A belated Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who were celebrating on Sunday.
We had a lovely day, but wait…, I’m jumping way ahead of myself already…
I meant to share this New Yorker cartoon last week as “May the 4th be with you” is a big day for Star Wars fans. Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in most of the Star Wars movies, also passed away last week. I didn’t realize that he was 7 feet 3 inches tall at his prime.
Also from last week: Brent published the long awaited “Sometimes Less Lean is Mo’ Lean” article. I say “long awaited” because this was inspired by a Keb’ Mo’ concert that we saw in 2014 for my birthday – the night of the now infamous Velvet Taco stop in a torrential downpour.
https://www.lean.org/LeanPost/Posting.cfm?LeanPostId=1038
I really enjoy the way Brent links process efficiency concepts to the concert experience and encourage you to give this excellent short article a read.
Now on to this week – a very wet one in Austin, starting from my bus ride down on Monday all the way through Saturday. Lots of flash flood warnings were issued as river and lake levels rose – Lake Travis peaked at over 104% full. The basement level of our office experienced some flooding and required a lot of drying machines to avoid mold developing:
While I was navigating through all the rain in Austin, my Mum and Dad were enjoying a trip to St. Anne’s with their church friends. They made a day trip to Liverpool, where it was also wet when this picture of the fifth Beatle was taken:
“How far is Liverpool from their home in Scotland?”, I hear you asking. About a 4 hour drive as you can see on this map of the UK or in much smaller scale on the World satellite view.
My parents enjoyed the architecture on their tour, including the “Liver Birds” atop these buildings:
These were the inspiration for the Seventies sitcom featuring the antics of two Liverpudlian lasses. Guess what they called it? You nailed it – “The Liver Birds”. I didn’t remember it from the name, but after watching a YouTube video, I remember it quite well from my childhood.
The “Ferry Cross the Mersey” (main river in Liverpool where much of the ship building industry was based) was passed up due to the weather.
The rain has certainly been doing wonders for my Dad’s garden. Spring has certainly sprung in Stewarton.
Back in Austin, Diana arrived on the bus on Thursday evening. We enjoyed the standing Friday happy hour show at the Saxon Pub – Diana’s first visit. Denny Freeman and his band played a mixture of blues and rock hits from the 60s and 70s. Here’s their version of the Jagger/Richards song, “Heart of Stone”:
Diana enjoyed the Saxon Pub experience and particularly the folks “dancing like nobody was watching”. This place is full of happy, friendly people looking to enjoy the music. An interesting couple joined us at our table. Bill and Marianne met in a Chinese restaurant in Peurto Vallarta during a thunderstorm. Bill attended UT before riding his Harley across country to San Francisco, where he got a job as a mailman, during the “Summer of Love” in 1967. He had just had ankle replacement surgery – did you know that was an option? We’ve heard of hips and knees, but I hadn’t heard of ankles.
We walked across the street from the Saxon Pub to Chi’lantro for a snack. This is an Asian Fusion, Korean style restaurant with excellent “Kimchi” fries and Korean chicken wings. Not familiar with kimchi? I wasn’t either but it’s kind of a cabbagey concoction. Wiki says: a staple in Korean cuisine, kimchi is a famous traditional side dish of salted and fermented vegetables, such as napa cabbage and Korean radish, made with a widely varying selection of seasonings including gochugaru (chili powder), scallions, garlic, ginger, and jeotgal (salted seafood).
I was managing the amount of time that we spent at Chi’lantro very diligently. Why was that necessary at 8pm on a Friday night? Well, I had a surprise planned for Diana, and needed to arrive back at the apartment as close to 8:36pm as possible. I know, a pretty precise and strange time for a surprise. Ok, I know the suspense is killing you. I had arranged for Alicia to surprise McD for Mother’s Day and that was the estimated arrival time of her Uber from the airport. I was a tad concerned that Diana would be upset with me for flying Alicia out when she should be studying for finals, but the visit was very well received and some pretend studying did occur.
We added Alicia to the typical weekend morning routine. Workout, followed by Keith’s famous breakfast tacos, then a trip to Trianon coffee (my favourite close to work) for coffee and crossword (Alicia made a genuine attempt to participate). Then we made a run through Trader Joe’s to fill back up the empty fridge and pantry.
The weather cleared up nicely on Saturday afternoon and I dropped the ladies off on South Congress Avenue for a ramble around the shops and restaurants. I went to try out the Austin Film Society and a documentary called “Carmine Street Guitars”.
Greenwich Village was once the center of New York bohemia and, like many other artsy neighborhoods around the country, has gone through significant gentrification in recent years. But one shop in the heart of the Village had remained resilient to the encroaching gentrification: Carmine Street Guitars. There, custom guitar maker Rick Kelly and his young apprentice, Cindy Hulej, build handcrafted guitars out of reclaimed wood from old hotels, bars, churches, and other local buildings. Nothing looks or sounds quite like a Rick Kelly guitar, which is the reason they are embraced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou 
Reed, and Patti Smith. The film captures five days in the life of Carmine Street Guitars, while examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life.
I enjoyed the movie but felt it was a bit too contrived and staged for my liking. The visit to the store by Charlie Sexton and the McSorley’s (oldest bar in New York) guitar he plays were worth the price of admission.
This video was playing as we were seated for the movie (Heatwave performing “Too Hot to Handle”). Hilarious seventies funk performance. Stick with it until the part where the guitar and bass player are on the shoulders of the two singers. Hadn’t seen anything like this in years.
We reconvened at the Apartment for dinner and then walked across the bridge to Antone’s for a concert. Roxy Roca was opening for Big Sam’s Funky Nation. Diana chose this as her Mother’s Day eve show over Sis DeVille at the One to One Club. Unfortunately the show was over 21 only and so Alicia practiced her story on the walk over. No real problem getting in – just a couple of questions that she handled well.
We hadn’t heard of Roxy Roca and were going to skip the opening act, but some YouTube research showed a great brass section and music that we thought we’d enjoy. They are an Austin based band and put on a good opening set.
We enjoyed Big Sam’s Funky Nation a few months ago at the Kessler, when they opened for the Rebirth Brass Band. It was great to see them as the main attraction. Happy, fun music very well presented. So much so that we couldn’t drag Alicia out of the show. “Two more songs and we’re leaving!” “No we’re not!”. 
We did finally leave a little after midnight and tried again to make a visit to the Elephant Room for some late night jazz. The band was on a break and the place was crowded, so we made the walk back to the apartment earlier than we might have – probably a good thing.
At around the same time in California, Cat was finishing up a very grueling day of testing for his black belt. He’s trying to look mean and tough in this picture and I can tell he’s exhausted. A very impressive and dedicated effort he’s made to get this far over the last few years. Late breaking update as I’m about to publish – Cat passed the test and received his official black belt!
I chose the Launderette restaurant in East Austin for Mother’s Day brunch, based on a strong recommendation from my friend Issac, who lives nearby. We sat on the front patio and enjoyed the lovely weather – that’s where the picture at the top of this posting was snapped. The restaurant used to be the “Kleen Wash” launderette.
What an amazing meal we enjoyed. My duck confit hash was excellent and Alicia’s turkish egg was an outstanding blend of flavours. I’m looking forward to trying dinner. I included the second picture below just in case you were concerned that we were able to finish the feast in the first.
But wait, there’s more. I had read that the pastry chef was excellent and so we agreed to share a desert. The arugula cake with meringue, rhubarb, and strawberries was both completely unique and delicious. The presentation reminded us of the garden dish at Manresa on our anniversary dinner.
After lunch we explored the riverside park just a couple of blocks from the restaurant. The city of Austin does such a great job maintaining the 10 miles of trails along the riverside. This section had some impressive fields of wild flowers.
We dropped Alicia back at the apartment for some more “studying” and then walked across the 1st Street bridge and down the riverside trail to Rainey Street. This is the historic area that I took Denny on his visit, where small houses have been turned into bars and restaurants. The street was hopping on Sunday afternoon and McD and I chose the back patio at Lucille as a good spot to 
relax for a while. There was a lot of entertaining activity – karaoke in progress, various games with rings and bean bags, puppies entertaining themselves trying to eat the Jasmine plant and then falling fast asleep. We walked up the street and back over the Congress bridge, pausing to take a funny picture at the Little Brother bar.
Mother’s Day celebrations wound down with a visit to the Sky Bar for mimosas by mother and daughter.
I heard this song from Shriekback, an English band most popular in the mid-80s but still playing today, on Radio Paradise and enjoyed the sound.
Shortly after that song, this Morcheeba song came along. I listened to this band quite a bit many years ago and enjoyed this newer song.
The National is often a bit too mopey and down for me, but I enjoyed this one.
And to close out the post, a brand new band to me, Pedro the Lion. NPR was raving about this album in a post and I did enjoy most of it.