It also reminded me of how much I miss eating pork belly (felt like it popped up on all sorts of menus!), but not enough to eat it of course.  Going food truck hopping is significantly harder in a city like ours.  But we still got some great grub and even showed up back home with a bag full of cakeballs.  Surely an indicator of a fun outing.

In some ways, it kind of stinks that a festival like this would be the only way to currently get to enjoy multiple food trucks in one location.  Houston’s lack of food truck parks is lame – it’s one of my favorite ways to eat when we’re in Austin and makes for such a fun and interactive space to kick it (and eat and eat).

The afternoon heat rendered my short person Ella pretty consistently grouchy, at least until getting her first bite of Pi Pizza‘s 420 pizza with Fritos.  The day went up from there.  ”Chips on a pizza with sauce and cheese is like snacks and lunch at the same time,” the 5 year old connoisseur said.  “This was a good idea.”

We walked around, not being able to find a couple of vegan options we were looking for and settled (well, hardly settled) on a fantastic Ladybird green tomato grilled cheese with a nice tangy dipping sauce.

A Mexican Coke and a sweet tea later, we were on the prowl for some ice cream.  The Eatsie Boys were the obvious choice, we split a yuzu flavor that was the lightest and almost frothy citrus frozen deliciousness you could want in a sweaty moment like that.

Then we mugged in a Mini (apparently Ella had her first experience with road rage), met an interesting edible-oriented gardener and snagged a red velvet, birthday cake and key lime to share at home from Angie’s Cake.

We’ll be back next year and have already bookmarked a couple of trucks we didn’t get to try out for a food outing asap.  

(Thanks JJ for the invite!)

The latest installation of my own personal chandelier obsession, I love this video showing the progress of the Bocci 28 series pendant chandelier at the Milan International Furniture Fair.  Click here to play!

Geeking out like me?  You can read more about the chandelier here.  I have the strangest fascinations…

I love being inspired by my heroes – Ira Glass is just one in a million.  I think you’ll enjoy what he has to say.  As usual.

Our sweet and quirky little outside cat, Catara, was hit by a car and passed away today.

I know I make lots of jokes about how I’m a total dog person, but boy will I miss this little kitty’s funny personality and excitement to see us everyday.

She was a cat that totally thought she was a dog – affectionate, sweet and always ready to run from wherever she was in the neighborhood to say hi when she saw us arriving at home.

One of my favorite memories of Catara was several months back, watching her follow us down the street for a couple of blocks as we embarked on a family walk  – meowing incessantly, probably complaining about fast we were going.

A funny little furball, with a broken tail, smushed nose and a voice that sounded like she smoked a couple of packs a day.  We loved her.

RIP little kitty cat.  Our house will be different without your constant meowing chatter, bizarre eating habits, footprints on our cars and constant desire to rub up on us to talk about your day.

If only all error messages and awkward public speaking moments were made up of bouncing be-wigged rainbow dancers and bouncy balls.  Then we would never be afraid to make mistakes. 

Read about this faux TED speaker, Colin Robertson, here.  And go make a rainbow colored mistake today, while you’re at it.

Perhaps we should take away important life lessons from the Turritopsis, the immortal invertebrate.  Completely re-build yourself after traumatizing experiences to emerge fresh and better than ever.

From the Green Cupboard community:

Imagine if your grandfather could revert back to his teenage years in order to re-live the “golden days”. That is precisely what these Jellyfish out of the Caribbean are doing, once they mature, they revert back to a younger self to age all over again. Scientist are baffled by this technique and by the fact that there seems to be no limit to the amount of times a jellyfish can do this, making it functionally immortal.

Or perhaps the real lesson is – when the going gets tough, the tough get going to the deep sea jellyfish spa and retreat center.  Heh.

There’s something about seeing and being near beauty that inspires awesomeness.  Have you ever checked out some of the amazing handcrafted instruments to be found on Etsy?  They make my eyes happy and my fingers itch to tickle some strings.

Just looking at this Ganesh mandolin above is like music.  It’s delicate, original, a touch playful and is just begging to be held and played.  Like the fine instrument it is, there’s just no bad angle to it - a masterpiece!

This handmade stand-up bass (made out of a snare drum and a cymbal) is a heavy metal take on an acoustic bit of musical awesomeness.  This is another one of those instruments that would look just as good embellishing your home as it would strapped over your shoulder.

Another great re-purposed and re-built instrument is this quirky but beautiful cigar box mandolin.  There’s a bit of a revival going on with the cigar box stringed instrument community (see some history here), you can find a musical cigar box to buy or plans to build your own because being musically DIY / crafty is kind of the most amazing thing ever.

Thumb pianos (also known as kalimbas) are another one of those instruments that I’m just dying to have around the house to pick up and play.  I think this electric kalimba is pretty cool.

And of course, to play all of this great music – you have to be looking good too  Mandolin t-shirt, anybody?

After watching my shortie play with her shiny new SpongeBob LEGO set on Christmas morning, it seems like LEGO-related imagery is popping up all over the place in my little Web world.  And this makes me happy, but that shouldn’t surprise you.

The Guardian has an interesting collection of 2011 news headlines in LEGO (see their entire Flickr gallery here) which perhaps make some of this past year’s big events more poignant and awesome at the same time with the addition of space creatures and LEGO monsters.

The royal wedding gets a bit more pixelated (by Flickr user allyhook)

A simple tribute to Steve Jobs (by Flickr user lego27bricks)

But if you want to get more timeless, there’s this great ‘Classics in LEGO’ set by Flickr user Balakov that recreates some of the world’s most famous photography with everyone’s favorite colorful little blocks.

Or opt for the always amusing and amazing A LEGO A Day blog – self-explanatory, yes.  But you’ve got to see it to fully understand its awesomeness.

What kind of imagery has captured your 2011?

I love these fun photos from photographer Allen Sailer on ‘The War Against Christmas’ – a look at exploding Christmas ornaments filled with random substances.

A nice break from your typical red and green ornamentation, right?  If only putting away Christmas decorations were half as much fun as these!

The Interwebs is chalk full of amazing content, stories and knowledge – here’s a sampling of this week’s readable brain candy from my personal bookmarks.

• The (In)Efficiency of Local Food | The Etsy Blog - Not entirely sure how I feel about this post, but it’s an interesting look at the implications of the locavore movement.
• Goodreads | Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution by Michelle Moran - A free e-book of some tasty historical fiction, for those winter days when only Madame Tussaud and revolutions will do.
• Reconsidering Arial - Checking out the usability and aesthetic perks and flaws of Arial vs. Helvetica for the web.
• Blinds.com CEO builds $75 Million company debt free - A ditty on building a business on a dime and the Web (I start working with this great company in the new year!  Very excited).
• Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream - Indigenous, activist and scientific viewpoints and calls to action on the state of our planet and how everything we do is 100% connected.