In Texas there are Dairy Queens everywhere and on their TV commercials the "DQ" logo is superimposed over an outline of this great state. "Dairy Queen: That's what I like about Texas!" is written on all the cups and stuff. Budweiser in a bottle has a little Texas logo on the label here, too. Mostly folks seem to drink Shiner or Lone Star though. The TV news extensively covers all of the University of Texas sports (hook 'em horns!) and minor league baseball. At the house we are staying at we have many little lizards who live on the brickwork outside. They only come out in the evenings. The first night we got a good look at one of them as we were coming in I leaned over and very earnestly declared "I love you!" to the little feller, and it was true. I'm crazy about those little 'zards. We also saw a giant frog or toad (what am I, an amphibiologist?), many Armadillos (nearly all were roadkilled though, sadly) and hundreds of thousand of grackles. Grackles are sleek blue-black or brown pigeon sized birds, sort of crow like, but skinnier, with gangly legs and nice sharp beaks. I guess they are a nuisance but I really like them. They sure make a lot of noise though. We've also had a few run-ins with giant flying cockroaches the size of your thumb. Bean likes to eat them. It has been, literally, over 90 degrees every day since we got here. There was an ongoing countdown on the news every night and at one point it has been 32 days straight of over 90 degrees and 36 straight of no precipitation. There was a big thunderstorm the other day so now it just the 'over 90' counter. I kind of doubt we are going to go below 90 anytime soon. I mean, It's July. I didn't realize how far south Austin is. It's farther south than San Diego, Tia Juana, ALL of New Mexico and Arizona. There is a little bit of Louisiana and, obviously, most of Florida that is farther south but that's it. The sun is at its hottest here at about 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. We went and bought a kiddy-pool, spent a half-hour in the 105 heat blowing it up, realized we hadn't properly plugged up the openings and then spent another 15 minutes ACTUALLY blowing it up. I tell you, floating in a kiddy-pool is a nice way to spend a sweltering evening. The water gets pretty gummy pretty quickly, and we don't like to waste that much water, but the 2 times we have had it filled for a few days it has been a joy. We might get a real pool when we get our house. I never thought I'd be a person with a pool, but boy if there is a place where it makes sense to have one, and where you can REALLY see yourself using it, it is here. Yow. At the sporting goods store where we bought our kiddy-pool they had a big display case full of GIANT FUCKING GUNS. Total Dirty Harry iron. Yow. There is lots of good food here. Really nice produce. Excellent restaurants. Shaved ice. There is also lots of really good bad food here. There is a southwestern chain of burger joints here called "WHATABURGER" that is a definite weakness of mine. Their burgers are really really good, and about twice the size of a McDonald's/Wendy's/Burger King burger. WHATABURGER has the added bonus of, after you go there you get to walk around saying, "Man, I am whatastuffed. I think I'm going to whatapuke" and so forth. OH! Also, WHATABURGER apple pies are *exactly* like the old McDonalds apple pies: Deep fried sugar crystal pockets of molten pie filling goodness and holy CRAP are they good. I could go for one now. Mm. Every restaurant serves Dr Pepper. Every restaurant. There's great neon here. I'm a big fan of old signage and the signs seem to stay in pretty good shape here. I guess since there is also so much space and a pretty easygoing economy they are less likely to tear everything down to build new things. They just spread the city out a little farther and leave up the old things. Austin, like many cities, is riddled with giant highways. I guess there is no getting around that sort of thing in the US, except in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco (all of which have their own monster highways anyway) bit it still bugs me. Texas in general has, literally, the most astonishing highways. Up by Dallas, and down here in Austin there are some places where you have several highways merging and doing stuff and they have built these HUGE 10 story raised cloverleaf interchanges. Just gigantic. And they are building more of them. We are something like 49th in public education funding per capita (take THAT Mississippi!), but we have the dough to build these massive sphinxian highways. We are early in the process of trying to buy a house, and are pretty confidant that we will be able to do so, but getting a mortgage will be a little tricky. We have pretty good income but most of it is non-traditional (freelance). If anyone out there wants to donate many thousands of dollars to our cause let me know and I'll tell you where you can send a check. Life here is good. You should come visit us.