“My compliments to the chef”
It was back down to Austin on Monday morning and back up to McKinney again on Friday. Diana let me borrow her car so I would be a bit more comfortable on the long drives, while she and Penelope tried to get along on her drives to downtown Dallas.
As you can see from the pictures above, it was oppressively hot all week. Those red bars are the “feels like” temperature – adjusted for humidity. Diana’s car is reporting a real temperature of 105 degrees at 5pm. As a result, I spent most of my time indoors this week.
Cat was in Austin for an Apple Systems Engineering annual meeting, and we were able to meet up on Thursday evening. We made a quick visit to the Sky bar for the requisite picture, and then Ubered over to Peche – I know, it’s less than a mile, but it was still too hot to walk at 7:30 pm.
We enjoyed an excellent dinner at Peche. The combination of Cat’s intelligence, world view, and immense wit, make him a perfect dinner companion. He loved the rabbit and mushroom risotto, and sent his compliments to the chef via Tucker, our waiter. Chef showed up a few minutes later and Cat told him he liked the dish because you could stop eating to tell a story for a few minutes, and the excellent flavor was still in your senses. This is a new dish on the menu, and Diana will have to return to try it soon.
We visited the Roosevelt Room, a kind of fancy speakeasy style cocktail bar, after Peche and I enjoyed a Paper Plane. We sat at the bar and thoroughly enjoyed watching all the craft cocktails being prepared – some works of art. My drink came with a small origami plane flying alongside
It was very nice to spend an evening with Cat without the girls along. Wait – maybe that didn’t come out exactly the way I meant it. What I was trying to say…. Ah, never mind, I’ll just stop digging the hole now.
I tried a couple of new things for my drive on Friday. #1, I downloaded an audible book to listen to on the ride – I’ve listened to podcasts but never a book. I chose “Lincoln in the Bardo”, which got such rave reviews last year. It has an all start cast reading – apparently one of the largest for an audio book. Nick Offerman is excellent. What a weird book – I listened for almost 
four hours and was really struggling to figure out what was going on. Had to read a synopsis when I got home. Not sure whether I’ll make it through the remaining 3 hours or not. #2, I decided to venture away from the standard places along the highway and try a real Waco restaurant for my lunch stop. Harvest was a very good farm to table casual place, not too far off Interstate 35. The migas were excellent. I look forward to stopping there again.
It was very nice to resume the regular weekend routine with Diana – swim, coffee and crossword, reading. The simple things that I miss when we’re not together. We ventured out of the normal routine for dinner, trying a 
new restaurant for us, Knife, located by Willow Bend Mall. This is a John Tesar place. You may remember I came home with a whole pan of his duck confit risotto after attending a demonstration he did at the Granada theater a few years back. He is starting to expand his empire with a few different places now, after getting his real start as the executive chef at the Mansion on Turtle Creek.
We were both very pleased with the quality of the steak and the sauces. My au poivre was absolutely delicious. I chuckled at the mini fry basket that the french fries were served in. We have plenty of left overs for dinner tonight.
I was even able to resist the chocolate caramel treat and have that waiting for desert later.
I finally finished “Lost Children Archive” by Valeria Luiselli. On the surface this is a family road trip story. Parents and two young children embark on a trip from New York to Arizona and the Apache homelands. Several stories interweave, including narratives on the plight of native Americans, and on children traveling alone across the border in attempts to reunite with family members living in the United States. All very poignant with the backdrop of our governments challenge to figure out a workable immigration solution on our southern border. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, but got bogged down in some of the historical details and discussion on documentary field recordings.
Welcome to a new series of introductions to my new music finds – featuring some of my favourite album covers. I particularly like the diner scene on the back of Supertramps’ classic “Breakfast in America”. If you zoom in you can see Dougie Thompson reading the Glasgow Herald.
I had been listening to some Philip Glass music this week, and then read in the acknowledgements in “Lost Children Archive” that Luiselli had listened to his “Metamorphosis” a lot while writing the novel. Also interesting that the owner of Shakespeare & Co in Paris gave her a room above the store to work in for a year while writing. Here’s Part 2 of metamorphosis – I love the triplet right hand part around 2:30.
Zero 7, an English duo who began as studio engineers, have a new album out this week with a host of guest vocalists. All very relaxing, chill sounds, and, not surprisingly, beautifully produced.
Something about the Zero 7 music sent me to Stereolab and one of my favourites from many years ago: