New Year's

Back in our coastal town and I am already missing the stunning graffiti of Austin, its pockets of expensively maintained women (roaming Breed Hardware looking bored, bored, bored), and most of all the way winter light takes on a golden cast and picks out all the contours and shadows in the hills, especially the ear-popping ones near Mansfield Dam.

I spent New Year's Eve at a wedding, one of the best I've been to and not just because it was for a bride who had to relearn how to walk for it. Pretty much nothing beats a brisk, cloudless night in the hill country with good beer, good food, good music, a hot date who's tethered to you for life, and gorgeous three-inch heels bought hours earlier for under $40. But add a bride who giggles through her ceremony while the entire audience is in tears, and who can two-step beautifully even with a titanium femur and a rebuilt neck, and you get something truly special.