austin

Austin
We have a first time host in Cousin Helen. In all of my travels I have never made it to her house. She had a three day weekend for Presidents Day and was willing to host so I said come on with your bad self.

Saturday
Really couldn’t afford to take off any additional time as this was my 6th weekend in a row on the road so that’s why I didn’t leave work any earlier than I did. Flight was early early, slept through the first one and managed to wake up just as they were serving breakfast. This was one of the rare times where I had a heterosexual male flight attendant. Some old classy dude who had his initials on his cuff links, gold jewelry and a Rolex. He served me up some wicked Crispix. I should purchase Crispix more often, it’s a tasty cereal. A little bit manlier than Chex I say. Quick hop down to Austin, sat next to this smoking hot lady who had a jawbreaker for a wedding ring, she was rocking those tight fitting yoga pants. Mmmm mmmm get some. I freak love hot legs in yoga pants. So we land and Cousin Helen picks up Cousin Jakey. And were off to stuff our faces with BBQ. We headed down to Lockhart, TX for what has to be some of, if not the best, bbq I’ve ever had. We went to Smittys and I had the best fatty brisket I’ve ever had. Soaked up all the fat, grease, and gristle with white bread and washed it down with Red Cream Soda. Man Alive I fucking love Texas!! Also saw Harry Connick Jr. I gave him the cool guy eye brow raise, what’s up, he acknowledged it, didn’t reciprocate, but that’s because he was with family and his hot ass wife. He ordered $92 dollars worth of bbq for them. Don’t know why I remember that, but it maybe has to do with him pulling out his wallet and all I see are dollar dollar bills ya’ll for days. So we make our way back to Austin. We had some good conversations in the car. I’ve never really hung out with Helen much. At least not where we had our undivided attention before. She was delightful to talk to. We stopped in Spec’s and I was in alcohol heaven for awhile. Bought a new flavor of Shiner. AND they had our favorite Tequila on sale. Centenario Reposado normally goes for about 55 dollars; it was on sale for 18 a bottle. Don’t know why it was, but I picked up three bottles to bring back to the AZ cousins. Score one for the good guys. Then we headed out to the original Whole Foods, some giant multi stored behemoth. It was packed chock full of hippies, buying their hippy products. Then we went home, chilled for awhile, and were back out to destroy the town. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse; it’s this theatre with bar sitting kinda sorta. You sit in a regular old school movie theater seat, but in each row is a bar, so you can order food and drinks. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. I had some local dark beer, Helen had green chile baked macaroni and cheese. I was still pretty full from the bbq, but I managed to take good couple of spoonfuls. The movie we saw was Cedar Rapids. It stars Ed Helms and John C. Reilly, who play insurance guys who attend a conference and hilarity ensues. It was freaking hysterical. Then we met Laura and Bryan, they were at this old time bar slash speakeasy. They make old school cocktails there, it was pretty awesome. Had a drink and chatted with them for awhile. Headed back early because Helen had to run a half marathon the next day, no biggy. As testament, to one of the finest hostings I ever been a part of, she offered her bed and then basically demanded I take it. I was perfectly happy being on the sofa but she insisted. So I got upgraded to her double bed which was way more awesome then the couch. Everyone should take a lesson from her; let the Jakester stay in your bed its cool.

Sunday
Woke up to an empty apartment because Helen went to a half marathon, so I was forced to fend for myself. I have to say I was a little bit out of my element because Helen only has all natural foods and vegetarian foods and vegan foods and gluten free foods. So I ended up having an organic banana, tortilla chips, fancy cheese, purified water, and I think that was it. She came home about noon and was exhausted. I was hungry, so I said get showered, get dressed, we need to feed the tape worm. We were off to some schmancy pants Tex mex restaurant. It was muy delicioso, I don’t remember what I had; one fancy chicken taco and one fancy beef taco, but what I do remember is that I was able to pop my Dublin Dr Pepper cherry. I picked up two bottles and knew instantly that these were gifts from heaven. I never want to go back to corn syrup dr pepper, even 125th anniversary dr pepper is garbage compared to this pure cane sugar concoction that comes out of the heart of Texas. Fuck you coca-cola and Pepsi-cola and all other inferior soft drink beverages. After lunch we headed down to congress which is hippy central. We went into a lot of eclectic boutiques and fun and fancy shops, with very high end prices. Most of these garments and gifts were of the used and second hand nature, yet seemed to have rodeo drive type prices. Maybe that’s why hippys are a poor sort. In order to stick it to the man they have to stick it to themselves. Helen was drained so she said very kindly, dear sir, lord eggemeyer, might we go home so that I may rest my feet. I said sure. We went home and played some buzz tv, it’s a trivia game. I think I went 2 for three if memory serves me correct. Helen had to be reminded of her place in life; a woman in my family is inferior when it comes to trivia. Save for this Christmas, but all other times, the eggemeyer knowledge of bullshit reigns supreme. Later on in the afternoon we met Laura and Bryan and the draughthaus it looks like an old timey Swiss chalet and they have lots of great beers on tap. Beers I’ve never even heard of and they were all muy delicioso. They were also a little high in alcohol content so I left soberville. Since one can never get tired of Tex mex we went to another Tex mex place where I proceeded to have a Mexican martini. It’s a margarita that you can liken to the Hudson’s milk shake. Meaning it’s a lot of damn liquid. It seemed to take forever to finish, but I managed to do just that, cuz that’s how I rolled. Next we went to red box because I was wide awake and still needed to be entertained. So we got Easy A and Get him to the Greek. I think Helen might have drifted off during Easy A, but she was awake when I decided it to be a good idea to start drunk dialing people. We call Cousin Paul, but because he doesn’t answer the phone, he didn’t answer. Then we drunk dialed my mom which was fun, because I had to shout the entire weekend of fun and hijinks Helen and I shared. She was moderately impressed, Helen was partially blushing, but like always she’s a good sport. Then it was off to bed.

Monday
Helen and I were off, most of you weren’t so fortunate. I got up about 8, Helen had been up since 6, living her life, reading, walking the dog, crocheting, growing a friendly freedom garden or who knows what. When I got up she proceeded to make me a hearty hippy breakfast of real bacon and cage free eggs, again it was muy delicioso. Then we watched get him to the Greek, Helen read a book, a big book, like 1200 pages. I’ve never read anything that long in my whole life. We had some more time so we played some more buzz trivia and I managed to win YET again. Then it was time to go to the airport but not before we got some lunch which consisted of you guessed it, Tex Mex. We stopped at this place and got some tacos and Mexican coke. Which Helen proceeded to spill all over her cup holder. We’re going to have to get her trained on the ways of multitasking whilst driving on the interstate. Got on my plane and headed back home.

And that’s how I spent my Presidents day weekend, yeah it was better than yours.

Thanks for everything Cousin Helen,

Jakey