The Lone Star State

Please excuse my absence, I have been away. I went to:

Specifically, I went to: It was a business trip, but when this:

greets you at the airport, you know that you will also have some fun in Austin. And that I did.


My lovely Texan friend in Texas and my lovely Friend in Texas (and owner of Elliot, the cutest terrier ever!) scooped me from the airport and drove me around downtown Austin. My lovely Texan friend was driving and she was paying more attention to the changing strand of Christmas lights (which ironically changed from red to green) than the actual traffic lights and almost killed my lovely Friend in Texas and I as we looked at the state capital, which apparently is in Austin, and not Houston. Ahem.
Okay, my lovely Texan Friend didn't *really* almost kill us, but she did almost run through a traffic light because the Christmas lights changed colors.

Downtown has a lot of new tall buildings now, apparently a lot of them condo buildings. My lovely friend in Texas and I agreed that this reminded us of the PNG building in Pittsburgh: it's the whimsical top of the building.

The purpose of the trip was business and not all play. I headed on Thursday to the University of Texas:
(Why *yes* that is the famous UT Tower where the student used it as a sniper location in 1966). I was there to do some work for work but also to see what my boss does on the other side of his job, when he and I aren't working on the same work. He runs British Studies at UT. The office is amazing, not least because of the Earl of Meow-nt Batton keeps Lord Disraeli company.


I got to work at this lovely desk:
It is a nice, lovely desk that greets you when you walk in the door. Oh, the previous owner? Well, he left his name on it:

In case you can't read the photo, yes, that does say that this desk was the writing desk of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ahem. And I got to send out a few emails on my computer while sitting at this desk. Not exactly Sherlock Holmes quality.

And so not to ruin the image in my head that all of Texas is like the movie Giant, my lovely Texan Friend took me to the historic Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin (where Kevin Nelan was also breakfasting), where she showed me that even Austin has a bit of Texas in it:




And to go with the longhorn, antique saddle, and rawhide couch, why, a thistle crystal sink in the ladies' loo!