Get out of the house, geeks! Once a week I round up the steampunk, boardgames, science fiction, burlesque, and other random bits of geeky awesome which make Austin such a great place to live. This is your excuse to get out of the house and mingle with your own kind. Enjoy.

Our nearest Renn Faire starts to the east while Firefly guests descend on a convetion to the north. Meanwhile, here in Austin there are plenty of fun things coming up at the Alamo Drafthouse. However, this week’s secret stealth event is the Sci Fi and Fantasy Social. It only comes around once a month. Have a beer with some of the most outgoing, friendly geeks in Austin. You won’t regret it.

Want your event listed? Leave a comment here or email ggg (at) oseland (dot) net. No matter how much time I spend showering in radioactive runoff, I still haven’t developed mutant telepathy, so make sure to include a link (if available), plus the time, date, and address.

EVENTS

Princess Bride Quote Along and Feast
Tuesday, 7:00 pm
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
1120 S. Lamar Ave

Epoch Steampunk Coffee Night
(No link, sadly. You can usually find them at the outdoor tables)
Wednesday, 7:00 pm
221 W. North Loop Blvd

Sherwood Forest Faire Opening Weekend
Saturday, 10:00 am – Sunday Dusk
1883 Old Highway 20, McDade TX 78650

Sci-Fi Expo
Saturday 11:00 am – Sunday 4:00 pm
Irving Convention Center
500 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving, TX 75039

Sci-Fi Comedy Double Feature
Saturday, 8:00 pm
Hideout Theater
617 Congress

Bat City Bombshells Burlesque Anti-Valentine’s Show
Saturday, 9:00 pm
Hotel Vegas
1500 E. 6th St.

Valentine’s Day at the Drive In – Earth Girls are Easy
Sunday, 6:30 pm
Blue Starlite II – Downtown
1001 E. 6th

The Big Lebowski Quote-Along
Monday, 10 pm
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
1120 S. Lamar Ave

MEETUPS

Tuesday

South Austin Game Night/Boards and Brews
6:00 pm
Rockin Tomato
3003 S. Lamar Blvd

Wednesday

Open Boardgaming with the Central Texas Boardgames Meetup
7:00 pm
Wonko’s Toys and Games
13776 N. Highway 183 # 116

Friday

Monthly Fantasy and Sci-Fi Social
7:00 pm
Draught House Pub
4112 Medical Parkway

Saturday

Reddit Does the Renn Faire
9:00 am
Carpool meets in Fry’s parking lot
12707 N. Mopac Expressway

Geeks Who Drink Trivia
10:00 pm
Opal Divine’s Marina
12709 Mopac

Sunday

Sunday Open Gaming with the South Austin Game Night
2:00 pm
Rockin Tomato
3003 S. Lamar Blvd

Monday

Board Games and Brews with the Girl Geeks of Austin
7:00 pm
Black Star Co-Op Pub and Brewery
7020 Easy Wind Drive

Nerdy Knitting and Fiber Arts with the Girl Geeks of Austin
7:00 pm
Genuine Joe’s Coffee House
2001 W. Anderson Lane

Austin has a surprising number of panhandlers.  I have four regulars staking out the highway entrance and exit ramps nearest my apartment. My favorite holds a sign reading, “Need Beer” while the saddest has a sign reading, “Even 25 cents helps.”

I’ve lived in much larger cities, but few with this sad quantity of beggars. As a single woman, I’ll admit I’m intimidated. Nothing raises the hairs on the back of my neck like walking alone downtown, studiously ignoring a man on the street, only to have him shout, “God gonna rape you inna ass an leave you bleedin at my feet, fuckin bitch whore!”

Here in Austin, though, the beggars are surprisingly friendly. They start every request with please, end it with thank you, and usually say, “you enjoy your night, ma’am” whether or not I give them money. It’s a heck of a change for someone used to hearing, “greedy cocksucking whore ain’t gotta dollar?” when I drop change into a hat.

I was on my way home from a downtown networking event when I turned the block and almost walked into a couple fighting. A panhandler grabbed the corner of my cape. “Let ‘em be,” he stage whispered. I wasn’t too happy about being grabbed by a stranger. He waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention. “Go on. Cross here.” He pointed at the street. I eyeballed the angry couple, gesticulating madly on the sidewalk, and took his advice. By the time I crossed the street, the woman had hissed her last bit of bile at the man and stormed off. He slumped against a brick wall one block from 6th street. The panhandler walked up and gingerly patted his shoulder. “Woman don’t know a good thing when she got it,” he said.

Instead of recoiling at a beggar’s touch, the freshly dumped man straightened up. “I’m going to dinner anyway,” he shouted in the retreating woman’s direction. He looked at the panhandler. “Want a meal? I hate eating alone.”

The panhandler tucked his cardboard sign into his jacket and picked up his hat full of change. “It’s okay, man. What happened?” I watched the pair of them walk off together. They turned a corner before I remembered this was real life and not some kind of street theater.

After four OK Cupid dates and one speed dating event, this week I had every intention of comparing menfolk in Louisville, Chicago, St. Louis, and Austin. Sadly, I’m entirely distracted from such things by some unfortunate news.

My company, which I dearly adore, is letting me and the rest of the staff go. I have an incredibly generous amount of notice and plenty of work to do in the meantime, but it’s still a blow. I haven’t entirely finished unpacking my home office yet and now I’m on the hunt for a new job. I once hoped to represent them at SXSW. Instead, I’ll be using the festival to network like mad.

As a consolation prize, the work I’m doing in my last weeks should look good on a resume. It’s extra motivation to still give them my all. Plus, if nothing else they gave me the economic freedom to move to Austin. I never would’ve moved across country without a job. I’m grateful they made this move possible.

I’ve had more than a few sleepless nights worrying about finding new work while my friends seem bemusingly unconcerned about my ability to find a job. It’s both reassuring and mildly irritating. I’m trying to panic over here, but they’re obstinate in their insistence that I always find some way to pull things together. Thanks?

If you recall, a few weeks ago thieves broke into my apartment complex’s communal mailboxes, stealing my paycheck, a couple birthday presents, and no doubt a stack of bills. Since then, another paycheck has gone missing. In fact, I’ve had suspiciously little mail. My apartment complex hasn’t bothered to fix the boxes, so the post office is grudgingly holding mail for us rather than leave it in a big sack by the welcome center. I suspect this is because after budget cuts, they can’t afford to lose the sacks. Consequentially, I have to drive half an hour and wait in holiday shipping lines in order to check my mail.

The last time I asked if they were absolutely sure they were holding all of mine – some of it might be forwarded. “Oh,” they replied. “We’re sending that back.” Wait – what? Yes, according to the post office, it’s not their job to provide us with free P.O. Boxes just because my complex isn’t equipped to let us receive mail, so they’re getting rid of the excess by turning away anything forwarded. I moved last month. They say that’s my problem.  No, I can’t simply forward mail from my apartment address to an offsite box at a UPS store, for example, because “that’s too confusing.” If I’m not getting my bills and paycheck electronically, like everyone else, that’s my own damn fault.

I picked up a UPS box anyway. Since I can’t simply have my mail forwarded, I now get the fun of spending part of every day on hold so I can individually change the address for every single relevant creditor, insurer, or other producer of documents.

When he found out my last two checks hadn’t arrived, my boss, in a fit of extreme kindness, went to his bank and wired me funds immediately. I am seriously going to miss working for him.

Meanwhile, my incorrigible friend Divinity Rose decided working full time while suddenly looking for new jobs a mere five weeks after moving across country is no excuse for me to slack on writing projects. After all, if I have insomnia, I might as well put it to good use. I’m the one who always insists I write best late at night, so get to it. Yes ma’am. At my current rate of progress, I optimistically expect to end January with a nifty announcement. Stay tuned.

Next week I should be back to more gushing about Austin and less bitching about circumstances beyond my control. Failing that, I may have a long and winding rant about the quality of movies Comedy Central plays at 2 am.

There’s a stretch of highway in Louisville that feels exactly like Kansas City.  After five years in Kentucky, I’d still find myself unconsciously switching lanes so I could exit onto a street in another time zone. Several stretches of St. Louis expressways were completely indistinguishable from Cincinnati. There’s a comforting familiarity in knowing how to navigate a strange city from the highway. Crossing the border into Canada always takes me by surprise because they don’t use roads the same way we do.

They say Texas is a whole other country. The roads here prove it.

For one thing, there’s no loop around Austin. Interstate 35 bisects the city and a group of state and local highways struggle to create a few faster routes around town, but there’s nothing remotely organized about it. A lot of the major roads have names like “FM 1325.” I heartily believe once a road has six lanes going 50 miles an hour it’s big enough to deserve an actual name but locals disagree. My GPS denies the existence of any address that consists of FM, RM, or IH followed by a random number.

If you’ve driven in 47 other states (I have no idea what roads are like in Hawaii or Alaska) you’re familiar with the way highways work. You drive until you find your exit, get off the highway, and motor around on surface streets. There’s a clear line between fast roads with no lights and slow roads with lots of intersections.

None of that exists here. Instead, local highways have 3-5 lanes in each direction with no stopping plus a supplemental 2-3 lanes alongside them full of shops and traffic lights. The supplemental lanes are supposed to flow 10 miles an hour slower than the main highway, but since traffic on Austin’s main roads is so congested, both tend to run about the same speed.

Getting to any stores on the supplemental lanes (all frustratingly invisible to my GPS) is tricky business. If you’re on the highway, you have to cross another 3 lanes of 50 mph traffic as soon as you get off, and sometimes the boundaries between the two aren’t entirely clear. If you’re on what ought to be an access road, you have to fight people using the lanes as highway overflow. They do not appreciate you slowing them down by turning. Since these lanes are all one way, if you miss your store, you have to get back on the highway, drive 1-2 miles to the next exit, drive past the store you wanted going the opposite direction, then loop back again. It’s maddening. The roads here feel like they were designed by people who read about highways without ever seeing one.

The one odd advantage is no road here can make me homesick. There were times when I’d take long, meditative drives around specific parts of Louisville just to evoke memories of happier times in other cities. Nothing here is capable of provoking nostalgia. In general, I think that’s been a good thing for me. I’m far from the people I care about most. When I drive home from yet another Meetup, there’s no moment of pretending I could pull off on this exit, turn twice, and be at a friend’s house. The city itself won’t let me forget this is a new place where I have no choice but to start over from scratch.

Moving across country alone and telecommuting to work is a great recipe for becoming the crazy woman who never showers and talks to her Roomba. In order to combat that, over the last four weeks I’ve visited 10 Meetup Groups.

Meetups in Austin are fascinating. I remember when Meetup was mostly an unhappy mix of grassroots groups supporting Howard Dean and soccer moms who needed a martini. Starting a new meetup in Louisville meant a year of patiently waiting with a sign, a smile, and a box of games, knowing that if I advertised enough, eventually the concept would catch on.

Meetups here are crowded, busy affairs with wait lists and mild competition to RSVP before an event fills up. There’s a science fiction group I’ve wanted to visit since early November, but the soonest I could find a RSVP hole was January. I’ve heard organizers complain they started a Meetup in April and are only up to 25 people at an average meeting. It boggles my mind.

I chalk it all up to Austin’s population dynamic. I’m one of 6000 people who moved here in November. We’re all looking for new friends in our new home. Multiply that by the last couple of years and you have an incredibly fresh population eager to find a social life. No one has asked where I went to high school. Instead, they’ve asked what I’m doing next weekend. I love it.

Here’s a roundup of groups I’ve found so far.

Reddit Meetup
Shh. I’m a fake. I’d heard of Reddit, but I didn’t sign up until I saw the huge number of awesome, well populated events on their Meetup group. So far, I’ve joined them for Thanksgiving, a board games night big enough to need a keg, and Futurama trivia. It’s a laid back, geeky group of people who have a pesky habit of constantly doing things I like. If I wasn’t one of a very small minority of people there over 30 I’d probably give up on sampling so many other groups and cheerfully settle in with them as my primary social outlet. That said, the redditors have been super friendly and welcoming despite me being old enough to remember riding dinosaurs to school. Interestingly, this is one of only two Meetup groups I’ve attended where men outnumber women.

Geek Girls of Austin
The Girl Geeks of Austin are another incredibly active group. So far, I’ve only attended their weekly boardgame nights, but they have a knitting circle, links to the Steampunk events in town, and a slew of miscellaneous events every month. Our Austin Old Timer has been here for 4 years. Most of us can measure our time here in months. This is another group where everyone is super friendly and just happy to find like minded company.

Boards and Brews/South Austin Gaming Network
This collection of two-meetups-in-one is the yang to the Geek Girls of Austin’s yin. The Geek Girls Boardgame night always has around 3 men. Boards and Brews always has around 3 women. The difference is the Geek Girls average a total of 10 people while Boards and Brews averages closer to 40. These guys are serious about their gaming. They scoffed at the idea of games playable in 45 minutes or less in the spirit of socialization. Instead, they’re all about the 3 hour strategy games with a minimal amount of socialization. While I like the group, it’s a 35 minute drive each way from my apartment, so I doubt I’ll make it more than once a month.

Professional Writers of Austin
This is one of the best umbrella writers groups I’ve ever joined. They’re about evenly split between aspiring novelists and people who somehow pay the rent with words. When you work from home, talking shop with likeminded people is a real treat. They’re equally serious about professional development, networking, and socialization. It’s hard to believe a professional association this large and thriving is less than a year old. I believe I’ve been shanghaied into writing some dating related blog posts for them in February.

Austin 30’s & 40’s Professionals
I was beginning to worry I’d wake up and find a glowing red dot on my palm. Then I met the 30’s & 40’s Professionals. They’re more like 40’s and 50’s professionals, but they’re friendly, active people who didn’t mind having someone a little younger in their midst. The group was almost evenly split between people who had been here for more than a decade versus those who had been around less than a year. The decade plus residents were fascinating. Despite the city doubling in population and changing as a consequence, they still loved it passionately. I want to be just as gushy about Austin in a decade.

Austin 30-Something Singles
On my birthday, I attended a BYOB wine tasting with the Austin 30-Something Singles. I was more than a little surprised to find quite a few women in their 20’s and men in their 40’s, though there was still a good showing of us 30-somethings. This was my first chance to see what people in the snobbier parts of town consider “The Real Austin.” Our hostess made her own one person hot tub out of an old clawfoot bathtub and a furnace, had lights and original art hung everywhere outside, and invited a friend to bring his keyboard and sing for our entertainment. The food was all vegetarian and the people looked like they walked out of a sporting goods catalog. I was the largest person there of either sex. While they were friendly, my lack of interest in 12 hour extreme hikes is enough to keep me looking for more laid back Meetups.

Monthly Steampunk Meetup
Austin has its very own full time brick and mortar steampunk shop. The Mysterium is run by a charming woman who is happy to sell her wares from one place instead of doing the con dealers room circuit. She also organizes a monthly get together which nets over 30 of my fellow steampunks every month. I enjoyed the heck out of seeing what other people were crafting, talking about cons, and envying people’s costuming skills. Interestingly, I was the only single person there. It was neat seeing so many couples enjoy a fandom together.  I also won my very first pocket watch in a drawing. Now that I’ve been bribed they’ll never get rid of me.

Bi-Weekly Steampunk Association
I’ve heard people say “Austin is an outdoor city,” but it didn’t really sink in until my first Steampunk Association meeting. The temperatures hovered around 40F, but all ten of them sat outside in coats and fingerless gloves, cheerfully working on individual crafts. Apparently, they sit outside all year. After all, their coffee shop of choice literally has 3 times more outdoor seating than indoor. I’m finding this typical in Austin. Even buildings with a generous indoors often have at least one wall made of screenless windows which can be opened to the outside. This is a smaller steampunk group, apparently more focused on making and sharing crafts. Since the only things I craft are sentences, I’ll probably give this one a miss in favor of the more general monthly club.

Austin Science Fiction Book Club
These are my people. The club had a nice mix of nerdy, outgoing, science fiction fans ranging from mid 20’s to mid 40’s. The founder only started his group in August, but he’s getting at least 10 people per meeting. He wisely alternates between Science Fiction Socials and actual book club meetings. I enjoyed the heck out of unselfconciously nerding out in a group where everyone got my references and the ladies outnumbered the gents. I do wish they met somewhere a little quieter. By the end of the night my throat was sore from shouting. On the other hand, their bar of choice has a nice, energetic buzz to it. More importantly, it’s walking distance from the founder’s apartment. I respect that.

North Austin Social Group
Since Austin traffic is horrifyingly congested it made sense for me to look into Meetups in my area. It turns out the North Austin Social Group started many years ago as a singles group for divorcees. Now it’s mostly married people in their 40’s and 50’s, though there were a few 50-something men who asked for my phone number. They’re the most conservative group I’ve met anywhere in Austin – which means the rest of Texas would find them flaming liberals. On a sociological level, I find them a fascinating contrast with the other groups I’ve met. Apparently, the Austin equivalent of waving your cane and telling kids to get off your lawn is grumbling about traffic and complaining that all the new restaurants are vegetarian. What’s wrong with some Chicken Tikka or a nice Ethiopan Wot, one complained. Kids these days just don’t appreciate good food.

I call shenanigans. This week, some strangers employed a crowbar to commit a federal offense at my expense. That’s right – the bastards broke into the central mail station for my apartment complex and looted all the boxes. They got my paycheck, a dalek shaped towel my friend Anne sent to decorate my Doctor Who themed bathroom, and a stack of bills I suspect they won’t pay.

People who’ve known me for awhile may recall that I’m so hipster I had my identity stolen before we had a name for the phenomenon. The 1990’s were a dark time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, short wires tethered phones to walls, and over a dozen illegal aliens regularly abused my social security number without even buying it a drink first – although in their defense, at that point my social security number was underage.

The last time around things ended up so confusingly convoluted I was nearly deported. What I’m trying to say here is that if I’m unlucky enough to have very clever robbers, I will eventually expect you all to send me American goods which can turn a high value on the Singaporian black market.

Robbery is sad, but what, you may wonder, about the shenanigans? The fine people who staff my leasing office were quite indignant when I suggested perhaps they should move the mailboxes inside. All residents have a numeric code for entering the building 24 hours a day so we can look upon the outdated exercise equipment with heartfelt despair before shuffling back to our human sized dollhouses and drinking ourselves into a stupor. Why not compound our misery but letting us access our bill-generating boxes at the same time?

My leasing agent matter of factly informed me all apartments with central postal stations have their mail looted 2-3 times a year. If they put the mail indoors, thieves would just throw a barrel through the glass door to get at it, and then they’d have to clean it up and replace the door. That would be ridiculous.

Now my curiosity was piqued. 2-3 times a year? I asked the fine folk attending a local steampunk meetup how often they had their mail looted. They looked confused. No, really, I asked. Be brutal. Once a year? Once a quarter? Alternating Tuesdays?

The sum total of all their answers equalled “never.”  This matches my lifetime experience culled from residing in over a dozen cities. I’ve lived in an actual ghetto where my upstairs neighbor kindly let me know which nights to stay down so I wouldn’t get my lilly white ass shot to death, but never once in my life have I had my mail stolen.

My apartment complex takes burglaries for granted. My nearest grocery store offer eyebrow waxing in the produce department. My local panhandler carries a sign reading, “Needs Beer.” I can’t help but wonder if this is Austin’s equivalent of a shady neighborhood.

If so, this is adorable.

Kids, I just moved out of the murder capitol of the United States. A few years before that I lived in a city where local race riots made national news. I can’t help but sincerely hope I’ve accidentally moved into what locals consider the bad part of town. If I’m so lucky, Austin is even more awesome than I first thought.

Behold, Austin! For lo, I am the bringer of rain. You were parched in anticipation of my arrival, but hark, in my meager three weeks living within your boundaries have I brought the rain thrice.

These gifts of fertility and life will fall like happy tears upon your barren soil so long as I am supplied with healthy consorts, black of hair and curled of mustache.

Look upon the cleanliness of your automobiles, feel beneath your feet the springiness of soil, sleep by night to the soothing fall of raindrops against your window. I can bring unto you strong crops, green lawns, and naturally occurring wet t-shirt contests. Give unto me what is mine and I shall give unto you all these pleasures and more.

Dare not incur my wrath. What I have freely given can yet be denied. Lo, those whose lives have been scorched by a long dry spell know truth in their hearts that a lack of moisture destroys all hope of joyful frolicking. Grow ye men your facial hair, for lo, it is good. Annoint yourselves with the brass goggles and fetching waistcoats of my priesthood. Come unto me, and in your joy, bring fruitfulness to all the land.

It’s been way too long since I enjoyed Thanksgiving. There was the year my ex’s mother decided to put bacon in everything then had just enough to drink to really enjoy hassling me for keeping kosher, the awkward year I spent with people who were trying to stay friends with us both after the divorce, and the year I spent drinking alone at home because it was better than the alternatives.

Things rounded the corner last year. I was close enough to my best friend Anne to spend the day with her family. Nearly thirty of us filled her house. I got to spend time with her awesome niece Jen and her new husband, Anne’s in-laws lived up to all the stories I’d heard over the years, and the feeling of warmth and holiday spirit reminded me that Thanksgiving with the right people is actually awesome.

This year, I’d been in Austin for all of 3 weeks when Thanksgiving rolled around. When I moved, I expected to spend it with a crockpot turkey breast and a few other fixings I made at home. Instead, I was invited to two potlucks, conveniently spaced out so I could attend both.

For lunch, I was one of 30 at the North Austin Social Group. It was one heck of a spread and I enjoyed meeting a nice, diverse group of people. For dinner, I headed over to the younger, nerdier Reddit potluck where the spread was less fancy but equally diverse. We whiled away the night drinking, playing boardgames, and, in my case, attempting to convince a man that he looked exactly like an ancient Assyrian frieze of a high priest fertilizing a date palm. Other people may have been impressed by the turkey wrapped in bacon, but I know it takes far more time and dedication to achieve such a genuinely old school beard.

I staggered home around 10 pm, overstuffed with food and genuinely thankful for my life. I have a job I enjoy which gave me the flexibility and freedom to move to a city where I feel like I fit in. Now that I’m here, I’m meeting friendly, outgoing people who don’t care where I went to high school. There are plenty of interesting things to do and, to my delight, a wealth of groups to do them with. I’m in the enviable position of not having enough time to do everything I want, both personally and professionally.

Over the last three years I’ve worked hard to have this first world problem. You know what? It’s great.

Back in 1989, the state capitol of Texas was populated by government workers, hippies, artists, and potheads. They built small houses which they painted however the hell they wanted, spent their evenings listening to small local bands, and owned art by someone they knew.

Then the population doubled from 400,000 in 1990 to 800,000 in 2000 as tech companies moved in. Free thinking culture, tech jobs, a thriving university, and genuinely gorgeous people drove the city to double in population again from 2001 to 2010. Now the metro area has more than 1.7 million residents.

In the last two weeks I’ve been to 8 meetups. I’ve met dozens of friendly, outgoing people, but only 2 of them were actually born here in Austin. The meetups are flooded with recent immigrants like myself. At the Geek Girls of Austin, a woman described herself as an old timer. She’d been here for 3 years. None of the Professional Writers of Austin were from the city. It wasn’t until I went to a surprisingly fun Reddit meetup that I met my first actual born and bred local.

Meetups in most cities have a big problem with attendance. 30 people will RSVP and 4 will show up. So far, all the meetups I’ve attended have had the opposite problem. In Austin, it seems you add 20% to your RSVP’s. I’m sure this is because damn near everyone here is new. We all moved here for similar reasons (tech jobs, pride in weirdness, trendy city) and we’re all looking for new friends. In the last decade Meetup has become the best way to meet new people once you’re out of college.

I’m sure I’ll wax eloquent about Meetup on a regular basis as I use it to evolve a social life. For now, I’ll set that aside and reveal my shiny, unfiltered first impressions of Austin.

This city is young and fit. Those two things go together naturally, but they take it to extremes. People here are seriously into hiking, biking, and extreme sports. They spend a lot of time outdoors and look down on anyone who isn’t in good enough shape for a serious sporting hobby. I want to lose my restaurant reviewer weight and get my arms into shape for a long day of kayaking by next summer.

Restaurants here skew towards young tastes as well. There are a ton of vegetarian restaurants. Downtown and parts south are full of cheap food trucks. (Including, to my delight, a group of food trucks set up around some park benches to create a self titled “Trailer Park Food Court.”) There’s also a great diversity of ethnic restaurants, including a surprising number of fast casual Indian restaurants. People say this is a BBQ city, but in person, I’ve seen more Ethiopian restaurants than I have barbecue.

However, while the restaurants aren’t serving up BBQ, the meat selection at local groceries makes me feel like I’m back home again. After years of exile in the uncivilized pork lands, I am back in the blessed home of beef. Grocery stores stock briskets, beef spare ribs, chili beef, and thick cut steaks for the grill. I want to cook it all.

Why the hell are their 3 lane wide 55 mph one way roads lining highways in the north of the city? Learning the difference between a normal left hand turn and a u-turn that puts you on the highway going the opposite direction is a special traffic adventure. Miss your turn or can’t find your building and you’ll be driving a mile or more out of your way in search of one of those special u-turn only lanes. Screw a grid system or normal human surface streets. This is Texas. It’s a whole other country.

I had a date set up with an artist on OK Cupid. He turned me down when he found out I lived north of the river. Yes, even in a city that prides itself on it’s weirdness, there is a strong weirder-than-thou culture. Rents in the south are double (or more) what I’m paying here for ? (or less) space and no amenities, but if you have the money, living in the right part of town is worth it. Crossing the river will cause the wax to fall out of hipster’s mustaches, PBR to go flat, and mud dragons to rise from the dry banks and attack your car. It’s just not worth it.

Traffic from north to south is ghastly. From 4:45 to 7 pm the roads are parking lots. As an experiment, I left the house at 5:15 one night. I arrived at my Metup du Jour at 7:20. No exaggeration. Another night, I left the house at 7 pm. I arrived at my Meetup at 7:20. I’ve only been here for a couple weeks, but I already know my social schedle is destined to skew late. I’m a thousand times more likely to attend a Tuesday night club meeting that starts at 8 pm. If it starts at 6, I’m simply not going. Quitting work at 3:30 to deal with the traffic just isn’t worth it.

Speaking of work, I’ve never met so many freshly employed 22 year olds. Austin skews young. A lot of the meetups are full of kids who graduated in June and moved here for jobs in August. The unemployed people I’ve met have all been over 35. That’s depressing. It makes me feel like I need to do whatever it takes to look as young as possible at networking events. There’s always a premium placed on youth (especially in the tech industry), but here, it’s taken to extremes I’ve never seen. It makes me think I’m  probably too old to enjoy San Fransisco.

You can tell when the tech boom hit by the architecture. My apartment is one of a two mile wide strip of 1990’s builds strategically near some of the tech campuses. For some reason, they decided to lure people in with the deeply annoying false sense of security created by putting gates around the communities. This does nothing to reduce crime or keep unwanted people out. Instead, it’s an annoying hassle for the residents. Far too often I’ve pulled up to the gate of my complex to find another car patiently waiting in front of me, blocking the gate. The only way for me to get home is to push my remote control, letting the car ahead of me in before I can cross the gate. All it succeeds in doing is making it very hard for guests to visit.

Old timers resent all the newcomers clogging up their traffic and skyrocketing the costs of rent. By “old timers” I mean people who have been here 2 years or more. I’ve heard plenty of people who have been in Austin for 9 months to 3 years discuss how they miss the good old days in the city. Mind you, people who have been here 10 years say the same thing. No matter when you moved to Austin, once upon a time, the rents were cheaper, the traffic was lighter, and the girls were easier.

Despite the good natured bitching, I’ve met some of the friendliest, most outgoing people since Kansas City. (Depending on your math, this is between city 12 and 15, so I have some perspective on this.) They may say they hate all the people swelling their ranks, but in reality, the Austinites who attend Meetups are there to make new friends.

I miss being a quick drive from so many people I care about. St. Louis was convenient to Louisville and Kansas City, a day trip to Minneapolis or Tulsa, and most importantly, a mere hour and a half from my friend Anne. You can’t live for road trips, though. I’m pleased to be in a city I don’t want to leave every weekend.

I’m a very lucky woman. Anne, my sister from another mister, not only kept me company but also kept me sane on my move.

A small but significant portion of my worldly goods still lived in a Springfield, Illinois storage unit. She met the movers there and supervised them loading my things into their panel van, then rode to St. Louis with them. She brought snacks and kept me company while total strangers packed all my worldly goods into a 24 foot panel van. When the painfully slow movers finally went back to Springfield, she hopped in the truck for a road trip to Austin.

Along the way, she kept me company day and night, always a voice of optimism. Who cares if normal people don’t move across country to cities they’ve never even visited, she’d say. You’re Chris-Rachael. You’ve moved to countries you’d never visited. We drove all day then watched house porn shows at night, comparing them all to the apartments I’d seen in Austin.

When I discovered my complex pulled a bait and switch on my apartment, she was there to keep me calm. Sure, she said, the kitchen sink may only be 8 inches deep and the miniature toilet may look like it was designed for potty training a two year old, but look at these huge windows. It’s a good, sunny space to replace that dark, depressing hole of an apartment in St. Louis. Plus, for $450 and 60 days notice you can move out whenever you want, so it’s as good a starter home as anything else.

Later that day, when the car dolly snapped, leaving me in serious physical danger on the bridge and terrified of financial disaster if I had to buy the dolly, she was there when I cried and still there when I calmed down. When the same movers who sloppily attached my dolly somehow also made off with all my bedding, she took me to Target and got me an entirely new set of sheets, blanket and comforter so I’d have something new to sleep on in a new city. Every morning, I love waking up in my new green bed.

She was cheerful on the calm drive and easily rolled with my moving day panic. Between the bait and switch, dolly disaster, and insurance shocker, I would’ve spent my first day in Austin a useless mess. With her calming presence I was able to get my shit together and deal with the realities at hand.

When it was time to put her on a train back to Illinois, I didn’t want to give her back.

I’ve spent holidays with Anne. I’ve gone on road trips with her. She’s the only person I regularly talk to on the phone, and every time I do it feels like we saw one another yesterday. Plus, she got me into Doctor Who. I am a damn lucky woman.

Hopefully, you’re nodding along, thinking of the friend who, by their actions, makes you happy to be a member of the human race. Go tell them how awesome they are. They deserve it.