PlatKat.com: So, Where Have I Been?

Sunday, November 19, 2006

So, Where Have I Been?

Everywhere! In the last two weeks, I've slept in 6 different places, been to 4 major cities, supported 2 customers, said good-bye to 15 coworkers, attended 4 parties, ate at Chuy's 3 times, got invited to join 1 threesome (huh? yeah, I know...), drove a zillion hours, freaked out 3 times, AND I visited my parents.

I'm a busy girl, I tell ya. I flew into Denver and drove into the southeast region of Colorado for a few days. Good thing CMJ happened because long drives like that require some cool new music. Incidentally, I keep meaning to make a swag list of all the stuff I got at CMJ, much like when I went to SXSW, but I probably won't get to it. My top three songs would be more useful to anyone reading this anyway, so here they are:

1. "Drink to Movin' On" by Grand National. You may remember them from this cool video I mentioned in a blog post a long time ago.

2. "Comeback Girl" by Republic of Loose. Gus says it's too repetitive, but everyone knows I'm a sucker for house music so that should put things in perspective.

3. "The Fatalist" by Robbers on High Street. *shrug* Just good.

And if you like hip-hop, "Something outta Nothing" by Messiah J & The Expert deserves an honorable mention. I must also note that Filter's compilation was surprisingly bad. Get with it fuckers, I was counting on you guys.

Anyway, I drove back to Denver and spent a couple of nights at the beautiful Magnolia hotel. I got to eat at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Nine 75. Everything about it is great. There's a wide variety of food, the portions are small, it's not too expensive, the ambiance is sophisticated, and my waiter was super nice. Some people there told me about The Shelter, which is now one of my new favorite clubs. The place was huge and I happened to land there on... INDUSTRIAL NIGHT!!! Maybe somebody up there really does love me. The music was great and the eclectic crowd was actually extremely nice.

After spending a day in the Colorado office at work, I flew down to Austin where McP threw a party for me and Gus. It was nice having most of my friends in one place again. Before that, I enjoyed one of my three trips to Chuy's with The Supergroup, who are a party in and of themselves. (And I know at least a few of them just got a week's worth of warm fuzzies from reading that.) After a short trip to Dreamers, I got to drive on the new-fangled Mopac Superhighway. It was fun until I had to get off and couldn't. It sucks when you try and try, but just can't get off.

We left McP's house around 4:30am to check into our room at the Omni downtown. They were out of normal rooms, so we got a sweet-ass suite. At over 1,000 square feet, it was bigger than our apartment, but it was high up and had a cityscape view like our apartment does, so we felt right at home. Unfortunately, they had rules about partying so we didn't try anything, but that didn't stop the big ecstacy party that the people above us had. (And fortunately, we know about that because we were invited, not because they bothered us.)

Gus's cousin got married, so we went to a nice dinner at Truluck's on Saturday. Abdiel and Heather are the smartest couple alive. They got married in Jamaica with no involvement of friends and family. Then they came back to Austin and had a small, elegant reception. Brilliant.

The most surprising thing about my trip was that I had fun at Austin Park and Pizza. I don't normally enjoy kiddie games and it seemed like throwing a bunch of adults into a place like that for mandatory fun was begging for an early ending. But it was actually kinda cool. I think having a bunch of coworkers give me drink tickets helped. I didn't really do much "playing," but it was good to see everyone.

However, the week went a bit downhill from there. Being back in the office with a ton of people everywhere was a little stressful. On Wednesday, I went to get my toes done in lieu of lunch and it was so windy that my car antenna broke off. I hate weather. Just like I hate time.*

Okay, so it's the severe weather and the bad times that I hate. The rest of the week had both.

After losing most of our staff at work due to layoffs and ended contracts, there wasn't much the rest of us could do but go somewhere and drink (as part of a company-sanctioned event). I've been trying to curtail my use of alcohol because when I drink, I turn into an ass. Friday night was no exception. I think I set the continuous bridge-burning record at almost 12 solid hours. Good thing I hopped on a plane the next morning and flew 1,000 miles north or my ass would have been kicked to the moon by now.

As always, it was wonderful to be in Austin and see my friends, but it's good to be home, sleeping in my own big comfortable bed with someone who truly loves me. When you're a huge listless nomad like me, the feelings of wanderlust are forever insatiable. But if you know you have someone at home waiting for you, simply staying in one place for a few seconds feels like the most worthwhile activity in the world. Having all my shit in one place is nice too.

*I often jokingly hate things that are mere functions of existence. Like, I don't hate time because I'm busy and there's not enough of it and all the trite reasons most people hate time. I hate it because we feel the need to have Daylight Savings Time when it does nothing for me. It just gets dark earlier now and I feel like working less. Time is a measurement of man and what we say it is doesn't matter because it will always do what it does. It's kind of like having a war on terror. There's no beginning, no end, and no reason anyway. Things are the way they are.

posted by platkat @ 2:51 PM