put your hand on your heart

can you believe the olympics are over already?! it's going to be a sad week while i adjust. no more olympics song.

well the snow has almost all melted in DC, leaving behind dirty sidewalks with concentrated piles of black muck and soggy leaves. there are still some piles of dark brown snow with big sheets of ice sticking out of them in every direction. but it feels nicely cold out. cold enough to wear a wool coat and scarf without getting too hot while you're walking around. not cold enough for my earmuffs.. which is fine with me.

i'm working on my grass is greener balancing act. when i'm in austin, i miss my friends/the city of dc. when i'm in dc, i miss my family/friends/the feel of austin. tricky! but easier when you step back and realize everything has worked itself out the way it should so far, and i trust that it will continue that way.

becca and nirav came home tonight and brought a piece of my bridesmaid sari and the blank wedding invitations! getting excitedd. july will be here before we know it.

to be caught adrift

have you heard of the bloom box? patrick, my resident technology/car/current events link provider, told me about it the other day. it's a fuel cell that creates power by blowing oxygen in one side and fuel in the other side. somehow they mix and create energy which then wirelessly powers buildings. google, walmart, office max and some other businesses are testing it right now. the investor also funded google before they were big.

anyway what struck me about the bloom box was a video of the inventor showing it off. he said it takes 1 bloom box to power an american home. or two european homes. or four asian homes. i wish america cared more about conserving.

today was a nice saturday. a bunch of us went to lunch at a new place.. i think it's called far east? the food was gross but it was empty in there. our favorite spots always have a reaaallly long wait. afterwards john and a neww girl and i went antiquing on U/14th streets. good wood, little miss pixie's, ruff & ready. john found an old burgundy velvet chair he thinks he neeeeds. he has interesting taste. mostly '50s like the stuff at millennium decorative arts. not my style. i liked little miss pixies best. lots of shabby chic which i thought i was over :X and pretty hand embroidered handkerchiefs. i might have to be a cat lady.

take what's left of this heart

started reading one hundred says of solitude. haaaaaaated it. it jumped around in time, all of the characters names sounded the same in my head/the family tree diagram wasn't helping, and you constantly had to reread sentences and paragraphs to try to figure out what was going on. i'm an english major, i appreciate figuring stuff out, but not when you have to stop every other page to decipher. that just takes away from the book.

but nowww i'm on the poisonwood bible and it is fantastic. kind of toni morrison-esque. each chapter is from a different point of view. the daughter who everyone thinks is mute actually just chooses not to speak and is actually very worldly/articulate. easy to picture the scene, to the point where you feel the grittiness of the dirt under your feet.

when i was in middle school i remember sitting in english class and thinking about how the candy they unwrap in books must be some kind of special candy with really complicated wrappers. the way it was described in such detail made it not even seem real at that point. sometimes when i read back over some of my blonde in taiwan posts, i wish i had described things in better detail. but what can you do!

plead with me, shout, scream

the baking continues. i wanted to make something with the leftover chocolate chips.. but i ended up making biscotti which contains no chocolate chips. it is yummy/just the right amount of work though. it was on my list of things i've always wanted to make but been a little bit afraid of. but it's so easy.

make a giant cookie

let it cool, cut into strips and bake both sides again

voila! i used hot chocolate mix which had little chocolate flakes, and sliced almonds. yummm.

ok friends. prepare yourselves for the most awesome maternity pictures you have eeeever seen. seriously, what is america thinking?

that's my pretty coteacher, augusta. she had a baby girl on february 9th.
changed your life, didn't they?

they pull the flowers from your hair

this sums up my day.

11am:

11pm:
had dinner with john and abha tonight. it's funny what a difference people make. whenever i'm around my friends i feel like i recharge a little bit.

we have a winter weather advisory tomorrow. i plan to spend several hours reading in a cozy coffee shop down the street and pretending like there is no job hunt for a little while.

electric feel

another productive day and it was even better because i took a break in the afternoon to bake some chocolate chip meringue cookies from smitten kitchen.

so easy. 2 egg whites. 1/4 tsp salt. 1/8 tsp cream of tartar. 1 tsp vanilla. 3/4 c sugar. 1/2 c chocolate chips. a handful of walnuts. 25 minutes at 300. soo yummy.
when they first come out of the oven they're like toasted marshmallows and the chocolate is melty. over time they get a little softer and gooey on the inside. and they've got to be better for you than regular chocolate chip cookies.. right? ... but i couldn't stop eating them. i think i had 5.

quote of the day: "she can eat as many cookies as she wants! when your mom keeps telling you you're getting fat, it's your best friends job to tell you you aren't, and to eat more cookies." -beccalove my friends.

how crazy was it that austin got snow today and people were building snowmen? DC is supposed to get snow tomorrow and thursday though, so my own snow angels await.

you think you have to re-brush your teeth after drinking chamomile tea without sugar? nah.

i have my love to keep me warm

all i want to do is find something i care about, work really hard, make a difference in peoples lives, not run out of work every day at 10am, and make enough to have a cute little apartment with my real bed in it and maybe a tea kettle and organic chicken. is that so hard, job market?! employ me!

i think we should revamp applications. there's no way to know what kind of worker they're going to be. there should be a trial period or some kind of objective employee-o-meter where people can actually see how well/poorly you'll do.

until thennn i'm going to keep scheduling, scheduling, scheduling. busy day today. hopefully tomorrow/this week will be the same.

a girl after my own heart

my mom and aunt think jeff's new hair cut & color make him look like boy george. it's pretty short.

welll i've decided the only way i'm going to keep myself from going crazy in the next two weeks is to stay really busy. tomorrow i've got a lot to set up and then i just need to apply for as much stuff as possible so i have a chance of people calling me back while i'm around. really i'm just hoping hoping hoping that this job i interviewed for will go well and i won't have to mess with anything else.

becca went to trader joes for the first time today. i'm not sure it was the beeest idea to go on a sunday afternoon when it's at its craziest, but we got some good stuff. i like cooking as much or more than the average girl, but it's overwhelming to have to cook something every time you want to eat. and prepared food done well can be really good.

oh and yesterday we met with a music guy and a bakery for becca and nirav's wedding. the cake was alrigghttt but they went to another place today that was apparently much better. wedding cake is expensive. but it's exciting!

abha showed me a new blog today that i loooove. it's about a mom who adopted a baby girl from china. when they went to pick her up, the chinese doctors told the parents that the baby had a problem with her spine and that she would never walk/be unable to control her bladder. but when they got her back to the US, that turned out not to be true. now it's just about her experience as a mom. it's very cute though. her daughter, natalie, comes home from school and puts on a princess costume every day. you can read the story here.

philadelphia

finishing a movie and going to beddd. tomorrow will be the weekend update.

the clam

ahhh jeff has red hair.

welll the interview was good. turns out they had filled the job i applied for, but they interviewed me for a correspondence job which i think i'd be better at/enjoy more anyway. now we wait for round 2. i just have a feeling.

this evening i had dinner with my aunt, uncle and two cousins who are in town for a couple days. i haven't seen them in 3 or 4 years. we went to legal seafood. ben doesn't like seafood but he had shrimp. uncle john didn't eat any brussel sprouts and he took umbrage with the goat cheese in my delicious salad because of the name. last time i saw faith i feel like she was this tiny girl and now she's like a real adult.

it was interesting because legal seafood has a whole menu/special rolls for people who are gluten intolerant like aunt kathy. i don't know how people with allergies do it.

then tonight i went to abha & pedro's housewarming and i got to see all of the DC friends. most of them didn't know i was in town so there was a little doubletake action. i didn't realize quite how much i missed them until i saw them in person again. it does make a big difference just in the feel of the city.

so tired. after not walking at all for a month, my legs are not loving it. time for bed.

walkin' on sunshine

i feel like i time traveled. this morning i was in austin. my jeffy took me to the airport sooo early. we left at 5:45, running on coffee fumes and cantaloupe.

(this is a picture of sunset last night leaving round rock).

and now i'm in DC! soo weird to go through the metro again. i couldn't remember which side you stand on and which side you walk down. guessed wrong the first time. and it was nice to pass by the familiar coffee + french fry smell of open city.
(snowy illinois).

i am a master of local DC politics right now after many hours of research. i can tell you about education reform with michelle rhee, the handling of snowpocalypse andd crime reduction. feelin' good. so now all i have to do is go interview tomorrow. fingers crossed!

p.s. i'm morally opposed to giving the plane crash in austin a whole lot of attention, but the house the guy set on fire was literally down the block from our old house. crazy. thank goodness almost everyone survived it.

how many wonders can one cavern hold?

..i keep thinking about where i want to start and all i can think is DUNNNNN DUN dun dun dun dun dun. still loving the olympics. it's finally time for shaun white. we didn't see his qualifying round but he's about to do his second run.

so today was a whirlwind. i got a voice mail that said i was being called in for a 'speed round' of interviews on friday for an administrative assistant job. so i immediately emailed becca to see if she'd be around, called back to say yes, booked a ticket and now i'm headed to DC tomorrow at 7am! crazy. thank goodness majjy had a free ticket on southwest so it isn't a million dollars. it's $10! then becca sent me the events calendar for the next 2 weeks. friday is abha's housewarming. saturday we're going wedding cake tasting!

thenn this evening patrick and i went to chuy's for a little last minute chat & tex-mex. i forgot my leftovers on the table =\ and thenn i went to the old house to look for wintry shoes and i was going to bring back this scarf i've been dreaming of all winter and forgot it too. losing my mind.

talk to you tomorrow from DC!

troubleeee, trouble trouble troublee

i was thinkingg i wanted to hear this one ray lamontagne song, so i put him in my pandora, and as i was typing in his name i was thinking 'this is silly i should just play the song on youtube' (because pandora chooses randomly so you can tell it an artist you like but not which of their songs to play), and what does pandora choose? my song.

so the finding smiles in nature photography project bombed. maybe if you spent all day looking for them, you could find some. but i haven't found a single one since the crepe face. something that makes me smile is roasted acorn squash.

it's $2 or so, all you do is peel it with a peeler, cut off the ends, cut it into little cubes, coat it in olive oil salt & pepper, and roast it at 400 for 15 minutes, turn it over, 15 more minutes. voila! delicious, nutritious, cheap, easy.

we've had it twice in the last two weeks because i'm addicted. jeff refused to even try a bite. what kind of person doesn't like fruits and vegetables?

flowers still pretty/making my room smell like a flower shop after 4 days.

we've been watching the olympics pretty much all day every day and jeff and i sing the olympic theme song at the top of our lungs before/during/after every commercial break. DUNNNNN!! DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN. hasn't gotten old yet. and how bad do we feel for lindsey jacobellis, the snowboarder who fell during the second round of prelims? she was supposed to be a medal contender.

on the opposite side of the sun

one of the coolest things about austin is how small businessy it feels. downtown is kind of lame/has ugly '70s architecture/doesn't have a whole lot to do during the day, but there's a lot around campus. one of my favs is milto's. it's a greek/mediterranean place.

it has 10 parking spaces that are always full and it's located on the corner of a busy intersection so you almost get in an accident every time you circle around. but when i was a freshman i used to go there right before they closed & they'd give me big paper bags of rolls that they were going to throw away. they're made from the pizza dough & covered with garlic oil. yum.
they have the beeeest $5 gyros. i found one place with gyros in DC & they were $10.
it was a beautiful day in austin today. clear, warm (57). ..i keep thinking about planning a trip to DC, and then i think of the snow.. and then i look out the window and decide to stay in austin for a bit longer.

does anyone know someone in the military who could use a penpal? or know someone in the military who might know someone without a lot of support?

when there's nothing left to burn

there's a donut/doughnut company in austin/round rock called round rock donuts. it's something of an institution and it happens to be only a short distance from our new house. i've been dreaming about the donuts, but hadn't given in..

until jeff also started dreaming about them. but he did give in. and when this is on your counter:
really, what options do you have? you can't ignore them. they were fresh. warm. covered in glazed goodness. i had 1.5 which i consider a victory.
this picture is hard to make out.. but my dad & jeff set up what i can only describe as a zip line for ripley so she can be outside without us. it runs from a tree to a telephone pole and it has a string hanging down that attaches to her leash. now she can just be clipped to it and roam around in the front yard. she seems to love it.

the thing is that she's a sheep herder so when it comes down to it, she really only wants to be outside if we're outside with her. which is kind of sweet. she has a bobbed tail so when she wags her tail, her whole booty moves back and forth for extra emphasis (this is jeff's theory). it's pretty cute.

hope your valentine's was lovely.

telegraphs and birds that fly

happy valentine's dayyy!

a little peek of the car[d] i made
and loook how pretty these flowers are.

my valentine's was yesterday and was really thoughtful, simple and fun.

no more teenagers

there are these weird open boxes above all of the closets so it isn't "wasted space".. we're not sure what to put in them, but jeff found a little home in the one above my closet today.

ripley just sat and watched him.

today is matt's 20th birthday! we went to fogo de chao for dinner. it's a brazillian steak house and these gauchos come around with meat on swords and you have a coaster with a red and a green side. when you want meat, you flip to to green.

the funny thing is that when it's green, they just descend on you. leg of lamb, ma'am? fillet mignon, sir? chicken wrapped in bacon? parmesean crusted pork loin? all of it is so yummy though. even jeff could eat a lot of it even though he can't chew. it took him a while though.
i didn't get any good pictures of the food =\ all i could think was 'MEATTTT' until it was all gone.
my favorite thing was the fried bananas. yuuuum. they also had a really good salad bar.. but i tried to stay away from it so i would have room for other things. this was my advice from andy:

Andy: dont eat

actually

maybe take a laxative

to prepare

me: lol

Andy: and make room

DO NOT GO TO THE SALAD BAR

it is the best youve ever sen

seen

but dont go

just eat the amazing carnesAndy: the appetizers are free and amazing too

me: so they do everything they can to fill you up before

Andy: exactly

my advice

10:21 AM is wait on the meat

it is so amazing

can't believeee my littlest brother is 20!

all of us and matt's girlfriend, janette.

you are the one that brings the weather

mom: i can't take any more dill bread. let's make elaine's challah.

jeff: oooh dang that sounds tasty

mom: her recipe says to divide it into 2 and then into 4's

jeff: it was 3 braids

mom: it says 4

jeff: it was 3.
megan: i know jeff got in trouble for saying this last time, but this dough feels exactly like gram
(mine is on the left)
jeff: now we have to let it rest to develop the flavor

mom: there's no way i'm waiting. i'm ripping off a chunk right now

megan: well if you are, i am

..20 minutes later, jeff is on his 3rd piece. he can only eat the mushy parts, so i'm eating his crust, and ripley is getting her fair share. we decide it tastes completely different once it's cooled
an hour later, we're left with a nub
survey says: no bread next week. this is getting out of hand.
look at those pretty quiche! is it quiche or quiches? recipe here. i usually use 2 or 3 eggs, 1/2 c half & half (or milk and 1T butter), 1/2 c mayo (that's what food network told me and it seems better with it than without it, so i stopped questioning it), s&p, 2 T flour and then you can add whatever filling you want. i used 4oz of cheese and it was fine.

i swam upon the devil's lake

hipsters are in the air right now.

earlier this evening, jeff got a call from his friend josh, who was at a record store they had never been to. jeff was laughing hysterically and told us josh was whispering [presumably crouched in a corner somewhere], saying jeff shouldn't go because the store was full of hipsters. one girl was playing an awesome guitar who didn't have any idea what she was doing. these weren't their type of people. they don't belong in a place like that.

so jeffy walked out with a big grin, wearing a pair of navy dickies over top of jeans, a hatebreed shirt with a black hoodie, scruffy face, long hair, and matt's white puma's because he reclaimed the shoes jeff had been wearing. the best thing about jeff is that he knows he can connect with almost everyone though. hipsters be damned, he can still chat with them. i love jeffy.

anyway an hour later my mom asked what a hipster was. all i know is that they wear skinny jeans and have questionable fashion sense/hair styling.

then 3 hours later, patrick accused me of being one because i once owned a scooter.

time magazine (via wikipedia) says "Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear t-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care."

so there you have it. i guess i could get a little jeremiah on this and give you some real background. in the '40s and '50s, a hipster referred to a white suburban kid who was trying to emulate the lifestyle of black jazz artists. and then in the '90s it basically came to describe every college student in austin. time says "take your grandmother's sweater and Bob Dylan's Wayfarers, add jean shorts, Converse All-Stars and a can of Pabst and bam — hipster."

ripley is asleep on my foot =\ i'll upload the picture of my beeaaautiful quiche tomorrow.

just haven't met you yet

it's nerve [w]racking to try to find a post-coolest-internship-ever job. i feel like i need to try to use it to find the coolest thing i can.. which probably needs to be in dc. my internship will carry the most weight, i have a social life there, it's a fun city, it's exciting, i can see myself there. but the jobs are so hard to get! it seems like you need to know someone, regardless of how well qualified you are. maybe i'm crazy, but i want to get hired based on my own merits, not who i know.

so the other part of me says dc is cold, you have friends in austin, it's cheaper, your stuff is already here, people are friendly, there's real mexican food. but austin seems so small and quiet compared to dc. and i've come so far to end up where i started. i feel like i need to keep expanding my horizons and get out of my comfort zone.

so that's where we're at. for nowww i'm just excited about this weekend because i have a valentine!

and not a drop to drink

what's the coooolest thing in austin? the liz carpenter memorial fountain downtown beside the dougherty arts center. it shuts down in the winter, but it is so pretty. 2 summers ago i dragged literally everyone i knew in austin to it. the lights are so pretty.

[above and below from micklpickl's flickr site]
my AP bio teacher from high school runs a cool blog for austin parents called little austinite, and she wrote an article about it. they have pictures of it during the day.

my lucy

brr it has been unseasonably cold in texas and i'm not loving it at all. this week we aren't supposed to get much above 60 and it's going to be rainy and cloudy. not really good lake weather, but we went anyway. 'lake' is one of the few words ripley knows. lake, cows, kitty, jeff, dad/fajjy, leash, walk, get off the couch, lay down, cheese, treat. i think that covers it.

dill bread tomorrow. this bread a week thing is really working out. now i just need to work on what it's doing to my middle. the crunches and yoga are being upped. we'll see how that goes.

p.s. i don't know how this happened

dark days

today has been silly. any time you spend more than 8 hours in the living room with dad, mom, jeff and i, it gets ridiculous. first of all, my dad and jeff recently discovered their love of mirepoix. you thought it was simply sautéed carrots, celery and onion. not so. it can be used in almost every sentence.. as evidenced by dad and jeff today.

so with that going on in the background, a discussion about how my blonde has disappeared started up. surely, i said, my hair could not be the same color as jeff's. his hair has always been light brown. matt and mine has always been blonde.

but sure enough. we're the same color now.

try to guess:

his hair is thinner/flatter than mine. but the color is aaalmost the same.
maj and i were talking the other day about how it's odd being blonde because your highlights are different every time, so your hair changes every 4 months. while i'm always aiming for something like this:
sometimes i get the too streaky (which i asked for, to be fair to audrey):
sometimes the too blonde (also asked for):

i think we'll end at that. mirepoix.