that would be rad. the family has some property off of lake travis... if you end up out there you will have to let me know.
Everyone I talk to always has good things to say about Austin. It's a great college town with good industry. IBM has their training center there, Dell is headquartered there and Apple also is there.
It has a drier climate than Houston which can get quite humid being on the Gulf. Lots of good local cuisine too. My sister tells me that the live local music scene is one of the best in the country.
I've looked at housing there and you can get a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath for under $180,000. The average salary here in California for what I do is between $90k/yr.-$100k/yr. and in Austin it's $70k/yr. which means Austin is much more affordable even though the pay is less.