“La Tristesse Des Herissons”
Tuesday was a good day for dining. Diana invited me to lunch, a rare occasion indeed as she’s usually busy with meetings most of the day. We enjoyed some fine, fresh seafood on the South Congress patio of Perla’s and completed some annoying online financial paperwork with our cappuccinos. It’s nice to find some time to relax amid the busy work schedules.
In the evening I had a work dinner at Geraldine’s in the Van Zandt hotel. It’s a great idea to go here with a large group because you get to try so many of their shareable plates. Beet salad, charred brussels, steak tartare, and several others that I don’t remember now. I was even able to bring back some leftovers for McD’s lunch the next day – I knew it wasn’t possible that she’d have a lunch break two days in a row. This restaurant has such a nice setting on the pool deck of the hotel and live music every night. Some folky indie lady was playing – pleasant background but nothing memorable. I had a very enjoyable and wide ranging conversation with Gordon, the head of the vendor group that was hosting us. As we drifted into music, he mentioned a love of karaoke and that gave me a thought.
The group relocated to Ego’s, just across the street from the Catherine, and offering karaoke every night of the week. Gordon’s favourite is Elton John and here he is performing “Your Song”:
It really takes a lot of courage to do that – not for me for certain. Any of you like to sing karaoke? What are your go to songs?
One of the challenges of waiting too long to write the blog is that I don’t always remember what happened when, if I remember what happened last week at all. All you youngsters laughing will get to this age someday too! I think I had this excellent D created pizza with mushrooms dish on Wednesday night. Either way, the mushroom medley with the special champagne cooking trick was amazing.
Friday evening was a long awaited night out with Brad and Jocelyn. Brad joined my company several months ago and we both enjoyed their company 
at the Christmas party. They’re the couple with the two Irish Wolf Hounds and a Bullmastiff. I’m so jealous of the Wolf Hounds, but they most certainly wouldn’t fit in our apartment.
We started with a visit to the Central Machine Works, the brewery that Denny found on Superbowl weekend. I love the way the old machine works has been converted and they have a great, expansive patio. Talking of dogs, Damon had reported earlier in the day that he would be “offline for a couple of hours, taking the doodles to the groomer”. I sent him this picture of a doodle enjoying the patio, and he responded with this:
If you zoom in you can see they are enjoying their own beers. The one on the right might have had more than one. They do look all trimmed up though.
We walked across the CMW parking lot to Justine’s for dinner. This is an excellent French brasserie and I particularly enjoy the casual atmosphere and vinyl records. Diana and I split steak tartare and a phenomenal duck cassoulet. Finishing our drinks in the restaurant garden, I made a note that it was way too long since we had visited this establishment. The evening finished at a respectable hour with a visit to Whisler’s for their excellent Old Fashioneds – best in Austin in my humble opinion.
Saturday was a quiet day, starting with a workout, and then lazing around watching movies and reading. I enjoyed “The Secret to a Happy Ending”, a documentary about a southern rock band named The Drive by Truckers. This was the band where Jason Isbell, one of the best songwriters performing today, got his start. We started to watch “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, the Mister Rogers movie with Tom Hanks, on Saturday evening. One of us fell asleep shortly after the movie started.
I caught up to the spot where Diana stopped watching during my workout on Sunday morning. I was so caught up in the story that I delayed our departure for McKinney so that we could finish the movie together. We highly recommend this film – that would be four thumbs up. It was not at all what I expected, telling the story of Fred Rogers through his relationship with a journalist writing a bio piece of him for Esquire magazine. Here’s a link to the piece, and if you watch the movie you’ll see the stories used mostly appear in the article:
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a27134/can-you-say-hero-esq1198/
We like to pass the time on our drives to and from McKinney with audio books. After finishing the last few minutes of “The Red Road” by Denise Mina (not my favourite), Diana picked out “Truly Madly Guilty” by Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies fame) as our next accompaniment. And it will accompany us for a while at over 17 hours long. I really enjoyed the first 3 hours – such clever character insight and development, and very well read by Caroline Lee, a native Australian.
There’s always something to be fixed on our visits back home – this time a wheel and drive assembly to be replaced on Stanley, our pool cleaner.
My book this week was “Einstein’s Beach House” by Jacob Appel. This is a short story collection and I only got through the first two stories. I had seen a documentary on Appel recently and was interested to try some of his work. He has 14 degrees from prestigious universities and is a qualified doctor, lawyer, and psychologist – makes me feel very lazy. In addition to all of that, he has written over 200 books – and he’s not that old.
This is some of the most weird, quirky and interesting writing that I’ve come across. My favourite of the stories so far is “La Tristesse Des Herissons” – Adeline is hysterical about her pet hedgehog, which a psychologist tells her is depressed. At the same time, she uses this hysteria to put Josh, her boyfriend, through hell. Absolutely laugh out loud hilarious.
On the music front, the massive South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival was canceled this week due to the Covid-19 outbreak. This was huge news as this event has been a mainstay in the Austin calendar for 37 years and will cost the organizers over $350 million. Many bands got their start in the numerous music showcases that occur at SXSW. In late breaking news, all gatherings of more than 2,500 people are also banned in Austin.
This cover on the current New Yorker magazine seemed a bit at odds with these precautions taken in Austin – but does make its point very clearly.
The cover art is titled “Under Control”.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Marcus King’s new solo album “El Dorado” this week. I love it – right up K alley.
This song by Guy Clark popped up on a playlist. It’s been a long time since I heard it – what a classic: