The following are Devorah's opinions which are not necessarily the opinions of this ISP, your ISP, any other ISP, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bill Nye, or Jabba the Hut.
Best Austin venue that isn't there any more: Chicago House on Trinity
Best Austin restaurant that isn't there any more: Martin Brothers
Coolest Athlete who no longer lives in Austin: Debbie Smith
Most Beautiful Athlete who no longer lives in Austin: Anita Lopez
Best Austin Spot to have a really heavy conversation in that isn't there any more: Les Amis
Best Austin coffee house: I'll tell you if you feed my duck.
Best Place to Eat After a Race: Souper Salads or any place with LOTS of food!
Austin restaurants I've gotten the sickest
from: We call it "Ptomain Palace" -- the Chinese place on Congress @ Ben White; Buffet Palace
Weirdest Place I ever taught someone to Waltz in:
Austin State Capitol Building. I thought we'd get kicked out but he said, "I've
got karma good enough for the both of us." He was right.
City I would live in if I didn't live in Austin: Tucson, Arizona
Places I've been kicked out of:
Place: My German professor's Halloween party.
Time: During my Bachelor's Degree
Reason: My best friend's date was dressed as a tree and got Spanish moss all over
his linoleum.
Place: McDonald's by a Louisiana sheriff.
Time: During my Bachelor's Degree
Reason: I brought in my own Diet 7-Up.
Place: South Forty in Austin.
Time: During my first Master's
Reason: I was at Happy Hour eating the free buffet, but didn't buy a drink.
Place: Mt. Bonnell
Time: Shortly after moving to Austin
Reason: We tried to stay past the 10:00 curfew.
... more to come when I remember them!
Places I've gotten my car towed from:
The Hole in the Wall: the very first night I moved to
Austin! I parked at Jack in the Box -- hey, they don't tow cars back where I'm from
[say with your best southern accent].
Funniest Insult I've gotten lately:
(A dude saw me wearing a pink, lacey dress) "That dress
would be really pretty ... if it were on a woman."
He said my arms were too butch, and, of course, I still had my temporary tattoos from the
swim meet! 
Best hip new Austin musician: Ginger
MacKenzie
Best Austin singer/songwriter: Jimmy LaFave
Best Jazz Vocalist in Austin: Hope Morgan (catch her at the
Elephant Room!)
Devorah's Picks among
Awesome Austin Musicians:
Composers: Glover Gill, Winton Reynolds, Rich Harney, John Fremgen,
Terry Bowness
Bass: John Fremgen, Chris Marsh, Evan Arredondo
Drums: A.D. Manion, Chris Searles, Mike Koenning
Violin: Will Taylor
Piano: Kevin Lovejoy, Winton Reynolds, more to
come
Sexiest Musical Instrument: cello
Local Pianist who most resembles Shroeder: Doug Hall
Coolest Instruments played by Tony Campise: Bass Flute, Soprano Sax, vocals
Best TV station: KLRU (pbs)
Best TV show: Kratts' Creatures, Nova, the British Comedies
Best Radio station: KMFA, KUT, weather radio
My Most Worn Out CD's: Stuff
You've Heard Of: Bill Evans: A Portrait in
Jazz; Miles Davis: Kind of Blue; Jennifer Warnes: Famous
Blue Raincoat, Songs of Leonard Cohen; Tom Waits: Heart of Saturday
Night; Chris Isaak: Heart Shaped World; Heart of the Celts
Collection (hey, I guess I just like CD's with "heart" in the title!)
Stuff You Haven't Heard Of: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays
Debussy, Galuppi, Scarlatti, Ravel; Jean-Luc Ponty: Civilized Evil; Piazzolla:
Tango Ballet; Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride; John
Michael Talbot: The Lord's Supper; Globalarium
Strangest Jobs I ever had: VCR Repair, EBR Parish Sheriff's Department
Grooviest Jobs I ever had: Disc Jockey, Refugee Rights
Longest Job I ever had:
Current location (now in the IT department) -- fourteen years and still loving it.
Shortest Jobs I ever had:
(1) Telemarketing -- lasted forty minutes
before I walked out
(2) Bazaar -- a Freak Store in Austin, got
fired after two hours because I refused to wear make-up and "accessories"
Favorite University when I was a Kid: Rice University
Second choice for graduate school: University of Arizona at Tucson
Best graduate school professors: Seng (Instructional Technology), Buckingham (Neurolinguistics), Yule (Pragmatics -- Discourse Analysis), Dixit (Acoustics), Parker (Transformational Syntax), also my UNIX professor and my Montague Semantics professor, whose names I can't remember.
College professor who cursed the most: That would be Buckingf***ingham, a big fan of infixes, still down there in BatonfrigginRouge
Cutest college professor: George Yule (Buckingham says it was because of his acf***ingcent, but I know it was more!)
Most adored professor: Prakash Dixit (Acoustics)
Most Interesting College Classes: Montague Semantics, Pragmatics, Psychology and Language (Clark and Clark)
Most Useful College Classes: Computer Aided Instruction (x2) at UT; Instructional Technology (UT), Phonetics, Syntax, Advanced Grammar (Lin 391 at UT)
Coolest Grammar Books on the Planet: Quirk and Greenbaum's A Concise Grammar of Contemporary English and Martha Kolln's Understanding English Grammar
Most Difficult College Classes that I still made an A in: Freshman Calculus; Montague Semantics
Easiest College Class that I didn't make an A in: Biology
College Class that I wish I'd paid more attention to: Astronomy
High School Classes that I wish I'd paid more attention to: World History, Literature, Chemistry
Subject I never studied in college even though I earned two Master's Degrees in Liberal Arts: Literature (I studied Spanish, Persian, and French literature, but never any English!)
Worst college professor:
Never had a bad one, thank God!
Most Useless Degree ever acquired: Legal Secretarial Certification
Best neighbors: Berta, her hubbie,
and cat. The Indian who made me curries.
Worst Line ever heard on a Date:
"I want you to know -- I really enjoy sex, whether it's
with a partner, or by myself."
Hint: Don't say that on your next date.
Weirdest Line to come out of my mouth recently on an
otherwise good Date:
"I just don't want a relationship to interfere with my life."
Cartoon Character that Ross on "Friends" most
resembles:
Eeyore
Favorite "Friends":
Monica, Chandler
Best Ducks on Town Lake:
Most unusual: Sterling and
Serah
Cutest Couple: Wilbur and Wilma (a
cute male mallard married to a white domestic duck)
Most handsome: Marvin (he
told me to say that)
Smartest: Genevieve, the Muscovy
Sweetest: Jeanette
Cutest Voice: Bert (the
white domestic duck of Bert and Ernie)
Grandest: Grant, the Great
Blue Heron
Most surprising: Marvette
(Marvin's sister?)
Good Lines from Songs: "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once
you find them. I've looked around enough to know that you're the one I want to go
through time with." (Jim Croce)
"Give me one reason to stay here, and I'll turn right back
around." (Traci Chapman)
"I don't want to wait for our lives to be over; I want
to know right now what will it be. I don't want to wait for our lives to be over --
will it be 'yes' or will it be 'sorry'?" (Paula Cole)
Best Breakfast Foods: Oatmeal, Cantaloupe, Peaches,
Coffee, Herbal Cinnamon Apple Tea, Orange Juice
Best Comedies on TV: As Time Goes By,
Faith in the Future, Goodnight Sweetheart
Best Films I'd Recommend: Amelie (French w/subtitles); Shall We Dance? (Japanese w/subtitles); Croupier (Canadian); Sliding Doors (British); Paris, Texas (with Natassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton -- fitting music against the desert scenery: Ry Cooder on slide guitar); Crimes of the Heart (Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange, Diane Keaton)
A Few Good Books I'd Recommend: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Lust for Life (the biography of Vincent Van Gogh); How My Heart Sings by Pettinger (the biography of the amazing man and awesome pianist, Bill Evans); A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall; Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolving; PHP by Julie Meloni; Stan Getz : A Life in Jazz by Donald L. Maggin; Endless Love (for the language); poetry of Leonard Cohen; The Language of Jazz by Dan Haerle; Power from on High by Charles Finney; In-Line Skating Basics by Cam Miller; More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow; Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This (fascinating study of advertising/marketing strategies) by Sullivan, novels of Rita Mae Brown, Toni Morrison; more to come
Worst Movie we went to see just for the Babe: Eight Days a Week (Keri Russell, you know ...)
Least Comprehensible Movie ever seen: Marie
Baie des Anges
...more to come, you know it...
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