Delivery or pick-up? (Should've gone with pick-up...)

I’m starving right now… really hungry… not sure I can write coherently, but I’ll try. Okay, I’m not THAT famished. But we did order a pizza about an hour and half ago and it’s still not here. A new pizza place just opened in the neighborhood, and we thought, “hey, it’s so close to our house that it’ll still be hot when they deliver it.” You can order online, so that’s what we did – but I’m thinking we should’ve just called to place the order. After over an hour with no pizza, Rick finally called to ask if they’d even received our order. And of course they said that they “just got” the online order and it would be another half hour. I believe that translates to, “we weren’t paying any attention and just now noticed your order.” Soooo hungry…

Well, speaking of new places in Austin – we decided to check out Austin’s newest shopping center yesterday. A place called “The Domain.” It’s actually a combination of shopping, apartments, office buildings and soon-to-be hotels. It’s sort of like a city-within-a-city. In fact, the main shopping area is set up to look like a pseudo-downtown street, with shops on street level and apartments above. People in Austin have been really excited about this place opening up, especially since it features the first Neiman Marcus department store in the city. Apparently this is a very big deal, although I’m really not sure why. Rick and I decided to walk through the store and see what all the fuss was about. And as near as I can tell, the “fuss” is about pretentious people who feel they have something to prove and who enjoy paying $150 dollars for a t-shirt. Seriously. This was in the Prada section – so I guess the shirt itself was about ten bucks, but I’m supposed to be convinced that the name “Prada” is worth an extra $140. And don’t even get me started about the supposed worth of the name “Manolo Blahnik.” (But if anyone ever feels the need to waste $300 dollars on a pair of flip flops, I can point you in the right direction…)

Needless to say, I did NOT make any purchases at the Neiman Marcus. But there are plenty of more reasonably-priced retail establishments in The Domain as well. So I may have bought one or two little things. Or three or four. (Hey, I spent less than I would’ve spent on those flip flops…) We ate dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen, which is a place I’ve heard about but never had a chance to visit. (This may be the first California Pizza Kitchen in Austin, too, I don’t know…) Mom and dad joined us, and, interestingly enough, none of us had pizza. They have all kinds of things other than pizza. (Although right NOW, I really wish I had a pizza… all this talk about pizza is reminding me about how hungry I am… where IS my pizza???)

Okay, the pizza FINALLY arrived. It only took two and a half hours. And after all that, they didn’t even get our payment correct – Rick paid by credit card online, but the delivery driver had no record of it. So we had to pay in cash (good thing we had some cash lying around…) and now we have to hope they didn’t charge the credit card AND take our cash. I guess this is why you should give new places a few months to work out all their issues before you patronize them…

Well, now that I’ve eaten, I seem to have run out of things to say. Unless anyone wants me to talk about pizza some more – anyone? Anyone want to hear more about pizza? Anyone? Pizza? No? Okay, no more pizza talk…