Results tagged “Austin” from BrainDrain

The other day I was turned on to the magic of ZINGWater, what I like to think of as the perfect caffeine delivery system. It's water plus caffeine, and that's it. Nothing more. No cups and cups of sugar, no horrible taste or aftertaste, and no pretense at being EXTREME fuel for the EXTREME lifestyle. In fact, if the bottle didn't say it had caffeine in it, you'd never know it.

I call it the perfect delivery system because it gives all the caffeine pick-me-up potency of a Red Bull but with the hydrating and super-clean taste of purified water. How many of us slam down multiple cups of coffee or diet Cokes in a single day for the caffeine rush? Hate having your teeth squeak from pop syrup or dislike that coffee tongue and post-java halitosis? Me too! I don't know about you, but when I'm working, I find that I drink far less water than I should and that can wreak havoc on the body. Thus, finding a way to hydrate AND also get the energy boost that I need to keep me alert at work is a pretty important thing - and it's all found in ZINGWater.

Who would drink it? The computer programmer in me would drink it for the reasons I've already mentioned above. The musician in me would drink it for the hydration factor plus the energy to rock out extra hard during a show. And the health-conscious side of me (yes, there is one in there...somewhere) would drink it because I know that it's healthier than any other drink out there that delivers that kind of caffeine punch with zero side effects (other than the caffeine, of course).

Oh, and did I mention that ZINGWater is local? Yep. Made right here in the Texas Hill Country. Hit up the link to check out the site, read the story, and then find out where you can buy your own. You can even order direct from the company, and I hear tell that they're also trying to get hooked up with some humanitarian organizations to help provide clean and available drinking water in places of the world where they can't get it.

SO...

Not only are you helping YOU stay lubricated and energized, you'd be supporting a LOCAL company to keep money here in the Austin economy, and you'd be helping OTHERS get water in places where the idea of bottled water seems like some ludicrous extravagance of heaven. Everybody wins! So give ZINGWater a try the next time you need that little something extra to put some pep in your step.

If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'.

I realized today that one of the ways in which I've been squandering my time of unemployment has been that I haven't taken advantage of my free days and visited any of the "must-see and -do things in Austin". So, I decided that I would do just that and start my tour of Austin by going downtown to the Austin Museum of Art to see what it was like and spend some time looking at artwork. They're currently featuring artwork by Chuck Close, who does some amazing things with old school photographs and such. For example, what looks like a giant poster-size self-portrait photograph:

is actually a large jacquard tapestry, as seen from the back:

Absolutely amazing! And, it only cost me $5 (plus $1.50 for meter parking on the street). So, I'm thinking that maybe tomorrow I'll hit the Blanton Museum of Art or maybe go down to the Dell Children's Museum to check that out. However, I'm also looking for some suggestions from you, my readers. What are some things I should do during the weekday? My goal is to keep it as cheap as possible, with free being best (obviously) and an upper cap of $15 for the entire experience (which cuts out the Bob Bullock Museum).

So what uniquely (and cheap) Austin "must-see"s do you think I should do next?

I enjoy exposing people to new things or possibly things that one should do at least once in their town but just haven't gotten around to doing. It was with this in mind that our home team decided to do some "Austin firsts" with our crew for some that haven't yet partaken in some of the uniquely Austin-y things to do.

We started off our evening with a trip to Frank & Angie's Pizzeria, some of the best pizza in Austin. With great names for the pies like The Travolta (a white pizza), the Scorsese (a meaty pizza) and the Chairman of the Board (a supreme pizza), the atmosphere is as much fun as the food. It usually fills up pretty quick, and the parking is pretty limited, but if you can get down there before the rush it's a great experience.

From there we headed on down to the Congress St. bridge to see the bats fly. There are several massive colonies of Mexican Free-tailed bats that live in various parts of Austin, with the most popular location being the park near the offices of the Austin-American Statesman newspaper. We've had several folks that have lived here for many years and still haven't been down to see them fly, and it's definitely something that every resident should do at least once. It's amazing to see - they start circling under the supports of the bridge, a little at a time, and then one makes a beeline out from underneath to start; perhaps he's some sort of scout or something. Within 10 minutes of that one leaving, the rest of the flying population leaves to go bug-hunting in one giant column that can take an hour and a half or more to complete. At this time of year, the viewing was okay, but the females had just given birth so the entire colony isn't yet flying. By the end of August and into September all 1.5 million of them will be leaving on a nightly basis at the fall of dusk to go keep Austin mosquito-free. It's a wonder of God's creation.

Finally, we ended up the evening with a viewing of Better Off Dead - John Cusack at some of his most amusing. It's one of those John Hughes films that everyone should see because it's just so much fun to watch (even though it's highly cheesy). We had a fairly large percentage of our group that hadn't seen the movie, so some of us that are "in the know" on these things decided that this would be a perfect movie to kick off a "movies everyone should see" series. There are so many movies out there and to know that someone is going through life having never seen "Ferris Beuller's Day Off", well....that's just tragic.

So all in all, we had a good night of fun and hangin' out, and now I feel like I've helped enrich the lives of my surrogate family by given them opportunities to experience some of the awesomeness that Austin has to offer. The next outing should be quite fun as well. Anybody got any good ideas on what we might want to do next? Something that every Austinite should do at least once?

Do tell.

9AM alerted me to the fact that Galactic was going to be playing in Austin tonight for the Louisiana Swamp Thing & Crawfish Festival down by the Bullock, so he and I and a couple more of our friends headed down there to chow down on crawfish and see Galactic bring the funk all New Orleans style. Stanton Moore is one of my favorite drummers and he comes here to Austin in various capacities all the time, and yet I keep missing him - so I was bound and determined that I was NOT going to miss seeing him again. Stanton is one of those drummers that inspires me not only by what what he plays, but by the way he plays - he looks like he's having a total blast the entire time, and that's what I want to be like. I wish that I could have gotten some clear pictures that show his facial expressions, but all I had was the Centro, so this is the best I could do:

That shot was taken during his awesome drum solo. But now I've finally seen Galactic and Stanton Moore, and I will definitely be going to see him again the next time I possibly can. I want to grow up to be him someday - maybe I need to get me some horn-rimmed glasses. I think that's where his drumming awesome is contained.

Heya, folks...for those of you that are in the Austin area, and in case you haven't been paying attention, Life On Loan is opening a show for Remedy Drive on Saturday night at GHBC. Tickets are only $5 measly bones, and you could do a whole lot worse for more money by going downtown to hear some of those other bands. :) The show starts at 6 with LOL hitting the stage around 6:15 and then Remedy Drive goes on at 7ish. If you're coming to the show, it would make things a lot easier if you get will-call tickets beforehand. The link to get yoself some tickets to the hottest show in Austin this Saturday night is right HERE.

Are you ready to rock? Because we are...

UPDATE: It seems that tickets are $5 in advance, but $10 at the door - so it pays to get your tickets early! Save yourself some green and come ready to have your faces rocked completely off!

Today the Father Figure and I went to meet up with 9AM for lunch at an Austin original, Threadgill's, to get some southern home cookin' before heading downtown to tour the capitol building and the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. I had never actually taken the capitol tour, so that was a nice way to spend some time and catch up on learning my Texas history (if I want to be an official citizen and all). However, that was a lot of walking and by the end of it we were a little too pooped to pop. We hoofed it back to the Bullock and decided to head back home once we got rousted by a security cop for not paying the admission fee. We were cheap and decided that $8/person was too much to pay for more Texas history that we wouldn't remember. Besides, it was getting late anyway.

Before we made that trek, though, I decided to drive him by the Governor's mansion (since it's still closed down due to being lit on fire a couple of months ago) and take him down Congress street into South Congress to show him how things have been gentrified and what is going on as a whole in Austin, and also to take him down Barton Springs to show him the original Chuy's and Zilker Park where the Austin City Limits festival is held. While we were down there in SoCo, I discovered a little graffiti enclave just one block south of Home Slice pizza right on Congress:

There were several buildings there that were covered with high-quality graffiti much like the tagging that I came across last week near Katz's Deli. I'm pretty sure that at least one of the artists is the same due to the reappearance of the three-eyed head and at least one of the same tags. I didn't get more pictures because I had dad with me and had left him in the running car on the curb so I could snap the pictures, and I was also unsure of whether or not I was trespassing on private property or something and felt a little weird about snapping a bunch of pictures with my camera phone. However, I think that some Saturday I'll get one of my photography buddies to head on down there with me and catalog the stuff that's down there. I think I'm going to make that my own little flickr project: a pictorial record of Austin graffiti.

I met my friend Kyle for dinner at Katz's Deli ("Katz's Never Kloses!") in downton Austin tonight, and was grumbling about the fact that the formerly free parking right next to it is now a pay-to-park lot. I ended up having to park a block behind Katz's on the street, but as it turns out it was a good thing because I came upon a spectacular example of some local graffiti art on the back of a building near the corner of 7th street and Rio Grande:

It was pretty cool to find some fairly spectacular street art here in Austin, what with my recent affinity for that sort of thing. I was looking for some good graffiti art to be a background for my phone so it was a nice surprise to actually stumble upon some right here in the 'hood that I didn't have to download from somewhere else. Click the pic to go to the flickr set of the whole wall to see all the streety arty goodness.