Yesterday I got up early and did laundry, returned a movie and officially began saving for a house. I went to the bank and opened another savings account – specifically for a down payment on a house. We’re pretty excited about that!
Then we loaded up and headed to Austin. We stopped in Georgetown and returned some pillows to Garden Ridge. Then we went to Fry’s Electronics. Talk about a kid in a candy store… Fry’s Electronics is like Radio Shack, Best Buy, CompUSA and Crutchfield thrown into a big pot with steroids.
They have EVERYTHING electronic that you could possibly imagine – from the smallest ceramic capacitors to the largest, tens of thousands of dollar Bose sound systems. I can’t even begin to explain all that they had. It was really overwhelming. They even had a trendy little coffee shop.
While we were purusing the ‘Radio Shack’ part of the store, we walked by a really strange looking redheaded guy. He had a ungroomed beard and was wearing an OpenBeOS t-shirt and talking to himself while comparing motherboard components… Guess you had to be there. Though I really can’t say much – I was standing there, ogling over all of the ethernet hardware, trying to explain a wireless network to Elise… she laughed at me and called me a nerd [again].
Anyway – we finally got into Austin around 7. We drove down the the S. Lamar area where I used to work @ Vidbook – I needed to get my haircut and wanted to go to my ‘regular’ place… they were closed. BTW – any former Vidbookers reading this – Suite 103 of the Lakehills office complex is now owned by Harrel Family Services (the funeral home across the parking lot).
We drove around for a good hour trying to find a place for yours truly to get a haircut. We finally decided to go to the mall – they stay open until 9. I never, in my wildest dreams, saw myself getting my haircut in the mall.
That was pretty funny. El and I are so far from high maintenance. We both got our haircut by a Junior E-2 Stylist Sergeant with a specialty in Gel and Mousse deployment. I couldn’t help but laugh. The place was one of those trendy mall haircut joints – mirrors all over the place, piped Muzak playing late 90’s pop/dance music.
Alicia (uh-lee-see-ya) was our whatever-her-cosmotology-rank haircutter person. She gave me a trendy, uppity shampooing. The whole time she’s trying to sell me on some peppermint, ostrich estrogen fortifying shampoo crap, telling me it would help keep the rest of my hair from falling out. I could tell she was afraid she was offending me, so I played on that and just wrinkled my forehead at her for the rest of the ‘experience’. She finally asked if I was mad about something – I told her “No, I just woke up too early this morning”.
After that, it was like trying to have a conversation with a brick. Uh-lee-see-ya was trying to rush because she needed to be in Del Valle by 9pm. Her boyfriend is in jail for a P.I. and she had to be there by 9 or she wouldn’t be able to see him that day…
Anyway – I got a rather good $16 haircut. Elise got her haircut too. Nothing fancy.
After that, we went and ate at Rudy’s – our favorite barbecue place. As always, a real treat for us.
Then we went over to Tommy’s. We watched the Holyfield vs. Rahman fight. Holyfield won in the 8th round by a TKO. The two headbutted each other and Rahman suffered a severe hematoma above his left eye. It was really gross. This thing grew to the size of grapefruit in 10 seconds.
We hung out at Tommy’s for quite some time after that – then we all piled in and went to 6th street for the annual Republic of Texas Rally & Races. What a disappointment that was. There were hardly any bikes out. El and I had even loaded up our video camera and the 35mm, hoping to get some good footage. It was pretty much a dry run. El took some good photos – though we won’t know until we get the film processed.
So we called it a night and El and I came back to Temple. That was our Saturday night on the town. We slept in today – now it’s time to go have lunch and watch the Lakers kick some Sacremento butt this afternoon.
