Last night was the beginning of SxSW, which means that masses of mindless drones are in town for a music festival. As you can probably already guess, I love it when lots of people flock into the place that I live, and act like they are from here in a very short period of time. I don’t mind tourism. In fact, I love tourism. I enjoy watching people who aren’t from here while they are on vacation. However, I hate when everyone comes at once, because all of the sudden the order of life gets flipped, and these people from other places end up exerting their idiocy on everyone else. I know this is a part of life, and I learn to accept it and get around it, but, that doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it. One of the major problems of living in Austin on a day to day basis is that the infrastructure has not kept up with the population growth. The road system just isn’t expansive enough to deal with the number of cars on the road, and whenever new roads are added, they seem to be toll roads, so they sit unused. My feeling on toll roads is not the point here, my point is that on a good day we already have plenty of idiots who don’t know where they are or where they are going. Now we are going to temporarily add in tons of people who have even less of a clue where they are or where they are going, and randomly include alcohol into the mix. That just sounds like a good idea to me.
Knowing all of this, I should have taken my vacation now, and just left. Sort of like burning the houses and salting the earth when the viking ships appear on the horizon. I didn’t though, so I am here now, and I am just having to plan around it. In one positive twist of fate, its Spring Break, so the number of cars on the road during my morning commute is cut in almost half, so I don’t actually sit in traffic. Because of this, I would completely support a law denying UT students driver’s licenses. And before people complain, I would also willingly support an expansion of public transportation. I am eagerly awaiting consistent service on the metro line. When it comes time to leave, I am however into the method of just planning for it to take a long time to make it home. So, I am hanging around downtown for a while to let the congestion subside. Yesterday, I went with Evan to REI and Bookpeople after work to kill some time. I ended up getting a hat that I really liked, and was way to expensive, but, oh well. I will wear it, and it sort of makes me look like I would fit in with Castro’s Regime.
Viva La Revolución
Before I headed home, we decided not to go out and hangout at the packed bars for St. Patrick’s Day, so on the way I stopped by the grocery store, and got some fresh fish and some beer. Being St. Patrick’s Day, I of course got a 6 pack of Guiness. For the fish, it was a 1lb fillet of Steelhead Trout. When I got home, I put on some rice, and coated the trout in lemon juice, then sprinkled it liberally with dried rosemary leaves, salt-free lemon pepper and some sea salt. I then broiled it on the top rack for 5 minutes, and moved it down to the 4th rack for another 8 minutes. It was delicious. We had rice and peas on the side, and the Guiness to wash it down. Pardon my dirty coffee table, for some reason we tend to eat dinner there more often than not. I guess thats because I don’t really have a dining room, only a bar into the kitchen, and thats got a bunch of stuff on it right now.
Steelhead Trout and Guiness