Local color - late November version

Fall colors finally arrived here in Central Texas about a week ago or so. Nothing spectacular like you get further north, I mean, this is no place to come for experiencing fall foliage unless you are wanting to escape your own local colors, which might include lots of white. The weather is still beautiful. We are expecting another cool front... but right now at 9am it's about 68°. Aaaah. My favorite colors out now are still on the butterflies though, and there are plenty of them on the flowers. My recent butterfly pics all blurred. Sorry about that.

Thanksgiving Day was very nice. I got a big project (more on that in another post) completed the day before, so I did very little work on the holiday itself. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see James Bond, which we liked. In the street/parking area outside the theater, they had set up a full-sized movie screen and were showing the Cowboy game, followed by the Longhorns game. They had some picnic tables set up, and were selling beers and other beverages out of a cooler. It reminded me of the Drive-In movies that I used to love, except that this also had a great sound system. Normally I am really uninterested in football, but watching it at that size with such good quality (HD really helping the cause), and it was a beautiful, balmy night, I could have stayed for the whole game, just sitting there on a road hump, if Henry and Jax had not been at home expecting food and pettins. The Alamo doesn't make any money on these kinds of events. They just have a lot of style!

(Black) Friday is today, and it has been nice. No Thursday midnight visits to Neiman Marcus or waiting line line at 5AM at Best Buy for us. We do have a tradition of visiting a few local businesses, including Waterloo Records, and we did indulge in a few things (more about that later) (SALE!!!). After Waterloo, we went to the Obama Store at 1111 East 11th. They will be open until the inauguration, and they have plenty of great items - many designed by local artists, and others that are rather obscure. When they get their online store going I will post a link. Here's a zoom-in of the dressing room sign. ;-)

There are murals all over Austin, but the street we were on had so many in a small area that I walked around a took some pictures. All these are just sections of larger paintings.


Victory Grill

Tile mural

Public Library
This was so cool. They painted right over the Library letters! This one has a story to tell, but I'm not sure what it is. Not entirely.

After all that we went to one of our favorite restaurants for lunch: Koriente. Here's the back view of that you have approaching from 6th St. Great food that is really healthy too.

And they just so happened to have a mural inside that I really liked, based on one of the John and Yoko naked portraits.

Tonight we will stay in and watch some stuff on the DVR, and tomorrow, maybe the same. Maybe get some stuff done around the house... or not.