me-ow

at one point today, i was curled up on the couch with the cat in my arms and ripley wedged in the crook of my legs. the 3 of us took a nap for an hour or so. nice way to spend a sunday.

stay close to me

it must have been a full moon today because too many out of the ordinary things happened.

i woke up and faj was all ready to go to the big house and clean it out. a little history: my dad works in california but lives in texas. so he flies home every weekend. all week, maj complains about how when dad gets home, all he wants to do is go to the lake and veg and nothing ever gets done at the old house.. which has to be emptied out, cleaned and sold. so it was a surprise when he wanted to spend all day doing all of that.

we took everything in the kitchen to goodwill and then jeffy joined us after school and the 4 of us took almost all of the rest of the goodwill stuff out. we installed the new stove, vacuumed, emptied the kitchen, laundry room and jeff's room. mine is just full of boxes waiting to be moved into storage. so, major headway. it's weird to go to that house when all of my memories there are of having a bunch of friends over and playing scattegories or watching football on weekends. but to walk into a cold, almost empty house is pretty unpleasant. it's like all of the life was sucked out of it.

tonight when we got home, mom dad and jeff watched the entire miss america pageant with me. bizarre. awesome. i didn't think i'd get away with it.. but since miss texas made it all the way to the end, we kept watching to see how she'd do. she made top 7 but miss virginia won. i usually watch it alone in my prom dress [it makes you feel more like a part of the action], but providing commentary in southern accents with jeff was a lot of fun.

baby all i got is this beat up leather bag

some days are slow around here and the highlight is moments like these. eating dibs out of the carton and bumping jeffy's hair.

before:

after:
he commented on his natural highlights when he looked at the after photo. he has a point.
and look who has a new favorite spot.

drip drip drop

wellll you're not supposed to be perfect at something the first time you try it. and so it is with baking bread. i followed most of the directions.

i kept seeing this book [artisan bread in five minutes a day] over and over again on food blogs, so i bought it while i was in taiwan and sent it to texas. then when i got back, i carried it to DC with me and never made any bread. so it was time.
the only issue i had was with the yeast. it said 1.5 packets of yeast or 1 1/2 T. so i measured one packet just to see.. and it was about 3/4 of a tablespoon. but for some reason i went with the 1.5 packet measurement instead. so i may have been a bit short.

but it was still fun. making bread is one of those get your hands dirty, back to basics kind of things.
scoring the top is not as easy as they make it look.

voila! delicious dipped in la madeline tomato basil soup. the recipe makes 4 loaves, soo i'm going to have to find homes for them this week. my waist line can't handle any more carbs for a bit. my diet the last couple of days has been 89% bread, pasta and chick peas.

ten thousand fireflies

this morning i attempted to do yoga i DVR'd.. but i forgot that the only time ripley sees anyone on the floor for any reason is when she's wrestling with jeff.. so she kept bugging me for the first 15 minutes. i was literally downward dogging over her while she laid under me. then she just kept barking as me as i went through sun salutations (where you're moving a lot through poses). once she decided i wasn't possessed, she got in her spot on her chair and just watched me.

and i made bread today! i'll post those pictures tomorrow. it is taaasty. and it's the right amount of work where you feel like you accomplished something, but it's not super labor intensive.

i met up with andy and kelly for happy hour tonight at this sushi place in the fancy new shopping center in austin. they're my friends from high school and i loooove them. it sounds silly, but just the smell of them makes me feel like home. that was kelly's first comment to me, that i smell the same as always. it's funny to be around people who know you so well that you can't tell even a little lie [or lie to yourself] without them calling you on it. so it will be fun to spend some time with them.

they're both living at home too right now even though they're both working in austin. the economy! it's making it hard for people just out of college. i guess i don't seem myself as "living at home" because it's more like an extended visit. we need to get the old house cleaned out and sold. meanwhile, i can look for jobs in DC from here and not spend money on rent or expensive food. i haven't spent quality time with the fam for quite a while and i know i won't be living with them again once i move out this time. so it's all part of the plan.

flat stanley and andy in salzburg.

sing sweet

i save a lot of pictures i find around the internet, mostly from the blogs on the side of my blog in the links section, of things i think are pretty/i want to copy when i finally settle down. if i was a real blogger, i'd be more careful about saving the sources so i could give them credit if i repost them..

so i have a funny dilemma which is that i know somewhere between 50-75 of us check in with this blog at some point during the day, and i know it's gotten horribly boring. trust me, no one wishes every day was an adventure the way it was in taiwan more than i do. but that just isn't going to be the case here.
but i've been writing every day since i was 12 or 13 and i don't think i'll ever be able to stop. so i'll always be around, posting something. i was hoping to find a bazillion smiles in nature, but it's harder than it seems. so i'm just going to keep plugging along with whatever i think of before bed.
it's nice to get all of your random thoughts out before you go to sleep. and i think the kuo's still check in periodically, so i want them to be able to see what i'm up to. and to everyone else, i'm happy to have you along. i know you by your cities and i'm always interested to see who came over from blondeintaiwan or who's been trucking along with me through dc.
so thank you.

let's get down to business

maj and i made such good progress today! we took everything out of the cabinets/drawers in the kitchen at the old house and sorted it into keep and get rid of piles. i think we're going to end up having an estate sale so we don't have to move everything twice. we found some interesting stuff. a glass chalice from their wedding with the date and my mom's name etched in it. lots of food that expired in '07. 4 paul prudhomme cookbooks.

we took 2 shopping carts full of books to half price books [and only got $26 for them.. but that's beside the point] and now they're gone!

so it seems more doable. you just have to break it into smaller parts.
tonight i went to central market, an organic grocery store downtown, and just wandered around. it's my favorite place to shop because everything is lined up and there are handwritten chalkboard signs and lots of interesting things you've never seen before. an olive bar, a real bakery, the stars from chicken and stars soup. i could live in there.

nobody, nobody

easy weekend at the lake.

once we got home we washed the window screens, washed the windows and put the screens in at the tiny house. my fingertips hurt from razoring paint off the windows. but now we can open the windows on these pretty 70 degree days!

somebody who's seen the light

welll my computer doesn't want to connect to the wireless. i finally remembered i've been able to connect through the ethernet in the past, and it's conveniently located in my room. annoying though.

fajjy got home today so it feels more normal around here. tomorrow we're headed to the lake with matt which will be fun. the euro & other decorative pillows for my bed andd all of my bedding is missing. it isn't at the old house. it isn't here. it isn't in the storage shed.. we don't think.

funny thing about the storage shed. so for some reason we thought it would be a good idea to number all of the boxes instead of writing what was inside them since they had been used by other people before and some of them already had writing on them. the master list lived on the side of the fridge for a year. then when i wanted to get something out of one of the boxes, i go to look for the list, and it's missing. i guess i should have known though. my mom literally used to throw away my homework, papers, etc because she hates having loose paper around so much.

so they may or may not be in one of those boxes.. but i swear i remember them being in big white trash bags. so i'm hoping we'll find them at the lake tomorrow. we'll see.

see you sunday when we're back from el lago.

the little house

it's funny to leave texas and your mental image of the tiny new house is plywood, unfinished floors and sawdust everywhere.. and then you get home and it's like this:

that door is the front door, so you have some idea of where you're starting from.

this is what you see from the front door. i argued against the high windows, but i didn't win. the house next door isn't so cute i guess, so we'd rather look at the trees.
the view into the kitchen from the front door
the kitchen still needs some reworking. jeff and i are going to take everything out of the cupboards/drawers and start over tomorrow.
the view from the kitchen door to the front door
sleeping ripley. i thiiiink she knew who i was. she was super excited.
kitty.
that's as far as i got today. i'll take pictures of the other stuff tomorrow. maj washed my sheets and i can't waiiiitttt to sleep in my bed! i scrounged up 5 pillows.

goodbye DC

how quickly time flies! i can't believe i'm going home tomorrow. but i feel like DC will be in my future again soon enough.

jonny, me and jamil at open city yesterday for brunch
all of us at brunch. that's the beeest brunch place. always busy but always delicious.
me abha and john at marvin on sunday night. i loooove john and abha. it feels like home when they're around and we never run out of things to chat about. it's going to be weird without them!

i roped nirav, becca's fiance, into taking me to the airport bright and early tomorrow morning so i don't have to lug my 3 bags on the train which will be a big big big help. i spent most of the day calibrating my suit cases to be slightly less than 50 pounds.. resulting in one very heavy carryon and a giant tote bag for a purse. crossing my fingers that southwest has some mercy on me.

talk to you from austin!

saved the world, broke my heart

i promise this is the dippiest this blog will ever be. but we all have our days.

abha bought me a bumpit for a going away present after i admired her new year's eve bump:

before: (for the record.. i did windex the mirror. it's just old and spotty).
tries #1, 2 and 3:

bumped!

look out, miss texas.