Farewell Alamo

On occasion, I like to use this space to evangelize about my dear city and in all my gushing I am sure I have brought up the Alamo Drafthouse Theatre at least more than once. How could I not go on and on about this theatre. I had never lived anywhere, where I could get a beer, a burger and watch silent movies while a real band played the sound track or sing along at the top of my lungs to the Buffy musical episode or catch a burlesque act. And I have so many fond memories of meeting my pals underneath the big ass "The Alamo" poster in the lobby. That is where I solidified a lot of my Austin friendships while standing in line with hundreds of other young Austinites waiting to watch the sinus guys goof on Tom Cruise's teeth or the iguana in the Terminator (it's a funny iguana trust me). Now the Alamo is another victim of the gussying up of the Austin down-town. Driven out by inflated rent, the Alamo is finding a new home in another theatre downtown called the Ritz. I don't know much about it but I hear it is nice and will be a fitting replacement and at least the business establishment that considers Joss Whedon's birthday a day worth celebrating is not gone from Austin forever. But it's still sad to know that original location will be a over-priced yuppy bar.
The Alamo is well known for having all night events and the last night was of course no exception. I always thought that being in a theatre all night watching every Buffy episode or all 6 Stars Wars movies sounded like great fun but when I actually got to the point of buying the tickets I always wussed out. I knew deep in my heart that by 1 AM I would be cranky, uncomfortable, and pining for my pillow top mattress. So, we didn't even attempt to get the sought after tix to the last show. However, a couple of my friends are just that crazy and they looked exhausted yesterday but had a blast! They watched the old Earthquake movie with sound equipment that made the whole building shake and wine glasses creep their way to the edge of the tables. That's the kind of fun stuff we will miss. But when one movie reel is removed another is replaced, right?

Wedding Chores

We recently returned from the first of three weddings we will attend this year. (One of course being our own:). Our friends hosted a beautiful, day-time wedding in Maine on a gorgeous local estate. Their ceremony was outside under a gazebo and incorporated a lot of personal touches that I would love to steal. However, they will be at our wedding so we should probably come up with something of our own. I am thinking a conga line around the terrace would be a blast. Just kidding, I am trying to make wedding planning more manageable and have a little more fun with it. I am assigning one wedding chore to do a day. Chunk the whole process up a bit. Since I have implemented this plan I have felt a lot more in control. I don't what I have really accomplished but I have at least called more people. I did talk to a friend of a friend who arranges wedding flowers and I had SO much fun talking about flowers. I love flowers. Especially bold, dark red flowers and she was just as excited about red stuff as I was. I was going to get wholesale flowers and do it myself and although that would be a lot of fun. I have never done that before and have no idea what the learning curve would be like so this way I don't have to worry about it. Plus, I think they are reasonable and willing to work with my measly budget.

Pup and Circumstance

After 8 weeks of lessons in sit, down, watch, loose leash walking, leave it and stay our boy successfully completed his first obedience class. Well, like CornyT said he got a pity diploma. Grady definitely needs to return for graduate courses but he kind of got the basics down. He sits and stays pretty well if he isn't too distracted. He does need more work on the leash walking. Today he demonstrated his education by dragging me into the street where I proceeded to trip in a pothole and slide across the street for about 6 inches all while my neighbor looked on in horror and said "that dog is kind of big for you." Yes, that was money well spent:). Well it least it went to the shelter who is now having even more problems. On top of the quarantine scaring away adopters, the air conditioning has broken and it may take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix. Poor shelter, things were going so well at the beginning of the year with a balance sheet in the black and a donation for kitty condos.

Shelter Struggles

Two weeks ago, on Saturday May 19th when I was skipping my usual shift at the shelter to take Grady to the Golden Retriever rescue group picnic, the humane socity volunteers found a dead bat in one of the dog runs. The bat tested positive for rabies and the poor shelter has been practically shut down for the last two weeks. Over half the dogs have been placed in a 90 day quarantine and only special volunteers can walk those dogs to the special runs. Other volunteers, like myself can walk pre-adopt dogs and do other little chores around the shelter. If I had been at the shelter that day I would probably been interviewed by the health department but I don't think the volunteers had to get rabie shots. Or at least I hope not that would be horrible. Anyway, the whole thing is really bad for the shelter and all those poor dogs who will have to spend over 3 months in the shelter without a chance of being adopted. All the puppies that were not in the shelter when the scare occurred are placed in kennels out on the patio for people to visit and hopefully adopt. From the emails it sounds like there are still a good amount of adoptions every week so at least people have not been scared away. What an unfortunate thing to happen to the poor shelter.