Today we were driving a round a bit, checking out the area some more and visiting some of the (many) antique/retro/who-knows-what stores in the vicinity.

Started out by going to the new “Chinatown” mall, up north of us. They just opened a huge Chinese grocery store. We’re talking an entire isle of sesame oil! Live fish! Squid snacks for kids! Really cool stuff. I’m gonna have to put together a list and head on up there again. The only downside is that there wasn’t much Japanese stuff there (in stores as in life, the Chinese don’t seem to like the Japanese very much).

The especially cool thing is that the Chinese place is pretty close to Ace Mart. Ace is a huge kitchen supply store. We’re talking $5000 Vulcan stoves. Huge Hobart mixers, friers, and on and on. A very cool store (and there are TWO of them in Austin–we’re in-between both). If you ever need a 36″ wok, a 24″ cake pan, and a stock pot bigger than most 5 year olds, then this is the place to visit.

While driving around I saw a new banner across Burnet (pronounced BURN-it) for the Texas Yoga Championship. What a strange thing, I thought. What do people do, try to out meditate each other? See who can sit in the lotus position longer? Hmm. I guess we’ll just have to check it out.

Across the street from us they are having a 48 hour Code-A-Thon. Yes, you too can spend a weekend coding the next version of Drupal–an open source content management platform. Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick! A fricken Open Source Coding party!

One minute I’m choosing between 60 different kinds of chili sauce, next minute I’m thinking about a yoga death-match, and then I get hit with an Open Source geek-a-thon. This has got to be the strangest town I’ve ever lived in. 

I was thinking of getting one of those GPS things for the car, but maybe not…

(AHN) – A German driver followed a road under construction and crashed his Mercedes following his GPS Navigation system. The 80-year-old ignored several signs for construction.

His vehicle ran into several barricades and eventually crashed into a pile of sand before the man’s journey ended. The driver and his wife were able to walk away from the crash uninjured.

A police spokesperson told Reuters, “The driver was following the orders from his navigation system and even though there was a sufficient number of warnings and barricades, he continued his journey into the construction site. His trip finally ended when he wound up crashing into a pile of sand.”

The crash occurred outside of Hamburg, Germany.

Evelyn has been busting her butt recently working on our big furniture/box move. I’m glad to announce that everything is now locked in. North American movers will be picking up our stuff on the 20th. Basically, they will be taking everything out of our two storage units in Arlington Heights and moving it  down to Austin. Once in Austin we’ll put the furniture in the apartment and everything else into storage down here.

So, we’ll be back in Chicago for a short time the week of 10/15. Probably arriving on the 18th and staying through the weekend. (We need to get in a day or so early, since we have to re-pack / pack some stuff.) We also tried to time it so that we could be in town for my parents birthdays (15th and 20th).

In Austin we’re still couch-less, but we did get a call from the guys today. They will be delivering the couch and chair tomorrow evening. Horray!

Today we did some stuff in preparation of getting the car registered down here. First thing was to get Texas car insurance. Luckily, State Farm is down here (our carrier in Illinois) so the process wasn’t too horrible. Got renters insurance too, which I’m very glad off, since now our stuff in storage is re-insured again.

Two funny things about the Texas insurance: Since this is Texas, everything is bigger. No little wallet sized insurance cards that are easy to carry. Nope. These are nice 5×7 sized cards, suitable for saddlebags (as the insurance agent joked). The other thing is that renters insurance covers $2500 in firearms “but many people require additional coverage”.

It was a great day today–we got our new (antique) dining room table and chairs. Horray! Now we can sit down to eat. Ev got a nice table cloth and some flowers, and it really looks sharp. Now we’re waiting on our couch and recliner to be delivered. Once we have those, I’ll post some pics.

The apartment is coming along well. We bought some new stuff for the bathroom, since we didn’t like the old cheapie faux-gold stuff in there. Our apartment manager is really cool–much better than our old place–they allow you to improve the apartment. The only thing is that you have to ask them to do the installs, which they do the next day. Plus, if we move to a 2 bedroom later on, they will move the fixtures for us. Pretty nice!

The complex continues to be very quiet. There is certainly something to be said living on the top floor of a place full of senior citizens. At first I thought that some of them weren’t as friendly as I would expect, but later I found out it was just because they didn’t have their hearing aids in, so couldn’t carry a conversation.

Ev has been working with a moving company (North American) to get our stuff down here. We were originally going to go with a smaller moving company, but we have a lot of heavy stuff (over 100 boxes of books), which can only be shipped via a semi (due to the weight). Tomorrow the movers are taking a look at what we have in Chicago (my dad is taking care of that) so that we can get an estimate.

With any luck, we’ll have our stuff down here later this month. Our plan right now is to have them put all our boxes (which fill up 1 1/2 10×20 storage rooms) in storage down here in Austin, and have our furniture moved to the apartment. Then we can pick-and-chose what boxes/stuff to bring in. It’s really important, since our place here is much smaller than in Arlington Heights. (In AH, we had 940 square feet. Here we have about 600.)

As for my commute, it’s only taking about 10-15 minutes longer (and we’re 10 miles north of where we were). In the morning I leave at 7 and get to work at 7:30. Not bad at all. Afternoon rush is a bit slower, been between 35 to 45 minutes. Again, not horrible…considering my old Chicago train ride was 45 minutes (we used to leave the house at 6:30 and I would arrive at work at 8 ).

We’re liking the area we moved to more and more. Ev made a very good choice. Walking distance to a CVS, restaurants, and a big grocery store. Lots of bike routes, too, so I’m dying to get our bikes down here.

Oh, and another Texas Twang for you: We go to grocery store called “HEB”. It’s very much like Jewel in Chicago, though it has more stuff. When we first got here Ev called it “heeb” (like Hebrew) and I called it “heab”. Both were wrong. You say the letters (H, E, B). Live and learn.

While Austin is filled with a lot of ex-patriots from all over the country, I happen to work with native Texans. It’s kind of interesting, and sometimes a challange, talking to them. Sometimes I think I need a pronunciation guide.

Take the road I take to get to work: Manchaca. When Ev and I first got here, we thought it was pronounced as a Spanish word. With the a’s as ahhh. Maanchaakaa. Well, the other day I kept hearing this other word and finally figured out the people were talking about the road. They pronounce it “Man Check”.

To the south of Austin is a town called Buda. I thought it was spoken like Buddha (of Buddhism). Nope. I was way off. It’s pronounced “Beauda”…if you say the first part of “beautiful” you get the sound.

Today one of the guys at work mentioned a cool breakfast place and I swear that he said “Almond Tree” (he said it twice). So I go looking for the place on Google. Can’t find it. But I did find “Omelettry”.

I have a feeling that within a couple of months I’ll be saying stuff like “ahll meet ya’ll at’de almond tree”. Probably the funniest thing is when the Texans put on a strong Texas accent, where vowels disappear and words lengthen.

The last couple of days have been spent getting stuff for the apartment.

On Friday we found a really cool dining/kitchen table and chairs at an Antique store near us. It was designed as a gaming table (for card games), so it has this kooky flip top table which makes it expand from 36×36 to 72×36. Plus, it has a hidden compartment under the table top, ideal for storing your poker chips, cards, silverware, whatever. It’s pretty cool.

On Saturday we went around picking up more normal stuff, like plates and bowls. Nothing too exciting, though it did take time for us to find a store that sells Corelle. Ended up having to go to the nearby outlet mall, which has a dishware store. I know it sounds boring, but the Corelle stuff is great. It looks nice, isn’t overly expensive, and is very hard to break. As an added bonus, it’s made in the USA.

In the evening we went hunting for a new couch (we don’t have one anymore). We went to Rooms to Go, and found some pieces that we liked, but kept looking. I hate going to furniture stores as much as I hate buying cars. I guess I just don’t like places that sell on commission. It just gives you that weird “we’re getting screwed over” feel. Anyhow, we left there, and went to World Market to buy some glasses (since they sell Anchor glasses, the kind in restaurants, that are hard to break). How exciting!

On Sunday morning we checked for some local furniture places and found a consignment place called (cunningly) Austin Furniture Consignment. We figured we might spot some decent second-hand sofa or something. So we drove down there (it’s just west of downtown) and checked it out. It had a bunch of old/junky stuff in the yard area, so I was worried at first. (If you need a huge ugly desk, this is your place. I saw one that would be a great workbench area [for soldering] for $20!) Inside was better; stuff everywhere. Well, we learned that they also sell new furniture and could order a bunch of different stuff. In the end, we found a loveseat and chair that we liked and ended up ordering those pieces. It felt much better to spend money at a small local company (with no sales pressure at all) than some big box chain.

Now we’re just waiting on the deliveries. The Antique store is delivering the table and chairs on Wednesday, and the couch and chair should be here later in the week. Horray! No more eating at the kitchen counter! And having a chair will be nice, too!

If you are into Antiques and second-hand shops, Austin is the place to be. We have at least 4 good sized antique stores within walking distance (2 blocks) of our apartment, and there is a giant Antique Mall (where we got our kitchen table) about 3 miles to the north. (We live just south of the big “furniture district”, which is probably why there are a lot of second hand places in the area.) Lots of good pieces, at prices cheaper than the speciality stores you see in Austin’s South Congress (SoCo) area.