This past weekend rolled around and I found myself making plans on short notice. It was really late Friday night that I finished up the epic tale of my weekend Thrift Store Extravaganza. So this time I’m a day ahead of schedule! It’s Thursday night, I’m watching the Eagles play football. Ugly first quarter in this game, but I’m not going to let that stop me!
So here’s the set up this week. I wanted to take some time and just find a good place to sit down peacefully and write. I’ve been falling behind on my goals for a few weeks now, I need to buckle down a bit more. The nature of my job makes it difficult to get motivated to do much of anything but try to relax and decompress once I get off of work. Which is all well and good, but at some point I need to force myself to sit down and write. With all this in mind here was the plan of action:
- (Boring stuff) Go by a dealership and get my car serviced.
- Stop by Tandy Leather to pick up some supplies/tools.
- Hit up the next Brewpub on the list.
- Hit up a coffee bar, enjoy some coffee.
- Write.
1) Boring Car Stuff
Went by a dealership in Round Rock to get the 60k service on my car done. The good thing is, they could squeeze me in right before they closed up shop on Saturday (they close at 3pm, I left Killeen around 1pm), and they’re on the way down to Austin… so I stopped in real quick. I have a Turbo Diesel Jetta, which comes in handy on road trips. It also comes in handy for services, because they’re a lot easier to service than a normal combustion engine. So I got put in the “express service” lane and was out of there in less than an hour. Which quickly put me on my way to my real first stop…
2) Stop by Tandy Leather
I went back by Tandy leather to pick up some stuff for the future costume. First thing I picked up was a rotary punch. This is handy for… punching various size holes in things. It’s made for leather, but will more than adequately handle EVA Foam (I know, I took a chunk of foam and tested it)… It’ll be interesting to see how it will handle EVA Foam covered with a thin layer of copper… hopefully it won’t distort the copper too much… if so, a drill might be necessary. What does a rotary punch look like, you ask? This weird looking thing:
I also bought a bunch of copper rivets to use for various rivet-appropriate situations. Like attaching leather straps and stuff. They’re nice and shiny.
Ooooooooh pretty. At some point I need to invest in a little light box to take pictures of stuff in.
I also bought a special chisel/punch thing used for applying these type of rivets. You’ll get to see that one in a future post when I’m working on stuff. (This coming weekend, I hope!) So, new supplies in hand, I venture off in search of a late lunch…
You know me and puns. This restaurant is a play on a huge music/movie/nowvideogame festival in Austin called South by Southwest. The restaurant apparently has Washington state connections, hence the NW. This place is a little more upscale than the other ones I’d been to so far. This is more of a nice-date location (and it’d be a pretty nice date, delicious craft beer and good eats) than a casual eatery. Prices are probably on par with [NOTE link] Capital Ale House for those of you from Virginia. So without further ado, let’s present this week’s culprits.
Top Row (L->R): Northern Lights Lager (NOTE insert stats), Belgian Tripel – Seasonal Brew
Middle Row: Bavarian Hefeweizen, Okanogan Black Ale
Bottom Row: Red Zepplin Amber Ale (they were out of Duckabish, so they busted into their other Amber), PY Jingo Pale Ale
The Northern Lights (4% ABV, 12 IBU) was a pretty nice little Pils.
The PY Jingo (5.5% ABV, 45 IBU) was a pretty solid example of an American-Style IPA, I’m not an IPA fan, so your mileage may vary.
The Red Zepplin Irish/Amber Ale (4.7% ABV, 17 IBU) was pretty good. Similar in style to Killian’s (just to reference a widely-available Amber that most people have probably had at some point), it was one of the standouts of the sampler… and ended up being the one I chose to get a pint of with my meal!
The Bavarian Hefeweis (5% ABV, 10 IBU) was nice and mild. It’s description says it has “Hints of bananas and cloves,” but there’s no hints about it. I could smell the banana from about a foot away when I picked up the glass. This isn’t a bad thing, it was actually a pretty good variation on the style. Were my choice of food different, I might have picked this one… or if I was sitting around with friends, lounging a while after the meal, I definitely would have gotten it as a desert beer.
The Okanogan Black Ale (5.5% ABV, 25 IBU), I’m not sure I’ve ever had another beer similar in style to this. It’s similar to a darker stout-style beer, but not quite. All I can say is if you get the chance, experience it for yourself.
Belgian Wit (5.5% ABV, 6 IBU)… Man, me and Belgian Tripels have an ongoing love-affair. Probably my favorite individual styles of beer. This one hit the spot. It was hard to choose something other than this beer after I sampled them all, but for some reason, the Amber just seemed like it would go better with this:
Kebabs of doom. The second-best Kebabs I’ve ever had in Austin (sorry, but the currently defunct Trey’s Fine Quisine will always be the King of Kebabs, I know there’s a plan to re-open it, I just hope it happens soon!). The one on the left was Shrimp and a Salmon Filet, the right was chunks of steak. Both included mushrooms, peppers, and onions, all carmalized via fire. The whole thing served on a bed of “spicy zuccini couscous.” See that innocuous green guy in the middle of the plate? What I didn’t know at the time, is despite the fact that it looks like a normal jalepano, it’s really a rogue pepper.
What’s a rogue pepper, you ask? It’s a hot pepper that for some unknown reason is about 6504138765183746 times hotter than it’s supposed to be. The couscous has a bunch of jalepano chunks in it, and none of them were anywhere remotely close to this grilled guy. This was hotter than some habeneros I’ve had. It was enough to trigger me coughing. And even the Stupid Wings at Caliente didn’t make me cough… and those are hotter than a million, billion suns.
So the crazy part about this meal aside from the rogue pepper, was the size of the shrimp. I don’t ever think I’ve seen shrimp as big as this before. Seriously, here’s my fork for comparison:
For cereal, here’s one in my hand:
It’s freakin’ half the size of my hand. Delicious, but for real. At least it went well with the beer.
And the flames the beer couldn’t quench…
Little bastard…
Oh, and a note, I really liked the decor of the place, it was a weird mix of rustic and industrial. There was a hunting-lodge style giant fireplace, and crazy exposed giant vaulted ceilings.
And weird custom-made light fixtures. I’m also pretty sure that’s hard-wood flooring on the ceiling, but whatever, it works.
4) Monkey Nest
Stop #4 was the Monkey Nest. A little coffee shop tucked away on Burnet Road in downtown Austin. Just a little way down the road from the Thrift shop I found my radio/vacuum tube goldmine at. A nice little spot too. They apparently do live music on the weekends. Not nearly as power friendly as Epoch was, but had plenty of seating. So I ordered up a Frappe, found me a window seat, and busted out the Beat Sheet.
My goal for writing was to finally break past the midpoint of the outline with the story beats. I was probably 2-3 scenes from the event that kind of signals the midpoint. So I put in the earbuds and set to writing. Choice of music for the writing was the new Devildriver album “Winter Kills.” A nice little upbeat number to get myself all pumped up and feeling productive. So I rocked out, got caffinated, and set to writing.
Devildriver’s new stuff is an awesome progression from their last album. Getting more and more complex with their orchestration and instrumentation. It almost makes me want to say something like if black metal was invented in the US, Devildriver would be what it would sound like. Though they don’t have any of the religious-oriented “commentary” that black metal is traditionally famous for. (For those of you who don’t know, a devil driver is a weird style of bell that was used by people “back-in-the-day” to drive away witches and demons.) By far though, the awesome little gem on the album is something you would never expect, but that works and fits perfectly because of how quirky Dez is. The last track on the album is a metal rendition/arrangement of the AWOLnation song, “Sail.” It doesn’t sound like it’s something that would work, but for some reason… it just does.
The song stopped me in my tracks when I heard it, because something in my brain was saying, “Where do I know this from?” And then I found myself singing along. And then I found myself getting some weird looks because I was laughing.
The writing went well, I cranked through about 5 scenes. Got through the midpoint of the plot. And I happen to think things are coming along well. I’m still not quite happy with how things are supposed to wrap up at the moment. It just doesn’t feel right yet. It doesn’t make sense for them to resolve the way I plan for them too, so I’m either going to have to think of some motivation to further encourage things the way I originally planned… or change the plan.
So as the evening approached, my writing was done. Goals complete. So I made my way back to the apartment… but not without a quick stop for some bubble tea.
It’s important. Every story should end with someone riding off into the sunset with a tasty beverage… and so this one will.
Next weekend (this weekend), things are kind of cut short because I start a guard duty shift which will actually interfere with my plans for the next two weekends… so the next two weekends will be dedicated to building costumes and crazy quasi-tutorials! This should get interesting… We’ll see how it goes!
Until next time!
DS Boggs 