Lakes and Hot Sauces

This past week+ has been fantastic. Last friday Mike and I went to his dad's family reunion at Canyon Lake. We had an amazing home-cooked meal and got to go on a sunset cruise on the lake.

On Sunday we met up with Lauren and Dave and went to Lake Travis to see Fastball... you know, that band whose single "The Way" was huge in middle school? Well, apparently they're from Austin so we got to see them for free on Lake Travis in a multi-tiered pool.

Mike's cousin (second or third or something, we can't figure it out) who we met at the reunion lives in Austin and invited us out to Blues on the Green. We hopped in the car for the 1 minute drive to Zilker Park, sat in a field and listened to great music. I just love the amount of free music there is in this city... and QUALITY music, too! The guy we saw is supposedly famous so I should be ashamed that I don't remember his name, but he covered a ton of Stevie Ray Vaughan songs (people here are obsessed with Stevie... there is even a statue of him downtown).

I had three orientations in four days- one for school and two for work. The one for school included a lot of partying which was great. On Monday we met up at Zilker Park for a BBQ with a great view of downtown.
We then went to the Blind Pig Pub on 6th Street. The Blind Pig actually reminded me a lot of Gainesville... poorly made drinks, bad 80's music and obnoxiously drunk people! It was great to start getting to know the other people in the program. I couldn't participate in a lot of the advertising activities because of my orientations for work, but a group of 11 of us all went tubing down the Guadalupe River on Thursday and my did it put Gainesville springs to shame!!!! I mean, canyons, rapids, crystal clear water, NO alligators... it was great! We had two extra tubes that were dedicated to carrying the beer and we floated for about 3 hours. The UF group of the tour (Mike and I, Lauren, Dave and Rachel) all went to Gruene to eat dinner afterwards. Gruene is this old German town with the oldest dance hall in Texas. Very charming but the type of place where you become thankful to live in a real CITY!

On Saturday Mike and I met up with the Lone Star Gator Club for the annual SEC picnic. There were a couple hundred people there, all SEC alumni, and everyone was decked out in their college gear for some silly games, grilling and good times. It was great to meet fellow gator alum, even if I was definitely the youngest person. We'll be meeting up with them to watch gator games at a local sports bar this season. Mike and I then had dinner at Chuy's, which made me think of a Mexican version of Satchel's. The food was good but there was a sign outside saying "No Crybabies" so we were disappointed to find out their hot sauce is actually quite mild. I thought this was Texas! Isn't everything here supposed to be spicy?!?!?
Anyways, we took care of the spicy problem today by attending the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival. It was a fun day with good food, live music and an endless supply of salsas and hot sauces. Our favorite tasting hot sauce was Aztecan... favorite enough that we left with three bottles of it (and we're already halfway through the first bottle after 1 night). Our favorite brand, though, was Big Daddy's Ass Burn whose motto is "Hell Goin' In, Hell Goin' Out." Awesome.