Floating

Before I moved to Texas my knowledge of the state really came from Yosemite Sam cartoons. I pretty much imagined I'd find mostly cacti and a sparse scattering of trees. It turns out Texas not only has many, many trees, but lots of rivers too! Last year I floated the Comal in New Braunfels, Texas (about an hour south of Austin). Yesterday I floated the Blanco in San Marcos (only a half hour south).

It being the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend we spent literally hours waiting in a line to even get in the river. In this line I saw 19-24 year old kids living out their parents worst fears for them. From 2 pm to 5 pm we waited behind a girl that had a "Made in Australia 1990" tattoo on her back just to get on a bus to take us and our inner tubes one mile to "put in." I know it sounds like I was miserable at this point, but all frustration melted away when we got in the river.

Zach's brother said this river kept him from finishing his degree at Texas State. It's about 5 miles from campus and he said that it was pretty much irresistible on hot days. The place we rented our tubes from is a local institution. Don's Fish Camp is run by an old shirtless man that wears shorts with suspenders and has the skin of an iguana. I'm looking forward to going back on a weekend where approximately 175 kids aren't in line ahead of me.

Back to floating, there's a lot of luck involved. At the end of the trip I felt lucky to still have my flip flops on, the cooler in tow, and the three boys I came with. The river regularly gets rapid and it is only by chance that you get to keep everything you foolishly brought with you. I also felt lucky that the cars in front of us got stopped by the police and not us. In a move that can only be called inspired the police set up right outside of the road that leads out of Don's. Who knew such beautiful tan people could look so miserable sitting in the back of a pick-up truck?

All in all I'd say this weekend really forced me to admit to myself that I've become a Texan. In two months I will have been here for two years. Though at this point I still haven't been a Texan as I long as I was a Chicagoan and I did still get nervous yesterday when I had to stand near someone with a confederate flag beer koozie, I'd have to say that I'm regularly having more fun than I've ever had before. For all it's brashness and blind enthusiasm, it's really kind of an amazing place. I think Molly Ivins said it best: I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

First timers

The proof of an adequate city is when you can live there almost two years and still have firsts. The past couple weeks I have had several of these.

1) Trivia. I've never participated in it before. My first time out my team, "Betsy Ross Perot is a Patriot" won first place out of 20+ teams. This won us a $25 gift certificate. So we went back to the bar (Shangri La) this week to use it and I played again. We didn't get first, but I was able to put my knowledge of the Marx Brothers and E. L. Doctorow to good use.

2) Salt Lick BBQ. Oh boy. A forty minute drive for exactly 40 pounds of meat for $40. Sooo good. For $20/person you can get a plate of all you can eat sausage, brisket, and ribs. It will be hard for us now to not go weekly.

3)Powerpoint. I'm old and a liberal arts (english even, one of the liberalist of the arts) person so I've never in my life had to give a powerpoint presentation. I know this doesn't fit into my proof-of-an-adequate-city category, but I had to give my first one last week. And it went really well. I have a little more confidence now that I can do things in the biz world should I need to for some godawful reason.

4)Little. I now have a "little sister" through Big Brothers Big Sisters. I actually need to get moving because I have to meet her for the fourth time in a half hour. She's a 7th grader and desperately loves anime. It's a challenge. That said, I'm relatively confident that there are few types of nerdy that I can't handle.

On timers

This morning I woke up to take Anna out to pee around 7:30 am and then crawled back into bed (as is usual on weekends) and couldn't fall back asleep. So I got up and did a load of dishes, did two loads of laundry, made coffee, toasted a bagel, and watched Inside the Actors Studio on youtube (John Goodman...a fellow St. Louisan). Now it's 10:30 and I've realized that pretty much everything I was going to do today is finished. I mean I still want to go to Newflower Farmer's Market and get chicken sausage, hummus, grapes, and maybe some potato salad, but my weekend jobs are pretty much finished (I cleaned the sink yesterday, did the other half of my grocery shopping, bought a frame for my new poster, and picked up my movie from the library that was on hold).

All of this rambling is to say that I'm very task motivated. I find it hard to relax until my tasks are complete, necessary or not. That is to say once I decide I should do some chore for the weekend I don't feel satisfied until it's complete. I find myself building a schedule each morning and then planning when I need to complete everything. All of this strategy is a little exhausting.

Austin as a whole is not task motivated. You'll find brunchers still brunching at noon. It's not unusual to schedule a meeting anywhere with anyone and have them be 15 minutes late. There's a real clear division between on-timers and not on-timers in that the on-timers stand out like that kid in your class that would say, "didn't you say we were going to have a quiz today?"

Summer time is a whole new beast. It's going to be 90 degrees plus all this week meaning that people will be moving even slower and almost every activity involves drinking and/or swimming. For example, this coming week I'll have a trivia night (drinking), a happy hour (drinking), a pool party (swimming and drinking) and a BBQ (more drinking). All of this makes every day here in the summer feels like vacation. Austin has this way of making everything a celebration. This is especially true once May hits. The grocery stores occasionally have live music, there are weekly city-wide social bike rides, I have a large collection of friends that participate in kickball/softball teams (also involving drinking), and the odds are about 90% that if you live in an apartment complex you have a pool.

All of this is to say that I find it very hard to be task oriented here. It just feels silly and meaningless. My years in fast-walking, high heel wearing Chicago seem to be melting off me like so much drunk sweat. And I like it.

What I still haven't learned

So I've been 28 over a month now and what's most interesting to me isn't what I've learned, but what I still haven't:

1) I still have a hard time reconciling the conflicted feelings I have when many people want something that I can't fathom wanting. I always think to myself, "why don't I want that too? is it something weird about me?" At 28 this feeling comes strongest when I hear about people getting married and/or having babies. I don't want it now. I just don't. I think I will...at some point...probably...but I don't want it the way most people seem to and it makes me question why I feel that way. It gets harder as you get older because people start asking you to explain this in a way you didn't have to when you were 19 or 20. I don't get through a month without having to talk about why I'm not married (nine years with Zach as of tomorrow). It's like when I was vegetarian for that year. When you make a choice that goes against mainstream you suddenly have to become this activist for your decision and get on some soapbox, even if it's as simple as something that makes sense to you...not because you're anti the other thing.

2)I absolutely love people and I haven't learned how to keep myself out of everybody's business all the time. I think a big reason I became such a big fiction reader is because I can't get enough of hearing what people are thinking about, the decisions they're making, and then helping them plan their next move. This makes me a popular friend because I am pretty easily invested in whatever anyone's drama is, but leaves me a little exhausted when I put a bunch of energy into someone and they do something I spent a lot of time advising them not to do. Or I put myself in the middle, relay messages from one person to the other, and then days and hours of energy later can't find a way to get out. All of this said, I don't expect to grow out of this...I'm just hoping I can begin to leave more and more wiggle room as I get older to spend sometime on getting what I want instead of living through other people.

3)On a less deep note, it's still hard for me to dance like nobody's watching.