Austin City Limitless

 

Welcome to a very special Street Food Friday! Okay, so it's not that different. But instead of featuring just one food truck, I thought I'd offer a music/food review of the Austin City Limits music festival.

(I'm the one on the left.)

My friend Audrei and I have been planning on attending ACL since Groundhog's Day. We hit up the Saturday Festival, getting there at 11:30 AM and staying until 9:30. I don't know how people do it for three whole days--I was exhausted. Luckily, they had the Austin Eats area so we could keep our energy. 

(The only thing that keeps me from hating long lines is the prospect of food at the end.)

For lunch, I ate a cheeseburger from P. Terry's and a pork belly slider from Odd Duck Farm to Trailer. P. Terry's is a burger joint in town and I've been meaning to go to Odd Duck for ages. AGES. The burger was decent, but let me tell you about these pork belly sliders. I could eat nothing but these for the rest of my life. The bun was soft and sweet, the coleslaw had the right amount of tang, and the pork belly--well, it melted in your mouth faster than a popsicle in the sun.

(Succulent is the best word to describe this.)

Around four p.m., I grabbed a mini cherry pie from Pie Fixes Everything. (Doesn't it, though?) Not only was the packaging delightful, but the pie was mighty tasty. Of course, no one makes cherry pie as good as my mom. I may be biased.

(Still not sure if the fruit had been brought back to life by Ned the Pie Maker. I like to think so.)

Around dinnertime, I wanted something light and fresh. I settled on a pasta primavera cup from Mandola's Italian Market. I'm a really big fan of Mandola's--they have amazing gelato. My little pasta cup hit the spot.

(Bonus points for the green beans. Minus points for the mushrooms that were hiding at the bottom.)

Not only was the food rocking, but so was the music. We heard the following bands...

ACL Set List

The Warrior Gospel Band 

The Antlers

The Belle Brigade (One of my faves!)

Young the Giant

City and Colour

Alexander

Iron & Wine

Fitz and the Tantrums (Hands down, the best show of the day.)

Gillian Welch (I adore her.)

Cut Copy

TV On The Radio

Stevie Wonder (Couldn't really hear him. It was disappointing.)

My Morning Jacket (Freaking awesome and hardcore. They were a fun group to see at the very end of the night.)

Oh, and then Audrei and I got invited by this random group of kids from Mexico to go to an afterparty where Chromeo was supposedly playing. We were like, "Uh....we've got church in the morning. But thank you?" Can't wait for next year!

For more Street Food Friday goodness, check out the posts from Lacey, Doni, and Jess!

Yet one more thing Angela Martin and I have in common...

Katy the purse girl: What colors do you like?

Angela: Grey. Dark grey. Charcoal.

It's a grey day here in Austin. We haven't seen nary a raindrop, let alone cloud cover, for months on end so the dark sky comes as a relief.

Do you guys have one color that you incorporate into your wardrobe more than any other color? Mine is grey. And yes, I prefer the British spelling. The "e" feels more elegant. I was doing laundry the other night and had the urge to pull out all my grey clothing. The evidence is pictured below. (Minus one Olympic henley, a track jacket, and boots.) I have grey sweats for the schlubbiest of days and a grey skirt that I wear when I'm feeling fancy. Every day I have at least two or three pieces of grey, what with my watch and my purse and my converse or flip-flops.  Even my bedding is mostly grey (with a little bit of green). Don't worry, I'm working on incorporating more color into my closet, but it's going to be a hard pull away from the comfort of grey. Anyone want to start a support group with me?

{I've included one of my favorite Mason Jennings songs below and a Jaymay song that fits the theme.}

"I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life." -Cassandra Mortmain

Laurie Halse Anderson, author extraordinaire of Speak and Catalsyt and countless others, runs a project every August called WFMAD. It stands for Write Fifteen Minutes A Day, so for each of the thirty-days in August, you're supposed to do just that. She gives prompts, but you don't have to follow along. All that matters is that you write. For fifteen minutes. Every day.
I decided to give it a shot. LHA should advertise WFMAD as "The same great taste as NaNoWriMo without all of the crushing social pressure!" Dan helped out by keeping me on track whenever I veered. I'd say I wrote for about 3/4ths of the month. That's pretty good considering that the months before were more like 1 in 10. I'd rather work on being consecrated to writing than just paying my writing tithe.
Here are five quick things I learned about myself and about the written word during these hazy, lazy days of summer.
1. I have two projects I'm working on. I love being able to switch from one to the next. I don't have a favorite, like how I presume it is with your children, but I do have one that I like more on some days. Other days, the second story wins me over. (Confidential to the million other ideas I have: Pipe down! I'll get to you later!)
2. Writing simply does not happen on the weekends for me. Either I am going to need to summon the willpower to change that fact or just accept it.
3. I write on my laptop, which is also where I do my internet-ing. This poses a problem.
4. It can be extremely frustrating to go from reading a polished work by an established author and then turning right around and trying to write something of your own. Laini Taylor, I love you, but I don't think I can read you when I'm going to be writing within an hour of reading you. I think it's for the best if I keep my reading life and my writing life separated for now.
5. Writing is HARD, you guys. You have to, like, make stuff up and junk. Dorothy Parker, in all her wit and wisdom, purportedly said, "I hate writing, but I love having written." Writing can be fairly excruciating sometimes. (Not all the time, but occasionally.) Then afterward there's that glorious feeling of realizing that out of nothing, you have put something on the page. Of realizing that you have complete ownership of those words. Of clicking save and opening it up the next day to create more.
There's so much I still need to learn, so let's try this again for September, shall we?