Austin is Weird. But we're weirder!

Alternatively titled-
Keep Austin Weird(er)
^Making

Pride parade + Large amounts of sidewalk chalk + Free saturday = Instant epic road trip

Roadside art is such a cool thing to try.

Especially when combined with an awesome parade that was just asking for a little more rainbow!

Naturally, no one stopped us or asked why we were making a giant rainbow starting line all the way across the street in front of the parade.  Most people just took pictures, or asked us questions about the event.  I love it how having fun, effective ideas that you're prepared to put to work makes people just automatically assume that you're supposed to be doing it, or that you're in charge.

Also, Grace and I got our money's worth from some epic knee high socks from Target.  In the middle of Texas's city of "weird" full of hipsters and people trying all sorts of eccentric styles, it was great to see just how many people complimented our matching neon-striped awesomeness.

Naturally, this also gave me a cool reminder that I am definitely related to my sister, who wore almost the same combination the next day in an unconnected, but equally awesome, fashion decision.

Arrrgh! It Be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Shiver me timbers!  I almost forgot that today be Talk Like A Pirate Day!  Many leagues have passed beneath me keel since I've used me buccaneering mannerisms!  Blow me down and have me marooned, but I won't let that be happenin again.  Seein' as I be at my apartment with costumes about as often as a landlubber sights a giant kraken, I had to make do with the flotsam and jetsam of me OC locker and the props of me mateys.  (There was a guy who gave a presentation recently about following our passions.  I may have used his business card to help make the eyepatch in the costume.  I hope he's proud.)

Though I've seen many a more threatenin' pirate climb a mizzenmast, I was still piratey enough to be considered a health code violation, and asked to leave the (ARRR)RMC.  But I did manage to get a complete stranger in a suit to voluntarily ARRRGH! at me, so if nothing else, I'd consider the day a success.

So, even though I had totally forgotten the vast amount of pirate that has been trained into my system, things are starting to come back now.  So here's a crash course in everything that is wonderful and piratey-

Quick tips on talking like a pirate, a must for every 19th of September- http://www.yarr.org.uk/talk/

All the best piratey songs for singing at top volume-

- Veggie Tale's Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaWU1CmrJNc 

- A Pirate's Life For Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A19q7rysLs

- What Can you Do With A Drunken Sailor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGyPuey-1Jw

Fun facts about Pirates:

Pirates would wear one gold hoop earring not for fashion, but because it would pay for funeral expenses if people found their bodies washed up on a shore

Pieces of eight were actual 1/8ths of gold coins that would be cut up for smaller increments of currency

The city of Port Royal, where Pirates of the Caribbean is set, was destroyed in a catastrophic earthquake.  Then they rebuilt it.  Then it burned down.  After that, pirate life in the Caribbean area never recovered.

If anyone wants yet more piratey information, don't miss The Pirate's Primer!

Adventure is out there!

So I seem to have left some people with out an update here for quite at while now.  Thanks to the start of the school year, this is certainly not due to a lack of adventure, but rather a lack of time.  Mostly, that lack of time has been due to discoveries that have made me want to make adventure planning a double major of mine.
Most of these shenanigans have not included cameras, so there is very little documented evidence of some of these occurrences.  Maybe it's best if we leave it that way.  However, I can share some wonderful adventure lessons that I've learned over the past few weeks-
- If you shoot roman candles along the beach, you can skip fireballs off the surface of the ocean.
- 3 dollars of sidewalk chalk can make a 50 square ft PacMan game in the academic quad.
- Trees are great places to have conversations for hours. (Not really new, but still true)
- September 14th is henceforth "Bagel bundle with noodle kugel National awareness day".
- I am probably one of the very very few people in this world to both get a blue mohawk and learn how to use a sewing machine over the course of one day.

- You can get people working at late night food places to do pretty much anything if you ask nicely, and it's for a good cause.
- Mini fridges make excellent clothes racks.
-If you tell google maps you're trying to find a gas station in Houston's industrial district, there's a good chance you might end up in the middle of nowhere outside of the Valero Gas Refinery.
- Most importantly, if you decide that a night is going to be an adventure, there's a very good chance that it will be, but not at all in the way that you expected.