Texas
An end to vacation and the beginning of a new year
Since you’re reading this, obviously we made it home. Thankfully we made it without any glitches, as smooth as can be expected in these teams of Fort Knox-level security and bare-bones travel.
As usual, dealing with the people in Austin’s airport is miles apart from dealing with people at Boston’s Logan. They were warm, friendly, and helpful. Logan workers are often helpful (but not always) and usually polite, but rarely are they warm and open.
We were able to switch our seats to a completely open row near the rear of the airplane, so I could jump across the aisle and Isabella could have a seat to herself. It’s amazing the difference between flying in coach when it’s full and flying when you have room to breath. It’s nearly like flying business class. And while JetBlue doesn’t offer a meal, I do appreciate the constant flow of complimentary beverages, especially since you can’t carry anything through security. And you can carry sandwiches through (for now), which are better than any economy-class airline meal anyway.
You can see Isabella in that photo up there, sitting in her seat and watching “Finding Nemo”, which I had ripped to the hard drive to save battery power. (Don’t worry, I do own the DVD.) Consider that photo an abberation, however, as on this flight Isabella was much more apt to want to get out of the seat and go into the aisle. She had an uncanny ability to fall down or drop her sippy cup or doll just as someone was coming by to go to the lavatory.
As for me, I watched a Travel Channel marathon of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”, which it’s always entertaining to see someone consume what is to me looks disgusting (and based on his reaction probably is) and/or eat food that is so spicy as to make my eyes water, just watching him eat it.
My always helpful and ready-to-assist brother-in-law Pete picked us up at the airport, along with my nieces Kateri and Chiara, saving us $40 for a taxi. Thanks Pete!
And then home again, where I had to figure out how to turn on the new water heater the landlord had installed in our absence and turn up the heat and pull my car out of the garage and put it behind Melanie’s in the driveway and put the car seat back in her car and … the million things you do when you come home after being away for a bit more than a week. On tomorrow’s to-do list: Take down the Christmas tree and figure out whether the city disposal date has passed.
Of course, there always work tomorrow and dealing with the piles of paper and meeting requests and notes and emails that have inevitably gathered in my absence, no one obliging me by refusing to work while I’m gone. Such inconsideration. Still, it will be good to jump back in, especially since we’re going to be so busy the next few weeks.
I feel especially bad for my in-laws who will miss Isabella so much. And Isabella as she begins to realize they’re not here. She had grown so close to them in the past week that it was tough to take her away from them. The consolation is that we should see them again soon when Melanie has Sophia at the end of February. I have to say that they are so generous in bringing us down and treating us and showering Isabella with love and attention. As the first grandchild on Melanie’s side of the family, she’s spoiled, spoiled, but in the good way with love. And it gives us a little bit of break to have several sets of helping hands at the ready to feed her, distract her, take her outside to play, read her books, etc.
And so on to the next challenges: The birth of our new baby and then moving again later in the spring. There’s never a dull moment.
A great Mexican meal
Last night my mother-in-law took us out to dinner at an awesome authentically Mexican restaurant here in Austin called Fonda San Miguel. I wrote up my review of the experience at Yelp.com. (Not to be forgotten is my father-in-law who stayed home to babysit.)
The food was amazing, even if my entree was not the most exciting of them. Thankfully everyone likes to share. Melanie’s dish was the best, Chiles en Nogada, (a similar recipe is here), a Poblano chile stuffed with spiced pork shoulder and various fruits covered with a walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds. While it sounds a bit strange at first, the completed dish was sublime. My entree was a little more pedestrian but not any less delicious, a few lamp chops, grilled simply, with a side of chipotle-cheese potato casserole. My sister-in-law had duck enchiladas.
My recommendation is when you go to a nice restaurant, give preference to the specials, because the chef is (a) showing off his skills and (b) using what’s fresh and good from suppliers. Not at every place, mind you, since in some places the chef is merely clearing out his fridge, but in the good places.
After dinner we had great desserts and I had a very nice glass of Port, a Warre Otima 10-year-old, with which we raised a toast to J.R.R. Tolkien.
If you’re ever in Austin and want a wonderful Mexican meal, this is the place to go.
Let the vacating begin!
As is our usual custom, we’ve removed ourselves to Austin after Christmas for a visit with Melanie’s family. They’re fun folks and they just adore Isabella, plus the weather is always so much nicer than Boston at the turn of the year. Oh, and let’s not forget the barbecue and Tex-Mex.
We took an early morning flight on JetBlue, although thankfully they’ve moved it back about an hour later than it was last year. We still didn’t get off the ground until about 45 minutes because they had to (a) fix a door latch and (b) pump in some more gas to compensate for a headwind across the country.
Unfortunately that headwind increased our flight time from 4 hours to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Four hours on a full plane with a toddler was daunting; 4-1/4 seemed potentially disastrous. However, aside from a few moments of panic when Momma had to get up and use the lavatory (poor pregnant women and their “urgent need”), she did pretty well. I should have pulled out my laptop a lot earlier, because when I started playing “Finding Nemo” for her about an hour from the end of the flight, she was out like a light.
Meanwhile, I was watching the Discovery Channel marathon of “Man v. Wild”, which I’ve never seen before. What a great show! (I told Melanie that I have a “man crush” on the host, Bear Gryll. It’s nothing untoward, just means he’s so cool, I want to be his best friend.) If you’ve never seen it either, he’s a former British SAS who has also climbed Everest. At the beginning of each episode, he’s dropped into some wilderness with only a knife, a canteen, and a flint and steel, and he must survive until he walks back into civilization. It’s not completely reality, as he has a camera crew with him and they create certain scenarios to illustrate survival concepts, but he still has to get his own water and food and make his own shelter.
Anyway, once we landed, Granddad was waiting for us in the terminal. As soon as we got home, she rushed out into the backyard where he showed her how to gather up pecans from the ground. That’s them in the photo up there.
With all the attention she’s going to get over the next week from her aunt and uncles and grandparents, how will we ever take her back home?
Next week some time, Melanie has arranged a meet-up with other Catholic bloggers in the Austin area, so that should be lots of fun. Other than that, we have no agenda but to relax and have fun.
Dutch priest, French saint, Texas BBQ
What fun! Fr. Roderick Vonhogen, the Dutch priest behind the Catholic podcast network SQPN was in Austin this weekend for a young adult conference. And today he was to con-celebrate Mass and be the homilist at Melanie’s home parish, St. Louis King of France Parish.
Since we couldn’t be there, I told Melanie’s mom, Pat, about it (and that Fr. Roderick called the choir—which she’s in—excellent) so she met him at Mass and went out with him and a group for breakfast afterward (or lunch, since it was a BBQ place). Pretty cool. I look forward to hearing his impressions in his next Daily Breakfast podcast. Especially what he thought of the Mass at St. Louis, with the dozen altar servers and all the beauty and pageantry possible in a Mass of the Ordinary Use.
My mother-in-law sounded like she had a good time too and was favorably impressed with Father’s homily. Darn, missed opportunities. Living vicariously through my mom-in-law.
More roadblogging
As promised here is a picture of me in my new cowboy hat. I liked the coat, too, but not on this trip.
Had fun touring Austin on Monday. We saw the interior of St. Mary’s Cathedral. It’s in the middle of a major renovation, and it looks good. All of the dark brown wood has been refinished, the gold leaf has been touched up and the whole sanctuary looks gorgeous. I was surprised at how small it is; Most parish churches are bigger. But it is an old church and I’m sure it was suited to the number of Catholics in the area when it was built.
We also went into the state capital building, which is an almost exact replica of the US Capitol. It’s a beautiful building, the Senate and House chambers are nice and the history in the place is great. And it’s also true that Texans are very proud of their independence. It does feel like some people think of themselves as Texans first, Americans second. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Texas also has a chain of used book stores called “Half Price Books” where we stopped in. I was looking for the next volume of the Aubrey/Maturin series, “Treason’s Harbour,” but they didn’t have it. Instead I picked up the first couple of volumes of another Age of Sail historical fiction series by Alexander Kent.
We also dropped into a large independent bookstore called BookPeople. Very crunchy, granola, and liberal. In the politics section, the anti-George Bush books outnumbered the conservative books by about 5 to 1. But they did have “Treason’s Harbour”, so I was happy.
