Will Work For Food

The Labor Day holiday is always fun when it's a struggle to do the most basic of things... like going out for lunch.

The problem actually began last night when this bottle you see pictured was full. Heed my advice. I'm sure there are plenty of tasty flavored vodkas and other drinks out there but I'm of the opinion tequila should be au natural.

My favorite tequila is having distribution problems for a few weeks and while there are other tequilas I enjoy, most of them are at least $10 more per bottle than my favorite. I should have stuck with my gut instinct last night and had white wine. But I saw this $23 bottle and thought, "Oh why not? I like limes and many people like salt and lime with their shots."

This shite is so limey I had to CHUG 4 or 5 gulps of dark beer after each shot just to help clear the lime from my palate. I won't bore you with details on how many beers I drank during the palate-cleansing exercise. We'll just say.... more than usual.

This morning I awoke feeling a little worn around the edges and I smelled like I'd had a lime bath. I also had a nasty headache -- something I very rarely have with my favorite tequila. As 12:00 neared I quizzed Txrad on our lunch plans which is quite silly since he never coughs up an idea without major prolonged prodding. Finally he suggested Burger Tex which is just a short 4 miles from our house. That was fine with me.

Veggie burgers and fries are good hangover food and I was primed for it. Most of this restaurant's clientele works weekdays in the area so their business is light on Saturdays, and they close on Sundays. Not surprisingly, they were closed for Labor Day.

I decided to go to Hut's Hamburgers downtown -- their burgers are better anyway, and the ambience is more "old Austin" also. But, they tend to be very busy. I was hoping we'd luck out on Labor Day but the gods seem to be stingy in dishing out the luck today. I opened the door to go in, and couldn't. The line waiting was pressed up against the entrance door.

At this point your God of Kona began behaving rather ungodly. I tossed the car keys to Txrad and said, "YOU take us someplace and I don't give a shit where."

After standing around in the parking lot for about 5 minutes unable to decide where to go next, I told Txrad, "If you can deal with getting us a table, I don't mind waiting." So back we went. Only this time people were waiting outside. I threw another hissy fit and back to the car we went.

Txrad suggested Veggie Heaven which is just north of downtown near the UT campus. Unfortunately there was no place to park. I was also moving far beyond cranky and the fact that I wasn't driving was complicating things. With nothing to take my mind off my hangover, I realized just how horrible I felt and I insisted Txrad pull over and let me drive.

As we headed north I now had my heart set on a burger & fries again. We ended up in far north Austin at the Waterloo Ice House. They had ample parking, no wait and a decent meal. What sucks is that an 8-mile roundtrip for an American staple turned into a 50-mile drive. And the fact that my long-awaited 3 day weekend is drawing to a close -- and quickly, after wasting 2 hours "doing lunch" and then trying to sleep off my nasty lime-flavored tequila hangover.

After I finish off that disgusting bottle of crap tonight, it's back to white wine tomorrow night.