“Sweet Child of Mine”
Busy, busy, busy with work all week and into the weekend for both of us. I had a big system migration project that we’ve been working on for months, and Diana had a variety of annoying challenges.
McD arrived in Austin on Thursday evening on the bus. Our friend Vinod 
had to spend his birthday in Austin to work on the migration, so we took him out to a nice vegetarian dinner on Friday night at Bouldin Creek Cafe. His gift was his very own Baby Penguin, which also became our migration mascot.
Our BP was very happy to have some brief company.
After dinner, we decided to see if we could make our way into the Austin City 
Limits music festival to see Guns ‘N Roses. We were very fortunate to run into “Marcus the ticket guy” on Barton Springs, and he fixed us up with wrist bands for a very reasonable price. The wrist bands are very fancy. A few minutes later we were transported back to the classic rock of the late 1980s.
The stage show was the most elaborate and impressive that I’ve seen, complete with fireworks for the finale:
Axl Rose’s voice wasn’t too bad, but Slash’s guitar playing was as good as ever. He seems to be channeling some Texas blues here:
Cold November Rain and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door were the two highlights for me:
I think Diana and Damon enjoyed the show almost as much as I did. We herded back out onto Barton Springs with the hordes and made it to Juliet to regroup and have a drink. We met a nice couple, Daniel and Natalie, and invited them to join us for the late night show at the Continental Club. Our luck continued, an SUV was parked right outside and ready to shuttle us over.
Western Youth had just started when we arrived at midnight. This is my favourite local band and they put on a great show.
Diana snapped a picture of the setlist:
After such a late night, we muscled through a late workout on Saturday 
morning and had a pretty lazy day. We met up with Damon for dinner at El Naranjo. This is an Oaxacan style Mexican place that I had been wanting to try. The ceviche and duck with mole sauce were very good. Apparently over 30 ingredients go into that thick, dark mole. I have a little left over for dinner tonight, and I’m thinking it may be even better now. After all the excitement on Friday, we called it an early night.
I had to wake at 4am for a checkpoint call on Sunday morning for our system migration. It has mostly gone well, but we’re still troubleshooting some printing issues as I write this post.
Workouts were earlier on Sunday and we were able to make a quick trip to Opa for coffee and crossword before I had to resume work. The Cowboys had a weak showing against the winless New York Jets, ultimately unable to eke out a win in the last few minutes – very disappointing.
I thought this news story was entertaining. Penelope was not laughing.
I finally finished the 500+ page novel, “The Most Fun We Ever Had”, by Claire Lombardo. I enjoyed this book, but it did go on for a while. Here’s what NPR had to say:
“Lombardo, a Chicago native and recently minted University of Iowa MFA graduate, has crafted an intricate multi-generational saga about the vicissitudes of a passionate but not perfect marriage over a 40-year span. Her capacious novel also encompasses the “vast hormonal hellscape” the couple has spawned — four cattily close, constantly sparring grown daughters trying to figure out their place in the world as they measure themselves against their mother and each other.
Set in the Chicago suburbs, Lombardo’s book has been compared to The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen’s seminal ode to a dysfunctional Midwestern family.”
I liked Franzen’s “The Corrections” a lot, and I suspect it was that comparison that encouraged me to read this one.
I thought this was a very pretty song when I heard it this week:
I enjoy the Fruit Bats and am surprised they are still so unknown:
A work colleague saw Fastball in Austin this week and raved about the show. I didn’t realize they were based here.