I'm back from Austin. It was a good trip, with boring travel (that is, on-time flights, and not very interesting people sitting next to me for the journey). Overall impression, I like Austin, and would not rule it out as a potential place to live in the future. It is definitely not very texan at all... that is, few big trucks, and not much of a cowboy look to people. I suppose heavy influences by University of Texas (where I almost went to school) has something to do with that, as well as the tradition of the town.

For the trip, I arrive on Thanksgiving Day just prior to my mom, Bob, and grandparents. We had a lovely dinner later in the day with new-to-town from Kansas City Katie, (friend of Dani via her brother). Relaxed and watched ASU's chances at a top bowl game fleet away as USC dominated the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters of play.

The weather was not very cooperative the next few days, cold and rainy. It did finally warm up the last day so we were able to enjoy the outdoors. Some of the highlights from the rest of the trip:

• Shopping at the outlet mall south of town
• Buying a painting at the outlet mall
• Not being able to get the painting home because of its size/expense in shipping
• Playing tug-of-war with Roma
• Ice Skating (first time in my life!)
• Italian Dinner
• Cruising the town
• Walking around downtown, and the Driskill Hotel
• The park by the river
• Changing light bulbs in the 25 foot high ceiling...
• Using weed-eater line to angle the bulbs that are 25 feet high into their light socket (go engineers!)

I have 165 pictures... I will try to post some soon. I need a better way of posting photos me thinks... perhaps I'll work on that sometime. In the meantime, I'll use my current method... and maybe get some posted in a few minutes here.