We awoke this morning to our host, Tomas, frantically searching for his keys. He finally found his spare car key, and made his way late to work. Meanwhile, as we packed up our car, we discovered his keys on the floor of our front seat - we felt so bad!
Both Tomas and Tory work organizing day laborers and ensuring that they get paid through filing wage claims. They have many outrageous stories of what day laborers go through. Tomas has been working with day laborers who are in New Orleans doing the most dangerous demolition and clearing of toxic materials.
We spent the morning taking care of some logistics for our move, such as making arrangements to have our cats flown out to us (much more involved than we imagined) and getting our electricity and gas turned on in our new apartment. Tomas' wife, Maureen, is a vet tech, and gave us good information.
Then we headed over to Dave and Tory's again. Tory stayed home with Elle, while David took us to El Chile for a yummy lunch accompanied by a 9-11 conspiracy theory discussion. I admit it, I initiated the conversation! I really wanted to hear David's responses to a few questions.
Even though he's on parental leave, David had a meeting at UT, so we headed over there so he could meet with some graduate students who he's organizing. He left Karl and me to wander around the LBJ library and museum. My favorite campaign button was "I'm a Beatle fan. In case of emergency, cast my vote for LBJ." I guess it must have made sense in context. David's meeting was a non-event, so we hurried through the rest of the display, and out to the car. David drove us through downtown Austin, and pointed out the state house and main quad of UT, both of which were purposefully built facing south to honor the Confederacy!
I learned an interesting thing from our native Texas friends: the "Don't Mess With Texas" slogan actually originated as an anti-littering campaign. There was a commercial which featured Stevie Ray Vaughn evidently! I like that slogan much better now!
We wish we had more time to check out Austin: the music scene, the bats coming from under the bridge... guess we'll just have to visit again! We were impressed with the local MTV type station that played cool alternative videos as well as local music.
Finally it was time for us to head north to Ft. Worth on 35. We said goodbye to our good friends and hit the road, but not before stopping at a great coffee shop, Ruta Maya.
Our soundtrack for the 3 hour drive, now based on the alphabetical method, was Le Tigre, L7, and LCD Soundsystem.
Along the way, we passed through Temple, which is where my childhood best friend moved when her family left Elkhart, IN.
More Jesus billboards along the way:
God Bless America: Pray... HE listens!
One nation under me. -God
And a good baby one:
What? You weren't expecting me? ADOPTION: 2 million couples wait.
One, I'd like to see a source for the 2 million number, and 2, they should qualify that statement with *for white babies only*.
We found our friend Sean's apartment in Ft. Worth just fine. He tried to take us to the legendary vegetarian restaurant, the Spiral Diner, but unfortunately it was closed on Mondays. So instead we picked up snacks at Central Market, a very nice Whole Foods type store, and went back to Sean's apartment to hang out. Sean played us his friend Thor's music, and then some Magnetic Fields.
Somehow the discussion turned to fascism, and Karl looked up the definition on Wikipedia, all 10 pages of it.
I took advantage of Sean's music collection to rip some CDs, including some which I had on cassette like The Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Sessions and Kate Bush's The Sensual World.
I was honored that Sean's shy kitty let me pet him before bed!
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