SXSW and the Houston Rodeo!

Sorry I didn't post on Friday, but I had a Extended Texas Weekend!  And there are a TON of pictures of it all!

It started on Thursday night when I went to the Houston Rodeo with some friends!  We started our evening with some baked potatoes stuffed with barbecue pork and topped with cheese, scallions, and sour cream.  It was artery-clogging goodness! 

Then we headed in to the stadium for the big event! It was my first rodeo and while I thought it was really cool to watch the events, there's a little bit of animal abuse in there that I wasn't as big of a fan of (using spurs to rile up the horses/bulls and jumping off of a horse to throw a calf to the ground...).  The animals all seemed to be 100% fine afterwards, though, which went a long way toward enhancing my fun-level!  I also saw my very first country western concert, Jason Aldean, whom I had never heard of before that night.  I'm not really a country fan, so I had more fun watching the light show and the people's reactions. 

Then Friday morning I hopped into my car and drove out to Austin for the SXSW music festival!  On the way I caught some of the beginning of Bluebonnet season (the Texas state flower), and they were such a pretty color!  Can't wait until they're in full bloom in a couple of weeks!

Once I got to Austin I met up with my friends and we headed out for free food, drinks and music!  We headed to the Yelp's Backyard Blowout party first and snacked on tacos and smoked black bean hummus while drinking Texas based libations with awesome mixers such as lavendar and cucumber sodas and St. Germain liquor!

There were a couple of decent bands there too including a female performer named Sydney Wayser and a band from Seattle called Hey Marseilles that was filled with multitalented musicians that played: guitar, cello/bass, violin, keyboard/accordian, trumpet/sax/bass clarinet, and drums.

 From there we headed further into the city and got caught up in the craziness that is SXSW - I could not believe the number of people that were filling the streets and bars!

We didn't wind up going to any more concerts that night.  Instead we went to the bar at the W hotel, where my friends knew the bartender.  We just chilled on the couches and chatted while friends of ours danced with an old man who REALLY liked to clap...

And we finished off the night at a karaoke bar where we gorged on cheese balls and "danced" in our roller chairs.  The next day was a bit of a late start.  We finally made it out of the house and headed into the thick of SX to see a band called Ramona Falls.  I definitely liked them and my favorite part was when they started playing percussion on the metal light scaffolding!

After that we found our way to a bar called Kung Fu that offers free vintage arcade games, skeeball, and has a picture of Chuck Norris painted on the wall.  On the way we ran into these guys:

Check out those awesome hipsters in spandex!!!  Eventually we made our way back into the madhouse of the main SXSW drag to listen to The Soldier Thread - who I really liked! And then we met up with a bunch of people to listen to Humans, but I was losing fuel by this point.

 Sunday was sleeping in, getting brunch, hitting up Austin Art Garage where I bought this awesome guy:

and then chilling at a sports bar to watch college basketball before hitting the road and heading back to Houston.  Overall an AWESOME weekend!