Sheep Guarding Llama

Today officially begins my tenth year, and eleventh time attending, SpiceWorld! Hard to believe that we have been here for so long.

It was a gorgeous Austin morning, the apartment is just great.  I got up and worked in the dining room, with views of downtown, for a while.  Then around eleven Paul and I got ready and went out with Jared, Jason, and Charles to Fogo de Chao for some fancy lunch.

I’m familiar with Brazilian steakhouses, but never go to them being a vegetarian.  Fogo de Chao turned out to be really good for me, too, though.  They had a salad bar kind of thing that was really excellent, especially their ancient grains salad.  It was a really nice lunch.

After lunch we went over to the Austin Convention Center and got registered for the event.

This afternoon Dominica and Paul did some showcase events.  While they were at the convention center, I stayed at the apartment with Liesl and Luciana where we watched some Growing Pains together.

This evening was our annual starter bar night at the Handlebar.  Turn out was tiny this year.  Some of the group tried to start a competing event somewhere else on Rainey Street and so all of the stuff was split up. Lots of old timers, including Hugh who was over from Nottingham, hit the Handlebar for a quiet start to the conference.  And of course a quick stop at Touche’s after that.  But the real event will be there tomorrow.

Sunday.  We all did a great job of getting up and getting moving first thing this morning.  I was up around eight.  We got the car packed and were actually on the road by ten!  Go us.

We were trying to make the Spicecorps event at Eastciders in Austin, but it took longer to get down there than we wanted and we were simply unable to make it in time.  That was a bummer as Eastciders is my favourite cider company and that would have been pretty awesome.

Around four we got into our AirBnD on Sixth.  It turned out to be totally awesome.  It had two floors, plenty of places for everyone to sleep, great appointments, a sweet balcony, wonderful views of downtown Austin including the convention center, sixth, fifth, “the parking garage”, and more.  This is great, we are going to want to use this in the future.

We did not have very much time in the apartment.  We got Dominica and the girls settled in, then Paul and I went for a walk down Sixth to get to CCB’s sponsored event at Easy Tiger.  This was a really fun event.  First because we got to meet up with so many old friends.  And second because it was a great party with lots of beers, dinner, and games (I didn’t play any games.)

We were out until pretty late. Our busy Spiceworld schedule has begun.

Saturday.

For lunch today, we ordered out pizza and subs from Ralph’s. We’ve only recently discovered Ralph’s. It is so close to the house and has the best pizza that we’ve found so far in Texas. It is so close that we could actually walk to it! In fact, I have.

While having lunch, Liesl and I watched some Growing Pains.

This afternoon I watched the girls while Paul and Dominica did some driving around to check out different venues for MangoCon. We are mostly looking at places in Addison, but checking on Plano, Carrollton, and Irving, too.

I did some Laravel and PHP work this evening. Then around ten Liesl and I watched some television together.

At midnight, Rachel came buy and picked me up and we went to the Fox and Hound and played darts till closing time.

Friday. Busy work day since next week is SpiceWorld Austin and Paul, Dominica, and I are going to be out of the office. Have to be ready, we are going to be super busy next week.

Today was the busiest day on MangoLassi in history. Pretty cool.

Thursday. Today is Dominica and my fifteenth wedding anniversary!

This morning I had to work on my resume for something. It turns out that it has been so long since I had to do anything with a resume that I no longer have a copy of it or anything. I had to make a completely new one from scratch. One thing that is sad is just how much of my professional history has been lost. Hundreds of certifications, scores of jobs, not recorded.

After working on my resume for a while I went out to mow the lawn.

I finished up my new resume at seven this evening. The first major rewrite that I have done in twenty years! I have been using my resume that I wrote before SGL all of this time. The resume was so much a part of my life, so weird to have a new one.

For our wedding anniversary dinner, Dominica and I went out to Pappadeaux on Frankfort for an awesome seafood dinner. I went for the fried seafood dinner, it was just calling to me. As always the food there was amazing.