Being a good renter

I spent the last few days in Austin, Texas trying to perfect the last few of my rental habits before we move into the big bad world of buying a house. In the process I also learned that renting out your house to six guys is a great way to make money, but you probably wouldn't want to watch them live there.

Note: for the safety of those involved no names will be attributed to the actions below. Note: I also don't condone any of the behaviors listed below except when conducted by friends who have none each other in excess of fifteen years.

1) Spilled a glass of wine on white cabinets. Tried to clean it up with napkins. Determined that it was impossible. Proclaimed cabinets stylishly streaked. Left a note for the owner asking for payment for our interior design experiments.

2) Swam laps in the 100 degree pool and upset the neighbor's dog. Woke up most of the still sleepy little residents. Further proving my point that all dogs do not go to heaven but are in fact creatures from Hades.

3) Spilled wine on the table downstairs. Proclaimed the wood finished in a more natural way. Talked about the rise of vampires and shows like true blood and probably increase in wine stained things. Charged the owner another twenty bucks.

4) Threw Cheez Itz box on the ground in disgust after not playing well at a video game. Used a coffee mug to break them into little pieces to they could be vacuumed up as opposed to using a broom.

Other fun things to do/not do in Austin.
5) Going clothes shopping with your five closest guy friends. Then spend time in the store asking one another how we looked in various shirts. I'm going to give this one a six out of ten on must do's in Austin. Anytime a large group of males have a get together clothes shopping should definitely be in the mix.

6) I recommend the community pool as well, where hippies play bongo drums and dance with hula hoops. However, the low point of the weekend may also have a come at the cp where a local denizen went for a swim in his g-string. Lets go Austin did not mention any chance of encountering local male nudity and should probably be downgraded as a result.

7) Complained about the heat at the community pool. Austin was roughly 1,000 degrees on a typical day.

8) Complained about how cold the community pool was when we jumped in. The pool, which was apparently just part of the river, was about 27 degrees, defying all laws/sense.

9) Didn't sleep more than five hours for four days straight. Sleeping is highly overrated, and so I spent the weekend trying to ween myself off it.

10) Encouraged friends to do things like: drive vans over curbs, jump off the balcony into the pool, jump off a bridge into the Colorado River, (we actually dissuaded that one). This prototypical masculine behavior was clearly a put on designed to ameliorate the clothes shopping fiasco.

11) Remembered that I like dancing.

12) Went to batfest. BATFEST! Watched a few dozen bats in a constant stream come out from underneath the bridge. Grew disappointed that all 1.3 million bats did not come out at once and black out the sky/attempt to take over the city. 75 percent of bats have rabies and at least thirty percent are vampires. Thus, not seeing rabid vampire bats take over the city was a too bad.

13) Tried to take a picture with a guy wearing a batman suit and was denied. The awesome part of this was the guy treated us as though we were idiots. I don't think you're allowed to wear a Batman outfit into a public event and then pretend like you'd rather remain incognito.

13) The coolest thing I saw in Austin: witnessed about forty people walking in the street randomly form into a group and begin dancing to the Cupid Shuffle, which was playing from the bar where we were. I don't think we do dancing in the streets in DC
very well or at all.

What we spent most of the weekend doing in Austin.
Playing a full season of Tecmo Super Bowl. Reveal. Josh and I won the Super Bowl.
Played games of pool, pretending not to care who won and lost.
Sat around the house complaining about the heat/making fun of each other.