For us, this destination was the Holiday Inn Town Lake, which
seemed to be a central location and right by the freeway.
We hit some ugly traffic en route, though, and were quite
behind schedule for the rest of the day.

We were issued fairly nice digs that could have been at a
more prestigiously-branded hotel but for a couple chronic
and one acute thing. The chronic: it seems that the lower
on the totem pole a place is, the worse the carpet cleaner
smells. Sometimes the carpet itself is okay (this wasn't,
with a slightly unpleasant foot feel), but at the less
eminent properties they always use crummy carpet cleaner.
Also, there seems to be a correlation between rank and
light provision: here the best we could do with all the
lights on was a sort of gloomy dimness.

A great view of the river park in its gray drizzly glory
from the 10th or 11th, anyhow the top, floor.

The acute problem was no hot water, not a fine thing if
you have recently been slinging luggage around in the
United bag room. Called down a complaint; meanwhile I had
an almost completely cold shower. The engineer came up in
fairly short order, and by the time lili wanted her shower
there was plenty. I don't know what happened or how the
engineer fixed the problem, but it was quick and welcome.

On the way out we asked the otherwise helpful front desk
people for a recommendation on a place to buy wine and beer.
They drew a blank; they were young but not all that young.
Innocent, perhaps; the junior sophisticates must work at
the Hyatt and the Sheraton. Eventually a slightly older
colleague was called over; after puzzling for a while she
gave us vague directions toward a store that turned out not
to be there any more. We ended up cruising around a bit and
not finding anything. The road to Spec's being a solid line
of red on the traffic app and the one to the park being
mostly green, we decided to throw ourselves on the mercy of
our friends and colleagues, promising to make up later.

Evening in the Park

This of course was Zilker Park, home of some wonderful
memories for me almost half a century ago. It was dim and
going on dark when we arrived and parked at the far end of
the pretty full lot. To get to the Clubhouse, we had to
go past the food trucks, mmmpanadas and the much anticipated
Slab BBQ truck, so food became the first order of the evening.
We ended up not superthrilled by the offerings at Slab BBQ.
One issue was the limited choices - no bulk meat, for
example, so we asked for brisket sandwiches extra moist. I
emphasized and reiterated the moist part to the server,
who said, oh, these are moist all right, and I envisioned a
slab of fat between bread. But sadly to say, they actually
came out not moist at all, with a little sliver of extra fat
that wasn't cooked enough on top. The brisket itself was
somewhat lackluster, but the sauce was decent. I should have
gone back out for an mmmpanada (Reb I think had one, and it
smelled pretty good), but it was easier to stay inside the
relatively warm confines of the building. We'd been hoping
for a beautiful balmy evening (at least I was, having spent
much of the last weeks in snowy climes), but we got what we
got. The organizing crew did their best, but there was no
getting around the raw, blustery, close to freezing rainy
unpleasantness outside. I did venture out for a couple hits
from the keg of NxNW amber ale, which Mr. and Mrs. Mackieman,
I believe, had providently brought in just in case.

Moonlight Social is a good band, and though lili and I had
planned to stay for only a couple songs (country/rock is not
our kind of music - she enjoys the country part, I enjoy the
rock part, and seldom the twain shall meet), we ended up
listening to two sets before setting out for some food -
no offense to the hosts, but we did feel the need for more
deliciousness after the event.

I understand the event raised a good bunch toward the
Austin Pets Alive animal shelter.