Day Trippin'

 Joe and I decided to take a little drive down to Austin on Saturday.  We haven't been down there in a while and thought it would be fun.  Austin is still the same, but different from when I went to school there.  That's mostly a good thing.

We dropped off the pups at my parents' casa and ended up in Austin for lunch.  Actually, we were in Pflugerville at lunch time and ended up eating at Baby A's.  The real reason anyone goes to Baby A's is for a purple "knock you on your arse" margarita.  Oh the memories.  Anyway, so I'm not really sure why we stopped there.  Joe gave up beer and liquor as a New Year's challenge, and I'm supporting him by not tempting him.  Thank goodness wine is not verbotten!

After lunch we made our way downtown (after taking a quick tour past campus).  Le sigh. We headed to South Congress for some shopping.  Wow!  South Congress used to be a smattering of funky shops, but they've really made it more walkable.  We shopped, ate a cupcake from Hey Cupcake! and then drove around the city.  Austin has grown up so much.

Genius!

Cupcake icing mustache.

We ended up at Max's Wine Dive for a glass of wine, and discovered they have a pretty nice dinner menu, so we just decided to eat there.  It's across the street from the old Real World Austin house, which is now Vince Young Steakhouse.  I love you Vince Young, but c'mon...

It was a nice, spontaneous trip.  I wish we could have stayed the night, but all of the rooms were booked up for the Austin Marathon.  I've decided that we've got to get to Austin more often. :)

Snowed In

Our school district made the call to cancel school today around 6:30ish yesterday.  I was relieved!  Truth is, I really really needed today to get some school work done.  Plus, mycousinamanda was in labor, and I had to stay up late to wait for the joyous news that Maia Liliana is here! 

Check out those lips and cheeks! Love her!

Joe is working weird hours setting up crap for the Superbowl broadcast (and freezing his arse off!) and so he got up and made me pancakes this morning. Yay!  Joe makes the best banana wholewheat pancakes.

On my list of things to do today:

- Watch Remember the Titans for my Leadership class and post on the course page.  This class is killing me with all the online discussion posts I have to make.  It's way too involved for my interest level.  I think I'm going to take it Pass/Fail so I can focus more on my Fiction Writing class.

- Read and respond to a short story for my writing class.  We're supposed to have author Jim Lee as our guest instructor tomorrow night.  I'm looking forward to it.

- Grade some poetry projects.  Geez...I haven't even looked at them.

And what did I do?  Watched Remember the Titans, posted on the course page....and.....

 made oatmeal chocolate chip pecan cookies!  It seemed like the responsible thing to do on a cold, winter day.

Busted out the Silpat I bought but never used for the X-mas Bake-o-Rama.

The jury is in: The Silpat rocks!

Since we probably shouldn't eat 3 doz cookies, I just froze the rest.

At least Joe will be happy when he gets home to freshly baked cookies.  :)  Well, it looks like I will have an extra day to get all my work done.  The schools in Midlothian are closed again tomorrow. Yippee!  Grumbly post to come later in the spring when I am working on a holiday.