What a great weekend!

Sorry I have not blogged in a few days, I've been too busy having fun! So just to get you caught up. Here is what I have been up to since Friday.



Friday, Mike and I caught up on many episodes of Heroes. That is one of the shows on NBC that is no longer available at my house, because I have cable - and TimeWarner and our local NBC affiliate are feuding over money. That means no Heroes, no SNL, no Office. I am mad. But, Mike has Direct TV so he has been recording all the episodes. What a season this is! Lots of villains and characters I thought were good are bad and vice versa.




Saturday was a UT football game vs Oklahoma State University (OSU). It was the closest game so far this year and although UT was ahead the whole time, it felt like we were losing. Colt McCoy broke several school records but also threw an interception and fumbled the ball. It really came down to the last 30 seconds and we got lucky and won 28-24. There was a record number of fans at the game, 98,053 and because the game was so close, more of us than usual stayed until the end - meaning it took an eternity to exit the stadium.



We had a Halloween party to go to Saturday night. I had thought we would have more time between the end of the game and the party, but there was no time to recover from the game before it was time to leave for the party. Kelly gave us the idea for our costumes. I went as a bathroom wall, complete with a tp dispenser and graffiti. And Mike went as kind of a bathroom graffiti writer. It was a very interactive costume and people at the party wrote their own graffiti on my wall. It was hard to dance in this costume though. The costume that won the prize was a girl who came with her face in a framed portrait. Her boyfriend is an artist and he painted it for her, cut out the face and then they painted her face to match it. It was very clever!



On Sunday we had tickets to the last concert at the Backyard an outdoor venue that opened the same year we moved here. It is such a nice venue, but I guess the level of frustration the owner has with the mall it is adjacent to just got to be too much and he says he is getting too old to be doing this. He is thinking about re-opening in another location - he even has the land and there were sketches of the layout yesterday - but he apparently won't commit to doing it yet. So the doors opened at 2, music started at 3 and we got there just after the first performance. Here's who we saw from about 4:00 until we left at 11:30: Nakia and His Southern Cousins (fun band, also saw them at ACL), Carolyn Wonderland (LOVE her music!), the Gourds (a popular local Austin band), Kelly Willis (good, but very laid back and mellow), Grupo Fantasma (got everyone on their feet dancing and singing!) , Ruthie Foster (one of my favorites for her New Orleans bayou type sound altho I think she is from Texas), Jimmie Vaughn (I've never seen him "live" before and he was who I really wanted to see and I wasn't disappointed) and finally Willie himself came on around 10:30. I love Willie. Although he sings softly now and mumbles some of the words, he is so giving to the audience. Fans toss hats and things up onto the stage and he puts them on, sings a song or two or three and then tosses the item back to the owner. So throughout his show he wears many different headbands, cowboy hats and ball caps. Mike and I met Virginia, Brian and Jack (Brian's son who fell asleep during John Fogerty) at the show. Chairs weren't allowed, so we had blankets to sit on, but we had to put them on cement because there was no grass. Anyway, our feet and butts are really sore today after all that time standing and sitting on cement. Oh, and they ran out of food! Lucky for them they did not run out of beer so there wasn't a riot.



So, here is Virginia



And here is Jimmie Vaughn. You can see how the stage is set with big trees behind it and there are large live oaks all around the seating area. This place has a great vibe. It feels like you are way out in the country literally in someone's backyard at a private party. And the main event - Willie!
Now it is Monday. I survived a day at the office and came home to cook dinner for Duncan. But first we carved pumpkins.

Duncan made a scary one with many big teeth and I tried a new technique (for me) where you don't cut all the way through and you get a glow effect. Here are the finished products