After the late night dud on 6th last night, I took a bubble bath and sank into my goose down duvet with lavender scented sheets… mmmmm… very nice.  But all that softness made it difficult to get out of bed the next morning, so I woke up realizing it was almost lunchtime, and I had to get going.

Threw on my new black motorcycle-slash-cowboy boots and stomped through the lobby out the front door.  Dude.  It was about 23 degrees, sunny, a soft breeze was rolling off of the lake.  Sigh.   Pulled out my supa-cool Ray-Ban Aviators and started looking for somewhere to eat.  I saw a bunch of cafes and restaurants on SoCo the day before, and right now a picnic table and beer sounded pretty damn good.

I ended up at this place called Doc’s MotorWorks… granted, it was pretty cheesy, but they had the best patio in town.  Really big and right in the sun.  And they had about 40 beers on tap.  I got a local wheat beer and took a look at the menu. 

The server made fun of me when I didn’t know what a “queso” was.  A queso is basically a cross between a taco and melted cheese nachos.  So… imagine Natalie, all by herself, sitting at a picnic table with a huge beer and basically a big bowl of melted cheese in front of her.  I felt pretty pathetic.  Whiiiiiiich meant that I ended up drinking a bit faster than I ordinarily would (which is pretty damn fast to start with…), and after my third beer I realized I was drunk.  BUT, feelin’ pretty awesome.  Here is a summary of my thoughts:

“Everyone on this patio is looking at me like I”m a loser.  I’ll pretend to do something on my iPhone.  I will take pictures with my Hipstamatic app.  HA HA!  Everyone thinks I’m super important with lots of friends!”

“My new boots are so awesome.”

This queso is so awesome.”

“Beer and queso and chips and sun are all so totally awesome.”

Yeah.  Three beers later, I’m in the bathroom and I see myself in the mirror and I remember thinking “AW YEAH!  My hair looks so good today!  Take a picture!”   Yeah.

I know I’m milking this quite a bit, but I guess the romance of the sun and heat, and the fact that I was alone and felt very unencumbered, and the fact that Austin is so totally awesome… made everything I saw seem so happy and positive and overwhelmingly emotional.

Anyhoo, as the afternoon started to hit, I walked past Guero’s, this big taco restaurant with an outdoor area for live music.  Again… such a fun, positive scene.  Check out the boys in hats saddlin’ up to the bar:

I took a couple of videos like a wierd creeper… but COME ON – check out the guys in cowboy hats chillin’, and that old couple dancing in the background:

Then I saw these adorable kids dancing on the wall in front of the concert area.  So cute.  That one kid caught me filming him and I think he got creeped out…

…that was my sign to stop festering and drinking like a creepy weirdo and go vintage shopping again.  Let me tell you.  I did some damage.  Check back tomorrow to see a run down of my AMAZING purchases…