Apologies for the late posting this week. I offer a couple of weak excuses – (1) Diana and I were wandering around downtown Austin on Sunday afternoon when I would typically write this and (2) WordPress, the blogging software that I use to write these posts, upgraded to a new “Gutenberg” editor that I couldn’t fathom at all. After an hour of research on my flight to New York, I have now reinstalled the old “Classic” editor and am back in business. Why can’t things that work perfectly well be left alone? Here goes with the post:
The film “Bill Evans, Time Remembered” occupied a good chunk of my bus ride to Austin on Monday morning. I’ve listened to a bit of Bill Evans music but didn’t know much about him or his contributions to jazz music prior to the movie. Evans played a major role in the creation of “Kind of Blue” – the classic Miles Davis recording, and one of my top 5 recordings of all time. This was their first experiment with “modal” music, where long passages are played on a single scale. Critics credit Evans with bringing a new elegance and refinement to Davis’ music. It turns out he lived a very tortured life and finally succumbed to his addictions. I’ve been listening to the albums “Everybody Digs Bill Evans” and “Explorations” this week and enjoying both very much – they feature some impressive bass playing.
Work featured a lot of interesting new things that I haven’t been exposed 
to before, and a couple of new folks that joined to work on a project with me for a few months. We had a working lunch at the original Chuy’s on Tuesday – really good and different Mexican food. There are a number of “original” restaurant locations on my commute route from the hotel to the office. Restaurants that have gone on to have many locations across Texas over the years.
On Tuesday evening, my new colleagues met me for a short dose of live jazz at the Elephant Room followed by dinner at the Second Bar and Kitchen. I narrowly avoided being knocked over by a gaggle of young folks dressed up as Christmas trees and jogging down the street – they were not looking where they were going at all. Greg commented that the singer at the Elephant Room looked like she would be “difficult to have a conversation with”. I think she was just immersing herself in the jazz singer character for her songs. Here’s her rendition of “Blue, Blue Christmas”:
I had a vegetarian dinner at Second Bar – beet salad and crispy brussel sprouts and then called it an early night.
The radio station 100.1, “Best Radio under the Sun”, is my new accompaniment on the drive to work. On route to TacoDeli for breakfast on Wednesday, I heard this song from the band Dawes. It really caught my attention as a good song but more so because of how much the singing sounds like Ray Davies of the Kinks.
A delicious Frontera Fundido Portobello taco with the crossword and it was time to start work. A consultant that I’m working with suggested a kebab for lunch and some quick research showed that the Kebabalicious food truck on 2nd Street downtown was our best option. Turned out to be a great find and one that I look forward to visiting again soon. It’s been a long time (probably 1985 in Edinburgh) since I had a kebab on the street.
Diana arrived for her first of I hope many visits on Wednesday evening. We walked over to Swift’s Attic for dinner and McD had just as positive a first impression as I did. She loved the scallops and we also shared the brussel sprouts, squid fries and a new addition to the rotation, hamachi crudo. After dinner, we peeked into the Elephant Room but they were between music sets. We wandered on to The Townsend and again McD enjoyed it as much as I had on my first visit with Gonzalo. Austin is doing a good job of impressing Diana so far.
Sun radio 100.1 came through again on my Thursday morning commute with the Teskey brothers from Melbourne, Australia. Another band that I hadn’t heard of with a great sound. Kind of a mix of Otis Redding, Ray Charles, and the guitar playing of early Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green – all things I like a lot. I’ll share a couple of their songs in the “K’s new music” section at the bottom of this post.
On Thursday night we planned to attend a tribute show to Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album at a great local music venue, the Saxon Pub. Before the show we tried Bartala for what are advertised as Catalan tapas with quite mixed results. The service, drinks and several of the tapas were good. However, the ceviche was really disappointing with very tough and rubbery octopus. So bad that it drove me to write my first Yelp review to warn folks away from this dish. I hope this was just some bad product because the place had some good potential and is nicely located close to two good music venues. After dinner, we were both too tired to wait for the music to start – the previous band was finishing and then we would have had to wait on their equipment being hauled out and the new groups’ set up.
For Friday lunch, I took a few coworkers to lunch at Mandola’s Italian. This was their recommendation and it turned out to be an excellent Italian restaurant and grocery/bakery. I had some left over scampi and augmented that with a fresh cannoli to take to Diana for lunch at the hotel, where she had been camped out working all morning. The conversation over lunch was very enlightening as I heard about one gentleman who had gone to Stanford on a volleyball scholarship and another who had been a minor league catcher for the Dodgers. I enjoyed getting to know some of the folks at work better.
On Friday night we let Diana out of the hotel for dinner at Wink – a restaurant recommended by another coworker who seems to know his food and wine. Wink is tucked away in a very quiet location and not easy to find from the street and has both a restaurant side and a wine bar side. We were nervous on arriving to find about 30 University of Texas fraternity looking folks all dressed up in tuxedos and fancy dresses for dinner before a winter dance. They turned out to be very polite and well behaved – must have been the nerdy fraternity.
The food and wine were very good. The fois gras appetizer being a particularly yummy and decadent stand out. I enjoyed grouper with lattkes and dill sauce while Diana had a venison dish with a little langiappe. A piece of a rubber band had crept into her dish. This was handled very nicely by the staff who brought us a quartet of desserts and extra red wine on the house. Everyone had a good chuckle as the kitchen was just through a small window from our table. A couple of the desserts were amazing and we left completed sated.
Saturday afternoon had been set aside to go apartment hunting and 
this was much more efficient than anticipated as I really liked the first place we toured and, on stopping at the second place, realized I shouldn’t waste any more time on places that I wasn’t going to like nearly as much as the first. We drove down Barton Springs road and had to stop at this airstream food truck to take a picture for Patty (the cupcake queen). Then I showed McD the new office and we drove on to the local mall for her to pick up some things she needed for her Christmas party outfit. The mall was a complete zoo and so I dropped Diana, picked up a couple of Space Cowboy tacos (my favourite lunch taco at TacoDeli) and returned to pick her up.
The company Christmas party was a very well done affair at the Hotel Van Zandt in downtown Austin. It started with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on a balcony overlooking these amazing trumpet bell chandeliers. Then dinner, accompanied by a 1920s style jazz band.
I enjoyed introducing Diana to the new folks from work. She had been grilling me on folks she would meet and we were able to check them all off except one who didn’t attend. I think she found our CEO the most entertaining of the bunch. Additional entertainment included a photo booth and caricature artist and we took advantage of both.
Sunday began with workouts and then a late brunch at Swift’s Attic. A very enjoyable meal again – I enjoyed a different take on shrimp ‘n grits. Then it was time to find somewhere to watch the Cowboys and Eagles game – a key decider in which team will make it to the playoffs. We started at the Driskill bar and saw the beginning of the game there. The TVs were small and dark and so we walked around downtown for a while. I picked up some useful information on vinyl record stores in Austin during a quick stop into Antone’s record store beside the music club.
We settled on Eddie V’s seafood house as a good place to watch the football and it turned out to be a good choice as we enjoyed old school style bar service to accompany D’s rose cocktail and some tasty steak tartare. The game remained neck and neck until the Cowboys finally won as we sat in the airport club waiting to board the flight back to Dallas.
I enjoyed some statistics on my listening this year that Spotify shared this week:
