Big Texas Vacation 2012 - The Award Show Version

I had so much fun writing the award show version of last year's California car trip that I decided to do it again this vacation. As I mentioned in my last post, we visited San Antonio, Houston, and Austin, in that order. We drove between San Antonio and Houston via Shiner (home of Shiner Bock beer) and between Houston and Austin via Brenham (home of Blue Bell ice cream).

Best hotel: The DoubleTree Suites in Houston. Our suite was really big, and I was the randomly chosen "guest of the day" so breakfast and internet access were free. It is located very close to the Galleria shopping mall, so we were able to walk over for dinner on our first night, when the thought of driving any more was thoroughly unattractive. The pool was really nice. And, like all DoubleTrees, they greeted us with warm cookies, which were yummy and much appreciated by the kids.

But really, all of our hotels were good. We stayed at the Drury Inn and Suites Riverwalk in San Antonio, and that had a great location and the breakfast and internet are free for everyone, not just one lucky guest per day. Their pool was nice, too, and located on the rooftop, which amused Pumpkin. The bathroom was a cramped for a family of four, though.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in downtown Austin. That had a good location- walking distance to Threadgills and the bat viewing bridge, but our room had a shower, not a bath, which was annoying for Petunia and anyone who tried to wash her. The pool had waterfalls, though, and that was deemed very cool.

Favorite dining experience: Woodrow's in Houston. We drove down to Galveston after our outing to the Space Center, and had originally planned to stay in Galveston for dinner. But the kids got weird about the beach and didn't want to stay there, and it was hot and nothing else sounded that interesting to us... so we drove back to Houston, planning to walk over to the mall again for another chain dinner. But on our way back to the hotel, I saw Woodrow's, and on a whim, we stopped. That was a good decision. It was more bar than restaurant, but they welcomed us and our two kids warmly, found the one high chair they owned for Petunia to sit in, and brought us a pitcher of Shiner for $6. I had to drink far more than my fair share so that Hubby could safely drive to the hotel... that was as buzzed as I got on this trip, and it certainly made the rest of the evening happier.


We had yummy hush puppies to start. I followed with a chicken and sausage jambalaya, and Hubby followed with a crawfish etouffee, and I don't think it was just the beer that made us think the food was good. But the best part of the experience was the feeling that we'd stumbled onto a local favorite (the place was packed).

Most surprisingly good meal: Rita's in San Antonio. I picked it for lunch because it was close to our hotel and therefore provided an easy return for naptime after a hard morning spent cruising the river. But the fajitas were really quite decent. And the margaritas were my favorite of the trip until....

Best margarita: The La Condessa Margarita at La Condessa in Austin. Their regular margarita was really good. The La Condessa was awesome. This was another lunch stop, after a walking trip to the state capitol. It was a higher class restaurant than we usually attempt with the kids- they didn't even have a kid's menu. But they happily welcomed our kids (and they had high chairs), and the kids happily ate plain tortillas and colored while the adults happily consumed their margaritas and food, so everyone was happy.

Best hamburger: The Blue Star Brewing Company in San Antonio. It was juicy and delicious and... yummmmm. The beer wasn't bad, either, and Hubby enjoyed the smoked vegetables. They just tasted like vegetable to me, but he raved about the smokiness, and since vegetables don't normally taste terrible to him, I'd go with his opinion over mine.


Best local beer sampled: Hubby picks the St. Arnold's Elissa IPA. I pick the Shiner Wild Hare Pale Ale. But really, this wasn't a great beer trip. Luckily, the margaritas made up for that.
Most disappointing meal (Mommy): Lupe Tortilla in Houston- not for the food, which was fairly good Tex-Mex, or the margaritas, which were good enough, but for the fact that our guidebook had said there was a playground for the kids, and there was not. They still did fine with their lunches, though, so it was not a bad experience. It just wasn't the awesome, "sip my margarita while the kids play" experience I was expecting.


Most disappointing meal (Daddy): Dickey's BBQ in Austin. Our kids don't eat BBQ and BBQ places don't tend to have kid's menus. Hubby searched and searched and found one that did... and it turned out to be a fast food like chain with good but not great BBQ. The staff were super friendly and I did get to experience a Texas-sized baked potato loaded with brisket, though, so again, it wasn't a bad experience. But in retrospect, we should have just gone to a real BBQ place and hoped our kids would eat the rolls.

Best ice cream: Pumpkin would probably pick the Birthday Cake ice cream at La Condessa, or possibly the vanilla with fudge concoction I had at the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham. I'd pick the French Silk ice cream at The Chocolate Bar in Houston, but I was also really enjoying that vanilla/fudge ice cream before Pumpkin decided it was nicer than the rainbow sherbet she'd picked and convinced me to swap with her. So maybe that is the consensus choice.

Best tourist attraction: The Space Center in Houston. Standing next to the Apollo 18 rocket (it was built but never used) really was awe-inspiring, except perhaps for Petunia. But she did at least enjoy saying "rocket" over and over while I carried her down the hall.

Most disappointing tourist attraction: The bat fly-out in Austin. Perhaps we were disappointed because it took us three nights to actually get to see it- we were rained out the first night and about five minutes too late the second- and therefore over-hyped the experience. But we could hardly see any bats, which annoyed Pumpkin, confused Petunia, and made Hubby and me reminisce about more spectacular bat fly-out spotting expeditions in Brisbane and Bundaberg.

Best parenting moment (Mommy): Noticing the Spanish rice on the Threadgill's menu the first night in Austin, correctly guessing that I'd be able to get it past the owie in Petunia's mouth, and then carefully feeding an entire serving to her- getting her a real meal for the first time in three days. She and I were both much happier after that.

A close runner up was my brilliant plan to get Petunia to watch Pumpkin take a shower that night, thereby convincing Petunia to take a shower without protest and sparing us from having to move rooms (and possibly hotels) on the second night in Austin. Unfortunately, the experience didn't stick, and Petunia screamed through her showers the next two days (we did a lot of swimming, so we couldn't just let her skip the wash). But at the time, I felt like a parenting genius.

Best parenting moment (Daddy): Conveying the excitement of the Space Center to Pumpkin, and hearing her proclaim that she wants to be an astronaut, at least on weekends. (This also didn't stick, but it was nice while it lasted.)

Best kid moment (Pumpkin): Taking photos of... just about everything, but particularly of Petunia. Petunia smiles best for Pumpkin. Pumpkin also took pictures of unusual little details we might otherwise have missed, like the grillwork on the fountain we walked past on the Riverwalk.

Best kid moment (Petunia): Announcing as we entered just about any restaurant that she wanted "shicken an' fies... AN' KESSUP". (Chicken and fries... and ketchup, with special emphasis on the last part provided by a dramatic pause and a finger held up and waggled at the nearest adult.)

Worst packing error: We forgot to bring a bottle opener for our post-bedtime beers. Which meant that we had to buy one in San Antonio. You guessed it, we now own a bottle opener that says "Don't Mess With Texas".

Most unexpectedly cool thing: The sunken Japanese garden in San Antonio. The main building alone was worth the excursion.

Concept most missing in San Diego: The big shady patio with a playground, beer, some food, and a very laid back atmosphere. Apparently, this is called an "icehouse". We experienced it at The Friendly Spot in San Antonio. The closest thing we have in San Diego is The Station, which is great, but not quite the same. And nowhere near as shady. (Hubby correctly points out that good shade trees are harder to come by in San Diego, but surely someone can solve that problem!)

A Triumphant Return Wouldn't Involve This Much Laundry

We're just back from our Big Texas Vacation. If you sent me an email or a direct message last week and I didn't answer it yet... now you know why! I'll try to catch up this week, but the other reasons for the predicted sparseness of my online presence in May continue unabated, so please be patient. Also, despite the fact that we did laundry twice- TWICE!- on the trip, we had three overfull loads to do today, and have two more waiting. I'm not sure how that happened. I think some fundamental laws of physics have been violated.

Anyway. We spent two days each in San Antonio, Houston, and Austin, and two travel days in between, and we had a great time. Our biggest problem was the fact that Petunia bit her cheek about halfway through the vacation, and cried big heartbreaking sobs every time she tried to eat for the next three days. She was otherwise reasonably happy, and we had no trouble getting her to drink milk and juice- so really, it was no big deal- and, per my rules for happy traveling with children, this particular suckiness could equally well have happened at home. But it did stress me out a bit, because, you know, she's my baby and she was sad and not eating. I kept trying to buy ice cream for her, which she kept refusing to eat, despite the fact that we'd had ice cream one night in San Antonio, before the mouth-biting incident, and she'd loved it. Pumpkin and I enjoyed our windfall of extra ice cream, though.

Other than Petunia's mouth pain issue, the kids did great. They saved their meltdowns for times when we were in private or could easily remove them to someplace away from people (i.e., not on the airplane rides). Petunia was cute and Pumpkin was for the most part polite and charming to strangers. Bedtimes were a bit of a struggle, but they aren't always a piece of cake at home, so again I don't hold that against the vacation.

We got to see some cool things, but we missed a lot, too- the only live music we saw in Austin was some dude playing guitar and harmonica in the park next to the kiddie train tracks, and despite being in San Antonio for Cinco de Mayo and the big Luminaria arts festival our big nightlife event there involved eating ice cream by the river. I was feeling a little sorry for myself in San Antonio, when we couldn't convince Pumpkin that she wanted to go see that arts festival on our way back from dinner. But then I remembered that I'd just eaten an unbelievably good hamburger (really- I had no idea a hamburger could be that good), accompanied by a decent locally brewed beer and followed by scrumptious pecan pie and a stroll back to our hotel along a beautiful river. Sure, we would have enjoyed the nightlife in San Antonio more if we'd been there without kids, but we still enjoyed what we did get to see. I think I need an addendum to my tips for happy travel with kids: don't compare your trip to what it would be like without the kids along. Compare it to what it would be like not to take any trip at all. That's just a special case of my philosophy about only allowing comparisons to real options, I suppose.

Regardless of what we didn't do, the trip was fun. We saw some fun and interesting things, ate too much good food and drank some truly awesome margaritas. The kids also really enjoyed the pools in the hotels. Because of this, and the unseasonably warm weather (90 degrees and humid!) at the beginning of the trip, we fell into a pattern of showering in the evenings. This did wonders for getting us down to breakfast before Petunia melted down- she is used to eating mere seconds after she opens her eyes, so really, waiting for everyone to get dressed showed quite a bit of patience on her part- but it didn't do much for my hair style. People of Texas, let me assure you that my hair does not normally look so dorky. OK, that is a lie. My hair often looks dorky. But it does not normally have quite so many cowlicks in it.

We really enjoyed all of the cities we visited, but I came home happier than ever that I live in San Diego. This isn't because of the weather (although it was a glorious day in San Diego today) or the politics (although my husband has a funny story about someone at the Space Center in Houston kvetching to him about the fact that the retired space shuttles all went to the blue states), or even the proximity to the ocean. It is the lack of mosquitoes.  You see, I am a veritable mosquito magnet. If there is a mosquito anywhere in the general vicinity, it will bite me. By the time we left San Antonio, I had 8 or 9 mosquito bites on my legs. No one else in the family had a single one. The bites are still there, albeit less itchy now. Whenever I am packing for a trip to some place likely to have mosquitoes, I somehow manage to forget about my special mosquito attracting qualities, and never remember to bring mosquito repellant with me. I have therefore amassed quite a collection of the stuff. I bought some more on our way out of San Antonio, along with some cream to make the existing bites itch less. The cream may or may not have helped, but I didn't get any more bites, so I'd say the repellant did its job.

I plan to write several posts with more stories from our trip, but for now, I think I'd better sign off. We mostly kept to our California schedule while in Texas- but it did shift a bit, so I am anticipating an early wake up tomorrow morning.  And there is a truly ginormous pile of laundry on my bed, waiting to be folded before I can go to sleep. Someone should come study how that happened. Perhaps our laundry-generating energy could be harnessed and put to use to enable warp speed space travel or something like that.

Weekend Reading: The Geeky Edition

Everyone else will have Mother's Day links for you... and oh yay! Time Magazine has stirred up another motherhood shitstorm on the internet. I'm going to ignore all that. Instead, I've got some links for the geek in you.

First, via my husband, the most awesome Star Wars-Star Trek mash up ever:



Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror reminds us all about email security. My husband has made the switch to two part authentication. I'm considering it and will probably make the switch soon, but have at least moved my important passwords to pass phrases.

Also via @CodingHorror- this comic pretty much sums up how I accomplish anything technical these days.

I really liked this xkcd cartoon. One of the day care Dads did the Mentos and Diet Coke thing for the kids recently, and I can confirm that watching someone see it for the first time is fun. Watching ~10 5 year olds see if for the first time is downright awesome. But more on topic- I like the idea of seeing the chance to tell someone something new as more fun than the usual cynical response.

Stuff and Nonsense

In their recent deliberately controversial post about chores, Nicoleandmaggie argue that cleanliness is not necessarily as important as we sometimes make it out to be. In the comments, there was a discussion of "tschotkes" and whether or not they are worth keeping. Nicoleandmaggie make a good point that more stuff just means more stuff to clean, but.... I love my stuff!

In thinking about why, and which stuff, exactly, it is that I love, I realized that I usually hold on to things primarily because they remind me of something happy. There are the things that were given to me by people I care about, obviously, but I was somewhat surprised to discover that the things that matter most to me- i.e., that I would be least willing to give away- are things I've collected on my travels. One of the things I really enjoy when I'm traveling is looking for the "perfect" souvenir. Some of my favorites are absolutely useless but quirkily perfect for me, such as this large ceramic rabbit I bought in Orvieto, Italy, and then lugged back home.

We were in Italy (primarily Rome) for the period between Christmas and New Year's, 2001, traveling back home in early 2002. Everyone was still noticeably jittery about airplane security, so security was ultra-tight. The rabbit, wrapped carefully for transport, was x-rayed twice at the Rome airport, and I was sure they were going to unwrap the entire thing. But they just asked us what it was, nodded when I said "a ceramic rabbit" as if that was the most normal thing in the world for someone to be transporting in their carry-on luggage, and let us through. I smile every time I see it on our bookshelf: at the absurdity of the object itself, my memory of the pleasant day trip we took to Orvieto with my in-laws, and at the difficulty of transporting the thing back home.

Other things are decorative in the more usual sense, such as this buffalo hide carving of an elephant, which is hanging in our living room, next to another buffalo hide carving of traditional Thai dancers.

We bought the carvings at the weekend market in Bangkok, while on our big trip. The market is huge, and we spent several hours wandering around, looking at the stalls. We bought several things, too. These hide carvings were definitely the most expensive. I think the two of them set us back about $35, but I can't remember for certain. They were also among the last things to arrive home. We sent ourselves packages at various times on our trip, with souvenirs we'd bought and a CD copy of the pictures we'd taken since the last package, as a backup. These carvings were rolled up in a large tube. Even though it was sent roughly halfway through the four month trip, it didn't arrive at our home until weeks after we did. That was a nerve-wracking wait! We had told ourselves we were prepared to lose a package, but when faced with the possibility that we might actually lose one, we were quite sad. Luckily, it made it. Looking at those carvings reminds me of the wonderful times we had in Thailand, of the craziness that was the market, and of that slightly stressful wait.

Then there is our ukelele. My husband does actually know how to play the ukelele, but ours primarily hangs on our office wall.

It was a wedding gift from our best man, who is from the Cook Islands (where we got married). It was made by one of the people on his home island, and it is beautiful. Looking at it reminds me of our wedding, of course, but also of our good friend and his beautiful homeland.

There are more things, of course... the prints of pastels of clouds that we bought in New Mexico from local artist Kathleen O'Bryan (who, by a weird coincidence, had also spent time in the Cooks). The decorative plate I bought in Barcelona. Our pint glasses from Powell's Books in Portland. The tea set from Japan. The awesome little rabbit sculpture I picked up in Bath... Each one makes me happy to look at. But I will admit that we work to find the right balance between displaying the things we've picked up on our travels and keeping our house from being a cluttered mess.

Maybe that is why I particularly like finding interesting and unusual jewelry when I travel. It is small and almost practical! My all time favorite find may be the rabbit necklace charm from Ireland.

It is made from a piece of their old money- I think this one was money that was used before they went decimal (but still kept the Irish punt). So it is at least two iterations out of date by now, although it was only one step removed from legal tender when I bought the necklace. I thought the idea of turning unusable coins into jewelry was brilliant. And it was a rabbit, too! (Yes, I do have a thing for rabbits- but that is a story for a different post).

Another favorite is the braided leather and silver bracelet I bought when I spent a couple of months in Sweden during graduate school.

It is from the Sami people, who live in the Arctic region of Sweden and several other countries. I didn't make it to the northern part of Sweden at all, but a couple of the museums I visited had good sections explaining their culture. I think I bought this bracelet at a shop in Stockholm. It reminds me of my first big international travel, which I did solo. I flew into Stockholm and had to get myself to the train station and on a train for Lund, which is in the south of Sweden. I didn't understand how everything worked, and made several mistakes on that trip. But it all worked out, and I look back on that trip as one that gave me a lot of confidence in myself as a traveler.

I have other favorite jewelry from my travels, too: shell earrings from Easter Island, a greenstone necklace from New Zealand... none of it is worth much money, but they are all very dear to me.

I think this pattern started very early for me. There are specific items I had as a kid that were special because of where they came from, not what they were. Now that Pumpkin is old enough to ask for souvenirs when we travel, I see her doing something similar. She has started picking out pins, and putting them on her backpack. She has a couple of other "important" souvenirs, too. As much as I grumble about finding all of her precious things homes when we're picking up her room before the cleaner comes, I can't really begrudge her these souvenirs, because I have my own souvenirs, too. The cheap plastic toys that we get in favor bags and refuse to throw out... well, those are another story, and have been known to mysteriously disappear. Soon, she'll be old enough to make that distinction herself, I think. It will be interesting to see what things she holds most precious.

Do you buy souvenirs when you travel? What things are most precious to you? Bonus points if you catch the reference in the title of this post!

Weekend Reading: The Writing Edition

This week, I've got some links for you about writing- blogging and otherwise.

First, Nicoleandmaggie explain why they blog. (I wrote my answer to this last year. It is still largely accurate.)

Some people blog for money. I think that by and large, they are disappointed, and this post from Anandi explains why- blogging doesn't pay well. Anyway, my experience with earning money from my blog has been similar to Anandi's. But then, I haven't really tried to make much money from this blog. To the extent that I've played around with monetization, it has been to see how the options play out, as research for another website idea I have (and may someday act upon, if I ever figure out how to either make enough money to make it worthwhile or stop caring about making enough money to make it worthwhile.)

Although I don't have any plans to try to turn this blog into a money-making machine, I have been thinking about trying to make some money from writing. I've even taken some steps towards making that happen, which I'll definitely talk more about when it is appropriate to do so. So when Nicoleandmaggie wrote a post about freelancing and referenced a book on writing by John Scalzi, whose Whatever blog I really enjoy, my interest was piqued. I did some Googling and turned up a couple of good, old posts of his on the topic of writing: John Scalzi's Utterly Useless Writing Advice and Unasked-for Advice to New Writers about Money. I particularly liked this quote from the second one: "Writing part-time does not lessen the work; the work is its own thing." It dovetails nicely with some thoughts I've been having lately about how to solve my recent motivational slump. I'll no doubt have more to say on that topic soon, too, but my thoughts aren't quite ready for sharing yet.

But I got tired of Googling, so I've shelled out the $5 and will be reading You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop on my Kindle, instead. I'll try to remember to let you know what I think when I finish reading it.

Along those same lines, Laura Vanderkam posted some advice for new freelance writers. I am not a freelance writer, and I am not aiming to be one- but I could still stand to take some of her advice. Particularly this: "Write tight. Omit needless words! Buy Strunk & White’s Elements of Style."

Because, as most of you have probably noticed, brevity isn't my strong point. But I do own Elements of Style!

Anyone have any other good posts about writing, for pay or otherwise? Leave them in the comments.