You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

My Feels, Let Me Show You Them
Thanks to the slow decline of LJ, I hadn't written as much about BNAT beforehand as I had in other years. I posted my application the day before the list went up, but that was about it. After failing to get in last year, I was really motivated this time to do a spectacular application (or at least as spectacular as I could make it) and do everything I could to get in. And I feel I did, though I've also started to feel that the BNAT application has evolved past a point where I can truly excel at it the way I could when it was purely a written task.



So when Harry posted the Instagram pictures of most of the list on Twitter and my name was nowhere to be seen - even though there were a few seats left to fill - my hope of getting back in this year shrunk to nearly nothing. I did my crying in the two days we waited for the full list, because in my heart I knew it wasn't going to happen for me. And it hurt, it really did. Part of it, naturally, was knowing exactly what I would be missing by not being in that theater, but just as big a part was because of simply not getting picked. After nine times at the rodeo, after drawing as much attention to myself and my love for BNAT and films I dared with those videos and my posts to the BNAT Facebook page, I felt like I had made no impression and had been frozen out of the family (which is ridiculous, because BNAT has grown into so much more than just the 24 hours - like Christmas, we keep it in our hearts all year).

SO ANYWAY, when the final list went up I wasn't too devastated. I'd already shed my tears and - screw it - I'd already bought plane tickets and paid for a hotel room with the money I'd saved all year. I hadn't taken a trip or any deliberate time away from work all year (though I'd been out several days for my dad's funeral, which is like the polar opposite of a vacation). Yes, there was the Christmas trip to Nashville still to come, but that's not exactly going to be a vacation either. So this would be my big trip for the year. I would take Thursday through the next Thursday off, be in Austin for five days, and go over to "Mordor" for a few more, because it's just weird to be in Austin without going there too. Plus, I'd get to see The Hobbit with a friend who would geek out about it even more than I would.

Getting the Heck Out of Dodge
Wednesday night (the 5th), I headed to work with all my baggage, especially thankful at that moment for the car service that picks me up for work and that night prevented me having to lug bags up and down stairs and on and off trains. It was a fairly busy night, and I'm convinced that fate picked my final task Thursday morning specifically to drive me to the utmost level of crazy JUST before I left. When I was free at 8:30 I felt like running out of the building and bursting into song, and as my cab drove me over the 59th Street Bridge, I was humming Simon & Garfunkel's '59th Street Bridge Song' (as I always do on the rare occasions I'm near that bridge).


Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning' last, just … kicking' down the cobblestone. Lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy!



After a fairly typical airport experience, I boarded the plane (very glad that I had ponied up the extra $10 for early check-in) for a not-full flight, which meant that I wasn't smushed and actually had an empty seat next to me. I had brought my copy of the Raiders! book (about Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala and their epic journey to remake Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I've spoken about ad nauseam on this journal) and got a good chunk of it read on my two flights. I had a brief layover in Baltimore, where I had a yummy Arby's lunch and mentally compiled a list of my favorite quotes from the Baltimore-set The Wire ("Shhhheeeeeeeeiiiiiiiittttt!"). As I was sitting and waiting to get into the boarding line, a figure with shocking pink hair approached me who I recognized as fellow BNATer Meghan, who was my seat neighbor for BNAT12 and sat a couple of seats down from me at BNAT9. We didn't make much of an effort to sit together on the plane, as sleeping while sleep was an option took precedence. But she found me at the Austin airport and gave me first pick of her fantastic BNAT-themed buttons.



Helloooooooooo, Austin!
It took an inordinate amount of time to get my rental car, and then they'd double booked the one they assigned me, so they gave me a free upgrade, which was nice. The car had maybe the most hideous interior I'd ever seen - sort of baby-poop brown/yellow, with accents of black - but the accoutrements were fabulous. Most notable was a special USB jack so that I could plug in my iPod and still plug in my GPS - you can even fiddle through the playlists and files from the radio! Yes, I'm a dork. Anyway, I'd seen on the Facebook group that Harry was headed to dinner someplace and had invited anyone who was already in town to join him. But there wasn't a lot of time, and the longer it took to get my car, the less likely I'd be to have time to adequately freshen up at the hotel (which was vital, because I still wanted people to talk to me the next few days and not avoid Stinky Girl).


(Image from BlankBlankBlank flickr)

Thanks to my delays and rush hour traffic, I made it to Omelettry an hour after the appointed time, but that didn't matter with this group, as we ended up being there a while (and a few people had had similar delays and gotten there not long before me). "Hellos" and hugs were exchanged, and I sat at some side tables with Jamie and Jen from San Francisco (longtime BNATers like myself who at this point feel like old friends) and Josh from Portland (my seat neighbor from BNAT11). I got what had to be the biggest omelet I'd ever seen (they claim it's a three egg omelet, but honey please). Oh, and two monster pancakes. I got to meet locals Jason and Lola and their adorable son Bruce (who's less than a year old) and spotted Jeff Mahler once again pleading with Harry to show Teen Wolf at BNAT. Josh and I chatted a bit with Harry's wife, Patricia, and got an interesting perspective from her on the BNAT programming process.

Once everyone started to leave, I joined a small group (Josh, Patricia, and a guy from Austria I'd met at BNAT12 named Tom) in the parking lot talking to Harry, who at that moment was ranting about Time magazine's choice of Cloud Atlas as the worst movie of the year (seriously, what were they thinking). I figured the next few days would be hectic and full of people and that this was pretty much my shot to get to talk to him in a setting that didn't feel like a receiving line. This was undoubtedly one of my favorite moments of the whole trip. Harry talked a little about the job of choosing attendees and how sometimes he picks or doesn't pick someone just to mess with them. And that a lot of times how they respond to that affects how he feels about letting them in in the future. At some point he talked about how he tried to let 11 new people in every year, and that that always meant cutting someone he valued and even someone who might be a BNAT veteran. He then said some really wonderful things about me that made me feel 100% better (well, 100% not-as-bad) about not getting in. Because, even though I wouldn't get to be in that theater, at least I felt like I mattered. That was pretty great. Oh, and we learned that Patricia really, really doesn't like buying paint.

I woke up way too early the next morning and took a shower (after an embarrassing episode where I couldn't figure out how to turn the water on and called the front desk only to have to call them again because I'd finally worked it out - PLUMBING, HOW DOES IT WORK?!!?!). I went to the hotel's breakfast as soon as it was ready and had a Texas-shaped waffle and some other yummies before going back to sleep for an hour.

Or three hours. I slept far longer than I intended and this was a potential problem. A group of us had planned to go to Franklin BBQ for lunch, and this was no ordinary lunch outing where you hop in your car when you're ready to eat, drive somewhere, *maybe* have to wait for a table, order, etc. Franklin is a very popular establishment that is only open for lunch and they close when they run out of food. There is always a HUGE line, and the people at the front get there at like 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. Like these folks, who were already in line while I was scrambling to get away from the hotel.



Top, L to R - Jamie (from L.A.), Barbara (Austin)
Middle, L to R - Lola, Jason (both Austin)
Front - Josh (Portland, Oregon)

Meat-ing of the Minds
So when I got to Franklin at around 10:30, parked a couple blocks away, and saw the line a few hundred people deep, I figured I was screwed. Luckily I hooked up with Jason, Lola, Josh, and Jamie (an Angeleno I met at BNAT12), and they were planning to just go in together on a pile of meat and share it family style, which would be cheaper and which they reasoned was no more cheating the system than the tons of people who always line up to get a bunch of BBQ for their whole office. I got a more formal introduction to Jason and Lola's little Bruce and had a Mexican Coke. I also hugged a great many more people, including my Mississippi girls, Jessica and Lisa. Not an unpleasant way to wait in line.



So Franklin BBQ is hands down the best BBQ I've ever had. Seriously. They cook it all night and rub it with a simple salt and pepper mixture. It is juicy, it is tender, and it is marvelous. If you ever find yourself in Austin, it is well worth the trouble to get in on this meat worship. Our meat was lovely and filling, and the table conversation was full of "that's what she said" jokes. I had a sweet tea AND a Big Red, because how often am I going to get a chance to have a Big Red from a glass bottle. And at one point we decided that "buttnumbathon" should be a measure of time.


(Photos by me, Dshanya, Josh)

Swag Party
About to pop (and scarily short of breath) from the meats, we left and many of us joined the bag-stuffing and poster-rolling party at the Drafthouse. Our usual locale for this tradition - The Highball - had closed for the forthcoming renovations, so we commandeered the picnic tables outside the South Lamar Drafthouse (where BNAT was being held the next day) and got to work. Thanks to the efficiency of the legendary Minnesota Contingency, we got it all done in a little over an hour, and gabbed a bit and exchanged gifts. Frisco Jamie brought me a copy of Mutations (from BNAT6) that he kept forgetting to put in the mail. Heidi from Toronto (formerly of Minnesota and still a part of that crew) passed out copies of her mix CD. And Windy (also of the Minnesota crew) passed out her Musical Mix CD, which came in three flavors (Stage, Screen, and Bollywood - I got Bollywood). When we finally dispersed, I had a few hours for returning to the hotel for rest and ablution (which, thanks to a combination of work-sweat and meat-sweat, I was in dire need of) before the evening's festivities.


Pictures by Meghan

They're Digging in the Wrong Place!
I got back to the Drafthouse about half an hour early to pick up my ticket to Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation and schmooze a bit (I have written about the Raiders thing A LOT in the past, so I won't rehash that here). I met locals Candice and Mark, who I ended up sitting next to in the theater. Everyone was fairly dolled up, because, as Candice reasoned, we'd all see each other at our worst at BNAT tomorrow. We got into the theater to find the usual pre-show playing. In honor of the evening's feature, it was clips from movies about making movies. My other seat neighbor was Benni from Germany, who I'd met at BNAT12 and who'd done the hilarious Wrath of Khan/Trololo Song mashup for his application video. Still rather stuffed from all the meat I'd had earlier (insert your own "that's what she said" joke here), I limited myself to a brown sugar lemonade. Harry got up to introduce the film, and everyone enjoyed the heck out of it. I giggled as Candice freaked the heck out at the kids setting themselves on fire and being dragged behind a truck. Afterwards, Chris and Eric were there to answer questions, and I was glad many people managed to ask questions whose answers wouldn't be found in the book. As we were leaving the theater, I ran into Brian and Eric (not the Raiders one) from L.A. Eric told me that he was rooting for me to get in on standby (I got a lot of that in the hours leading up to BNAT, and I was glad for it).

The final Pre-NAT event was a party at Gibson Bar across the street. I stayed for about 20 minutes, posed for a few pictures, and had had my fill for the night. I'm not good with loud environments of that kind, and there's just very little for me to do at a bar once I've had my one drink or so. Unbeknownst to all of us, Josh, who was supposed to pick up his wife Emily from the airport while most of the rest of us were at Raiders!, ended up having to drive to Houston to collect her. I envy his will power in not breaking his caffeine fast to help him stay awake for the drive.

Christmas Morning
I woke up far too early the next morning and took a gander at the Fake BNAT List - Harry's annual tease of the real lineup - and mused over what the fake titles could be stand-ins for. There were quite a few that had connections that could have been drawn to The Hobbit, and among the other movie titles was Xanadu, which compelled me to listen to the soundtrack for that movie on the way to Pre-BNAT breakfast and the theater ("Got some dancin' to do!"). Pre-NAT breakfast was a honey butter chicken biscuit from Whataburger (I have to do that at least once whenever I'm in Austin), and as I arrived at the Drafthouse, I was trying not to get too excited or nervous about my standby prospects.

One thing that thrilled me beyond measure, though, was that, at the last minute, Tim League had given a couple of seats in his block to Chris and Eric (the Raiders guys). Having done their screening and book signing the night before, they were still in town, and as Harry had mentioned that this was the 10th anniversary (almost to the day) of the original accidental screening of their film at BNAT4, Tim allowed them to experience BNAT and see the context in which their little project screened. From what I understand, they were adopted by the Minnesota peeps and had an absolute ball. That accidental screening is one of my favorite BNAT memories EVER, and if I couldn't be there this time, I was really, really glad that they got to be a part of it (in a literal sense, I mean, since they kind of *are* a part of BNAT to me).

Once people arrived at the Drafthouse, the morning was spent rifling through goodie bags and going through the traditional BNAT yearbook, which contained everyone's "I didn't get into BNAT" pictures (mine is at the top of this post). There were some really stellar ones. Patricia took a picture of divorce papers - a card only she could play. Elijah Wood used a still from LOTR of sadface!Frodo - a card only *he* could play. Without getting too much into it, there were ultimately about a dozen seats available for standby, and my number did not come up. I blame the fact that I left my good luck charm - the duck call from BNAT7 - at the hotel. The manager, Kristen, gave us all her e-mail address and said to feel free to e-mail her throughout the night, as seats were bound to open up as people (for whatever reason) left early. I e-mailed her four or five times but heard nothing back. (I heard later that she was hanging out in the lobby drinking and likely never even checked her e-mail. Oh well.) But I decided I wasn't going to waste too much time on that when the entire city of Austin was before me and there were still movies to be seen.

And thus began what I have dubbed "Me-NAT."

I'm Having a Me Party!
The first thing to do was to go back to the hotel, get on my laptop, and buy a ticket to the 70mm screening of Lifeforce, which was starting at 3:30 at the Alamo Ritz (home of BNAT9). This left quite a bit of extra time, during which I went to Torchy's Tacos for lunch (I seemed to be a step behind everyone else on the restaurant hopping, and I believed I was the only one who hadn't been there yet). I ordered a "Crossroads" (brisket taco) and a "Trashy Trailer Park" (fried chicken taco with lots of yummy goop) and had a delightful yet solitary meal in their covered picnic area. At one point, I was forcibly reminded of the outdoor eating experience at an amusement park. This was an okay way to not be at BNAT. (I'm sorry if you find these details tedious, but I want to keep them, no nyah.)



I found a parking space near the movie theater downtown and bemoaned the fact that parking was no longer free in that area on weekends. Oh, for the days when I could conveniently park my car 100 yards from the old Drafthouse on Colorado Street. Anyway, what I also bemoaned was what I was seeing on Twitter. See, about a week before BNAT there was this huge discussion about having cell phones and other electronic devices in the theater during BNAT. I have always been of the opinion that if you can't be separated from your devices for 24 dadfraddlin' hours then DON'T COME and leave that seat for someone else. Yet here were at least half a dozen people, once again live-Tweeting BNAT. A few of them may have had permission from Harry, but I *hate* the idea of BNAT being some scoopfest. I seethed about that for quite a while, but I still couldn't resist following along as the titles were posted.



Lifeforce at the Ritz was amazing. There were tons of trailers before the movie started - all of them vampire movies, most of which I'd never heard of, all of which I wanted to see as soon as possible. The feature itself was introduced by Lars Nilsen, who is a programmer for the Drafthouse and used to attend BNAT every year, but I get the sense that he's kind of over it. It was nice to see him, then, and he gave a very entertaining introduction (as he usually does). I have written about this film before (here) for my vampire movie series, so I won't explain it again. Click the link, though, if you want some more detail. The practical special effects are really extraordinary (some might say cheesy, but they're jerks, so who cares what they think), and the music … man, Henry Mancini pulled out all the stops, and hearing it on a magnificent (and really loud) 70mm soundtrack was exquisite.

Next I went back to the hotel and popped in one of three movies I'd Netflixed and brought with me, all of which were going to be entirely new to me.


Road House

No, this isn't the movie with Patrick Swayze. This is a noir film with Ida Lupino, Richard Widmark, and Celeste Holm. Lupino plays an entertainer, of sorts. She doesn't really have much of a singing voice, but she can do a lot with a song, even without a spectacular voice. She's a hit at Richard Widmark's bar and has a hate-to-love dynamic with the bar's manager, and my shipping war compadres will know that I was all over that like Hermione on Ron in chapter 31 of Deathly Hallows. The second half of Road House is mostly a love triangle plot, with Richard Widmark trying to force Ida to marry him and framing the manager guy for theft from the bar. When all is said and done, there are a couple of good bar fights, which is all you really need from a movie called "Road House," amirite?

Okay, at this point I was exhausted. I decided to try and sleep for a few hours and then try e-mailing Kristen again. I woke up at around 2am and decided to go and get something to eat. Not knowing what was available at that time of night and in the area, I was ready to settle for snacks from a quickie-mart. I found a Waffle House and remembered that there is probably no place more awesome than a Waffle House in the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, I was not the only one with this idea, and instead of truckers and various interesting personalities, the place was full of kids and hipsters. Typical. Still, I couldn't say no to country ham and eggs, so I stayed. When I got back to the hotel, I decided it was time for something a little freaky, so I popped in The Toy Box, which is a movie I already owned, thanks to having several years ago bought the disc it shared with Toys Are Not For Children. I hadn't ever plucked up the courage to watch it, though, as the trailer kind of creeped me out.


The Toy Box

Hoo, boy. I was not prepared for this one. While not as disturbing as TANFC, it was waaaay pornier. If I could boil a review down to three words, it would be "TOO MANY GENITALS." The basic story - yes, there is (sort of) a story) - is that a bunch of people regularly gather for parties at the home of someone they call "Uncle." These parties consist of the various guests performing "tricks" (i.e., sex acts) for Uncle and being paid a good deal of money for them. Frequently the "tricks" have a rather macabre twist, and the nature of these scenes keep them from being just generic sex scenes, which is something, I guess. Probably the most memorable scene is when a woman is made love to by a bed (as pictured above). Let me repeat that … she is made love to … by a bed. Oh, and one woman is turned into a giant. A very naked (and slightly stoned, it seemed) giant. The movie takes a turn for the sci-fi, as it turns out that Uncle is an alien and he has been feeding off the energy released from all the sexing. A strange way to end what is essentially a soft-core porno, but there you have it.


Cat Dancers

I was only aware of this movie because of a list the Drafthouse's Zack Carlson made of his favorite vintage discoveries of last year, in which this was ranked #4. The picture seen above caught me immediately, and it looked like the most amazingly bizarre thing I was likely to see for some time. I was delighted to find that Netflix carried it, so into my queue it went … to sit for almost a year. This plays like a lot of "true life of entertainers" documentaries, and you have the usual arc of ascending to greatness and the swift fall of tragedy and despair. But the context and the subjects are really quite fascinating. Ron and Joy are two ballet dancers who grew up together, started an act together, and fell in love and married. After meeting William Holden after some performance, Ron tells him about a dream he had about Joy dancing while being a cat. William Holden apparently gave Ron and Joy either a tiger or a jaguar (I can't remember), and they began to collect both tigers and jaguars (and panthers? oh my!) and incorporated them into their act, becoming one of the first acts to do so (around the same time, or perhaps slightly before, Siegfried and Roy). They eventually bring in a third person to help them train the cats and perform with them, and over time the three of them develop a very close … okay, they become lovers, like, all three of them together. Anyway, tragedy strikes, and it's actually quite moving. Much more so than I thought it would be.


Juan of the Dead

I'd heard about this from either SXSW or Fantastic Fest, and everyone raved about it. It never came to a theater in New York that I was aware of, but I bought the DVD months ago when it was released and never watched it until now. As you might imagine from the title, it is yet another spin on the zombie film. It never ceases to amaze me how much mileage filmmakers can get from what should be a simple premise. Context, character, and tone, however, can make a simple, one-note concept into a complex character study and social commentary. I won't go too much into the plot with this one, because it would turn into a play-by-play of favorite lines and scenes, but this is a mostly humorous take on the zombie lore (not quite as straight comedy as Shaun of the Dead, but close), with a distinctly Cuban flavor. It's flat-out wonderful.

I had an hour to kill before I had to leave for the showing of Lincoln at the Alamo on Slaughter Lane, which was the other location I was keen to check out. That wasn't enough time for another movie, so I flitted around on the internet before heading back out, mostly checking out which of the vintage films from this year's BNAT I could see immediately (answer: all of them).



I was impressed with the look of the Slaughter Alamo, but their customer service needs work. The wait staff are friendly and efficient and everything, but they don't seem to know how to not be intrusive during the movie. Also, the way the individual theaters are designed bugs me, as the screens go floor to ceiling, making it impossible for the wait staff to duck out of the way and not momentarily block the screen anyway. Pre-show entertainment included a lot of Lincoln-related clips, trailers, and some sketch comedy. Also, when it came time for the Don't Talk PSA, due to the political nature of the feature, they rolled out an old PSA that featured the late Ann RIchards, the former Texas governor who used to be a regular at the South Lamar location ("Talk during the movie and Ann Richards will take your ass out!").



The movie was just as wonderful as I remembered ("Oh, what a joy to be comprehended."), and I'm even more impressed by the writing and acting (not to mention the restraint of the directing) this go-round. Not much more to say that I didn't say in my original review.

And We Can Build This Thing Together, Standin' Strong Forever…
After coming back to the hotel for a few more hours of sleep, I got up and headed to the first Post-NAT event, which was dinner at Casa Chapala. The restaurant usually closed at 9:00pm on Sunday nights, but they were so excited at the prospect of such a big group, they stayed open after their regular closing time just for us. I sat with a lot of the Minnesota folks and I was between Oregon Josh and Cathie from L.A. I asked someone to tell me, for science, at what point the Teen Wolf print burned up, and this led to a stream of conversation that somehow resulted in Josh, Cathie, Heidi, Minnesota Jeremy, and I belting Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from the movie Mannequin (which is Jeff Mahler's next project to bug Harry about screening at BNAT). Another group tried to trump us with the theme from Xanadu, but we countered with the "Misty Mountain" song from The Hobbit. It was a strange few minutes.


Pictures by Meghan. Pic on the bottom is of Jamie and Jen from Frisco.

After dinner we were scheduled to make our way to a nearby bar, but at that point I was so tuckered I could barely imagine driving back to the hotel. I did manage a side trip, because Jamie and Jen from San Francisco very generously offered me one of their swag bags, filled with stuff they didn't need doubles of, so I popped by their hotel to pick that up, feeling that for a weekend in which I failed to get in to the event I was there for, this was still a pretty damn awesome weekend all around.

Too Many Foods
The next morning I breakfasted at Magnolia and had something called an "Eggscape" (and a single pancake, because you can't go to Magnolia and not get pancakes). Then a couple of hours later a group of BNATers were gathering at Kerbey Lane Cafe, which made for a lot of food in a little space of time. Pretty much the theme song of my time in Austin, now that I think about it. The Franklin outing clearly set a dangerous precedent.

I went back to the hotel to sleep off some of that food and rest up for the evening's gathering (and what would end up being the last gathering I would attend in Austin this year). We met at the new Gourdough's Public House for a semi-late dinner. I think I mentioned a couple of years ago going to a place called Gourdough's, which was a food truck (though it stays in one place) that serves enormous doughnuts with a wide variety of insane toppings (that year I got a donut with fried chicken and honey butter on it). The Public House was a full-on restaurant, with an expanded menu (though still building on the foundation of huge donuts with all kinds of stuff on them). Having not yet quite recovered from the one-two punch of Magnolia and Kerbey Lane, I got something relatively small and then got a dessert donut, which I ate about a third of at the restaurant and the rest of for breakfast the next morning.



I slept as late as I could the next morning and still had some time to kill before check-out time, so I watched the last of my Netflix never-before-seen movies, which was Girl on a Motocycle. This is a film by Jack Cardiff, who directed some films, including the BNAT6 gem Mutations, but is better known (and more respected) for his cinematography work, particularly with Powell & Pressburger (he is the reason The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus look so beautiful). Girl on a Motorcycle is about a woman named Rebecca (played by Marianne Faithful) who is on a journey from the bed of her husband to the bed of her lover, Daniel (played by the beautiful French actor Alain Delon). Over the course of the journey, she has a series of flashbacks to how she met Daniel, as well as fantasy sequences of being reunited with him. Except for some strange psychedelic shots and some weird dialogue ("Your toes look like tombstones" - WTF?!), this was pretty great.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen…
After packing up, I left the hotel at the last possible moment and still had several hours to kill before my flight to Houston and over four to kill before I had to return the rental car. I went to Half-Price Books, even though I didn't really have a lot of room for more books than I'd already brought. I did look through their movie selection, though, and was pleasantly surprised to find The Gang's All Here, which had played BNAT this year. After lunch at Buffet Palace (which I'd been to many times, but only now discovered was conveniently accessible from South Lamar - I guess I'd only ever approached it from another route?), I really couldn't do anything else of note before the car was due, so I headed to the airport early.

Failing to get into BNAT aside, I really could not have asked for more from this trip. It was wonderful to see everyone. I am finally at a point where there's more than a handful of people that I feel comfortable walking up to and striking up a conversation with. There are times when I think I'd like to live in Austin. I certainly enjoy it more every time I'm there. And I *think* I'm actually starting to learn my way around. Kind of.