Café Con Monica

Austin Adventures: Inner Space Caverns

Another goal for my blog was focusing on sharing things I was doing in/around my new city so today I am sharing one of our recent adventures.

It’s rare when AJS and I have the same weekday off so I always want to plan something when we do. I started looking up things we could do on a Monday with weather we thought might be just this side of too chilly to be outside a lot. (ended up being a gorgeous day though) and I found out that we lived only 20 minutes from some caverns! So we text our friend, made plans and headed out to check them out.

Inner Space Caverns

Located in Georgetown, TX (about 20 minutes north of Austin) these caverns are some of the best preserved in Texas. The caverns were discovered in 1963 when a drilling team for the Texas Highway Dept was drilling to see if the land was stable enough. After that some Splunkers went in and explored the caverns and eventually in 1966 it was opened to the public.

They offer a few different tours ranging from basic walking tour through well lit areas (Adventure Tour) to Wild Cave tours which are off the path and last 3-4 hours.

Unfortunately, in all my excitement I did not do any research so we didn’t know about the other tours until we arrived and ended up deciding that the basic Adventure tour was the best option for our plans for the day.

We got our tickets, chose a time and then joined a group of people waiting.

The our was led by an awesome guide named Sarah who was funny and knowledgable and shared plenty of cavern type puns throughout the tour. We learned some great facts and were surprised to find that parts of the cave were super warm! We had bundled up thinking it would be cold underground to find out it was a nice balmy 72° with 98% humidity down there.

We came to this great big formation that had water constantly running down it that we were told was 98% pure. I kind of wanted to just dunk my face in it.

After that we got to into a space that was really beautiful (pic below) and our guide asked us to cover all our devices so that she could turn out the lights. It was incredible to see the absolute absence of light. I kept expecting my eyes to adjust and eventually see but there was zero light, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

After that we headed back the way we came resisting the urge to touch things no matter how much I wanted to.

We really enjoyed seeing these caverns and were so glad that I happen to find them on a whim. Our plan is to do one of the off the path tours really soon because we need a little more adventure in our lives!

Have you been to these caverns? Done something similar? I’d love to hear about it!

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Girly Book Club: The Wife Between Us

Tonight is our the first Girly Book Club meeting for the Austin chapter and we will be discussing this month’s book:

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

This book had been on my list for almost a year according to Goodreads. I remember that I had put it on hold through the library and I was like #234 in line and I hung on for awhile and then eventually I must have wanted to read something else and bumped it. Luckily when I joined GBC as their new Austin host I was given a copy of the book to read. Yay for perks! This didn’t come with a request for a book review though so I am just sharing because…because.

I was recently talking about it and a girl I’ve become friendly with asked if she could borrow it. She did, and this past Sunday we got together for coffee to talk about it and just catch up. She decided she would really like to attend tonight too so she signed up. yay!! Now on to why most of you actually visited this post…a review.

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Did I like the book? Yes. I did and enough to recommend it a friend to read so that I could talk to her about it.

Why did I read it?

I read all kinds of genres and when I saw it on everyone’s SUYB posts and then read the synopsis on good reads I thought it sounded intriguing. That first line “When you read this book, you will make many assumptions” drew me in right away. I am notorious for making assumptions when reading and 8/10 I am off, really off. For this book, I was off right away and I loved the moment when I actually audibly gasped “what!?” .

That being said. It was only one moment in the whole book and I wish that there could have been another. I realize that the last twist was meant to give the same feeling but by the time I got there I had already figured out something else was coming. There were parts of the story that felt like they were so detailed that it dragged on for just long enough that I skimmed. I hate when I find myself skimming.

Why the rating?

It sounds like I should have given it a 3 star rating right? There were parts of the romance in this story that were so close to real life for me. Have you ever dated someone you thought was just maybe, slightly, too good to be true? Even though you felt this nagging in the back of your mind you just couldn’t help yourself? I have and being able to relate to that just took the book up a star for me. We are capable of doing some kind of ridiculous things when it comes to love and dating.

If I am summing this up in a short little blurb, I’d say that this is a good read that had the potential to be a really good read but fell just a bit short.

Have you read this book yet? Tell me your thoughts!

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Meetup: Starting a Group!

I wanted to share with you guys a bit about the meetup group I started when I was in Chicago!

 A little background

So let me explain why I started a group instead of just attending meetups from other groups. When I first got back to Chicago there were some really great groups but they were HUGE. Like 1000+ people in them. Eventually I started to notice that the groups were all posting the same events(cross posting) and they were events like “Singles party” “Networking Blah Blah” and they were for 150 guests, coed, or for dating. Even in the group that was specifically for Couples making friends. It made no sense. So I decided that I wanted to start a group of my own and hope for the best.

 The basics

I named the group: “Let’s Make Real Friends” and I put this little blurb in the about section:

  • “It is so hard to make close friends as an adult! There are many groups out there for girlfriends but it still seems to be so hard to make real genuine friendships that last past a meetup with 30+ people. You don’t have to look a certain way, make a specific amount of money or live in a certain neighborhood to make friends and that is what this group is for! We will be geared towards women in their 20’s & 30’s, single, in a relationship and/or married, who like to explore this great city and make new friends! This group is about small meetups and making real lasting friendships. Meetups will be 10 people or less always”

I started the group in September 2017 and it really didn’t pick up until about January. We now have 260 members and I get requests to join daily.  We have great turn out now with a wait list for every event.

 The Good 
  • The good is that I have met some really awesome women! I always have people to do something with. If I see something I want to do or a place I want to try I just make a meetup and there is always at least 1 other girl out there who wants to go.
  • Once the group started to really grow people started giving me ideas and offering to host events.
    All the events on the calendar for May already!
The Bad
  • People are flakey. Especially people you meet online. Living in a city like Chicago means there are a lot of options for every day of the week and we live in a time where having options makes people a lot less willing to commit.
  • It also takes work. Until people are open to hosting events on their own you are the host for everything. You have to come up with ideas, make the time and keep the group going.

To combat some of this bad…I had to make rules. I had an event in December with a full RSVP list and 10 people on the waitlist. By the time the event started everyone already on the list had cancelled and the waitlist was moved up…which  means no one showed up.  Let me tell you how upset I was that I traveled across the city in the cold to wait outside for 20 minutes before I realized no one was coming. Going into the new year, with the help of a couple girls in the group, I came up with some rules:

  1. No shows are automatically booted from the group
  2. People have to change their RSVP 3 hours ahead of time or receive a warning (2x and they are out)
  3.  Anyone on the waitlist is responsible for attending if their name gets moved up (people rsvp on the waitlist and forget)

Seems kind of ridiculous right? But the point is really that we should be treating each other as we would a real friend.  You wouldn’t leave a friend at a restaurant waiting for you and not show or cancel right? Then we shouldn’t do it to strangers either.

So thats the story of the meetup group and how I get to do all the fun stuff I do around Chicago all the time! I am open to answering any questions or helping out if anyone is thinking of making their own group!

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