Busting Ruts

Matt and I haven't gotten out of the house much lately. He's preparing for his preliminary exam — which basically gets him approval to do the research for his dissertation — so he works pretty much every day. But luckily his presentation is this Friday! (Everyone wish him good luck!)

Anyway, we've been in a bit of a rut. This weekend was the annual Texas Reds Festival in BCS, and I had wanted to go for the past few years, but somehow always ended up missing it. Not this year! Friday night was free admission, so we headed out to catch the shuttle bus to downtown.

The big draws for this festival are the local wineries' booths and the giant steaks, but of course, there are other vendors as well. One of the first things I saw when we passed through the front gate was a vendor doing olive oil tastings! (I didn't even know that was a thing until Mandy mentioned it in her 101 in 1001, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.) I tried four types, and I was kind of surprised that I could tell the differences between them.

We planned to get dinner while we were there, but I knew I wouldn't be able to eat an entire plate on my own, what with the huge steak plus side dishes, so Matt and I agreed to share a plate and then get dessert later on. Matt got his plate and plasticware and started loading up on side dishes, and as an afterthought, I went back to the ticket-taking people and asked if we could have an extra packet of plasticware since, uh, it's hard to eat someone else's steak with no fork. They wouldn't give us an extra packet. We ended up passing the fork, knife and spoon back and forth so we could both eat, which was kind of funny and awkward.

The steak was really freaking good. Actually, all of it was really good.

Meanwhile there were some musicians playing on stages in a couple different locations in downtown, so after we finished our steak, we grabbed a beer and headed over to watch a Tex-Mex band. They had an accordian player, and he had at least one accordian solo during every song, even during the slow jams, and that totally cracked Matt up. And when he laughs, I'm generally not far behind. :)

After a few songs, we grabbed some jumbo cupcakes from the Cake Junkie truck (run by the same company that made our wedding cakes!) and went back to wait for the shuttle. It had been a long day, but we were glad to have gotten out of the house, even if only for a few hours!

How was your weekend? Do you like going to local festivals?