Clear Eyes, Full Tummies, Can't Lose

So first you withhold grilled cheese from me, Internet, and then you withhold queso? This simply won't do. I was almost twenty-seven before I'd had my first grilled cheese sandwich and I probably would have made it to forty-seven without trying queso, had I not spent last weekend in Austin attempting to break some sort of record for eating the largest amount of it in the smallest amount of time. 

I'm pretty sure I'm now the current champion, if anybody would like to challenge me.

I was in Austin for the SXSW conference, where I moderated a panel called "Secrets of Fake Twitter Accounts Revealed." I got to meet the geniuses behind @BPGlobalPR, @JasperSlobrushe, and @FakeAPStylebook, as well as the very lovely and forgiving manager of the real @APStylebook Twitter account, which made for some hilarious photo ops in the green room while we were all waiting nervously for our panel.

The other thing I did in Austin was eat. I ate my way through all of your marvelous suggestions---thank you so much for those; you all have fantastic taste---and then I Yelped a few more, just for kicks. We went to Kerbey Lane ("I don't even need a menu," I told the waiter, "the Internet already told me to have the gingerbread pancakes") and to the enormous flagship Whole Foods (they had a bar in the store!) and to Torchy's, where we had some damn good tacos, just like they said on the sign.

See? That is, like, the opposite of false advertising.

We didn't get out to Salt Lick, unfortunately, because there were so many conference-y type things to do, but we comforted ourselves with the fact that we could have it at the airport, and it certainly didn't disappoint. (Barbecue is another thing, by the way, that I didn't eat until my very late twenties when one of my Southern friends in San Francisco made pulled pork. All that time I lived in Charleston and I never so much had a slice of brisket!)

Of course, being in Austin, I did my best to drink the local beer:

And to match it to my cardigan, of course. What, like you don't? When in Rome!

I'd been to Dallas before, and to San Antonio, but I wasn't sure what to expect from Austin. In truth, it wasn't like I thought it would be at all. I guess that's what happens when the only frame of reference you have is a hazy recollection of Real World Austin from that one time you watched a marathon on MTV. 

Everyone had told me that Austin wasn't "the real Texas" but I thought it was still pretty authentic, even with the insurgence of tech geeks who descended on the city for SXSW. In fact, the unusually high level of hipsters combined with the regular population of rugged Texans meant I don't think I saw a man who wasn't wearing a plaid shirt during the whole weekend!

Including my husband, of course. He wore two. Plus a moustache, but only because it was a special occasion.

I have a ton more photos from Austin and about fifteen thousand more things to say about the queso (most of them are just sound effects, like mmmmmmmmm and whoaaaaaa), but I shall leave you here because I am currently working my way through a book called "Room" which is, as they say, unputdownable. In fact, I typed this whole thing with one hand while reading an entire chapter with the other. Not really. Well, maybe. It's called multi-tasking. You'll never be able to prove if I'm lying.