Texas, Day 3

Still can't get the pics to load at the moment (our digital camera is more used to hooking up to a Windows XP machine and it's nothin' but Macs here) but I'll be showing the cream of the crop from the bunch when I get back. In the meantime, I can report that it was another action-packed day here in Texas...

My friend Deborah and I got in my rented Jeep about 10 this morning and headed to Austin. She got us on Congressional Avenue and I got some awesome photos of the Texas State Capitol. Then we headed over to the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Deborah got a pic of me standing in front of "The Tower". And yes, this is the building from which Charles Whitman shot and killed all those people. Which isn't really why I wanted to see it: it's always struck me as a great design for a building. But I couldn't disassociate being there from the history of the place, either.

After that, we got on I-35 and headed north to Waco, 'cuz there's something I've been bound and determined to do ever since I found out that I was going to this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon in Austin: visit my brother-in-law Jonathan who's a seminary student at Baylor. About 1 p.m. we got to his apartment and hooked up with him, and we went to this place in Waco that serves up Chicago-style deep-dish pizza... which was the first time in my life that I'd had any. After that (and it was a lot of pizza, believe you me) we went to the Dr. Pepper Museum: Waco is where Dr. Pepper was invented and I think the whole state is pretty darned proud of that :-) Then Jonathan took us around Baylor: a school with more steeples than some entire towns that I've been too.

We got back to Jonathan's place, and we said goodbye for now (I'll be seeing him again in a few weeks). Then we got back on I-35 for the drive back to Austin. I dropped Deborah off at her home around 7 and then high-tailed it back to town. The reason? A get-together for the Butt-Numb-A-Thon people at some chili joint in downtown Austin. Took me awhile to find it but in the end I got there and met some of the Ain't It Cool gang: Nordling (will be posting a funny story about when he and I met when I get the pics up), Massawyrm, and then the man himself Harry Knowles! Will have a pic of Harry and me up soon too.

Then I came back here, and I'm gonna be hitting the hay soon 'cuz I'm gonna be getting up early tomorrow morning so that I can be at the Alamo Drafthouse (the Ritz one) at 10 for Butt-Numb-A-Thon. Which is where I and a few hundred other movie geeks will be spending the next 24 hours watching Lord-knows-what.

So this is the last report that I'll be filing 'til Sunday afternoon. Expect tons of good stuff that I'll be writing about when I get back :-)

Butt-Numb-A-Thon starts in 13 and a half hours. Here we go, fast and furious...