On the road again: Austin, day 2

As I've mentioned before, I can't talk about what I do on these business trips, at least not in any detail, because all our work for clients is confidential. That restriction hurts blog prospects, but so it goes; when you work for a company with the name Principled Technologies, it's kinda hard to be, well, unprincipled.

I can say that I met multiple clients today, some old friends and some new ones, and I enjoyed the meetings.

I can also give you food reports, as well as two bits of weirdness, so give them to you I shall.

Lunch today was at the northwest Kerbey Lane, an Austin 24-hour-a-day food institution. The original was at the fork in the road--a literal large fork stuck by the side of the road. The northwest location was a cool, funky old place that I quite enjoyed and was looking forward to revisiting. Unfortunately, when we reached it, it was closed, moved up the street a ways. We drove to and ate at the new location, but it was in a strip mall and smelled and looked and felt like strip-mall restaurants everywhere. The food was still good, but I miss the funky atmmosphere of the previous standalone building.

Dinner was at Chez Zee, a place we chose when we thought we were hosting a large dinner but that also worked out fine for the three of us that ended up being the only ones in the group. It's a pretty place full of sparkly geegaws and lights, and the food was good enough that I'd eat there again if someone suggested it.

The visual highlight of today visited us on a drive to a client location. No, your eyes are not deceiving you: that's a giant chicken half sitting on top of that van. The thing had to be at least six, maybe eight feet long, a good four feet wide, and obviously high off the ground, where no chicken parts were meant to fly.

When we saw it, we started hooting, grabbed my iPhone, and got a snapshot through the window of our moving rental car. Is that awesome or what?

I would love to go cruising for girls while driving that van. Can you imagine the pickup line possibilities? "If you think my chicken is big...."

Okay, maybe that's only me. Move along, these are not the demented thoughts you're seeking.

While we're on the subject of awesome incarnate, how about this purple lamp, which Sarah is hugging to demonstrate both its scale and the fact that at least some forms of craziness are genetic and stem from the father? Can't you imagine that bad boy in your den? I sure can. As Sarah said, it would be like having Christmas and going to Las Vegas every day. Of course, as Rana pointed out, it would also be one of the world's greatest dust collectors, and we would deserve an avalanche of scorn for the mere notion that we had paid over eleven hundred simoleons for something that looks like a refugee from the direct-to-DVD film Revenge of the Mushroom People (no, don't try to order the movie on Amazon, however much you may want it; I made it up), but I have to admit it: I was sorely tempted.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and the lamp still lives on the furniture store show floor.

For now.