Yesterday I was ready to come home from our week's vacation, despite the fun friend city time in Louisville, the quiet lovely underground/cottage time in Mammoth Cave NP, and the family wedding time in Nashville. We'd had a great time, but we were weary. I missed my cats. I missed my bed and my friends and even my job, a little bit. I needed to eat some vegetables.
Now I've been home about 26 hours and I'm wondering what my big hurry was. Although the cats and the bed are dandy, it's sullen, gray, and humid here. Work was annoying today. Someone stole a Port-a-Potty sink and left it tumped over on the sidewalk down the street for no reason I can discern. It seems like it should be the time of year where things start to get interesting, but it isn't.
One thing that is almost certainly adding to my spasm of discontent: We walked and drove around Louisville for three days last week and Jesus, everything was so easy there. You don't have to plan some insane route around eight million poorly designed intersections that require two light cycles each; you don't have to have a Plan B and a Plan B-minus (or just pick C by default) in case Plan A has a 45-minute wait; you can just pull up in front of a place and leave your car there and go on in, or, better yet, wander over. Even if it's a long walk, it's most likely temperate and filled with nice trees and interesting architecture to look at the whole way there. And this is a good portion of the city, by the way, not just a few blocks here and there in a handful of highly desirable neighborhoods or planning districts or whatever the hell.
My point is, I hadn't realized precisely how much of a pain in the ass Austin has become and how much mental energy I spend calculating boring logistical bullshit until I could spend a few days just cruising around a nice city having a good time and not thinking about any of that. It was great.
I realize we were on vacation, not living there, and I also realize the rest of the reason it was easy can be divided between the beauty of halfway decent urban planning and the fact that people are not exactly knocking each other over to move to Louisville the way they are here. But you know, it's not exactly rotting away up there either.
I guess I can't really compare the two; I'm just saying it was nice, and we had a lot of fun there, and Amy, our hostess, showed us a fantastic time.
Plus they have bulk beer. On tap. In the supermarket. Point: Louisville.