Jen's Blog

So my parents are coming in town this weekend, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with them. The way I see it, there are 5 types of activities you can do with out of town guests.

1. Shopping
2. Eat
3. Drink
4. See live music
5. Do outside stuff

My parents wouldn’t really be into the music or drinking thing. You can only eat so much, and they don’t love shopping either. That leaves doing stuff outside which brings me to my next point. There is SO much fun stuff to do in Austin happens outdoors. Almost everything I can think to do would be a bazillion times more fun if the weather was good. Austinites are used to (read: spolied) having good weather and all this rain/hail/snow/cold weather shit is really ruining it for me! Please come back sun and 80 degree weather. Thanks.

Austin ranks as the least stressful city of the 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas we examined. It has a year-over-year median home-price drop of only 1%, and an unemployment rate of 7.1% as of June. It also had the lowest population density.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/20/stress-unemployment-homes-lifestyle-real-estate-home-values-stressful-cities_slide_2.html

Austin is having their 2nd ever Restaurant week going on now until tomorrow and September 20-23rd as well. I for one am stoked. Dallas has been doing one for a while, and I’m sure there are many other big cities throughout the US that have them as well. Basically you get to eat like a king for not a lot of dinero. Most places in Austin have a 3-course menu to pick from for $25-$35. The restaurants that participate are the kind of places that one course runs you about $30. The hardest part is picking which wonderful food to eat. This year I’m thinking: III Forks, Hudson on the Bend, NoRTH. What do ya’ll think?

http://restaurantweekaustin.com/