The End of Summer is Still Summer in Texas

School started last week and I just wanted to share a picture of a campus vehicle here at the University of Texas-Arlington. Isn't it sweet? I asked the dude driving it if this is what they used to chauffeur important donors around when they came on campus and he chuckled and said no, but proudly told me it was a '74. I told him, so was I!

I spent the Labor Day Weekend down on the coast in Rockport-- a part of the state I had never been to before. Other than the Czech Stop, a gas station that sells incredibly tasty homemade kolaches (my favorite culinary discovery since moving to Texas), the metroplex (that's what they call the greater Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area) and the ocean are separated by about 350 miles of almost featureless rural Texas landscape. The coast itself is nice and provides an ocean breeze to offset the incredible heat (it's September, and yesterday it was still 100 degrees here.) I am going to miss lots of things about fall, I can tell already. The weekend was composed of swimming, boating, and, most wonderfully, eating seafood to satiety, which one rarely gets to do. Thanks to Kerri and Mitch for hosting!

In concert news, I got to do 2 of my favorite things last week-- 1) see Todd Snider, on his old stomping grounds no less and 2) introduce someone new to the joy of Todd Snider. He played the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, TX-- a venue owned by a guy named Kent Finlay who met Todd shortly after he bought his first guitar and taught himself the three chords he has learned to play so well while sharing his opinions which, brothers and sisters, he is not sharing because they are right, or because they are smart, but because they rhyme. Todd's first gigs were at this place and I was extremely excited to drive 4 hours south to see him play among old friends in a small Texas shack made out of rebar. The highlights for me were Waco Moon, which he rarely plays, and a slowed down, heartfelt version of Play A Train Song. Both songs are about friends who died early, but one is sad and one is celebratory. One of the reasons I love Todd is because of his ability to find both these feelings in something most people write off as simply tragic and his ability to share it with the rest of us so beautifully. It was a great show (my 16th I believe!) and I can't wait to see him again.