“The Busy Travel Season Begins”
The fortnight began with a mostly quiet week. On Monday we watched the latest Olivia Wilde movie “Don’t Worry Darling”, starring Harry Styles. This was a really interesting film, featuring an alternate reality in the 1950s that virtual reality clients can sign up to participate in. Styles wife is a stressed out doctor working 30 hour shifts and he plans to offer her a better life as a 50s housewife – and then it all starts to go awry. Worth a watch.
Our midterm elections happened on Tuesday. For the most part, we’re just delighted that all the crazy, inflammatory commercials on TV are finally over. I’ll spare you the rest of my political commentary.
I love the New Yorker magazine regular “Table for Two” articles. They are wonderfully written and feature so many wonderful gems of New York dining. The example this week is a very good sample:
As I said at the start, the week was pretty quiet – we went for a walk on Monday, a run on Tuesday, and a swim on Wednesday. We took Finn to lunch at the Legacy West food hall on Thursday – maybe the first time he’s been outside the McKinney city limits in months. He and D chose Velvet tacos (Finn said his brisket might have been the best ever taco), and I chose a really tasty Indian street food place.
We drove down to Austin early on Sunday so that I could watch the Cowboys and Packers game at the hotel. That was a mistake – poor coaching decisions caused the Cowboys to lose in overtime.
Sunday wasn’t a complete loss though – we ran into my CEO in the lobby on our way to dinner in the hotel roof top restaurant, Nido. It was his birthday, and we had a lovely celebration dinner – great service, yummy food, and entertaining story telling.
I loved my redfish Provençale and squash beignets, D her octopus carpaccio and oysters. The view of downtown from the8th floor across the river was lovely.
The Loren is a brand new luxury hotel on the Austin riverfront. It has a lot of kinks to work out. On our first night the smoke detector was shining some kind of bright green laser light in the room every few seconds. We moved to a new room, with the same problem, and then learned that the lights are controlled by a solar powered heat sensor – problem is the sensor isn’t anywhere close to light. The engineer came up and shone a torch to charge the sensor. The next morning a fake fire alarm woke us very loudly at 5am. Good grief – two nights with interrupted sleep. Tape on the smoke detector had improved things, only to be replaced by loud announcements. The next morning at 6am, we had a reprise of the loud fire announcement. Needless to say we have free rooms to use in the future. A shame because the hotel and staff were really nice.
On Monday night we were lucky to score a reservation at Este, the new seafood restaurant from the Suerte (one of our favourite Austin places) folks. The food was fantastic from start to finish – amazing ceviche, and several other seafood delights whose names I can’t remember.
Este is in a small house in an East Austin neighborhood and I can’t recommend it enough.
We met our old CEO (still a Board member) back at the rooftop Nido after dinner and that was interrupted by some Pacifica health scares – all fine in the end. I did learn a new toast “Here’s to cheating, stealing, fighting and drinking. May you cheat death, steal the heart of a woman, fight for your friends, and drink with me.” I love it. Nido has this beautiful fig tree in the entrance.
I had Board meetings all day on Tuesday, followed by a wonderful Executive Committee dinner, with special guests Diana and Lisa, at Qi – a wonderful Chinese place in downtown Austin. That was followed by a very entertaining after dinner session at Nido – our CFO telling a more detailed version of his first trip to Burning Man.
On Wednesday, we executed our typical drive to Dallas day ritual – lunch at June’s all Day – always a lovely experience. And the drive was very easy for once. My Boursin omelet was delicious, as was D’s standard steak tartare order.
As if I hadn’t spent enough time with my work colleagues, I had another work dinner with the Executive crew on Thursday night. It took forever to get to downtown Dallas, but we had a delicious meal at Sachet. The octopus appetizer was a real highlight.
Friday morning came early, and fortunately our flight to San Francisco was delayed a few hours. We Ubered down to Redwood City to borrow Marco’s car and then had an early night in Pacifica.
For some reason I thought a jazz show in San Francisco on Saturday night would be a good idea. Diana was too tired to make it, so Alicia and I made the drive up. An Arcade Fire concert, Opera, and Symphony were all going on at the same time within two blocks of each other. Parking was a disaster. I’m glad Alicia was driving, because I would have given up and driven back home.
We were only a few minutes late to SF Jazz, and quickly got our seats to watch Joe Lovano and John Scofield – two giants in the jazz world. I have enjoyed Scofield in New York a few times, but had never heard Lovano.
There was a lot of what I call “noodling” in the early parts of the show – showing off musical ability without necessarily being musical. The drummer, Joey Baron, was the star – demonstrating the amazing acoustics, as we could hear every delicate brush stroke and cymbal tap. McD would certainly have been sleeping early on. Things picked up towards the end with better musicality and this gorgeous saxophone sound:
Alicia did a very nice job of driving us home, just in time to say “Hi” to Julie and Marco as they collected Gianluca from his boring day hanging out on the Hill.
Watching the Cowboys game today was much more pleasant. From the first play – Parsons sacking the Vikings quarterback, until the last it was total domination, leading to a 40-3 final score. Where was that team last week?
Marco and Julie came by after Gianluca’s soccer game in San Francisco. Always so much fun to spend time with them.
My book this week was “All This Could Be Different” by Sarah Thankam Matthews. The wonderful Lauren Groff (author of my book last posting) says:
“This book is spiny and delicate, scathingly funny and wildly moving. Sarah Thankam Matthews is a brilliant writer, one whose every ringing sentence holds both bite and heart.”
I found this book a bit silly and plodding to begin with, but was completely hooked and invested in the characters by the last hundred pages or so.
Springsteen has a new R&B cover album out this week. Great stuff:
The wonderful Lukas Nelson with a song I first head this week, reminding me of Nathaniel Rattelife’s “It’s Still All Right”:
And finally, some classic Credence jamming:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and compassion for all!