XLVIII: Messing with Texas

She took us with her for a week-long trip to Texas. We stayed first with some of her family in Houston, then moved on to a hotel in Austin.

Our exceedingly purple accommodations in Houston.

In Houston, there were fauna . . .

Yes, just as dumb as she looks as it turns out.

Alas, the laser eyes did not work as I'd hoped.
Useless feline.

It seems the primary reason for the visit was for The American to go through many boxes of old things and select a few worth keeping. These certainly were:

They have games about me!

Though I feel less certain about the quality of this:

Where Mycroft got the "information" he fobbed off on Jim?

And she evidently got credit for this at some point in her life:

Proof the U.S. educational system is rot.

Meanwhile, I suspect this may come in handy at some point:

And this book is called The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook. Didn't even know I had one.

This is only a very few of the items we ended up cataloguing and shipping off. God, what a bore. Although I did find her old diaries quite amusing. (What, John? If she can read my scrapbook, I can read her diaries.)

The hotel in Austin was a marked contrast to the family home in Houston.

Room 422 of the Driskill Hotel.

I found a comfy chair . . .

. . . and John found the minibar.

I wasn't the one daft enough to let him have the key.

John also enjoyed the faux fur bed coverings. The less said about that the better.

Where are your hands, John?

Just because I'm not saying anything more, John, doesn't mean I won't show them a picture. It's worth a thousand words, after all.

We were actually there for some kind of conference. She even cleaned herself up for it.

I suppose we'll keep her. For now.

See! Learning stuff!

However, we didn't allow a petty film festival interfere with our fun. We ate a lot. Well, she and John and their friends ate a lot and I watched. A man at Chuy's came to the table three times, he was so excited to meet John and me. Every time he brought someone new along with him for us to meet. We were honestly concerned he might begin dragging strangers in off the street. But it turned out he had somewhere to go or be or something.

And of course John was chatting up girls again.

We also walked along the shops on S. Congress and stopped to have a picture taken at an art installation.

No idea what it's supposed to be.

And we visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Because John just can't get enough of flowers.

Not much by way of flowers here, mind.

Or here.

Ah, here. Asters.

And more asters.

We started and ended with purple. Interesting.

As it turns out, Jim got into quite a bit of trouble while we were away. But that's another story for another post.