Hanging With the Texas Qs

Okay, I realize that I haven't updated daily as I hoped I would, so I decided to combine all of my posts from this week down here in and around Austin into one big mega-post. Here's how the week went:

Tuesday, July 9

Bats, Donuts, and the Capitol

There's nothing quite like going to a bridge in downtown Austin at sunset to see around three million bats swarm into the sky. What made it even better was that I was there with Rachel and Andy, and we all thought that it was pretty awesome.

Afterward, we went to try out a local trailer park-themed "gourmet donut" restaurant for dessert. After getting the extremely rich "Black Out" donut, made with brownie batter, fudge icing, and chocolate covered brownie bites, I felt somewhat ill from chocolate overdose...

We closed out our day with a quick drive past the Capitol building on the way back home.











Wednesday, July 10

Bowling With the Q's

On Wednesday, we decided to  go bowling while it was just the cousins and I (and Aunt Leslie of course). It was Scarlett's first time ever bowling, and she actually handled the turn-taking pretty well -- up until the end when she got impatient and wanted to keep the shoes as we left. As you can see, she needed a bit of help with the actual bowling part...













Thursday, July 11

Six Flags Fiesta Texas

During her time as a first-grader, Rachel had won a free ticket to Six Flags over the summer. We decided to take advantage of this prize (and my season pass) to spend an awesome day with just me, Rachel, Andy, and my Uncle David. Between burgers, the Scooby Doo ride, swing rides, and slushies, I believe it was a day well spent.

Back Home

On the way back to Austin from Six Flags, we passed through a small town just outside of San Antonio called Schertz. It's hard to believe that nine years have passed since I sat in the back seat of our van and watched as we drove away from 241 Victoria Point for what seemed to me to be the last time. Now I can't help but look back at that house with fond memories and hope that whoever lives there now is having just as great a time in that house on the corner as I did.





























Friday, July 12

Tie Dying With the Qs

Nothing quite says 'Summer' like sitting out on  a hot driveway, having fun with white t-shirts and multicolored dyes. Naturally, we had to embrace the summer tradition, and broke out white shirts and canvas bags, and went crazy with the colors. I for the most part, was in charge of collecting and handing out colors as they were needed (or not). The perfect way to spend my last full day with my cousins here in Texas -- for a while at least...

Solo Flight

It feels like time is just flying by way too quickly this summer. Already I've been through a week of sunny camping with my Boy Scout troop, and had a great time during my stay at AGS. Now, I'm in Texas, visiting my aunt, uncle, and three small cousins for a planned college visit at Texas A&M. What I didn't expect was that on the way here, I'd have to take two flights, with a three-and-a-half hour layover between the two. Of course, there are worse places to be stuck (wi-fi limitations have their drawbacks though...) and I managed to survive my time there.

Due to a delay, however, my second flight was forty minutes late, which made for a very late night, and I didn't actually get to bed until a bit after midnight. So, I've managed to use today as a day to rest and recuperate, with good amounts of watermelon and my aunt's cookies mixed in as well (gotta have a ton of energy to keep up with all three of my cousins), and I even got to eat at one of my favorite restaurants in Texas: Rudy's.

 

 

Video Lab - Countdown: 36 Hours

In an earlier post, I related a tale about the semi-glamorous world of Lights, Camera, Action. As we begin to approach our deadline, however, things have decided to get quite crazy around here, just to mess with us. To begin with, our video-editing software is so advanced that I could almost swear it came from sometime twenty years from now.

To keep up with both our software and our deadlines, we have had to stay late at the office some nights -- which, when combined with how early most mornings during these two weeks have been, lead to quite the sleep deprivation experience, as you can probably tell...
   

And to make things even more interesting, the only elevator in the building -- the same elevator that I was trapped in -- decided to stop working again, with seven of the ten people in our crew trapped inside. Unlike my experience, however, they had to climb out to the floor above where the elevator stopped.

So, after a long two weeks, the end is in sight -- just one final push, and everything will fall into place just before my time here at AGS is up. Can't wait to get this video together (finally) so I can publish a copy here for you all to see.

Insights Dinner

When the staff members of AGS announced this morning that we needed to be at a certain building on campus today at six, looking our best for what they called the "Insights Dinner," nobody knew quite what to expect. Regardless, we all dressed our best (or at least made a feeble attempt) and had an interesting dinner where those who had attended cotillion sometime in the past felt right at home. The rest of us, however, felt even more out of place when the traditional seven course meal table setting was combined with a buffet style food line.

Our guest speaker for the night was Robert Record from southern Louisiana, and the main thing that he emphasized when he got up to the podium was about failure:

"We all have dreams, hopes, and lofty goals. I hope you fail. Because when you fail, you find out whether that something is truly what you want to pursue. If it is what you deeply and truly care about, you will get back up, let your failure roll right off of you, and keep trying. If it is not, then you will find yourself free to pursue whatever project or cause you wish until you find that something that means something to you."