As I was saying

As I had mentioned, I can be easily distracted from blogging. Recent distraction: Austin, Texas. I was there for the SXSW interactive festival, along with 20,000 of my closest friends. It was awesome, as usual. And I got to see my new family. Getting married and having new, fun family has its perks. I have a fantastic family to begin with and now it has expanded! Love it!

So, my goal to not gain weight while in Austin did not happen. :( I was overcome by the tastiness of the amazing food, drink and dessert. I did work out 3 of the 6 days I was there, so I am proud of that accomplishment. I tend to slack when I travel on business trips.




One thing that I was so happy about on this trip: I didn't hurt. For anyone that suffers from RA, you'll get it. Travel, stress, and added activity can make the joints go INSANE and swell, hurt and just cause enormous amounts of pain. I have been taking medrol (between 20-25mg) and I know that played a large factor. As much as I dislike taking steroids, the not hurting thing is beginning to help me lean more on the side of love versus hate with them. These were my poor feet last year. So swollen and painful. But not this year!!! And my hip didn't hurt. I was also nervous, as I knew that there would be a lot of walking and at just a few weeks after my three-month restrictions, I had a little trepidation about how so much walking would make it feel. All good!

I did have a hellacious time getting my humira delivered. The pharmacist messed up. The drug company needed another approval from my doctor (which, if the doc wrote the script, I think that is a pretty good indicated that he meant for me to get that!). I finally got my pack of 4 syringes on Thursday, in time to inject on Friday. I got to carry three home with me. TSA inspected them and my gel packs, all went well.

The second day I was in Austin, I went with one of the other attendees, Jeff, to Lockhart, Texas. It was close to an hour drive both ways from Austin, but it was well worth it. We enjoyed some amazing BBQ. Like, fall off the bone, you are in meat heaven BBQ. I was also one of the skinnier people at Smitty's. Jeff and I enjoyed our brisket, prime rib, sausage and lots of white bread. I guess you wrap the sausage in it.  I'm not really sure, but I think we each only ate about 1 slice of the 10 we received. All of this was complimented by some Lone Star beer. It was pretty amazing all around. Typing this now is making me hungry for some good BBQ. May have to do some pork shoulder in the crockpot with some Stubb's BBQ sauce soon. I went there, too. It wasn't quite as heavenly, but it was still yummy.

Another Austin/SXSW highlight: Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.

He was a speaker at one of the sessions. I had a front row seat. It was pretty awesome. Would have been even cooler had he sung to us, but he was a very animated and passionate speaker. I appreciated this.

This dude opened up the session. I didn't get his name, unfortunately, but I did get a video of his song.

Another learning piece of SXSW - there are a lot of free parties and a lot of free alcohol. I am no longer in college. My body does not like a lot of free, bad alcohol. Draw your own conclusion. 

Here are a few other random shots from the week. Enjoy!