Finally, a moment's reprieve from fetus=slave arguments and students griping about their essay grades*, and now I can recount our trip to South Central Texas. Last Thursday, Beck and I got a ride to the airport from friend Xtina (of D/C fame) and headed down to the balmy 95 degree tropics of San Antonio, TX., where my dad picked us up and took us back to good ol' Shavano.
* - It's time to play our favorite game, "Was That Ironic?" A student turned in a 1400 word essay for an assignment that was explicitly restricted to a 800-1200 word range. He heartily contested his grade when he received a C- for his essay; he thought he had written an A paper that was docked to a C- solely for missing the restrictions (more accurately - he was docked from a C to a C-). He requested an explanation of his grade. I wrote him an e-mail detailing the mistakes in his paper, documenting the times and places when/where he could have learned about the word restriction, and explaining all the ways in which he could have been more succinct in his paper. The e-mail, largely focused on the ways in which brevity is superior to gratuitous floridity, was itself 1600 words long. Now, WAS THAT IRONIC?
We hit up the Cafer aka Alamo Cafe the first night, meeting up with Deb, Pat, Ron, my mom and dad for the traditional authentically suburban Tex-Mex fare. Good times, and I got to explain the vagaries of the Bio&Soc program at ASU to a nacho-munching audience. Pat was very excited about a "Yarn Crawl" she was going to be doing in SA and Austin over the next few days; this is the same as the sport of "extreme bar-hopping" except that the product is wool socks rather than vomit. Yeah! This enticed Beck, of course. Deb and my mom are reading Infinite Jest, which I am very excited to learn; I reread it this summer and just finished going through its study guide, Elegant Complexity. Of course, now I am probably under some sort of obligation to not spoil things for them, so I'm not sure how I'll approach my long-promised-not-yet-delivered commentary. Considering I bought the book for my mom in 1999, she's now on page 70 or so, AND the book is roughly 1400 pages (if you consider the 6 pt. font of the footnotes) all told, it'll be a brief 190 years before I can post something without fear of spoilage. Hmmm... maybe I'll just put a warning at the top of the post. I think this was also the night when Matt Holliday took a flyball off his crotch and cost the Cardinals a playoff game; Grandpa swore off baseball immediately.
Friday was our faux-Thanksgiving; Beck and I made a quick grocery trip in the AM. On the way, we went to the yarn store to pick up some 3-gauge needles; we were a bit pressed for time, so Beck swore she was going to go in and out in two minutes. She told the people at the counter that she only wanted needles, her poor husband was in the parking lot breathing SUV-dioxide, and she didn't have time to talk shop, and they STILL tried to sell her cashmere yarn laced with caviar and Faberge eggs. I think the debate over whether knitters are evil capitalist bastards can be safely concluded. Beck and I then hit up the new wannabe Wegman's HEB superduper market and grabbed ingredients for Beck's caramel-tinged pumpkin pie. We ran home so Beck and my mom could get pedicures.
My dad and I had planned on going to the driving range, but between the unreasonably hot* Thursday and Friday evening, a Nor'therner blew through and dropped things down to the rainy low 50s. Ugh. My dad and I opted for a trip to the JCC instead, where he thoroughly mangled me in a couple of games of HORSE (though, to be fair, I haven't touched a basketball in 10 months, and my game was entirely oriented around lying-on-the-floor shots. And I did hit an unanswered half-court shot, so phbbbbbbt). Fun times, though the little jogging around I did did a number on my knee. I am in knee (I am in) pain (I am in love) for something new.
* - That's right, a Phoenician complaining about hot Texas. There had been highs of 85 in Phoenix the week we left, and we don't have this BS "moisture in the air" thing. Yeah, my blood is thin in a way that can't handle humid hot or cold of any kind. If I sit perfectly still, I'll be fine...
Later in the afternoon, Aaron and his girlfriend Kristen rolled in from Austin to enjoy our Faux T-Day. She's a children's lit-focused librarian, in case you're one of the few people who read this blog who doesn't already know that, and a great gal taboot. I mean, seriously, into Guided By Voices AND Dave Eggers? AND tolerant of the A-child? APPROVED. Next topic. No, seriously, it was great to meet / get to know Kristen over the weekend; she's a welcome addition to the clan.
Deb and Beck had made a variety of rubs and marinades for the turkey-substitute pork tenderloins. The menu for dinner Friday included those 'loins, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry-Jello salad, dinner rolls, and scalloped potatoes. My brother also made some ridiculously good pesto for an appetizer, and I'm pretty sure some of it found its way into the main meal as well. Delicious stuff, and 'twas followed by Beck's delicious pumpkin pie, a chocolate satin pie, and a chocolate-pecan pie. I ate way too much, which is a general truism about time spent at my parents' house; I always leave a greater person.
Saturday, we all, at separate times, headed up to Austin. Aaron was headed up early to get ready for his play, my fam was meeting Kristen's fam for an early lunch, Pat was headed up to get intoxicated on lamb fur before the play started, and Beck and I were meeting Carrie, Ryan, Harrison (the toddler not the Ford), Brett, Matt, Ebit, Ben, and Noah for lunch at Rudy's. Yeah, more eating! Great BBQ, great seeing old Rice friends, and I even had the privilege of playing a whole lot of the "drop the toy truck on the ground over and over and over and over and over*" game with Harrison. We went straight from there to Aaron's play, the Tom Stoppard classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The leads were AWESOME; especially Rosencrantz (no, wait, Guildenstern). Seriously, I spent a lot of the time wondering what precisely the difference between this high school production and any community or professional level production would be, and with few exceptions (cough cough The Player cough), I saw no difference. Bang up job by Aaron et al., even if the vast majority of the audience was left clueless by the goings on (hint - it helps a lot if you've read Hamlet recently, and it helps even more if you've been reading a 1400 page novel loosely based on Hamlet, too). Thoroughly enjoyed it, and we booked it out of there to Aaron's apartment to get ready for the wedding. Which is as good of a place to take a break as any.
* - And over.
No comments:
Post a Comment