it's a blur....

armed cattle
somewhere between hillsboro and waco was the gary nichols and the ballistic bovine boys van, apparently on it's way to the holiday house concert in fredricksburg, texas. yet another of my brushes with fame!

"but we're just meeting some friends here for dinner"
erica and i dropped off our stuff at autumn's place and went to meet up with the pre-fray festivities attendees at stubb's (whose web site likes popping up annoying soft-porn ads and will not be referred to here). the kind door-man finally gave in and let us go inside without paying the $6 cover charge so that we could sit with the gang. heading to empanada parlour (who's website is hosted on the same server as stubb's and, likewise, will not be referenced), i had my first true dose of why i love austin so much. the diversity of the crowd was refreshing. there was no dallas-socio-elite coagulation going on here.

bert, ernie, and the buddy shark
i was a nervous wreck saturday. i really wanted to meet up with some of the many friends that i had from the ten years of living in austin, but they were all too busy to see me. slightly bummed, i hooked up with billy and jessica and ended up having a very wonderful time strolling around with them and window shopping. the three of us wound up at lucy in disguise and it was like three kids in a candy shop. the place is so huge, you could easily spend an entire day browsing the hundreds of racks of clothing and costumes for sale and rent. billy will be posting some pictures soon.

we met up for the pre-fray dinner at iron cactus and i smoothed out some of the nervous knots in my alimentary canal.

out of the fire and into the fraying pan
dakota started the evening off with some music and then introduced dave as the first speaker. jessica spoke next, followed by alison. i was fourth and, though very nervous, utilized my experiences as a musician to calm myself down. sara and kevin finished up with a chilling tale about the power of being just friends. billy was one of about ten other people that spoke during the open mic portion of the evening. honestly, i was so relieved to have been finished that the rest of the evening was somewhat muted by a great sigh from within my whole being.

papparazzi
turned out it was a good decision to not lug my camera down to austin. at one point, i believe there were more than two hundred flashes going off at once. so don't look here for comprehensive photo montages of fray day 5. instead go here, or here, or here, or here, or here.

et al
tony, hanh, and shaun came up from houston with alison. hanh blew a kiss as i left b-side. tony was a riot. i really enjoyed talking with him. amanda helped with organizing fray day and brought her father. michael was responsible for getting it all together. thanks michael.
it was nice to see my old roomie adam and his sweetheart megan come to give me notes at fray day. thon, damon, and tanna showed as well. woohoo!
leia and julie gave me a ride home saturday after everything ended. ciao!
there were others...others that i can't recall names or details of. if i met you this weekend and you're not here, let me know.