Austin: Week One

[bryant]

We have been in Austin a week and a half. In that time I have started my new job, we’ve found a house to rent, we opened a bank account, saw two movies, caught De Danann (or at least Frankie Gavin and a band, there’s some dispute there), and I’ve eaten more Mexican food than I have in the last five years. So that’s all good.

This is a neat city. The brown is not bothering me; I had years to get used to brown nature in the Bay Area. It’s a bit browner here, drought and all, but that’s life. I had forgotten a lot of little differences that come with living in the middle of the country. There’s more elbow room for the houses, and the spaces between neighborhoods. The city has room to breathe, which I like a lot.

On Saturday, I was reminded of some important tricks that come with living in a serious college football town. Namely, why are you going near downtown and trying to eat on a Saturday during football season, you idiot? Right.

The local indie bookstore is pretty good. On the grand scheme of things, it’s not quite Kepler’s or Tattered Cover, but it’s good. Little less literary than the Harvard Book Store, but better as a generalist store. I liked it. Dragon’s Lair is a superb gaming store. Plenty of places to still check out, too.

The food is great and we’ve barely dipped into it. We picked up a couple of local food guides at BookPeople. Nom nom nom. We’ve also barely touched the music; got to get more serious about that. I suppose we’ve been pretty busy, you know, finding banks and houses and all that fun stuff. The real estate market is as frenetic as we’d heard; the place we wound up in went on the market the day before we saw it, we put in an offer immediately, we were the second people to look at it, and it had two backup offers if ours hadn’t gone through.

My job rocks. Good people, tough challenges, but that’s what satisfies me. I’m quite happy there.

Happy times.

Mirrored from Population: One.

Comments

[rfrancis]

I know a heap of people in the area, but they are basically all SCA people so that may or may not be useful of me. :)

[bryant]

Heh. I dunno, do they do tabletop gaming? ;)

[rfrancis]

...possibly? :)

I haven't myself in many years, so I don't keep up. :(

[ladyjestyr.livejournal.com]

Nifty :) I know various people who've lived in Austin at one stage or another, and they all seem to have pretty fond memories of it, so hopefully it's a good place to be.

Though I hadn't realised you had a new job; what are you working on? :)

[bryant]

It's a totally sweet geek town. I'm working on Dark Millennium Online. :)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Whoa, new job?

[bryant]

Oh, yeah, I kinda got a new job. I was holding off on mentioning it in public till I was done with the last gig, and then I forgot. I'm down at Vigil Games in Austin working on the Warhammer 40K MMO.

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

You're at Vigil? Tell Ross Watson you know me. He's good people.

[tfbretz.livejournal.com]

Also, we must discuss OwlCon.

[bryant]

He is. He is sitting literally right next door to me as I type.

OwlCon yes. I am amped.

[bryant]

Ross says, somewhat paraphrased, "OMG tell him to come visit so we can play Feng Shui." So I think that needs to be a thing. I note that I have successfully run games for 11 year olds in the past and I like 'em, if that turns out to be part of the thing!

[kodi]

Welcome to lovely Texas!

[bryant]

Thanks!

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

Welcome to ATX!

The first-week Tex-Mex binge was also an experience we had...

[kallan.livejournal.com]

YAY, I'm glad all is going well (and that you went to the cool movie theatre)
There's a big food truck following in austin as well, you need to get onthe Twitter and track them down.

I laughed when you mentioned the football town thing...I learned much the same when I lived in Ann Arbor and pre-planned all my getting things done movement for friday before the game. How close are you to the stadium?

[bryant]

It's a few miles away, so it's not like there aren't safe directions to go. But we were downtown when the game was ending last Saturday. Whew.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

The day before the game, 30% of the employees at my office come in wearing burnt orange. It's a good way to tell when game day is if you've forgotten.

[bryant]

I am kind of curious to see how my office rolls. In San Francisco, none of my fellow geeks were sports fans. In Boston, most of 'em were. In Baltimore, there were a lot of people very serious about the Ravens/Redskins/Steelers/Eagles.