Week in Review – October 20th, 2019

“Angry Bevo”

We started the week in Austin, enjoying a reasonably long stay this time. Celebrations and self congratulations continued on Monday afternoon as we had an afternoon office party to celebrate the rollout of our new system. The balloons say POS2 – our highly original name for our new version of the Point of Sale system. One of the really nice features of a small company is the way the whole office comes together to recognize accomplishments like this. Beer, wine, and snacks at 3:30pm didn’t hurt either.

That’s my Development leader, Doug, cutting the cake. He’s been working on this for several years and certainly deserved the recognition.

Diana joined Damon, Mark, and me for continued celebrations at Uchi on Tuesday night. This time we were celebrating a successful migration from our old cloud data center provider to Microsoft Azure – another activity that had been planned for a long time, and consumed a good part of our normal weekend sleeping hours. Sushi is not the best choice for Damon, who can consume massive quantities of beef for such a small, skinny guy. As a result, we got to sample a decent amount of the menu. My favourite was the maguro (big-eye tuna) with goat cheese mousse.

One morning this week, Marc Cohn and the Blind Boys of Alabama performed “Work to Do” on the Today show. It’s a great performance that took us back to that wonderful evening at the Mountain Winery:

https://www.today.com/video/marc-cohn-blind-boys-of-alabama-sing-work-to-do-on-today-71287365656

I planned out an evening of new experiences for Friday night. We were very adventurous and stepped outside our standard 2 mile radius around the Catherine, starting with a lovely Indian dinner at the Clay Pit. Curried mussels with garlic Naan to sop up the sauce, chicken pakora, and lamb Rogan-Josh were all excellent. It’s been so long since I had a decent Indian meal – and who knew there was a good place within a 5 minute Uber ride of the apartment. I look forward to going back soon.

After dinner, we walked up “the drag” (Guadalupe street by the University of Texas), to the University Union and the Cactus Cafe.

This is a small music club that features folk-rock singer-songwriter types. It just celebrated a 40 year anniversary and has hosted many of the greats as seen in these posters. It did seem a bit strange to wander through UT students, studying with laptops out, to get to a show where the median age was at least 50.

Our entertainment for the evening was provided by Steve Forbert, top middle in the poster from 1994. If you’re like most of the folks I’ve talked to since this show, you may not recognize the name. Here’s his biggest hit, Romeo’s Tune:

Did you recognize it? No worries if you didn’t – it’s from 1973. But is does have very close to 5 million listens on Spotify. I’ll share another of my favourites later in the official music section. What a unique voice. Forbert has released 19 albums over the years, and so has a large catalog to draw from in performances. We ran into a couple we met at the Bill Frisell show recently, and they reported very different setlists each time they have seen him.

I had heard about a new book by Forbert, and had waited to buy it at the show. I was fortunate to get a personalized copy.

We slept late on Saturday morning, then I had a swim in the very chilly pool while McD had a workout. Next we were off on a typical Austin Saturday trail – coffee and crossword on the Opa! patio and a stop to pick up wine. Then another new experience.

We donned our UT burnt orange garb and headed over to the stadium parking lots for a “tailgate”. For my overseas readers, a “tailgate” is a gathering to get pumped up before a big sports event, often involving barbecue and beer. The term stems from dropping down the gate at the end of a pickup truck bed to make an informal table. Our event was a bit fancier, with sun awnings, TVs, catered barbecue, a wide selection of drinks, and games. My vendor who organized the event did a great job – she had to arrive at 6am to stake out the prime, shady spot, and the party didn’t start until 3pm.

Over 100,000 fans attend the University of Texas Longhorns games – it feels like the whole city is involved, with lots of people traveling in from around the United States. Bevo is the longhorn mascot, and I got Diana an “Angry Bevo” tee shirt to war to the event – she got lots of compliments.

I was sporting my new “Allright, Allright, Allright” shirt. Matthew McConaughey, the actor, is a huge UT fan and that’s his catch phrase.

Diana won a pair of tickets to the game in the raffle, but neither of us was pumped about sitting in the craziness for another three hours. Like a couple of old folks, we headed home for a quiet night in. The game turned out to be a very exciting and high scoring affair, with UT ultimately defeating Kansas. That picture of D’s new shirt was taken inside a conch shell sculpture outside the UT Medical Center – she’s still very good at humouring me.

Sunday was another lazy start, followed by workouts, and packing for the drive to Dallas. Thousands of others had the same idea, and it was a long drive in Penelope. She was only able to achieve a comfortable cruising speed for short periods – always gets her dander up.

We did arrive home in time for me to settle into my spot for the Cowboys – Eagles game. This was a very important game for the division lead, and the Boys got off to a great start. For once, they were able to maintain momentum and win 37-10. A very nice victory.

Mother Nature was extremely active during the game with severe thunderstorms in McKinney and tornados in North Dallas. Our local tornado sirens went off a couple of times. The damage was very severe – the worst since 1969. The tornado was classified as an EF3 with 140 mph winds, and was on the ground for 16 miles across North Dallas. The Preston Hollow area, with very fancy homes (including George and Laura Bush’s residence) was heavily impacted. This article has pictures and videos of the devastation. The great news is that nobody was critically injured – amazing when you look at the pictures. This is one of the advantages of all the technology and early warning systems, and lots of folks watching the football game that was interrupted with detailed warnings. On the negative side, many schools were completely destroyed and it will be a logistical nightmare to recover.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/10/21/destructive-dallas-tornado-lofts-debris-twenty-thousand-feet-high/

Out in California, Will and Christine were attending a wedding at Lake Tahoe. A typical silly Will pose, but he does look smart. I did ask the typical parental question, and was told firmly that there are no plans soon.

I enjoyed a couple of quite different books this week. I need to do a better job of recording where I find the recommendations that cause me to order up books – I can’t remember what chose me to order “Post Office” by Charles Bukowski. This 1971 novel made its author famous, with the tales of a poor character who spends the majority of his working life in dead end postal service jobs. He suffers through abusive bosses, alcohol abuse, and a racetrack gambling addiction. So, not an upbeat beach read, but well written and it felt very real.

My second book was a complete departure from Post Office. “The Balcony” by Jane Delury is a multi-generational tale based around a manor and cottage in Benneville, France. I almost started to draw a family tree to keep track of all the various relatives that weave through the book over 200 years. I didn’t love the writing, which seemed to change styles with the different portions of the story, but enjoyed being immersed in French culture and language – much of it untranslated to give me a test. I don’t think I agree with all the reviewers that have been raving about this debut novel.