Where did I pahk the cah?

Yea, Eric is gone! Uh, I mean, aawwww… Eric is gone… No, seriously – I’m upset that Eric is gone, because now all I have to look forward to in the next week is proofreading annual reports and jury duty. Oh joy. Oh happiness that cannot be contained. My unbridled felicity shall know no bounds. Tell me, is there any miniscule prospect of discovering a delight to surpass my present good fortune? I think it must not be possible. (Am I being sarcastic enough? I can’t tell…)

So anyway… we discovered a really good new restaurant when Eric was here called III Forks. (Pronounced THREE Forks, but actually written that way: III Forks) It’s in the “revitalized” Second Street District downtown. Austin has been undertaking this whole “revitalization” thing with Second Street, because apparently some people are tired of only having ONE cool street in downtown Austin (Sixth Street – let’s go to Sixth Street!). And I, for one, am happy to finally have another street to recommend to out-of-town visitors. III Forks is actually located at the corner of Cesar Chavez (which is technically First Street) and Lavaca, but it’s close enough to Second Street that it’s considered part of the “Second Street District.” Yeah, that’s right – Second Street is so cool that it spills over into its neighboring avenues. Can’t say THAT about Sixth Street…

And we were very impressed with III Forks. It’s a steak restaurant, and I’d say the steaks are on par with what you’d find at some place like Ruth’s Chris – but III Forks actually includes a couple side dishes with your dinner. You don’t have to order every single thing a la carte. They had reeeaaaalllly good mashed potatoes that were kind of spicy (I don’t know what they put in those, but whatever it was, it was good), plus green beans and creamed corn (I’m not much of a fan of creamed corn, but mom and Rick seemed to like it…). Plus a very nice chocolate ganache cake for dessert. Yeah, I think we’ll be patronizing that place again some time soon…

After we ate, we came back here and watched The Departed on DVD. We’d never seen it before, and since it just won a bunch of Academy Awards, we figured we should check it out. Very good movie… and I don’t want to give anything away, in case someone hasn’t seen it and still wants to, but the end is a little bit surprising. I mean, I was expecting SOME of what happened, but not all… and Rick was sitting on the couch going, “what? I can’t believe that… this is intense… whoa…” And we were also surprised by all the actors who kept popping up in the movie. It was like, “Did you know that Martin Sheen was in this? I don’t think I knew that… wait – Mark Wahlberg is in this movie?? Huh, I definitely didn’t know that… okay, hold on – Alec Baldwin is in it, too???” The only slight problem we had was the annoying Boston accent affected by all the actors… it’s funny how I never really got used to it. Maybe it just reminded me of Red Sox fans…

But if you’re looking for an intense movie that makes you go, “whoa… not sure I saw that coming…” and you don’t mind two and half hours of Bostonian accents, you should watch The Departed (or maybe I should call it The Depaahhted…). We all agreed that Martin Scorsese deserved the Oscar he finally won. (And at long last I can say I saw a Martin Scorsese movie… I feel so much more content with my life now… how did I ever make it this far without experiencing such cinematic genius? Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t THAT good…)

Anyway, I have to think about getting to bed some time soon so my eyes are rested for proofreading tomorrow. Oh joy. Oh happiness… eh, you know the rest…