Sorry, no brown rice on Sunday

Erin in front of a sign at the capitol.....

The office of Terry Tottenham

This is a statue to honor the 'confederate dead' at the state capitol. There's no mention of the union here... I'm not even sure I saw anything about the United States.... just Texas and the confederacy.....here's hoping TX leaves the union and we get dual citizenship.

Jess and Erin in front of the capitol
The bar area at the Hula Hut where we spent an hour and half consuming 5 or so bowls of chips and queso.....mmmmmm.......
Jess and a cannon.
The view from the Tottenham's backyard... amazing.... notice the topography
Jess, her mom, and my Erin.

And now.... a real post:

So.... we went to Austin to visit Erin's college roomie: Jessica (she and Alamo need a blog) Tottenham! Jess is a staff worker for Young Life in SLC. Jess has an amazing opportunity to start a Capernaum Club ministry in SLC to disadvantaged youth (http://www.younglife.org/Pages/Capernaum.htm).

Jess was in town to update some of her TX based ministry supporters about her work with Young Life and the new opportunities doing Capernaum. A little known fact about Jessica Tottenham is that she was born right here in Houston! Who knew? Another fact about Jess is that her passion for all things TX is sort of justified... at least when it comes to Austin.

Austin is beautiful..... Houston is this flat concrete jungle...... Austin has rolling hills...everything is green... there's lots of crazy hippies and really cool confederate memorabilia.... oh and ton of bats that live under a bridge. Austin is home to the main campus of UT, Amy's Ice Cream (which is.... dare I say it.... more glorious than the Midvale Cold Stone...) and the Tottenham's.

Erin and I stayed with Jess and her family at their amazing home. Her oldest sister Joe was in town with her twin boys who were very shy and silly. I really admire their life... they sleep for like 10 hrs, get up... eat.... poop their pants... wait 'till someone changes them.... go back to sleep... and repeat.... it's amazing!

Speaking of pooping your pants... I heard a life-changing story from a source that shall remain nameless.....

A friend had gone to a bachelor party in the great state of TX.... and this was their activity for the evening:

Everyone put on a pair of depends.... took some ex-lax, and wrestled the night away.... last man to poop his pants wins! What a glorious way to spend your last night as a bachelor!!!!!!

Here's a quick list of guys I'd like to wrestle and poop my pants with:

1) My Dad - who introduced me to professional wrestling (Old School Wrestlemania Videos - we used to get big bags of popcorn and watch Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant go at it!), Mel Brooks, and the Broncos, and just about everything else that makes me manly!

2) Jonathan Hays - Jonathan would be too funny..... he embraces his.... physique and the physical comedy of him pooping himself would be too much to handle.

3) Sean Patrick - I dare not speculate on what his wrestling outfit might look like... I just hope it's made of mesh

4) Gep/Dittmer/Schwarz/Ari: My college roomies from the crack house and el caliente apts! We watched wrestling pay per views together.... .Kyle and I retook Physics because we played wrestling so much.... Ari gets special bonus points for his luche libre qualities (he can reverse a powerbomb - although he's a little guy... so his poop would not be as explosive)

The next dude to get married.... PLEASE consider this for your bachelor party, and consider inviting me!

OK.... back to Austin....

So the first night there was Jess' Donor Dessert....... one of her neighbors made a ton of desserts from scratch... espresso brownies, strawberry cheesecake thingies.... chocolate cake..... it was AWESOME.... all natural ingredients too for those of you Whole Foods types....

It was cool to meet all the sweet people who showed up!

On Saturday we made our obligatory pilgrimage to the State Capitol! Everyone who crosses the state line needs to visit the State Capitol. It is beautiful.... we found out why Six Flags (the theme park) is called Six Flags..... we found out that God & TX are inextricably linked, and we saluted the soldiers who fought valiantly for the confederacy......and I mounted a cannon.....

After the capitol, we went around the campus of UT which was quite impressive....the soccer stadium is huge! After we drove around the stadium we went to the Hula Hut for lunch.
The wait at the Hula Hut was an hour and half... which fortunately is just the right amount of time to sit in the bar area with some chips and queso and people watch the crazy texans! (It would be redundant to say crazy inebriated texans... as all texans are by legal mandate inebriated after 1 PM) By the time we ate we were full from the chips... but the Hula Hut was awesome... right on a river/lake thing.... you can boat right to the restaurant!

After lunch we went back home and chilled out while I watched the NFL Draft..... I can't comment here on my NFL Draft thoughts..... it would distract from my focus on Austin, and pooping.

Saturday night we went to dinner at this sub shop called Thundersomething.... It was like 8PM and this joint closed at 9.... which for some reason meant they'd shut off everything that could be used to heat anything in the building..... like a sandwhich or meat.... etc. But that didn't dissuade us. When we got to the counter I was filled with glee... the young, potentially stoned, sales attendant had a full color tattoo of several characters from He-Man! I promptly told him about my dog named Battlecat to which he replied something incoherent...... I was soooooo let down by his lack of enthusiasm... perhaps he was hallucinating when he got the tattoo?

So we followed the subs with some Amy's Ice Cream and then saw Thank You for Smoking.... I'm always up for satire and thought the movie was quite funny... although I could have done with about 600 less f-bombs per sentence.

On Sunday we went to Johnny Rob's church - Redeemer Presbyterian. The sermon was awesome... a little Luke 24 meets Genesis 3... I dug it! They had an intense organ player which was cool. After service we went to lunch at this Chinese joint.....

The server came to take our order, and I requested brown rice.... to which he replied... We don't serve brown rice on Sundays......

I'm not sure what that means..... I was too amazed to ask why not......

After lunch Erin and I had to leave the beautiful land of Austin and head back to Houston.... and though we were excited to see Battlecat and eat at Dairy Queen on the way.... we were quite sad to leave behind hills and Tottenhams.