Austin!

Well, I'm here in Texas. I got a cold the first day I got here so I've been trying to maintain a low profile and take care of myself, which seems to be what vacation is for anyway. The snot is still green so I figure I have a few more days until I'm 95 percent. I don't think I'll ever be 100 percent.

Before I left Eugene I checked the weather here incessantly. For a good week weather.com said it would be a high of 77 on Monday. I looked forward to wearing a short-sleeved shirt and walking around without the red hoodie that has been my security blanket in Oregon. Well, weather.com suddenly changed its digital mind on Sunday and declared highs of 32 for Monday. (I realize this is boring, guys. Stop now, for it probably won't improve.) I figured I could take it. I mean, it was snowing Sunday morning in Eugene before I left, but I forgot the cold here is 2x as worse as Eugene. Austin was freezing and windy, but alas, what I've always hated about this place (and what I love now) occurred. It's warmed up. Highs in the 70's until Sunday.

It's been a trip being in Austin again. I realize that it's only been six months since I was last here, but every time I leave something changes. Some new condo high rise is almost finished, some beloved Mexican restaurant is gone, or some new kitschy/trendy strip mall has popped up between a garage shop and a porn store. Austin is having an identity crisis. Downtown the new condos are revered as the harbingers of a new lifestyle. Expensive boutiques and restaurants line the bottoms and people walk around in Prada high heels with lap dogs attached to their arms. Less than a mile away a new strip center, named something like The Trailer Park something or other, sells Lone Stars and breakfast tacos. Of course, these owners want to profit from the non-natives trying to pass off the trailer park ethos as their own. And then there are the sorry Austinites still left here, still wondering what the hell happened to all of their decrepit and beloved institutions, stuck in their memories of Maria's when you had to stand in the corner to eat on Sundays and Rutamaya when really, really weird people hung out there and you could give a guy a dollar to watch him spin on some spinning device and of course, Las Manitas, which is totally gone. That one broke my heart. I won't go into all of the sweet memories I have of that place, but that one broke my heart.

I'm meeting up with my friends tomorrow, and I can't wait. They'll remind me why I've missed this place so much.