Epic Meats

Got a call from a friend on Saturday that something epic was afoot at the aforementioned Ice House. Boy, was it.


That, for the record, is a burger skewered on sausages and wrapped in a woven cloak of bacon, waiting patiently for space on the grill. One of many, many, many meat treats at the, get ready, Montrose Beer & Gun Club Annual Cookoff & Music Extravaganza, a benefit for, also get ready, kids who wish things were better. You pay five dollars at the door and then eat as much as you possibly can from the 20-30 little stands set up on the grounds at the ice house. Beer is for sale, like always, but mostly, there's just a crazy amount of food. Things get made in waves, the offerings change as the day wears on, but we saw lots of chili, six kinds of beans, tenderloin on the grill, a roasted pig head, tamales, tacos, chicken, quail, rabbit, everything. And each with some kind of sauce, tenderly drizzled over top. I got to eat some stuff here and there, but yeah, mostly I just watched.







That there? That's a candied jalapeno. Momentarily sweet but really just hugely spicy, for the record.

Sweet Spots

I should confess, I still have a suitcase on the floor of my room full of clothes. It's not exactly still packed, but the stuff in it is that sort of in between clothing that you don't want to devote one of your three precious drawers to, but also, that you actually wear. I believe its a medley of athletic clothing and old t-shirts that are really only suitable for sleeping in, when you've run out of otherwise more suitable pajamas and shorts or ruffled bloomers I wear under dresses while bicycling and enormously bulky Russian socks and long underwear and the odd pair of sweatpants. They are things I don't need right now, but might need someday and the whole mix leaves me really uncertain about myself. Let alone what kind of storage solution I require.

So, yes, I haven't documented the state of things here, as they are still very much in progress. Sorry. I really need a dining table and I think all other negligence in my apartment sort of orbits around that main issue. And in my defense, I am almost never actually here. So never here, that my neighbor was shocked to see me in the daylight the other day. I actually startled him.

But there are some little spots where in between brewing coffee or reading or brushing my teeth, I've put down little roots and hung up the things I love. Sometimes, I've just used the nail that was already in the wall. But even the little wispy bitty roots we put down, they do help to hold things up.
















I've always been really attached to my house. (Nester, obviously.) But here in Houston especially, I realized that the things I've held onto, through all the moves and all the shakes, are the things that will always remind me of some very specific moment or person. And all these silly little things, tacked to the walls of this little apartment, is a way of surrounding myself with all of the moments and with all of the people with whom I've known love and felt life. To linger over them in the minutes between the usual, ho-hum everyday? Well, it just, it really helps.

Can't Be All

I daresay, if you can manage to make a perfect peach pie and drink some nice whiskey with a friend once in a great while, it can't be all bad.

That half that's missing we ate to celebrate the end of our first review and one quarter pie each was well-deserved.

West Alabama Ice House

I am not ashamed to say that I have managed to locate for myself, a bar. Arguably, for a grad student and a fan of fun, this is the most important thing to nail down in a new city. This one, it hits all the notes.





Pool table, outdoor seating, cheap beer, old timers, taco truck, huge white dog, check.