumphantly deplaning back onto the icy tundra, I'm sitting here like a chump in Concourse C of Atlanta International, eyeing the children's play gym beside me and hoping no actual children notice it. I didn't know this, because I'm an idiot, but ATL is BIG. My flight from Austin rolled in to Concourse B at about 4:50, and my flight out was supposed to leave from Concourse D at 5:10. There's a train that runs between, but I thought, ha! Trains are for bitches, I'll make better time on foot. I did not make better time on foot. I finally got to my gate at about 5:08--just in time to hear the gate operator announce that the flight had been cancelled for undisclosed reasons. I thought, damn, why couldn't I have been a few minutes late? Then the cancellation would have been a wondrous stroke of good fortune, rather than a total punch in the crotch. In fact, you know what? I so got there at 5:12. Thank God my flight was cancelled.

Austin was awesome. I got in around 11 Friday night expecting to meet Lizett at baggage claim or something, only instead there was just a message from her on my cell saying 'BURN!' and--get this--she left me alone at an unfamiliar airport all weekend! Haha! Oh, I had all kinds of crazy adventures, scrounging for food, stalking flight attendants, avoiding the watchful eye of Stanley Tucci. Then everyone left the theater vaguely disappointed.

So she picked me up around 11, we grabbed some beers, and then watched Arrested Development until unconsciousness overtook us. It didn't take long. Par. Ty. Animals.

Saturday was a little more active. I have like 3 more hours in this airport so prepare yourself for some excruciating detail. We went to grab breakfast at a local place famous for being rude to the customers, where we were of course greeted by a friendly staff and given prompt, courteous service by the waitress. Too bad, I had been looking forward to a brawl. I punched Lizett in the eye for good measure and we headed to the Texas State History museum, where I learned, among other things, that the Revolution was some dramatic shit. Seriously, I don't know if it was the soundtrack or what, but by the end of their informational videos I was pounding my chest screaming "ERRRRM! I LOVE YOU TEXAS!" I also got to experience the smell of sulfur up close and personal in their awesome exhibit "Find out what sulfur smells like up close and personal!" It did not smell good. But other than that it was a pretty cool museum with lots of swords and guns and things, so I enjoyed it.

After that it was off to the Drag, which is a long strip with lots of funky little businesses. I was not aware, but apparently Austin loathes any kind of chain, and everything there is local and quirky. They even have little bumper stickers that say "Keep Austin Weird." It was a glorious 80-some degrees out, so we didn't actually go into many stores, preferring just to walk and enjoy the sun. We did hit the Co-Op, the UT book store, which was pretty impressive. ND has some truly ridiculous stuff in our bookstore, but UT definitely takes the cake with the child size Hook'em Horns iron cast bed. Very wow.

We were going to hit a sports bar to catch the second half of the UT game, but we chanced across it on the radio during the drive over only to discover that the score was already 70-3. Suckaaaaaaas! It didn't seem worth it anymore to fight for a parking spot--that's the other thing about Austin, at least downtown. You can't park. At all. Instead of manufacturing thousands upon thousands of regular no parking sings, they could just fly a blimp around that says "No Parking, Bitches!" So anyway, we just headed back to catch the rest of the game at her apartment. We had missed all but some of the 4th quarter, so by the time we flipped it on the coverage consisted almost exclusively of Vince Young dancing around with a rose in his mouth. Oh, Vince!

We went to dinner at a steakhouse called Old San Francisco. Man was that place awesome. Really nice dining atmosphere, extremely good steak, live music, and what is apparently their trademark, the girl on the red velvet swing. Half of their waitresses were wearing old-timey 1800's red dresses, and one of them would periodically go up and get on this enormous swing. Lizett and I had been curious about this fabled swing, so the first time she went up I said 'Oh, baby!' much as I might say 'Oh, baby!' if someone put a bowl of peanuts in front of me. Unfortunately, our table was right by the stage, which was raised maybe 5 feet off the ground, so too late I realized I was basically looking up the skirt of a waitress who could clearly hear everything I was saying, and 'Oh, baby!' may not have been the most prudent choice of words. Oh well. Anyway, the swing was pretty cool. The ropes were maybe 30 feet long, and she just swung up further and further, doing little kicks and such, until finally she got all the way up to the ceiling where she kicked a little bell with her feet. Well...it was much, much more impressive if you saw it.

By the time we got home, I was stuffed with beer and steak and totally dozing off against my best efforts, but Lizett insisted that I absolutely must see 6th street. Lizett is wise. 6th street is totally ridiculous. Traffic is blocked off on the weekends, so there are just hordes of people roving around everywhere in search of booze. Hordes. The whole area was absolutely packed. We just had time to hit 3 of the dozens upon dozens of bars--the first a hangout type place with live music that was pretty cool, the second a sketchy lets-have-sex-on-the-dancefloor club which we fled almost immediately, and the third a huge billiards and darts place where we hung out until closing time. We were both on the verge of vomiting the entire time, not because of alcohol content, but because of the absurdly huge dinner we had eaten, but did we let that slow us down? Yes, a little! But it didn't stop us! We drank and drank and drank some more, and then my spleen exploded. After whooping some shit in darts, 2am rolled around and we headed to the main bar for a last round and watched all the drunkys stumble out. One girl in particular was attempting to descend the stairs and failing miserably as her friends looked upon with mirth, and as we mocked her amateurish behavior the bartender came up to us and said "Yeah, why do girls do that to themselves? What kind of guy finds that attractive? What's she going to do, go home and puke on his wiener?" I had two thoughts, almost simultaneously--first, gross. Really gross. Second, wiener? Seriously, did you just say wiener? She had, and I loved it.

Lots of stuff happened Sunday as well, but I'll just limit my commentary to the most awesome movie theater ever, the Alamo Draft House. You head in, sit at long Debartolo style tables, check off a little menu box, and they bring you a bucket of beer to enjoy with your movie. Glooooorious. We saw 'Just Friends', highly recommend. You read that right. The best part of the place by far was the gigantic bright red "RESTROOMS" sign placed directly outside the theater doors, pointing in the only direction you could go anyway. Man, these guys are really in tune with their clientele.

Lizett had class this morning, so I took the bus over to campus afterward to meet her for a quick bite before heading out, and thus I was introduced to the glory of the "breakfast taco." There isn't much to see in that area of campus, and it was a little nippy outside, so to kill time until the bus came we wandered around the engineering building while I shaved, pretty much explicity so the engineering students could later tell their buddies, 'Hey, I saw some weirdo shaving in the engineering building.' Shut up, it's funny to me.

Took another bus to the airport, said farewell, walked inside...got a call from Lizett. "Hey, I'm right behind you, you took my keys! Aaand there goes the bus." Haha, BURN!