The Holiday Madness Has Begun!
Nov 29th
Did you manage to survive Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday? I sure hope so! I managed to live through it all with only minor cuts and scrapes, and considering I currently work in retail for my real-world job, that’s no easy feat! I didn’t even get screamed at, so overall it wasn’t too shabby 
For Thanksgiving dinner, despite Joey Snackpants‘ parents being here and offering to cook, we took the family to a local Greek restaurant where they were serving turkey with traditional fixins, as they say here in Georgia, lamb, prime rib, and Mediterranean salmon. I was actually quite surprised at how good it all was, especially the white chocolate raspberry cake we had for dessert, and honestly I’m glad we made that decision. The best part – no clean up!
The other excitement of my holiday weekend has been knitting and crocheting until my eyes bleed. Okay, so maybe they haven’t ever actually bled, but I managed to finish the 20 baby hats I was working on and complete a knit hat and fingerless glove combo set requested by a friend. That’s a lot of yarn.
Happy Holidays, y’all!
Friday Donut Madness!
Oct 1st
In honor of Friday, that most joyous day of the week, I bring you the other donuts we had while in Austin, Texas a few weeks ago.
Also a product of watching some random food show on the Travel Channel, we were pleased to partake of Gourdough’s, which is run out of what appears to be a trailer of sorts. They make everything fresh there and are famous for their insane and generous toppings.
Joey Snackpants enjoyed the Flying Pig, which is a donut covered in bacon and maple frosting.
(Clearly photographed with a cell phone, so please excuse the weirdness)
Being the 4 year old that I am, I decided to have the Baby Rattler, which was covered in fudge icing, Fudge Oreos, and a heaping helping of gummy worms.
Both were very large and we did our best to finish them. And of course, we’re already planning which varieties to try upon our eventual return. Another highly recommended experience in the Austin area! You gotta love a Gourdough’s Donut!
Biggest Donut EVAR!
Sep 28th
I was first introduced to the Texas Size Donut while watching Man v. Food: Austin on the Travel Channel. One of my favorite things about this show is that host Adam Richman gets so excited and enthusiastic about food! He makes me want to try everything he eats… well, almost. But this donut has been on my mind for the months since I first saw this episode. When we found out that Joey Snackpants was going to be in Texas for 2 weeks for work and we decided that I would visit him over the weekend, I knew that my donut dreams were about to come true!
Round Rock Donuts is in Round Rock, Texas just outside of Austin. They specialize in donuts, obviously, but also offer a variety of cakes, pies, and cookies. My eye was of course on the Texas Size Donut, which is cut out using a 5 gallon bucket to get the size right.
It’s ginormous at a 10 standard-size donut equivalent. The thing I most enjoyed about this donut, besides it’s insane size, was the flavor. Round Rock uses an orange glaze on the top side of the pastry, but it doesn’t have an orange taste in my opinion. The donut is light, super tasty, and larger than my head. Which makes it just plain awesome.
See? Totally bigger than my head! These donuts are so popular that while Round Rock doesn’t offer a shipping option themselves, the local Postal Annex will pick them up and ship them for you, according to the Round Rock Donuts Facebook page.
I HIGHLY recommend that you take a bite out of this monster should you ever find yourself in Austin. It’s totally worth the trip! And you can even get them in standard size for those with a much smaller sweet tooth than my own
Dragon*Con 2010: The Madness!
Sep 13th
Dragon*Con 2010 took place in Atlanta last weekend. During this, my 4th year of attendance, I had a lot of fun as always. But I gotta say, it had a few moments of FAIL that make me kind of leery about the commitments I’m willing to make for next year.
To start with, I will absolutely NOT be pre-registering as I did this year. Through a series of FAIL, I ended up with 2 badges: the one I pre-registered for and never picked up because they wanted me to wait outside for 4+ hours, and the one I paid cash for and had hanging around my neck inside of 10 minutes. Apparently I’m not the only one who thought the wait was completely not worth it and just bought another badge. I have since read that D*C plans to switch to a barcode system for next year that *should* make things run more smoothly, but I’ll believe it works when I see it. I also had a friend there trying to pick up a Press Badge, and what should have been a simple process became a 60 minute ordeal as no one knew exactly where the pick up was, and we ended up going from the Sheraton to the Hyatt and back to the Sheraton before she was actually able to get it.
It would also appear that the con is getting a little too big for its britches. Hotel security went into lock down a couple of times, only allowing people with con badges or room keys to get into the hotel. From what I heard, the Fire Marshall was threatening shut down due to too many people. Though the con is spread out over 4+ hotels, there’s not enough room for everyone! The wall to wall bodies was not fun.
I also heard that there were a NUMBER of sexual harassment and battery issues taking place throughout the course of the weekend. While this didn’t personally happen to me, I have to admit that I didn’t feel safe enough this year to go anywhere by myself. The number of people was not comforting, and the limited number of staff and con security didn’t make me feel entirely ‘secure’.
I won’t even go into the problems of staying in a con hotel. Of course it had amazing benefits, but the elevator situation was just plain annoying. And walking down 18 flights of stairs wasn’t very fun either.
All in all, my complaints aren’t terrible enough to prevent me from going back, and my level of enjoyment was still quite high. So here are a few choice photos from the weekend for your viewing enjoyment!
Geese!
Aug 1st
Living in one of the big cities in Florida, I never saw anything quite like this (excepting the occasional family of ducks). This morning on my way to work, I was held up briefly as I waited for this line of fine feathered fellows to cross the road:
What was really killing me was their apparent fear of the yellow line. They would stop, investigate, and then run over it quickly. I was cracking up waiting for them to go by! As I turned up at the corner, there was another line of 15 or so crossing in front of the building in the background. For some reason, they love hanging out in the mall parking lot (to the immediate right in this photo).
Who knew geese had such manners when crossing the road??
