“Silly Penguin”
Penelope and I made the drive down to Austin on Monday afternoon. The morning was spent getting my teeth cleaned and a filling replaced – such fun to hang out in the dental chair for over 3 hours. Following that with 4 hours in Penelope wasn’t ideal, but I did want to enjoy the convertible as we enter into the beautiful fall weather in the Hill Country. You should have heard Penelope when she discovered that her rear-end was a little too wide for some of the parking spaces at the Catherine.
Tuesday was a quiet work day. I was tired in the evening, had a nice swim and sauna and called it a night, after a chat with Diana who was working in Milwaukee. I was shocked to look down at the end of the call and see we’d been yacking away for almost 2 hours. I’m sure we very productively solved all kinds of problems but don’t really remember any great conclusions.
Baby Penguin (BP), having spent over a month lost under the couch, played on my sympathies and convinced me to take him out on Wednesday.
BP really enjoyed the ride down Barton Springs road with the top down. He was excited to make some new friends at my office.
I left BP unattended for an hour while I went to a meeting. During the session, we lost all network connectivity in the office – first time this has happened in the 11 months that I’ve been there. Hmm – what’s different in the office today. Review of security footage revealed the root cause of the issue:
Vinod was not at all happy with the problems the unattended BP had caused:
I made the silly penguin join me in the gym as a penance for his poor behavior.
I was busted on Wednesday evening. I made the mistake of telling McD that I was having dinner with Damon. She tracked me and saw we were at the Odd Duck – one of her favourites. The pork chop and creamed corn dish there is delicious.
Our COO retires on Monday and there was a very nice event to recognize him in the office on Thursday – complete with a throne for him to sit in.
Diana arrived in Austin from Milwaukee around midnight on Thursday.
I missed the flu shot clinic at the office and so decided to get one at Wallgreens on Friday lunchtime. My doctor has been on me to get the Shingles shot and so I got that at the same time. The pharmacist warned me that the injection site would be sore and swollen for a few days and that I 
may have flu-like symptoms for 24 hours. Both turned out to be accurate. After a short workout on Saturday morning, and coffee and crossword at a new location, Once Over Coffee on South First, I had to go to bed for a few hours. A nice feature of this new coffee shop is the El Primo taco truck out front.
I was mostly recovered by the evening and we had an excellent dinner at Eddie V’s. This is an old school seafood and steakhouse -waiters in white jackets with business cards. Diana’s sea bass was beautifully flaky and I enjoyed my redfish with lump crab. Live jazz music was playing in the lounge, which gave me an idea. I had heard that the Parker Jazz Club was a good venue, and it happened to be just a couple of blocks from Eddie V’s.
This venue is great, with comfy seats, good drinks, precise sound and an excellent house band. The trombone player was very talented:
We enjoyed the reed player very much – he had quite the array of instruments: soprano, tenor and bass saxophones, clarinet, flute and bass flute, and a flugel horn.
We enjoyed the music so much that we stayed until the end of the set at close to midnight, before walking home.
One evening in Milwaukee, Diana had dinner at a gastro pub and mentioned 
that they had scotch eggs on the menu. This led me to a Google search for “best scotch egg in Austin”. Which then led to Phoebe’s diner for brunch on Sunday. They call their version of a scotch egg the “Cheeky Monkey” and it was quite tasty – particularly the sausage gravy. The tater tots we shared and Diana’s crab cake benedict were also yummy.
Diana headed back to Dallas on the bus on Sunday evening – too short a visit by far. I settled in to watch the Cowboys playing the New Orleans Saints in the Superdome. This is the first big challenge for the Cowboys this year – their first three victories coming against teams with losing records. New Orleans star quarterback, Drew Brees, is injured and so we should have a bit of an advantage. As I press “publish” on this post, the Cowboys are leading 10-9 but it’s a very close came.
Peter Green might be my very favourite guitar player, and this is a gorgeous song:
Heard this Herbie Hancock on the radio. I don’t love all of his music, but quite a bit of it is very good.
I can’t remember what made me put on some Chris Rea music this week (part of the aging process) – hadn’t thought about him in many years. Andy Bull used to play his music constantly at University.
The excellent Texas singer songwriter, Rodney Crowell, has a new album out and here’s a highlight: