Ate a cheese sandwich at the Capital

A five dollar "gourmet" cheese sandwich from a vendor at the Texas Book Fair (seen behind Alice)


Of course the lady needed a little drinky-drink to go with her sa-mich:


Then she needs to break it down to the smooth tunes of a high school kettle drum band:





Good Times

Voting

Alice and I voted last week. I never considered the logistics of taking a baby (plus stroller) into a voting booth. It's a tight fit, but the volunteers were tremendously helpful and even entertained Alice with shiny government forms while I did my duty.

In the past I have been guilty of just voting for members of my party or for women without knowing a thing about them. Shameful. This was due to a lack of preparation on my part. But this year I was energized by the national elections and did my research. I even researched the judges by their records. Yeah. You know it. I found that my choices were much more varied in gender and party than I could have imagined last year.

The picture was taken near the huge sign on our neighbor's back fence. There are more campaign posters (for Obama, McCain, Nader, and even Ron Paul) out than Halloween decorations. I'm glad that everybody in our community seems to be shaking off apathy and declaring their intention to participate together in the democratic process.

Casa de Luz

(note: This is not my photo. It can be found on the Casa de Luz website)

Today Alice and I had a lunch date with my friend Krishna and her baby girl Lilly. Krishna and I met in a Mom and Baby group and she was very helpful in helping me to prepare for Tony's first trip away from Alice. Her most helpful suggestion was to fill the weekend before he left with nothing but family time.

One of the things Krishna helped me do today is get out of the frickin' house!
The place where we ate lunch was an interesting school/vegan restaurant/yoga studio/lots of other stuff. It seems to be a community of folks that like hanging out under trees drinking tea, watching the kids play, and eating lunch, and I am totally down with that.
The place was called Casa de Luz and it was really lovely. Alice is not fond of sitting in her carseat for long periods of non-driving time, so she sat in my lap and goggled at the older kids scrambling all over the playground. It was great getting to just sit with another adult and talk about baby (and non-baby) stuff. I think we freaked out our fellow diners when we roamed onto the topic of amniotic fluid. But they were talking politics, which is marginally more unappetizing.
The deal with Casa de Luz is that you pay $12 for two helpings of whatever vegan meal they are making that day, plus soup, salad, and free drinks. It was a very satisfying experience.

We live next to the House of Torment...owner

One of our neighbors owns the sixth best haunted house in the nation. We're new to the community so we haven't had a chance to get to know the guy but he seems really nice. He's got cute kids. His yard looks good. Oh, and he has a hearse parked out front.

The picture up above is not of his house. We took this photo on a walk in another neighborhood. I thought it probably wasn't cool to post pictures of the man's domicile. But I will post links to these great videos of what it takes to spend all year creating the most incredible Halloween experience in Texas. What a great job.