Austin, TX - I used to live in this building, on the second floor - which used to be the top floor. The building left of this one, is the same exact building and scenes from A Perfect World were filmed in it. I really enjoyed living here. It will probably remain the coolest apartment I have ever had. I don’t know how I feel about the new construction, actually, I know how I feel about it, it sucks!
I stopped by Mother’s Cafe and Garden, got two sandwiches, yummy!
San Antonio, TX - While speaking to my old friend Jon on the phone, he asked me if I had a headlamp. I asked him why and he said he wanted to take me to “this place I go to†tonight. Night hiking he said. So I told him I would go find one.
Later on in the evening, I arrived at his house. He was in the middle of eating a tuna fish sandwich with a side of whole uncut cucumber. I sat down and waited for him to finish, when he did, he began pulling out all of his hiking/camping/climbing gear from his closet. He was going on and on about this and that gadget. He was telling me about kilonewtons and static versus dynamic ropes. I was smiling and nodding away. Then he brought out a harness and said, very matter-of-factly, “this is what you will useâ€. To this, I had no reply.
It turns out we were going rappelling off a 75 foot cliff at an undisclosed location in the northwest part of town in the dark. I eventually managed to utter an incredulous, “O-Kâ€.
We arrived at a construction site off the highway, parked, scrambled up some dirt piles and through knee high grass and shrubs. It was dark and we couldn’t use our headlamps yet because that would attract unwanted attention from local authorities. (Did I mention we were trespassing?) When we got far enough away from the highway and deep in the scrub trees, we turned on our headlamps. A short hike more and Jon started warning me to watch my steps and stay behind him. I was second guessing my ability to go through with this and the doubt worsened when I saw the darkness before us. Standing on top of the cliff, our LED headlamps couldn’t even penetrate through the darkness to the ground. We had to switch to incandescent to see the bottom. We sat on the ledge as Jon gave me the crash course on rappelling.
He was going down first, stopping on a ledge about 15 feet down, clipping in, and then waiting for me to come down to him to make sure I was roped correctly and that my belt wasn’t getting loose. Then we were going to switch on the ledge so that he could go all the way down to hang onto the end of the rope in case I let go. Well, that plan evaporated rather quickly.
He was on the ledge, while I was getting ready to rope up. I had to improvise my initial descent because I am a lefty and had to keep the rope from twisting. When I reached Jon, he realized there was no way for me to clip in and for us to switch so I had to go the rest of the way down with no spotter. So I did. There were lots of overhangs, lots of tiny caves, and a great deal of small trees growing on the face of this cliff. Occasionally I would stop on a ledge and rest my white knuckled hands. However, when I stood up on my feet, my knees would start trembling uncontrollably. I made it down about 3/4 of the way when I hit a snag, actually, the rope hit a snag - that is to say - it was snagged on one of the many small trees growing on the ledge. Great. I eventually managed to get enough rope free to complete the descent.
A few times I stopped to take it all in, turning my head around only slightly hollowed out the darkness. Having your well being gripped in one hand is quite a rush. My mortality crept into my mind each time I fed the rope to descend. Once on the bottom, we hiked around, illuminating the occasional spying pairs of eyes. Happy birthday Mom!
San Antonio, TX - Second day in San Antonio. On the flight in - I arrived after dark - I was totally taken aback by the sight of the city lights on a Saturday night. The lights were green, white, and red - like Christmas lights - and spread over the entire city, San Antonio as I have never seen.
Today was the penultimate baby shower for my sister Grace. This one was thrown by my mom, who is notorious for her parties - this one would be no different. She rented a hall in the deep southside of San Antonio. My dad, my brother-in-law, and I were the lone males, each with a specified job. I was given the task of photographing everyone and everything. It was a good place to hide - behind the camera.
I was suprised by my brother-in-law’s ability to bite his lip while the presents were being opened. I mean, they registered at Target, so why were a lot of the gifts not only not from Target, but nothing remotely close to what they wanted? Such is life in the southside.
After gathering all the helium balloons and transporting them back home, my sister was a few steps from the front door when she accidentally let go of all the balloons! It was a wonderful and uplifting sight, but I couldn’t help feeling regret that not a single one of them had a message attached to it waiting to be found by chance. Project!
In celebration of Kelly turning a quarter of a century, Ben invited over a handful of people. The night started with scattered groups doing their own thing. Well, one group, Jon, Ben, and Mr. Cai, huddled around Kelly’s main birthday present, an old school Super Nintendo. When I walked in, the game of choice was StarFox, boy have games come a long way. I remember playing that game once or twice, so I tried my hand at it. My hand eye coordination has increased tremendously since the last time.
Eventually a group of four of us, Justin, Elizabeth, Kelly, and myself broke off at the table and started a series of Set games. I never won, but tied for second a couple of times. Euchre made an appearance, but died quickly once the poker was mentioned. And so we began…
In honor of the birthday girl, we played a round of pass the deal starting with 7-card stud. The deal went around and then a hold ‘em round started. The hold ‘em round sunk my five dollars of chips. I was playing loose, for example, I paid two bucks on the river with an inside straight draw with an ace on the board, and a likely pair of aces from the aggressive raiser. I lost.
Eventually we made it out of hold ‘em and back into pass the deal. I built up a stack only to lose most of it again, this time it was follow the two’s and three’s. The winner, Jon (Ben’s cousin - yes there were two Jon’s here tonight, it made things difficult at times), was sitting pretty with two natural aces and a two showing, but all along he had been betting like he had another two or three in the hole, it turned out he had a two AND a three all along. Then he got a three at the end. Ouch! He wound up with six aces. I folded before I got my fourth card, but it had already cost me quite a bit. Elizabeth went down hard on that hand.
I bought another five bucks and we passed the deal again. The stacks fluctuated wildly; I eventually had 13 bucks and tried to keep a stack a ten off limits. Jon cashed out (up 15 dollars) and physics Jon cashed out and broke even, and Justin had been out for a while, I took him out on a game of touchies. He had been staring at a double belly buster inside straight flush for most of the hand but never got a touchie. He quickly headed to the couch and moped over Aladdin on the Super Nintendo.
With four at the table, I tried to call Midnight Baseball, but no one would play, so I changed it to baseball. Ben folded quickly, Kelly had a pair of sevens showing, I had a wild and a queen showing with pocket aces, and Elizabeth had a pair of fours showing, which means she had FOUR cards face down! I wasn’t worried though, because as far as I was concerned, my aces would beat her fours and Kelly’s sevens. But then, to my horror, Kelly got another seven! She had to have four, with so many wilds, then she went all in, surely she had four of a kind, but to my surprise, Elizabeth called, so I called Elizabeth and went all in for five dollars and 25 cents. Elizabeth called. I was sure I had her beat, so that relieved me, then we got our last card, I made a full house, aces over jacks. We flipped and I couldn’t believe that I won it all - even against Kelly who had a full house with sevens over jacks! Ouch!
The table disbanded at this point and we watched Kelly beat Aladdin over ice cream and cake. I ended up for the night, about six bucks. On the drive home the moon hung low in the sky and was huge. I followed a Westward road for as long as I could but lost the moon behind the buildings downtown. I scrambled to find it but it had set.
My answer to McSweeney’s question of the week:
What is that thing on the cover of The Better Of McSweeney’s? A Modernist statue? A clump of mud?
Here it goes.
My path of deduction:
First, the choice of the word ‘Better’ as opposed to the ‘Best’ of McSweeney’s. ‘Better’, as in one who bets, a gambler. Gambling is a problem; most gamblers drink a lot. Drinking a lot is a problem that leads to liver disease. The liver makes bile, among other things, but mostly bile. McSweeney’s makes bile - in book form - and sometimes bile is called ichor. Ichor is the blood of Greek gods. I like Greek gods, after having just become the new God of War after defeating Ares in the Sony Playstation game God of War. Afterall, how can you expect someone to love you - or your kind - if you don’t love yourself. So then I must correct myself, I love Greek gods. So, to reiterate in reverse, Me, Ichor, Bile, McSweeney’s, Liver. Does my omniscience disqualify me? Of course, who wants to read bile?
Of course, I love McSweeney’s, so saying they make bile is not an attack, bile is essential for digestion - imagine life without humor.