In late February I made a business trip to Austin, TX. My trip was a few days after Dayna had sent me an IM asking if I had heard about the plane flying into the IRS building there. At that time I hadn’t, but during the trip I did see the building from the freeway. It was dark out at the time, but it basically looked like a building that had been on fire to various degrees around it, although I wouldn’t have known it was the building had the people I was with not pointed it out.
On the first night I was there, I discovered that a block away from the conference hotel was 6th street. Google was telling me there were lots of eateries there, and since I arrived at about 19:00 local time, I was somewhat hungry. Turns out almost all the eateries were bars or clubs packed with people and cover charges, especially on a Saturday night. Of course I discovered the next night that on a Sunday, the street is basically dead.
On Sunday morning, I had a few hours of dead time, so I took the opportunity to walk to the state capital building, which was a mile or two away. I didn’t really expect the grounds to be open, let alone the building, but it turns out they were open for anyone to walk in and look around, so I did. One of the things that really struck me was this statue I saw listing the various states of the Confederacy along with the dates they seceded. It also had a statement on it proclaiming states rights to do such a thing. I found it interesting, as I never really think about Texas as having been a part of the Confederacy, so it caught me a bit off guard.
Inside the capitol were the normal arrays of statues, such as Stephen Austin and Sam Houston. A youth mock Congress was going on, so both chambers were occupied with high schoolers giving speeches and such. At least I choose to believe that was the case and that real representatives don’t tend to spin around in their chairs while debating the finer points of legislation during weekend sessions. Arrayed around the multiple levels of the dome were paintings of past Governors, such as this guy.
After that morning it was back to the hotel and work for a few days. I did see my first snow of the year on the Tuesday I was there, which shut the city down. That would have made a bit more sense if it stayed on the ground for more than a second or two, but I’ve seen how people panic when the weather is not as expected, so I can’t say I was totally surprised.
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