they'll be doing my drinking for me.
I throw things.
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
So, I flew to Austin today for the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference (second year running, and probably the last year for a while). I came alone--Darin stayed in CA to work. Waaah. I missed him while waiting for my flight at LAX, so I can just imagine what condition I'll be in by the time I see him on Monday.
I flew Southwest to Austin, which turned out not to be as hellacious as I was expecting, as the flight was not full. Small favors, I guess. And Southwest even had a "snack," which could not under any circumstances be described as "nutritious" or "filling," but was more than I was expecting from them. (I ate the cheese and the oatmeal bar.)
Austin has a brand-spankin'-new airport, which is huge and very shiny. It uses the philosophy noted by Jon Carroll in a recent column that modern architecture uses atria for everything. All of the ceilings in the airport were about 250 feet higher than they needed to be. "We're Austin, we have the air space," they're apparently saying.
The recommended method of getting into Austin was the SuperShuttle--$8 to the Driskill Hotel. Only SS was not quite ready for an influx of people coming to the conference/film festival, and I had to wait about 30 minutes for a bus. And the driver didn't know where the Driskill was. ("It's across the street from the Downtown Omni," I assured him. "One face is on Sixth Street.") He didn't believe that the Driskill was an $8 fare, no matter how much I assured him I had told the clerk at the counter where I was going and that was how much she charged me.
It wasn't until he was driving up Brazos that it suddenly hit him. "Oh, the Driskill," he said.
Sigh.
The Driskill looks way better than it did last year. Of course, last year it was undergoing renovations, whereas this year it is renovated and shiny and new. Instead of a short walk to the check-in desk, you must hike halfway across Texas to get to the desk. And there is no handicapped accessible way to get to the elevators: you walk up a flight of stairs to get to them. But it was very pleasing to see a sparkling new hotel, albeit one built in 1886.
The best new feature is instant Ethernet accessibility in the rooms. I'm not quite sure how they managed this, but all I did was plug in my Mac and go, without changing TCP/IP settings. I really hope they're not charging by the minute.
I got into the room--big ol' king-size bed, only one side's going to get used, sob--and not 30 seconds later there was a knock on the door. It was Pooks, wondering where I'd been. "I just got here," I assured her. "Literally." Hadn't had a chance to go to the bathroom or anything.
Pooks, Toni, and Ruth got me the room across the hall from theirs, in order to improve accessibility. Actually, Ruth wasn't in yet, but Toni had had lunch with Jette and Jette was still there. She took off and Pooks, Toni, and I went to get drinks and something to eat (I was the something to eat part).
We ended up at Iron Cactus, a Tex-Mex place on Sixth Street that seemed decent enough. We got appetizers and gabbed for about an hour or so. I have no idea how long we were there, but when they start clearing your table while you're still chatting, you get the idea that there are higher-paying customers who will have your table whether you're done with it or not.
The funniest bit (for me, at any rate) came when Pooks started to hand Toni her margarita, because Toni had never tasted a margarita before. Toni had not been warned this was happening, so she picked up her Corona. Pooks said, "No, try this," and Toni said, "I thought you were doing the clinky glass thing."
I said, "In the rest of the country, we call that a 'toast.'"
This earned me the you-stop-right-now-missy look and Toni saying, "I've been known to throw things." As there was still a dish of salsa on the table, I felt it best not to try to top that one.
We headed back to the hotel and ran into Ron Peer and his girlfriend JoJo, who were off to Sixth Street to find some dinner. We gabbed a bit and then headed back to Pooks and Toni's room, whereupon we were jumped by a very enthusiastic Ruth, who had just gotten in, was happy to see us, and was very, very hungry.
"I bet we can find Ron and JoJo," Pooks said.
So we went back to Sixth Street and stopped in every plate glass window to see if we could find them. Eventually we did--at the Iron Cactus. We went back in and joined them. Ruth got some dinner and Pooks and Toni had another couple of drinks (margarita and Corona).
Ron asked me if I was "batching it" this year and, once I realized that this was a shortening of the term "bachelor(ett)ing it," said, "Yes." Ruth and Pooks immediately said, "No," which confused the hell out of both Ron and me until I realized to what they were referring. I mentioned I was pregnant but didn't really count that.
The six of us went back to the hotel, whereupon I realized I could barely stand and went to my room. I hooked my Mac up to the hotel's network--ethernet installed in all the rooms!--and called down to the desk to find out what the TCP/IP numbers I needed were. "Oh, you don't need those," said the desk clerk. "You need this cable--"
"I have the cable, but I think I need those numbers."
She assured me she had nothing around with any numbers on it. I started up my Mac...and lo and behold, with my home network information still the selected TCP/IP information, I managed to get all my mail and do a bit of websurfing (before crashing).
The answer to yesterday's question: MCI is going to buy Sprint. You know, Ma Bell got broken up so we could have all these competing phone companies, and it just seems like all they're trying to do is form Ma Bell again. However, we're assured that having a big honkin' phone company will once again be really, really good for consumers.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com