Travel
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 
BEWARE the Business of Gainesville!
Oct 27th
Last night, as Snackpants and I were driving from our home in Middle Georgia back to Orlando, we made a slight detour in Gainesville to partake of one of my favorite chains: Tijuana Flats. Because the closest one to us is in Jacksonville, every time we come back to Orlando I insist that we have it at least once. Due to time constraints and pre-existing plans for this trip, Gainesville was really our only option.
The TomTom faithfully got us to the UF Plaza where the Tijuana’s is located, and we proceeded to park my car in the lot before enjoying some of the tasty goodness. We were in there for about 30 minutes and upon returning to the parking lot, Snackpants says…
“Where’s the car?”
It took a few minutes for my anxiety to fully kick into gear. I stared up and down the row, knowing full well that the car had been there and now there was a different, not-my vehicle parked in its place. I admit that I even did a ‘faculties’ check in my mind to see if I had gone insane.
Now, instead of being a rational human being, my mind automatically went to the worst possible scenario: someone stole my car. It took about 30 seconds for me to begin bawling on the sidewalk and mentally running through the list of everything we had just lost: 3 laptops, 2 iPods, my digital camera, my knitting. I ran the mental circle of “well, we have to report it stolen, but the VIN number is on the car and the registration is IN the car along with the insurance information, which I could also access online but my computer is gone” and all that jazz.
Snackpants managed to keep mostly calm, while he did a pretty poor job of keeping ME calm or being soothing in any fashion (sorry honey, but it’s true!). Fortunately, though, he was still in the right frame of mind to realize that we were surrounded by 22 signs signs stating “TOW AWAY ZONE” and he had misread the list of businesses for which the parking lot was used.
Luckily for us, but rather unfortunately for the owner of the car being towed next, the tow truck pulled up about 3 minutes into my hysterical crying and Snacky was able to verify that he had, in fact, taken my car not 20 minutes earlier, which was about 5 minutes after we parked it. Turns out the plaza pays a guy to sit and watch people violate the parking rules and then calls in their vehicles to be taken away.
From what we learned on the ride to the tow yard, towing is a HUGE business in Gainesville. There are about 12 companies that run around the clock picking up cars, which apparently have NOWHERE to park in that city that is actually legal. And far be it from anyone in the plaza to let us know that we were being retarded and failing to read the signs. Oh no. They couldn’t even be bothered to say “It was towed” while I was standing there losing my mind along with my tears.
Next trip, we are stopping in Ocala instead for some Flats.
All about the ring
Oct 1st
Earlier this week, for what constituted our “weekend” on Monday and Tuesday, Snackpants decided to take me to Savannah for a little getaway. We had an awesome time wandering around the city, being tourists, and exploring many of the local pubs, of which there are a great many.
Monday night we ended up in Kevin Barry’s Pub on River Street where we found ourselves sitting at the bar with a party of drunk middle-aged guys. There were about 8 of them and we later found out that they work for a company that sells sewer pumps and had budgets due the next day so they were drinking away their worries because they were not going to hit their sales goals.
As the night wore on, one of them got slowly more and more drunk while the rest of them went home to get some sleep, and this one guy kept hitting on the waitress at the bar. Turns out she has a cop boyfriend, though he continued to pursue her anyway. In an effort to boost his morale and “help him out”, Snackpants made the following comment:
“It’s only serious if there’s a ring.”
Excuse me, what?!?
He tried to save himself after this one, but the damage had been done. That’s how you define serious, Mr. Snackpants? I can see we are going to have some problems then. Being that we live in a military town, I don’t think I would have too much trouble finding another casual boyfriend (or two) since I appear to be mistaken about the commitment level in this relationship.
When you come home to find me gone, having run off with some 19 year old recruit, remember that you dug your own grave with this one! Then you’ll recall the immortal words of the great Beyonce: “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.”
Dance it out for me, Ava!
**Note: I am not actually going to find another (or more) “casual” boyfriends, in case you were seriously worried. I threatened Snackpants with a post about this one so here it is.
**Edit: I know he is getting a lot of crap about this one. I also know he didn’t mean it the way it came out. Blame it on the 3 Irish Car Bombs. I do.
Dragon*Con 09 review – coming soon
Sep 8th
So, because I have WAY too much work to get done tonight, I am taking the time to post that in the coming days, I will recap my impressions of Dragon*Con this year. So be warned. There may even be photos posted, since I took so freakin’ many.
