TMEA, Part 2

So MUCH of TMEA is about the food you can eat on the Riverwalk. Last night, Valentine's Day, we couldn't get in at any of the usual places, so we wandered down the river a ways. Finally, we found a restaurant I had never been to before that didn't have a ridiculous wait time: Rita's on the Riverwalk.

We didn't order food, just appetizers: nachos and riverwalk queso. I have to admit, the queso was crazy-good. It came with tortillas and those were hands-down, the second best tortillas I've ever had (first place will always go to Amarillo-favorite, Oscar's Burritos).

Here's a picture of the queso bowl. Good Eats!

On Friday, I ate with the staff from Joshua HS. We ate at the restaurant in the Rivercenter hotel. I can't remember what the name of the place was, but the buffet was pretty amazing. Here's the dessert pic first.

And, here's some pretty awesome chicken with all of the trimming... There's a salad on there somewhere. And rice. Yes, I can at least identify healthy foods and occasionally put them on my plate. 

This is a pretty sore subject among some of my coworkers:

When we checked in on Wednesday, the women could get into their room immediately, but us guys would have to wait until the actual check-in time before another room would be available. So, after a late lunch, we came back only to find that no rooms were available again. Being that my singular purpose on the Wednesday of TMEA is to judge All-State Auditions, I was starting to get "antsy." I was in a T-shirt and jeans with about 45 minutes before the judge's meeting -- I really prefer to dress nicely for that audition, for some reason. So, I mentioned to the front desk clerk that I had a meeting to be in and that I needed to have ironed my clothes and changed and given myself time to get to the convention center. 

So, after a little checking around, she was able to get cleared to give us a suite! Suddenly our $200 a night double was picking up a $1200 a night room! Although, I have to admit that I didn't think our room was all that spectacular. It did, however, provide a pretty cool view of the downtown area.

Our room was on the 9th floor of the Emily Morgan and it overlooked the Alamo. Here's the back.

It was foggy the morning I took these pictures. It adds a nice effect to the photos... (This is the Hilton Palacio de Rio -- thanks to Rosetta Stone I know that means "Palace of the River.")

And here's a shot taken towards the Convention Center. In the foreground is the tan Crockett Hotel. To the left and tallest is the Marriott RiverCenter Hotel, followed right by the new Grand Hyatt then then I'm pretty sure that that is the original Hyatt.

Here's another pic of the Alamo grounds. We cut through the back gate a few times to avoid having to go all the way around it!

On Saturday morning, there was a crew of drummers, buglers and period soldiers doing some sort of reenactment. 

All in all, a great trip! 

TMEA 09, Part One

So, it takes flying to San Antonio to have enough time and motivation to write a blog. That's pretty lame. But, this is seriously on my to-do list for today. This will be the first in two installments of my TMEA blogs. (And because Blogger was being really dumb the other day, I will be writing both blogs while I'm sitting in the San Antonio airport on the way home from TMEA...)



Here's our pit stop in Dallas enjoying psuedo-mexican food. Hey, it's Chili's... It's not the Riverwalk.














Here's our All-Stater, Mitra. She's originally from Iran. So, suffice to say, she's logged more airline miles than ANY of us combined! Man, what a clarinet player -- this girl knows her stuff.














When we got off the plane in Dallas, the first thing we saw were two vending machines for something I'd never really suspect would go in a vending machine: Rosetta Stone Language Software (which from personal experience I can attest Rosetta Stone being muy bien' for learning how to speak espanol...)











Then next to it was an iPod vending machine. You could buy virtually any iPod you wanted -- sans iPhones -- but there was plenty to choose from. iCan't imagine there being much being sold in the way of iTouches there, but iDid see a lot of accessories that you could (or iCould) buy: earbuds and holsters, etc. iThought it was quite a neat thing to see, but nothing iD'd probably ever find myself buying. But, iDigress....

Here's another picture iTook.

From there, we had an uneventful flight to San Antonio. The only other thing worth mentioning is that from Amarillo to San Antonio, we shared both flights with the basketball team from Oklahoma Panhandle St. Univ. These guys were living the life: you would have thought that they played basketball at an actual NCAA school. These guys really knew how to wear all of their clothing loose and listen to their mp3 players beyond a safe decibel limit.

It's also worth noting that there was a very large percentage of music educators on our flight. So, had there been a terrible accident, the future of both music education and Division Four college basketball was doomed.