the stars at night

We were away the last 10 days or so - in TX. We spent time in Austin. Eh - not a fan - kind of a bigger even more all-the-inconveniences-of-a-city-with-none-of-the-perks town like Madison. South Austin wasn't bad and the bats were kind of cool. Then it was San Antonio. What a nice city! An old and walkable city center. The coolness (meaning temperature) of the somewhat over touristed riverwalk. A great place to visit. Last was San Marcos (pronounced locally sanMARcus) which ended up being a pleasant surprise. The outlet malls were on the outskirts and there was a nice little village center and even some good food (best vittles of all 3 locations).

Other things learned:
1. The smell of barbecue (I'm from Maine so the spelling is a guess) makes me ill - burnt flesh with a few spices rubbed in. It permeates everything. I can't even eat the bread or the beans without tasting it and feeling like I'm about to toss my cookies.
2. One can only spend so much time eating cheese enchiladas, rice and beans.
3. At the young age of 14 months I would guess that E has consumed less than 1/8 the sugar of the typical American toddler. I suspect one of the things she is going to enjoy about traveling as she grows older is all the crapola she gets to eat.* We have a pretty established diet of whole grains, unprocessed/sweetened fruits, veggies and legumes, and organic dairy products without additions. So, on this trip, we couldn't give E her normal whole milk organic plain yogurt and ended up with those typical yoplait and dannon-type things. 3 of the first 5 ingredients are some form of sugar! They averaged 12g of sugar per container (less yogurt than E usually eats at a sitting). They also contained less calcium and protein than a typical serving of whole milk plain yogurt. I can't believe people think of those things as part of a healthy diet.

*Incidentally, I didn't travel growing up (barring the trip to the mainland to shop at the mall and our annual family trip to "Funtown," a 30 minute drive from the ferry terminal and, in my mind, basically another country). All the same, my parents ruined their credit on a family trip to DisneyWorld when I was in 7th grade. They purchased a package which included meals at resort restaurants. I think I ordered a steak pretty much every night. Toward the end of the trip, as I was finishing off yet another steak, I turned to my mother and said, "I really like steak, but, when we get home, do you think you could make a green salad and macaroni with butter and pepper?"Sure enough, mom made that for our first dinner at home. She also made it for all my subsequent homecoming meals - home from college, home from Russia, first meal after the Nutcracker closed, etc.