Festivals coming up - book your hotels now

Looks like the Austin City Limits Music Festival is all sold out now. However, a quick search on craigslist shows that you're still in luck if your heart is set on going. Tons of people rent out their homes on craigslist that weekend (October 2 - 4, 2009) as well if you can't find a hotel to book.

My home is booked, by the way. My husband's three friends from high school are coming all the way from Houston, San Francisco and Atlanta to crash at our house, drink Bud Light, reminisce about that time they drove to Ben & Jerry's when they were 16, and make fart jokes. Oh, and go see Pearl Jam. As much as I love hearing that Ben & Jerry's story (over and over again!), I have decided to spend the weekend at my parents' house with the kids and let the boys have the house to themselves.

But I will be damned if I'm going to miss Wurstfest, which is October 30 - November 8th. Screw the Dave Matthews, give me some German oompah bands! (Roll out the barrel - We'll have a barrel of fun!) Ok, so it's in New Braunfels instead of Austin, it's only 45 minutes away. I've only had the most amazing time each and ever year I've gone (coming up on year five, whoo hoo!). It can't be missed. My friend is coming in from San Francisco to join in the revelry. Beer! Sausage! Friends! Yeah!

Book your hotels now! I'm so excited thinking about it I can't stop using exclamation points!

There's no place like home

My coworker was raving about the Aquarium in Dallas, and somehow I got the bright idea it would be fun to go on a family vacation there for the weekend. Husband agreed. Stupid, masochistic us.

NEVER go anywhere with a almost three year old who is in the middle of a "I'm not going to do anything you say" phase. The same goes doubly for a five week old who does not sleep and needs to be held constantly.

I'm sure Dallas is a great place, but I never want to go back there again. I'm not going to recount all the struggles we went through because they're not that interesting, but let me just tell you I am SO GLAD TO BE BACK HOME.

It is funny though, the one time of the trip where I think we were all getting along and having fun was when we were eating breakfast at this cute restaurant called Allgood Cafe. While waiting for our meals we suddenly realized that all the posters up on the wall were concert bills for The Continental Club, which is the mack daddy of all music venues here in Austin (since 1957). Then we looked on their drink menu and read their slogan:

The Allgood Cafe
"It's like going to Austin... without having to pass through Waco!"

Shoot, if we had only known that beforehand.

New School Ratings out for 2008-2009

I've updated them on my website here, complete with interactive Google maps with color coding.

Lots of schools jumped up in ratings, due mostly in part to a new way of taking into account projected future improvement. It doesn't really make sense to me, but you can read about it here, on AISD's website.

When the toddler's away, the parents play

My son is hanging with the g-parents this week. They took their RV and headed to Guadalupe River State Park, which is about 1.5 hours southwest of Austin and one of my favorite campgrounds in Texas. My son loves buses and grandparents, and is quite partial to throwing rocks in rivers as well, so he's quite happy.

All of this leaves me free to go to a party tomorrow night (Thursday, Aug 13) at Software Advice, which is a company that just relocated from San Francisco to Austin.

According to their website:

When deciding where to move the company, founder & President Don Fornes said that Austin’s favorable business climate and high quality of life made the central-Texas town stand out.

“We wanted to move to a city where we could grow our business cost-effectively and have a great quality of life. I also wanted our employees to love where they lived. Austin gave us the best combination of a friendly business environment, outstanding professional talent and a quality of life that that is unmatched.”

Austin’s reputation as a technology hub played a large role in the move, Fornes said.

“We knew that as the company grew, we would need to find talented employees with a background in technology and Internet marketing. Moving to Austin means that we can find that talent right here while helping to strengthen local business.”

Read more here.

Gotta love a company that cares enough to give away free local beer, aka Live Oak. None of that Anchor Steam foolishness.

More info on the party here:

New look for blog and website

I've been trying to learn CSS, and thought I'd update the look of the site in the process. Hope you like it.

Festival of Cheese in town

My family is lucky to have friends in the most holiest of cheese places on this planet, right outside of Gruyère, Switzerland. I've gotten to visit them a few times, and each time they've taken us to their local castle to see where Gruyère cheese got started. Once they even took us to a Sacred Order of the Cheese Meeting (I'm roughly translating from the French name), where Swiss dudes (including Jean-Pierre, the patriarch of our host family) dressed up in funky Alpine clothing, danced around in a circle singing "Lo Ma! Lo Ma!" and played a weird looking horn, all in celebration of cheese. It was quite bizarre. Afterwards they served the most divine fondue I have ever tasted in my life, so it was a good day. I love living in Austin and don't ever want to leave, but living in the Alps in Gruyère, Switzerland would be a pretty awesome second choice.

Suffice it to say, I am a lover of cheese, and when I read that the American Cheese Society is holding their Festival of Cheese in Austin this week, my heart skipped a beat. If I had an extra $75 laying around, I would totally go to their cheese judging/tasting event this weekend. Alas, I'll have to make do by licking the newspaper article about the event with its gorgeous photos of cheese.

Last night my husband and I conned my parents into watching my 3 year old son and took off for happy hour at Trio, which I raved about in a previous post. The 3 week old had to come with us, but she slept most of the time so it was still a pretty nice date. My husband ordered the baked gulf oysters, which he knew I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, so to make him suffer I ordered the Texas artisanal cheese plate and refused to share (though I caved in halfway through the night).

Three of the cheeses came from Paula Lambert's company, which makes artisanal cheese in Dallas. I've actually met Paula Lambert, when she was hocking her cheese book at Central Market a few years ago. As I mentioned before, Lambert is my maiden name and I am bound by honor to support any and all things Lambert, including fancy barbecue, American Idol contestants, and Highlanders. So I bought her book and gave it to my dad for Christmas. She's really nice and very knowledgable about cheeses. I was hoping we'd be related so she could give me free cheese, but no luck.

That cheese plate was fantastic. The only thing that would have helped it would have been a couple of Swiss dudes dancing around, celebrating.

If anyone makes it to the Festival of Cheese, eat some chèvre for me!

New school ratings list out for Austin area schools

I've gone from spending 8+ hours a day in front of a computer to 5 minutes a day. My home computer blew up 2 weeks ago and we had to buy a new one - but I haven't had the time to load any of my design programs yet. (That's the short version, the long version is I am scared to bite the bullet and buy Adobe CS4, which is $1699 for all the programs I need. Yikes!)

Meaning, can't update the website anytime soon. And yet, the new 2008 ratings for Austin schools just came out!

So you'll have to use this link until I'm back up to speed:

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2008/districtlist.srch.html

Latest Unemployment Numbers for Austin - July 2009 report

June 2009 unemployment numbers for Austin are 7.1%, up from 6.2% in May. Texas' unemployment rate is 7.5%, compared to the national rate of 9.5%.

Let's keep the gloominess at bay, shall we? A little classic by the Yip Yip aliens:


Yip Yip! Radio!