Kvetch

This morning we called Eric (I guess the property manager?) about our lease. He emailed it to us, and today we went in to sign it and give him the check and like, basically officially have this house. And we weren't even going to be able to do that, he wanted us to wait until Monday because he couldn't meet us on Sunday, which is the 1st. Andrea had to keep convincing him and solving the problems he had so that we could move in when we wanted to. We had to meet him today with a copy of the lease to sign, and the check, and then tomorrow night he'll give us the combination for the keybox, so that we can move in at 12:01 AM on the 1st. I kind of want "The Camdens" to be there, so we can kick them out. I hate them. Anyway, for some reason, we had to print out the lease, even though Eric knows that we've been staying in a hotel and don't have a printer, and even though I'm assuming they have printing facilities at their office, but in spite of all of this, we were running around trying to find Kinkos so we could pay like $5 to print out the lease and get to Eric's office in time. But we did everything in time, he kind of quickly bulldozed over all of our issues with the lease, "it's a standard Texas lease," and that was pretty annoying. But whatever, it's done, we're moving in tomorrow and tonight is our LAST NIGHT IN THE HOSTEL!!!!!!! Tomorrow morning will be my last disgusting mildew shower!

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant called Brick Oven, because Andrea has recently gotten into caprese, which is amusing because I used to be obsessed, and now she is. This place wasn't my fave though. What's weird is that at home, caprese usually comes in really big portions, so much mozzarella and tomatoes that you're too full for the main course. But here they're tiny. Plus they sat us at the worst table ever. First of all, every other person in the restaurant was seated in one room, and they put us alone in the other room. And, it was literally in a dark corner, the furthest like tucked-away corner in the restaurant, like they were ashamed of us or something. We were looking into the open door to like, the storage room, and we were right next to the bar where staffmembers were polishing glasses and watching and loudly commenting on some sports game. I could barely read the menu and then whenever the tall waiter came over and stood next to the table, we were plunged into total darkness. I'd showed Andrea some parts of the book by the authors of that Broadway show Jewtopia, they talk about the quest for the perfect table, drafts and being near the door and being in bad-service areas or near loud tables, so now she always laughs when I complain about the table.

Camden voodoo dolls?

We have our house!!! Well, after stalking this Eric person, he's the broker for the house, he told us that our application and credit checks all worked out. But, we can't move in early. Which is SO frustrating and ridiculous because when we went to look at the house, the people were so obviously 99% moved out. They weren't sleeping there, there were no beds, no shower curtain, nothing in the whole house except except literally an ironing board in one bedroom with like, some shoe boxes on it. These people, "The Camdens," are obviously already living somewhere else and are just taking their sweet time moving out. We had assumed that they'd want to end their lease early and get some money back so that two nice girls could stop paying to stay in bunk beds and move in before October 1st. But no, there is no way that "The Camdens" can move out early, it's just not possible. I want to move in at like, 12:01 AM on Sunday, which I feel like legally we have the right to do.

Luckily, our moving truck, which had to be delivered by Thursday, won't be picked up until Monday since we have two business days to unpack it. So it was delivered this morning, and it just is going to sit there all weekend. We went and talked to the people who live in the front part of our duplex, and they were totally fine with having the truck there. They're five guys who are in college and seemed pretty laid-back. Andrea thinks the one guy who answered the door is really cute, but I reminded her that he's in college and is basically fifteen years old, but she maintains that the other four guys in the house are probably all grad students. We'll see. Hopefully they won't be having ridiculous parties, but I'm just glad that they aren't that type of fussy person who would've had all kinds of issues with our truck being in front of the house. They also confirmed our suspicions that "The Camdens" were idiots: the guy said that he sees them every few days walking out with one tiny box, and that they've had a car parked on the street for a really long time, but it's that kind of parking job where you park too far forward and ruin the other spot for anyone else.

So now we only have three days left until we get to move in. Actually not "only," it's like an eternity. The hostel is so repulsive. The beds are awful, we're both on top bunks, and the people who sleep under us don't seem to realize that we have to use the ladders to get up, so they hang towels on the rungs and put their gigantic "fragile--don't move" suitcases at the bottom. And the bathrooms, okay so I guess this hostel used to be some kind of public pool-house or something since it's right on the lake, so the showers are just one big shower room with like, these totally pathetic curtains dividing it into four not-private-at-all sections. The water comes out so hard from the shower heads, like a WaterPik, which could be nice except when you're being Waterpik'd in places that you really would rather not be. They also must really like the color dark green, because the cloth shower curtains are covered in dark green spots, and the grout between all the tiles is dark green, and there's this dark green gunk all around the sink faucets.

But I think the absolute worst news of all is that we won't have anywhere to watch the Smallville season premiere tonight. Sigh.

Oh...it's you.

Since we're so sick of hanging out in the hostel common room, with foreigners bothering while we are so clearly busy on our computers, Andrea and I usually go to Whole Foods to use their free interent (I heart Whole Foods), but today it wasn't working. So we went to Jo's, one of these hyped-up coffeehouses where all the "hip kids" go. It was pretty nice, there's a nice outside area and they have coffee and sandwiches, and free wireless internet. Of course something odd happened: this old Australian man in purple crocs is hanging around, turns to Andrea and says, "Oh, it's you," as if in recognition. Obviously neither of us has been here before. Then another old man, a very Texan man, while talking with the Australian about massage parlors in Melbourne, turns to me and says, "Oh hello again darlin'," and I said, what? And he says, We met last time, and I said, No I've never been here before. So he says, Oh you must have a twin, and then says, but I'll talk to you about it later, and turns back to the Australian. Do I have a twin, or was this just some cliched old-man pickup line? Anyway, true to his promise he begins talking to me later, about how he comes here all the time, and some director, Martin Scorcese or Quentin Tarantino, someone like that, is shooting a movie in Austin and he's gonna be in it, and did I like good music, because he's a singer, he has a CD, and he doesn't like to charge people for it, but he does gratefully accept donations, and he puts a CD in front of me, and above the track list is a little American flag with "Veteran" underneath, and a cross with "God Bless You" written in flowers. So eventually I just say, you know I don't have any cash, and he says Oh well darlin' I couldn't let you have it for free, but next time I'm around, because I'm around here a lot (is that a threat?) and you have some cash, you can get one of my CDs. So I guess, in conclusion, Jo's is not my new favorite place after all.

After loitering around Jo's for a while longer, we decided to go see a movie. We saw The Illusionist, which I really liked because of Rufus Sewell, but also kind of didn't like because of Jessica Biel (poor man's Scarlet Johanssen). But I think it's worth seeing. Anyway after the movie, we remembered that "the band" was doing a show at a place called A Hole in the Wall, so we went over to see that. Unfortunately by the time we got there, they had just finished and the next band was going on. They seemed kind of hurt, but we didn't know what time they were going to be playing. We hung out through the next few bands and talked and drank. I had a Heineken, and realized that since I hadn't had dinner, one was enough to make Andrea the designated driver for the evening, and so I had another. Andrea tried to explain to Nick and Drew what a "foul slattern" was, which I've kind of been in the habit of calling people lately, but I'm not sure if she got through to them.

By the time we left and went back to the hostel, I was pretty tipsy, and Andrea and I were loudly discussing really inappropriate things in our room, thinking there was no one else there, until we realized that there was. Whoops. That's what you get for staying in a hostel I guess.

Foggedaboutit

I'm always interested in seeing people's stereotypes of New Yorkers and New York Jews. So we met Andrea's friend Sarah, who lives in Austin, for lunch at this place called Katz's Deli, no affiliation to the Katz's downtown in the city. It is SO gimmicky, and ridiculous. Everything on the menu is named after things, Tavern on the Green salad, Mayor Giulianni's favorite dinner picks, etc. And then these odd menu items like fried pickles. And then everything was "Kosher-style." A Kosher-style breakfast taco, with salami and cheese. What is Kosher-style? Something's either kosher, or it isn't, and a salami and cheese breakfast taco is not kosher. They had some good things, like egg cream and rice pudding, Andrea got stuffed cabbage. I got a BLT with Kosher-style beef bacon, which was so undercooked it was like Canadian bacon. Except kosher-style. So obviously that's somewhere that we'll never go again. Plus our waiter was like, really confrontational in a weird way, almost challenging me when I asked for no mayonnaise.

Then we went over to the East Side to see our new friend Nick's band, the Twilight Broadcast, at this place called Red's Scoot Inn, which was the first drive-through liquor store in Austin. I know, right? And inside there's a picture of a guy in a horse-and-buggy with someone handing him a beer. The band was playing outside, I guess outside is where live bands come and play, there's a really nice patio area, and then inside is a super local bar scene, with the music switching between that Hispanic music and country. I assumed they wouldn't have Heinekin, which is what I usually have, so I ordered a Dos Equis, but for some reason I was thinking it was pronounced like Italian or something, I don't know what I was thinking, and I asked this Mexican woman for a Dos Ekwees. And she was like, "What??" and I had to repeat myself three times and point to the sign behind her until she was like, "Oh, laugh at my stupidity, a Dos Equis (pronounced correctly)." At least I'm not super white so she couldn't be like, Oh that silly gringa. Luckily since I was driving I didn't have to order any more alcohol from her.

So the band was actually good, I was really worried that they would be bad and we would be really embarraassed, and since there were like, maybe seven other people there, we wouldn't even have been able to leave. But we liked them, definitely music I could dance to in the car. Then half way through we realized that the other people in the audience were actually other bands that were going on after our friend, so then we felt even worse. But once they had finished, they came over and were so surprised and excited that we'd actually come. And I guess they get paid by how many people come to see them, so when we told them, yes, we'd come especially to see them play, they ran back over to the bouncer and got paid their ten dollars, which is what Andrea and I had had to pay to get in. And they gave the ten dollars right to their drummer.

The next band that went on was SO awful. I knew as soon as I saw them, three skinny guys with that dyed-black shaggy helmet haircut, thick black-rimmed glasses, tight t-shirts, and sure enough their music was all screaming and odd sounds and really loud guitars that were like, off-key. And then the guys on the end started almost moshing, I thought they would fall off the stage or maybe smash their guitars. Meanwhile, there were still only twelve people in the audience so it's hard to believe they were that into the music.

Luckily Nick and the other guy in the band Drew weren't big fans of that stupid kind of music either, so we followed them back to their like, apartment community where there was a party. Ugh that sounds so gross, we were like "going home with the band," but it wasn't like that at all. They're both nice college graduates from Wisconsin who went to high school together and were in the same fraternity. Nick works at Chase and Drew is like, an almost-manager at Starbucks or something like that. Both philosophy majors, which I find humorous.

So all the apartment complexes in Austin are kind of the same, they're apartments arranged around courtyards that usually have pools. So Nick and Drew's neighbor Kerry, who is so Texan college student, was having a costume party, and we met some nice people, including this total character. That is the only way to describe him, a Character. His name was Eric, and he was maybe older, in his 30s or 40s, and had on a cowboy hat, bow-legged tight jeans, and cowboy boots. He was totally drunk and when Andrea said she'd been living in Boston, he starts going Omigod Boston, Omigod Omigod, come with me I have to show you something. So Andrea's like ummmm, and he's like No no, it's nothing perverted, come on. So she follows back to his apartment, and I followed them, it was right on the courtyard on the ground floor. So Eric proceeds to tell us all about how he runs marathons for a living, sponsored by Claritin, and his favorite is the Boston marathon, which was evidenced by two posters of Boston, which he kept pointing to, like, Oh yeah brick buildings, yeah, I can totally see how much you love Boston. Then he's like, I don't like to brag, and opens this cupboard in which are arranged a zillion medals, but I mean arranged, like obviously he shows this display to people all the time. And probably the oddest thing was that every sentence was punctuated by "Foggedaboutit" in this Texan accent. Maybe he was in the Texas mafia or something, because when Andrea asked what he did when he wasn't running marathons, mean a profession, he just said, "I run triathalons," and wouldn't elaborate any further.

So all in all it was a really fun night, and now we have two new friends, and some odd Texan acquaintances. Luckily they're actually people that we want to hang out with, because sometimes being friendly and extroverted causes you to get involved with people and then you can't extricate yourself when you realize you hate them. So we were fortunate. I would say which one I think is cuter, but you can never be too sure, I don't know how internet savvy they are.

No Shoes for You!

We still don't know about the house. There were some problems this morning, but they're all sorted out so now we're waiting to hear about credit checks, and whether the people in there now can move out before Oct 1st. If they can't, then we'll have to stay in the hostel until then, and since our truck arrived in Austin today, and has to be delivered by Thurs, we'll have to pay $75 for every day that they can't deliver the truck. But I think the people will be able to move out faster, since when we went to look at it, most of their stuff was out, and they obviously already have another place and are sleeping there.

After lunch (BLT at Which Wich), I really had a craving for a smoothie so we went to Jamba Juice, and there was a cute guy behind the counter (cute despite the barbell eyebrow ring) who was talking to me and giving me samples of smoothies in the blenders that didn't fit into people's cups (green tea smoothie = disaster). The only problem about Texas is that I can't tell if guys are flirting or if they're just being southern and friendly. Not that I would ever have been able to stop staring disdainfully at the eyebrow ring even if he had asked me out.

We finally found a bookstore, after being convinced that Southerners really were illiterate because we couldn't find any bookstores downtown. It's a really big place that's more personal than a Borders or Barnes & Noble, they have staff reviews and recommendation post-it notes all over the shelves, and cool displays like all these books that have been banned around the country for ridiculous reasons. The Lorax by Dr Seuss was banned in some town because it "criminalized the forestry industry."

After Book People, I decided I wanted to get new flip-flops from J. Crew because the ones I have are so old that they're starting to stain the bottoms of my feet dark blue. So we drove all the way up to what I had understood to be an upscale mall north of town called the Arboretum, but they had a really odd assortment of stores that didn't include J. Crew, which was really frustrating. Then on the way home we passed another mall so I went in there, into the J. Crew, where the girl told me that none of the J. Crews in Austin carry shoes. HOW ridiculous. I was furious at this point, especially because the sales girl was so rude about it, "No we haven't had shoes in this store for a year." Sorry, I must not have read that memo closely enough, looking for shoes in this J. Crew location is soooo passé. And no other stores have flip-flops since it's "winter" (it got up to 101 degrees today). Now I have to wait until I have a real address and order them online. I'm starting to feel the strains of un-civilization, which I feel whenever I go too far from New York.

Now I'm back at the hostel watching 45 hundred lizards run around the floor-to-ceiling windows chasing moths and each other. National Geographic Live.

WHOLE FOODS!!!!

We went to the Whole Foods headquarters, and it was soooo great! Everything was bigger and had more of a selection. There's a giant prepared-food section, and we got dinner and ate outside on tables and chairs with free wireless internet. The place is so big that they have floorplans at the entrance. Maybe I will decide to live in Austin permanently.

Oh yeah, we know that band.

So we had to pay the security deposit on our house with a cashier's check or a money order, and since I didn't really feel like walking into a 7-11 with $900 cash, we went to Chase because I have an account there. Well we're at the teller, and our teller and another woman behind the counter start talking to us, where are we from, what are we doing in Austin, Omigod, we just moved here, wow, blah blah. Then the woman sends someone to go get someone else who works there, he comes over and starts giving us advice about where to go out at night, and the guy who's helping us is like, do you have any friends in Austin? And we said no, so he says, Oh well my band (because everyone is in a band in Austin) is playing at this great place over on the East Side on Saturday, you should totally come, yadda yadda, and he gave us all the information and his cell phone number and everything. People are so friendly it's insane. The entire bank was giving us advice about what to do on the weekends, like bank managers from the upper floors were pulled away from customers to compare the merits of 4th Street (older and more mellow) versus 6th Street (loud and collegey). So now we have a friend and something to do on Saturday night. Our first personal connection with a local band, which is such an Austin thing. Imagine if we'd went to 7-11.

Househunt

We met with Neil Garrett at 11:30 this morning. He only had 4 houses to show us, which made me nervous. The first was in the 38 1/2th Street area, known as French Place. We'd seen the house before when Neil had sent us listings by email, and it looked kind of in bad shape, a lot of junk in the yard, maybe an abandoned car outside the frame of the picture. In real life, the yard was bad, no car, but totally dead lawn and a weird like, "mural" on the front steps that could've been camouflaged graffiti. It was also SO close to the highway, I'm sure we would have heard it night and day. Inside it was okay, small, and the floors creaked terribly. It just needed a lot of work.

The next house was on the East Side, which I was worried about because of what we'd seen yesterday. It's not terrible over there at all, just kind of aesthetically unpleasant. But this area was much nicer, it was right off of MLK Blvd. It was a newly-built duplex, painted light yellow with green shutters and a red door. Everything was really new and nice, but it was almost a little too new, and there were no wood floors, only what I'm assuming is laminate flooring, like fake tiles in the living room and then carpet everywhere else, and my other problem is that the rooms were so unequal in size, one was small with one small closet, the other was one HUGE with a HUGE HUGE HUGE walk-in closet.

Next we went to Northwest Campus, aka Rosedale, to a really cute older (1950s) house that I really liked because it had nice old hardwood floors, but the kitchen wasn't in the greatest shape and Andrea says she noticed some possible moldy spots.

Last was a house that was sort of far out, I don't even remember the area name. but kind of far southwest of downtown. It was one of these like, flat-roofed 60s or 70s houses, pretty ugly and bland. The inside was okay, but the total deal-breaker for me was the hornets' nest right by the front door under the roof of the porch. The realtor said that would be really easy to get rid of with a can of raid, and did I want to see the other, even bigger nest on the other end of the porch. Guess what I said.

In the end we picked the new yellow house on the East Side, because it was closer to the bus lines and because the kitchen was nicer. We sort of had to rush through the application process, and pretty much in vain because the current lease on the house isn't up until Oct 1st. Which would be really unfortunate first because I'm not interested in sleeping in this hostel for that long, and second because our moving truck is going to arrive sometime between the 22nd (tomorrow) and the 26th, and for every day that they have to hold it for us they charge $75. Not key. But anyway now our application is in, we paid the security deposit, and we'll wait and see if we get it.

SoOver SoCo

Since we aren't meeting Neil Garrett, our realtor, until tomorrow, today we drove around just looking at different neighborhoods. First we went to SoCo again to find a lunch place, and went to Vespaio, this little Italian "trattoria" place. I had a pastrami panini that was actually good, but the desserts were atrocious. We went to SoCo, and the "maze of streets around 38 1/2th Street, and over to the East Side, basically all the places that Adam recommended. I really should have been driving around with a printout of his email.

We went past Jessica's "cute East Austin house." That woman honestly has to be out of her mind. It's right on 12th Street, which is really run-down, and a main thoroughfare, so just the neighborhood alone would, I would think, put the house on the cheap end of the spectrum. But besides having a crackhouse on each side of it, the house is absolutely tiny. And she wanted $1300. Meanwhile, all the other houses in the neighborhood which are bigger and nicer are around $900. I wonder if anyone ever rented it. She is just dumb. I hate her.

For dinner we thought that we would walk along 6th Street, which is (self-titled) Austin's Bourbon Street, it's where all the bars are. We figured, with all that traffic, there have to be restaurants. But there aren't any. Literally not one. We walked from one end to the other, all the way to North Congress where everything was expensive or closed, and then back, only seeing two like, walk-up pizza stands.

Right at the beginning of 6th Street, we walked past these two pretty drunk-looking men sitting outside of a bar, and one of them said "Heeeeey laaaaadies," in that way that doesn't merit a response, one would think. Maybe we were mistaken because we ignored, and he starts yelling after us, "You're mean! I hope you step on a rock! I hope you fall and hit your knee!" Those are word-for-word the "curses" he was yelling after us. GOD FORBID I step on a rock, and am slightly irritated for about half a second. So odd. After that we smiled and said hello back to everyone who addressed us on the street, which was most people, apparently while in New York or Boston there's an unspoken agreement where you pretend that everyone else on the street doesn't exist, here you have to acknowledge everyone, even people whom you have absolutely nothing to do with. That's gonna be really tricky.

So since 6th Street was a bust for restaurants, we went back to SoCo, which I am already so bored of, and went to Home Slice Pizza which had been closed the night before. It's supposedly New York pizza, and they have instructions for folding your slice in half on the menu. It was pretty good, obviously not really like New York. Then we walked next door, well not really next door it was down the block where the sidewalk disappeared (and I stepped on a rock), to this ice cream place that's supposed to be "so incredible," like everything else in Austin, but we realized they probably wouldn't take cards, and since who even carries cash, we went back to the hostel.

Tomorrow morning we're meeting Neil to look at houses !

The Roach Motel, Little Rock, AK

This morning in our Super 8 Motel outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, we found our second roach, climbing along the ceiling over the sink. The first had been crawling under the light switch in the bathroom. It's been a really long time since I've seen a cockroach. Now I'll just have to be super-obsessive about cleaning.

We left at 11am, after being harassed by some woman asking when we were leaving, and being annoyed when I pointed out it was only a quarter to 11. We pretty much drove straight through to Austin, besides stopping to go to the bathroom and get gas, because we had to get to the hostel in time to check in. I saw an awesome outlet mall (premium outlets, are those different from not-premium ones?) on the way down I-35, about an hour outside of Austin. Key. They have a Restoration Hardware outlet there.

By the time we got to the hostel it was about 9pm central time (ew), and we checked in, brought our stuff in from the car, and then went out to try to find somewhere to eat. We drove to the South Congress (SoCo) area which is supposed to be like the "hip" area, kind of like, maybe like the village or something in the city. But I guess since it was Sunday or too late, there was nothing open. It's just a few blocks of one street and we didn't see too many restaurants. We decided on Magnolia Cafe, a kind of hippy-ish dinery place, with sandwiches and pasta and breakfast all day. All the waiters had locks and dyed hair and tattoos. The most exciting thing was that it's open 24-hours. It's always so important to find the 24-hour places.

After dinner, we went back to the hostel to go to sleep, but since lights-out is at 11:00, our room was so completely pitch-black like you've never even seen, or I guess not seen. We just had to stumble around in the dark, and both Andrea and I are sleeping on the tops of bunk beds. Not too fun. The hostel is fine, but I'm really looking forward to having my own space with my own bed and room and bedding (we're not allowed to use our own bedding at this hostel).