I spent my first night in Austin hanging out at Pete’s Dueling Piano bar with 2 friends from work. I adore pianos and this wasn’t your typical swanky piano lounge. It was dark, full of drunk people, and loads of fun. The musicians were incredible and could play any song requested of them.

After we closed the piano bar down at 1am on a Tuesday, we went next door to a college bar. I don’t know what was going on, but things got weird. One fella was dressed as a Fred Flintstone pimp, another as Despicable Me, another as a woman (possibly Britney Spears), and an 80′s jogger in a wind breaker. Rush night for a frat party in April? Who knows.

Besides those people, there was a girl standing by herself practicing golf swings and putts with an imaginary golf club. I was intrigued and slightly embarassed for her, so I walked up to her to see if she could help me with my swing. Do you know what she said to me? “Get out of my way. I’m going to hit you with my swing!”.

I am waaaaay too old for college bars and those shennanigans. By 2am we headed back to our hotel where I had an incredible view.

The conference organizers arranged to rent out Austin City Limits studio and I was excited to see the venue.

A local band played all sorts of standard rock favourites, like Lynard Skynrd, Bon Jovi, & Journey.

Darla and I wandered around the city for a couple of hours one afternoon. I really loved this city and want to go back with Bob sometime.

We walked along 6th Street, the main music drag and city hot spot. The buildings were charming.

I missed my chance to meet Willie Nelson by a few hours. On 4/20 at 4:20 pm, a statue was dedicated to Willie outside of Austin City Limits studio. Willie was there, accompanied by his white beard and cowboy hat.

After 3 days of conferences and mingling with some clients, I had reached my Austin City Limit of margaritas and I was happy to be back on the road again to see the hubster.

I had to travel to Austin, TX for work last week and I was able to see my Aunt Susan, Uncle Tom, cousin Peter and Andrea while I was there. They took me out to dinner at a restaurant called The Oasis, located on a hillside overlooking Lake Travis.

Auntie and Uncle were excellent tour guides, pointing out worthwhile things to see and providing me with facts. For example, Lake Travis is a man-made lake and it is made out of limestone. That is why the banks are so lovely. Lovely banks? Yes, the rock is lovely.

Some day when I have a pillion dollars, I’ll buy a home in each state. My Texas home will likely be the one with the turret below.

Back to The Oasis. The restaurant was huge and had patios and decks all around the cliffside.

We got to see a beautiful sunset, and when the sun has mostly sunk into the water and only a sliver remains, the restaurant staff ring a bell to notify the patrons to watch the last bit of sunlight disappear.

When I ran a 5K last year I was sure I would never run again. Somehow, at the beginning of this year, I registered for a race. I’m pretty sure it was the dozens of Christmas cookies that made me do it. The sugar got to my head and before I knew it, I was committed to running another 5K and buying new running shoes and an engraved toe tag in case I died.

After I signed up for the race and got new running shoes, I quit going to the gym at the rec center that I usually went to. I didn’t train for this race. At all. Instead, I found a Groupon for a 10 week kickboxing class so I started going to that at least 5 nights a week. I haven’t run over 1/4 mile in MONTHS. My new plan was to throw jabs and hooks at anybody that got in my way on the running course.

Team Turtle grew by one this year! Megan joined Darla and I as we embarked on our long, slow journey.

All 160 racers were lined up at the start line, seconds away from the start gun firing, when a fire truck with flashing lights drove through our course and forced us to delay the start for a minute. I wasn’t pleased because I just wanted the race to start so I could be done as soon as possible.

Team Turtle was off to the races!

While Team Turtle moseyed through 3.1 miles of the course, Bob and my mom met some new friends and Bob got a little extra friendly with a complete stranger.

The kickboxing must have helped my endurance anyways because I finished in less time than last year, when I actually trained quite hard for the race. My official 2012 time was 44:33 according to the race web site, a whopping 44 seconds quicker than last year. If I keep this up, in the year 2027 I can upgrade the team name to “Team Sloth”!

I was very excited to finish at a faster pace so I gave Bob a big hug. But it was hot out and I was sweaty and stinky so he didn’t enjoy my hug.

I wouldn’t run 3.1 miles without a reward, so mom took us out to Glacier ice cream where I enjoyed some…what else… turtle ice cream!

Aunt Cathy has nice, long hair so I put a sock bun in her hair. You actually roll hair up in a sock to make a bun. The bun was a little plain so mom and I decorated it for easter and turned Aunt Cathy into a bird brain. Since Aunt Cathy doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head, she didn’t know what we were doing to her hair. She just heard a lot of giggling. So festive!

The Easter Bunny still hides baskets in my house and mom’s was hidden inside a case of beer at the bottom of the pantry so she had to work hard to find it. Actually, she didn’t want to work too hard. I believe she said “just tell me if it is in here because I don’t want to get on the floor to look for it if it isn’t even there”.

My sister can never find her easter basket and despite being almost 30 years old, she has an annual tradition of crying out of frustration. Then our family points and laughs at her and takes photos and she cries more. She was back in NY this past easter, so Bob gave me his best Amanda impression when he couldn’t find his basket. ( He eventually found his basket hidden in the bag of dog food.)

My brother-in-law, Luke, was responsible for letting us know if Amanda cried again this year. I was pleased to get a text from him on Easter morning: “Crying from searching: mission accomplished”. And so the tradition continues!

Bob and I wore our easter bonnets. Exhibit #1 for why I’ve never been called “cool”.

I also made Paco join the fun. Exhibit #2 for why I’ve never been called “cool”.

Paco, tell me how you really feel about the bonnet.

My cousins noticed boxing gloves in my car from when I go to kickboxing class, and being teenage boys, they had to test the gloves out. Doesn’t YOUR family have boxing brawls on Good Friday? The Friday night brawls were well-received and continued on Saturday morning.

Calvin Cornholio has some real boxing talent. It must be all of those years beating up on his little brother.

Calvin may have succeeded in beating up his brother, but he was no match for his dad.

The next round was between Max and David. Max likes to randomly beat his dad up and catch him by surprise anyways so they’ve had practice. Max got a nice punch in.

Then it was payback time!

The boxing matches were held in our garage and I wondered if the neighbours heard punching followed by “ooof!” I thought Child Protective Services would show up at any moment. Really, folks, it wasn’t a full-on boxing match. There were no injuries. I like to think I just taught them self-defense. They like to think it is cool to punch their family members and have it be “allowed” because boxing is a sport.

The boys all said they want their own boxing gloves at home, so it is only a matter of time before fighting machines are unleashed. Sorry, Aunt Cathy & Uncle David!