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.