Favorite Things about Austin

8 more days for you to enter the One Year Anniversary contest. Thought I'd share some of the entries so far:

Favorite Things About Austin

Denise

1. listening to cicadas in the summer
2. thunderstorms
3. summer days (try nine years in the Pacific NW and see if you don't miss TX summers, too!)
4. margaritas and tex-mex
5. HEB

Daniel

1. Floating on a float at Barton Springs
2. Two-stepping at the Broken Spoke
3. Looking at the Austin sky while camping at Emma Long
4. Thursday night free concert series at Shady Grove
5. Sno-cones at Sno-beach during the summer

Robin

1. bats (i watch them from my deck)
2. customer service at the omlettry
3. my house (i live in agave)
4. driving down mopac during the kite festival
5. sipping joe's while strolling down so co.

Rebecca

1. the dusty, concrete-y, lake-y, Austin-y smell of rain in the heat of summer.
2. the Austin mythology of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Raft Race, 4th of July Picnic, Eeyore's, and the general "good old days."
3. the way Austinites embrace change even as we complain about it.
4. that there is a festival in Austin every single weekend.
5. that "shop locally" really means something to so many people in Austin.

Stephanie

1. the Alamo Drafthouse
2. Tubing the Greenbelt
3. SXSW
4. Barton Springs Full Moon Parties
5. slacking away the day at Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse

Alison

1. my city-issued recycling bin is twice as big as my city-issued trash bin
2. people are friendly
3. there are multiple restaurants offering vegetarian and vegan food
4. independent businesses can thrive here becaue people actually support them.
5. there are cupcakeries and cupcake-mobiles!

New Unemployment Numbers for August

Austin is at 7.2% unemployment for the month of August 2009, and we came down slightly from the month before (which was 7.3%).

The US national average is 9.6%, down from9.7%.

From the Texas Workforce Commission's website:

"Financial Activities employment increased by 600 jobs in August [in Texas]. This was the fifth monthly gain since January, and the eighth monthly job increase in the last 12 months. Since January, this industry added 3,100 jobs. The hardest hit industries in August were Leisure and Hospitality recording a month-over-month drop of 12,900 positions. Construction was down 11,700 jobs, and Manufacturing industry employment fell by 10,900 jobs."

Good news is, we've gotten some rain! It's actually in the 60's today and I'm wearing pants instead of the shorts I've been sporting since May. We're heading to the beach this weekend so I was kinda hoping for some warm weather for swimming, but then again, I'm not quite ready to don a swimsuit yet.

One Year Anniversary

Move To Austin is coming up on its one year anniversary!

Instead of cake and ice cream, how about an Austin giveaway instead? One lucky reader will win a $50 gift card to Breed & Co, an awesome hardware/houseware/garden store here in town. Every town needs a small hardware store that is fun to browse in and carries everything (like that tiny drill bit that you lost during the last move and really would love to find again and the Big Box Stores don't carry but lo and behold there it is on the shelf!). Breed & Co is just that.

Second place winner will get a $25 gift card to Toy Joy, which is just around the corner from Breed & Co. Toy Joy is like a toy store on speed, but in a clean, non-drug fun sort of way. It's packed full of awesome toys that you don't find in normal stores, like punching nun puppets and a cardboard firetruck that your cat can live in. Adults can spend hours browsing, and kids need to be dragged kicking and screaming out of there (I know from experience).

Third place winner gets a $10 gift card to Vulcan Video, an independent video store with a huge selection of foreign, cult and classic films, enough to make your inner film school geek go gaga. Bob Fosse fest!!! Wh00t!

All you have to do is write a list of your 5 favorite things about Austin* and send them to me here. You can also put it in a comment to this post, but make sure I know how to get a hold of you. Winners will be chosen at random, or by my three year old son. Entries must be received by Friday, October 2nd at midnight.

*If you've never been to Austin, then write about your 5 reasons for wanting to move here.

Latest Unemployment Numbers for Austin, plus evil spirits have been expelled

We're at 7.3%, as of July 2009, up from 7.1%. The US national average is 9.7%., same as last month.

How's my family faring? Well, my husband is still unemployed (laid off in April) but is starting his own company now. So contact me if you're looking for an architect. I know a good one.

A little off topic, but my mom took my sister and me to a lady who does clearings last week. She found out how many past lives we have had with each other and our spouses and cleared any bad juju that may have accumulated over the years. My husband and I have had 45 lives with each other, and apparently I've cursed him a time or two. We are now curse free. The lady has also cleared any bad sprites that might be causing us harm, so I'm hoping that some good luck is coming our way as a result of this.

Perhaps this was a good omen: My cat brought in a dead rat the other day. Could it be one of the sprites that got cleared away? Who knows. My husband happened to be away at the time, and I was in the process of putting my son to bed while my daughter screamed her little newborn head off. I joined her, and added in a few choice curse words as well (what is it with me and curses?). Somehow I managed to grab the cat while he still had the rat by the jugular vein and tossed them both outside.

Be gone, evil spirits. Be gone.

Duuuuude. It just started pouring rain as I typed that. Around these parts, that's a fucking amazing sign of good luck.

Jazz Apple Hands!!!

The major grocery store chain here in Texas is called H.E.B. To every grade schooler's delight, those initials stand for Howard Edward Butt - a grocer with a very unfortunate name who's tiny store (which began in Kerrville, TX in 1905) morphed into a huge corporation that most Texans rely on.

Back in the 90's, HEB began converting some of their stores into super duper upscale yuppie marts and renamed them Central Market. The HEB near my grandma's house in San Antonio was one of the first to get converted, and we heard her complain about it to no end. Gamboo had no need for organic monkey-picked $12 sugar, no thank you. Her next closest HEB was grimy and horribly stocked, and she had to drive to a third HEB, which was kinda fancy but still stocked regular sugar. They were renamed: The Gucci-Bee (Central Market), The Wanna-Bee (far away HEB), and the Sleazy-Bee (the ghetto fab HEB).

Here in Austin, those names live on. My closest HEB (corner of Burnet and Koenig) is terrible, with fruit flies hovering over the grapes and nothing even close to shallots or white asparagus. It's the Sleazy-Bee. When I am in need of normal grocery items like cat food or toilet paper, I head to the Wanna-Be near the UT campus where I shop among the Kappa Kappa Gamma girls, whose carts are filled with Diet Coke and Lean Cuisines.

When I need my monkey-picked $12 sugar, I head to the Gucci-Be. I actually have fun shopping here. Like today, major excitement! Jazz Apples are back!! Hot damn, I love these things. I have seriously screamed with delight every time I see them return. And they've also been carrying peaches from Fredericksburg, TX, which are the best peaches I've had in a long time. Cantelopes, 2 for a dollar?! Asparagus bunches for $1.99?! 4 ears of corn for $2.00?! Man, I love summer produce.

People have often asked me if I miss Trader Joes from when I moved from California. Heck no, I've got my Gucci-Bee to keep me happy.

Kids & Toddler Birthday Parties

My social life now revolves around toddler birthday parties. It's not really a problem, because I happen to like cake and ice cream just as much as the preschool set.

As such, I've gotten acquainted with many, many birthday party ideas in and around Austin. My own son just turned three and we had a pirate treasure hunt at my house. It was totally a success, if I do say so myself. We sent out invites that looked like treasure maps (picture tea soaked paper, roughed up to look old with burnt edges that read) and made a cute little course in our backyard for the kiddos to discover. Before the hunt, my husband told a story about my son's great great great great uncle, Capt. Pickle, and we showed a slide show on the TV to go with the talking points. A bonus for all of this was that we didn't spend too much money, although I did go a little overboard with the treasure for the kids. (Went to Toy Joy and picked out awesome little trinkets, like glow in the dark eyeballs and bat rings).

Three weeks ago we went to my son's BFF's birthday party at Goin' Bananas, which is a super AC-ed warehouse in way South Austin filled with bouncy houses. Awesome for kids who have birthdays in August, when it's too hot to move outdoors.

Coming up is the birthdays of two sisters whose parents go all out for their birthdays. Last year they rented out the entire Austin Childrens Museum, ordered pizza (and kegs for us parents) and invited the whole school to party.

We've also been invited to parties at

• Jungle Java, a coffee shop/kids playground.
• The Little Gym, a gym for younger kids
• Gymboree, ditto
• Amy's Ice Cream / Phil's Icehouse, where you can get ice cream, hamburgers, sweet potato fries and beer all next to a playground.
  

Other fun ideas (for us adults) include inviting people over to your house and providing great barbecue, like from Louie Mueller in Taylor, Tx. I'm sure the kids love it too, as long as there's cake. Or if you want kids activities, rent a bouncy house for your backyard while the adults eat.

We've also been to lots of parties at the parks in town. Our backup cheap idea was to have my son's party at Brentwood Park and have all the kids bring their tricycles, which we would decorate and then have a parade. It's just so hot in August that I doubt we'll ever do that idea.

One final note: to make it truly an Austin celebration, be sure to get an ice cream cake from Amy's. Especially the mint chocolate chip one. Yum.