The Austin Bleet-Up at Mohawk.

The Austin Bleet-up!

This Thursday, temporarily setting aside thoughts of tragic events in Killeen, I drove home from my conference to attend Austin's Bleet Up at Mohawk, downtown.  I went with my friend the breakfast taco blogger, Elizabeth, and her girlfriend, Andrea.  Being afterschool program workers, Elizabeth and I are both weary by 8 o'clock at night, and haven't frequented the downtown scene (yet), so we took our time getting ready to go, finishing dinner, and driving down there.  When finally in the vicinity, we circled the perimeter of downtown Austin at least twice before conceding that we were not going to find a free parking meter, so we paid the $6 to park a good five blocks away.  Thank goodness for flats. 

Mohawk reminds me of a doll house because it has all of these little "compartments" like the green room, the downstairs indoor stage, the upstairs patio, the side patio, the outdoor stage...

We waited in a long line for fifteen minutes at the entrance marked "blogger party" before we finally wound our way up the side stairs to the ID checker.  No one questioned our identity as bloggers, and I was later disappointed to see some people walkin around with prominent "blogger" stickers on their chest.  I wanted one, too!  But being given a ticket for a free drink - Tito vodka with Sweet Leaf peach tea - atones for all wrongs.  My drink mix-master must have either been hurried, thought I was cute, or saw me as a girl who can handle her booze - because she mixed about 1 part tea with 8 parts vodka for my drink.  I'm a lucky girl.  Nonetheless, I tempered my vodka-with-a-splash-of-tea using Andrea's tea-with-a-splash-of-vodka. 

The upstairs patio also had food set out, a few vendors, and enough people packed together to merit a spot by the balcony in order to find air to breathe.  When trying to find a bathroom, I went down the indoor stair case to walk into what appeared to be a completley separate concert.  Seeing no free drinks there, I quickly went back upstairs. 

Girls Rock Camp Austin was there, raffling off this red guitar signed by Debbie Harry and the Donnas.  I'm a terrible person and can't remember this girl's name, but she's super cute and helped coach my band during my weekend at Ladies Rock Camp. 

I also don't know the name of this band, (what a terrible blogger!), but they were awesome, because part of the time they were playing I was standing on the balcony above them, and the lead guitarist says to the audience "This is an oldie but a goodie," then turns around away from the mic and says to the band, "Just watch me for the changes and try to keep up."  Back to the Future reference for the win!

There was a photographer there, taking pictures with this glitzy backdrop.  I have no idea where those pictures are going to be posted... again, I am so uniformed.  But there was this giant glitter disco ball available as a prop, so this is Elizabeth being metal and about to smash it, while I exclaim how much more awesome Lonestar is than PBR, but remind everyone that free drinks are the best. 

My friend Phil came to Mohawk after his band practice let out.  I'm supposed to go with him to see Adrian and the Sickness at Momo's tonight, but at the moment I feel inexplicably queezy, so that may not pan out. 

Elizabeth held on to her souvenir cup for a while, but I don't think it actually made it home with her.

This is the last photo in a series of pictures involving Andrea making grumpy faces and Elizabeth looking upset.  To avoid being chastised later for posting them, I offer this resolution picture, as no parties look silly here, but instead disgustingly sweet.

Here I am posing as the cyber (that's a golden computer mouse around my neck) queen that I aspire to be.  Phil and Andrea are cyber fans with flashy googly balls on top of their heads.

The fantasy over, we take an (almost) normal picture.  And having to head back to Killeen for day 3 of the conference in the morning, I called it a night shortly after this photo was snapped and headed home, to get my four hours of sleep.