So Saturday Isaac and I got up and headed to Austin to pick up Cody from the airport. He had spent the week out of state for work last week. He was tired from his trip so we went on back to San Marcos for him to shower and take a nap before we went back into Austin for the AustinTuners noodle meetup.
Before we got to the noodle meet up we stopped by Tek Republik and dropped off the xbox 360 for cleaning and repairs. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get fixed up so I can get to playin forza3! The noodle meet had a small turn out but I didn’t expect a crowd in the slightest. Not everyone likes pho and lots of folks have been busy with school lately.
We brought Isaac with us, Jack and Ellen came too, so did Ian and Ashley. After about an hour we were all ready to leave and we had Xrunnit show up so Cody stayed a bit longer to chat cars with him while Jack, Ellen, Isaac and I went to Amy’s Ice Cream for dessert. Obviously I didn’t have any, but we got some for Isaac but he was super tired by then and only ate a few bites, Cody had to finish it for him.
Today we all slept in a bit. Cody went over to Chuck’s house to watch the Cowboys lose. Isaac and I stayed here while Isaac took a nap and I worked on the next meetup for the AustinTuners thing. Later in the afternoon I was planning on headed out to Walmart to get diapers and such when I couldn’t find my keys. I had left them in the passengers side door of cody’s car. /fail. He brought home groceries and stuff and said to clean up the living room cuz Bryan and Traci were headed over.
I made some spaghetti for dinner, used macaroni noodles instead of thin spaghetti noodles, sooo good. Watched last nights recorded episode of SNL with Sigourney Weaver…AWESOME. Then Bryan and Traci came over with late Christmas presents for Isaac and us. They got him a toy guitar, nerf sword and a nerf basketball goal! They got Cody a copy of Uncharted 2 for the ps3. He has been playing it all night, it’s pretty fun looking. But the coolest part is what they got ME:
Nintendo Controller Soap from Dirty Ass Soaps. Super awesome as its the exact size of the real controller to the point its probably molded straight from it.
It smells good too! The second thing that they got me, which I wasn’t expecting at all, as a copy of Between Me and Life, the Romaine Brooks biography. I had been looking for something on her since I did research on her time period back in an Art History class at UMHB. Super hard to find these books because they only printed them once in the 70′s and it’s the only biography of hers that the lady who wrote it actually interviewed Brooks in person. She died in the late 70′s so this was cutting it close!
The book is pretty cool as it has actual pics of photos of her I haven’t seen before like this one of her actually WITH d’Annunzio: (yes THAT d’Annunzio)
What was even cooler was the full color photos of some of her paintings in the middle:
Totally awesome, I really need to sit and read it, I’ll probably bring it to work and read during breaks 
So I’ve still been drawing at least one sketch a day, lets see if I can keep that up. All the sketches are on my Flickr, you can see the little thumbnails of those to the right of this page so I’m not gonna post each one unless I have nothing else to post.
Yesterday we met up with Jeff and Christine for Pho in Austin.
I hadn’t had pho since we moved from Round Rock. I like this place in Austin as they have better spring rolls but their broth isn’t as good as the Round Rock pho place. Still, ultra delicious. I like to try and eat all my meat the second it gets brought out so that it doesn’t become super tough in the hot soup.
After pho we went next door to CoCo’s to get drinks because we weren’t already waterlogged from gallons of soup. ^_^ So good tho. I always get the strawberry slushie, not a fan of the tapioca pearls you can have added to your drinks. Jeff got them in his Thai Tea you can see it in the pic, the little black dots are jelly tapioca balls. Not a fan of them, makes me feel like im slurping huge boogers up my straw.
Once they left we killed a few hours shopping before we planned to meet up with Bryan and Traci for Bryan’s Birthday. I’ve always wanted to go to Jerry’s Artarama but we never have had the money or time to go by there. They were having some kind of after Christmas sale and everything was 30% off so we grabbed a few gesso boards, pencil sharpener, pencils, and of course 8 x 11.5 GRAPHICS 360 PAPER!!!! Right now all I have is huge 11 x 17 massive sheets of it from the Art Institute, but now I can trace my normal sized sketches. Graphics 360 is a semi-transparent marker paper that is far superior to tissue tracing paper. Normal tracing paper is so thin and flimsy that what the paper gets all wrinkly and gross, plus you can’t use ink on it or it will beed through. With graphics 360 you can bust out the industrial markers and have at it without any bleeding, also its still thin enough that you don’t NEED a lightbox to trace your pencils. (why are you tracing things? its for when you draw something in a sketchbook in pencil or whatever and you want clean drawing of it or to ink over it without destroying the pencil sketch, you trace over it in ink or whatever)
I totally want to build a lightbox one day.
After Jerry’s we skipped over to Highland Mall and I picked up some undies at Victoria Secret who were also having a massive sale so I got 5 panties and a bra with my 50 dolla gift card. Epic Win! Their cd store was having a going out of business sale and everything was 50 percent off so we got Isaac a new Wonderpets dvd “The Wonderpets save the Beatles” which is either going to be totally awesome or an outright abomination. I apparently never went to Highland Mall at night because its now the cool place for the thugged out middleschooler black kids to hang out in. At least in Dallas malls their my age, here it was just hilarious.
Once we were done with the Mall we headed towards downtown to find some dinner. Taking Cody there from the mall got him a little lost so we were surprised when we suddenly found ourselves in the yuppie part of downtown and next to the Whole Foods. Christine had gotten me a gift card there for christmas and so we used it to get a few things and our dinners:
I got a sushi box with about 8 or 9 pieces of tuna and avacado rolls. Cody got a huge fresh Italian samwich at the little samwich bar. He was suprised to find the samwich to be really fresh as it was a pre-made they had under the glass, the guy heated it up under the pannini machine for him and everything. My sushi was super good, but super cold as I grabbed one from the bottom of the cooler to ensure propper saftey so I had to let it sit a sec before I could taste the tuna. I have no idea what Codys tasted like since it had a huge slice of provalone or something in there.
Soon after that we headed to Spider House for coffee and beer with Bryan and Traci. We had given them their present earlier in the week and they brought us ours! Cody got a beer shirt and I got THIS!!!
Its one of the Katchoo statues made years ago from the Strangers in Paradise comics. SUPER COOL! They always give the best presents. Thanks again guys!
I was very surprised by Spider House last night. The first few times we had been there it was just a coffee house with a large deck outside with kitschy Austin seating and lights. Now its still a coffee house but their running more of it like a restaurant now. They have a food menu now and the walk around waitresses were being given actual sections to garner over rather than just overseeing the permanent sitters. I don’t know if they had always been that way or if its new with the semi-cafe thing they have going now. Anyway, it was super slow for a Saturday night. Good because I can’t stand going there when its sitting all over the place full of Macfags and indieChicks talking about Obama and organic chicken eggs or whatever. There were those kinds of people there of course but not in the droves like usual. I actually liked it this time. Maybe it was the cold that kept them out. I don’t have enough scarves or bangs to be “cool” there. However someone decided that pea-coats should make a comeback which is good because I’ve had mine since 8th grade…too bad its only guys that I see wearing them. Meh.
New Killers album > New Alanis album, sorry dear you need to go date uncle joey again and get angry cuz sappy music is not your thing.
