Stars and Stripes

Okay, for those of you waiting for the political unraveling I hinted at earlier this week will have to wait a little longer. Christina and I want to make sure to do some more research before we take any philosophical position. But, in perfect patriotism, I joined several thousands of Austinites to watch fireworks over the lower Colorado River.

I sat with my friends Lydia, Scott, and my friend Shyle from San Diego in front of a most entertaining older couple. We heard the expected exclamations throughout the show, "Oh my! Look at the blue!" and "Wow, it's still sparkling!" and "Oh, look at that one!" and "Ooo that one is pretty!" There was a certain, short-lived comraderie established walking amongst the masses to and from the Lamar Street bridge. It's an amazing thing, really - living in the city among so very many people. People of all kinds and shapes and backgrounds and worldviews. There is a reason why revolution often times starts in cities - in part the sheer number of people and in part the ease and necessity of gatherings. Hmmm... a thought for further reflection.

With Shyle in town, we've been doing a lot of walking (which I LOVE) and falling into conversation along the way. On one wandering, we started talking about how lovely it is for friends to meet for discussion. The more we talked, we found ourselves saying, "Oh, I forget the name of that author..." and "What's that movie?" And we wondered if in a few years our memory would be so dependent on technology that we couldn't actually hold intelligent conversations without it. Scary, isn't it?

Makes me want to turn things off and get out more. Speaking of getting out - today Shyle, Lydia and I went to the Farmer's Market and then spent the afternoon floating down the Guadalupe River.. the adventure ended with about 20 minutes of downpour, but such is what memories are made of, right? Then we came back to Austin to see the infamous bats flee the Congress bridge by the millions.

We about to continue our adventure, but I didn't want to go too long without an update. I guess this has little really to do with patriotism or any singular theme, but it is an update nonetheless.

Oh! And before I fail to mention it, we had a pretty close encounter with a 'star' last night. I took a picture of my friend Scott with her - Mischa Barton - I guess she's on the TV show "The OC." I don't really know her, but apparently other people do. She looked very normal close up. You know what they say...

Tomorrow I will hopefully get a lineup out for you!