Recap

Tuesday: Traveled to Austin with Eva, via west Texas back roads, stopping in historic downtown Hico and Lampasas. Early dinner at Dairy Queen in bumfuck somewhereoranother 80 miles outside of Austin. Arrived in Austin just a little too late for a concert where a friend wanted us to meet him, so we went to the Driskill bar and had expensive martinis instead. When we realized we spent $50 in like five minutes, we mosied on down to a sports bar instead. It had a roof deck and $7 double jack & cokes, so... done. Got nice and toasted, hopped across the street for pizza, then stumbled back to the hotel for bed.

Wednesday morning it decided to thunderstorm. Eva, a native Texan who hardly ever gets to see the rain, was excited. I, a transplanted New Englander who gets to see the fucking rain all the fucking time, was pissed. This also appeared to ruin our plans to go swim in Barton Springs, one of the few really fun and really free things we were looking forward to. So we hopped in the car and ended up in another historic Texas town: Gruene. A few antique shops & one glorious hot dog later, it is nice and sunny and scorching out again and we head back to Austin for some swimming after all.

Barton Springs is apparently the place to take your dog to play when you live in one of the hottest places in the world, so there were a good 15-20 dogs in the water, and I was having a great time just watching them.

After an hour or so of this, we headed off to what would be a free dinner & glorious desert courtesy of a family friend, followed by drinks on 6th street (again!) with Eva's friends, and Eva's friends' really hot single friends. The good news is that Eva and I have enough of a taste difference in men that she liked the one and I liked the other. The bad news is that we had to get up at 6am so we left too early for any of that to matter. Damn.

Thursday: Eva leaves at 7am to get back to Dallas for a 12-5 shift, and gets stopped on I-35 for an hour. I check out of the hotel at 11am, take the dogs to Barton Springs, where they wore themselves out swimming for like 20 minutes. I don't have a towel, so we walk around in the sun for a bit until I'm dry enough to put my clothes on over my bathing suit, and then we take off eastward, toward Alabama. On a whim I decide it would be fun to see New Orleans, so at 11pm I arrive at a La Quinta in the French Quarter.

Friday I run out of money. I spend the morning walking around downtown New Orleans, taking pictures of the city and the river. I stop in a souvenir shop and try to buy my brother a housewarming gift and my credit card is declined.

So I guess it's time to get my ass to mommy's house, since I've acquired $3,000 worth of credit card debt in the last 10 days alone. I just hope it still feels worth it when I'm back in Boston working three jobs to pay it all off. Bah.