Austin breakfast FTW

I got up at a stupid hour this morning, a time when I was not inclined to deal with the taxi shenanigans that ensue whenever you have to deal with Montgomery County's eedjit cab services, and managed to sleep a few hours on the flight to Dallas. At the DFW airport I wandered around in an uncaffeinated, fasting haze until I found a Starbucks, then meandered over to my gate to find that, whoops, they were almost finished boarding. Would've been so embarrassing to miss the flight. But I got to Austin fine, grabbed a cab, slung my bag aboard, and bid the driver hie us to the Hilton by way of breakfast tacos.

"Okay," he said. "There's a place on the way. You mind if it's grungy?"

Things were looking up.

It turns out that in this case, "grungy" meant "a converted Popeyes in which the redecorating has involved knocking out the order counter, chiseling off some wall tiles and replacing them with other tiles reading 'Mi Cantina,' and adding hand-written strips to the menu board. And you will be the only guailo in the joint." Rock on. I passed on the especial del día ("carne azada") and got a taco de huevos y tocino (a small flour tortilla filled with fresh eggs and bacon) and one of huevos y queso, both enlivened with a cup of fresh roasted-tomato and cilantro salsa. Life and civility flowed back with the cholesterol. The cabbie and I traded notes on barbecue, once I'd established some fresser bona fides (he asked where I went in Lockhart; I passed the test), and he pointed out a 'cue place down the road from my hotel. Since at the last meeting I was at with this crew, our token Y-chromosome finished a pound of steak at dinner, that intel will come in handy.

I hesitate to say how much more I'm enjoying Austin than Seattle, for fear of being thought ungrateful (and really, I keep trying to write up the dinner we had at the Impromptu Wine Bar on Thursday night, but it always ends up a string of obscenity-laced superlatives and l33t-speak, "OMG so fucking good," which isn't much help, but I can sum up by saying that I didn't think the place could match the swoony food pr0n the chef's wife writes at Gluten-Free Girl and I was wrong, amen). But I like it better in Austin. It has something to do with the sun.

[ETA: The hotel is hosting a boxing match tonight. The people-watching is unbelievable; someone could write a thesis on the difference between the ring girls (travel in groups, uniformly blond, ponytailed, and mascara'd into tarantula territory) and the pros (pretty in a way that is also kind of terrifying). And this is four hours before the bell, so it's only going to get better more.]