The Austin Trip

Okay, the Austin trip post!! After I finished the second semester of law school, I had about a week off and then started the internship at Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas in downtown Dallas. Stephany and I traveled to Waco for Josh's wedding (see post below) the first weekend after I started the internship. The next weekend, we traveled down to Austin (about three hours south of Dallas) to visit Jed, Emily, and Charlie. These people have been dear friends of mine for years - Jed and I became best friends in third grade. Emily and Charlie run a deli in north Austin, and Jed just finished his first year of teaching tenth-grade biology. He was leaving to head to Germany for about two months later that week to visit his German girlfriend, and we hadn't seen Emily and Charlie in quite a long time, so it was a good time for a visit. Plus, Malory joined us and got to experience Austin for the first time ever!

Unfortunately, we didn't really take a whole lot of pictures on this trip. However, we managed to do some fun stuff: we visited North By Northwest (a great restaurant and brewery in north Austin), Magnolia Cafe and The Omeletry (two local places that serve great breakfasts), the South Congress area and downtown, and the University of Texas (where Jed and I both graduated). We went to the Harry Ransom Center art museum on campus while we were there and saw both an original Gutenburg Bible from the mid 15th century (you can see it here) and the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (take a look - he taped a scroll of paper together so that he could write in crazy multiple-hour increments uninterrupted by the need to feed paper through his typewriter).

Here are pictures we took in front of the Tower on the University of Texas campus.





And here are some pics of us playing poker with Jed, Emily and Charlie (they were married about a month after we were in 2006), and the great Lebanese philosopher/computer programmer/photographer/story-teller Maan (far left). It was a very laid-back evening. When the game was still dragging on in the early morning hours, Malory, Charlie, and Jed finally split the pot.





It was a good trip, albeit a bit short. We're currently finishing up our trip to Albuquerque, which has been really fantastic. I'll get a post up on that soon.

Nathan