i haven't felt so much like a 5 year old in a long time.

john texts me and says: winter wonderlandd!!!

which wakes me up

i read it and jump out of bed, look outside, run into the living room, hair rumpled and puffy eyes from just being asleep and do the squeaky yell to my roommate to my miriam "it's snowingggg!!!!" and then stand at the window for 5 minutes just looking at the snow while intermittently squealing.

andy and marc headed to the capitol but i just woke up. we had a fun night last night. well, a fun day. andy, bec, abha and i met up at lunch for crepes downtown. it was bizarre to see all of them on my lunch hour. then i took abha and andy to work! and they got to see what everything was like. i forgot how it all looks through fresh eyes. pretty exciting.

so then after work we all met up with more people and had drinks and had dinner at a sorta mexican place. not delicious but not bad. and the restaurant is really pretty. i was just happy to talk to my friends who have been friends for so long. i like how they all felt the need to tell marc and nirav myyy embarrassing stories but we never got into any of theirs. some of johns i guess.

later we met up with one of my favorite people from work and it was nice that he finally got to meet them. it's funny/awesome when worlds collide like that. i think it gives you much greater insight into who someone is. and i'm so proud of my friends and how we all fit together.

so that's my weekend. and now snow! and the big 12 championship tonight! it's going to be awesome.

everywhere you look

two stories, friends.

so i walk to work in theoretically comfy or at least flat shoes and then bring other shoes in my bag. lots of times i change before i get to the office so the shoes i walk in end up in my bag. this results in a layer of leaves, dirt and general crap in the bottom of my purse.. which gets under my fingernails when i'm digging around for my badge or my keys or whatever. so today! i decided to take everything out and dump it out.

so im sitting in the break room at work and i take everything out and shake my purse over the trash can. i was talking to someone so i wasn't really paying attention to what came out, and tonight when i was walking toward the metro i went to reach for my metro card and i realized that it was in a pocket that doesn't close and i accidentally threw it awayyy!! and it had SIXTY FIVE DOLLARSSSS on it!.

bad words came out of my mouth that never, ever come out. i was so upset and mad at myself because i know they empty the trash every night so it was gone.

but five minutes later i remembered that i wrote down the number and saved it in my wallet andd registered it online. so, all is not lost. it's just going to be annoying to get a new one and get it recharged. so that was a stressful success.

the other story is less of a story and more of a cool thing.. but i have this friend jill who i met when we were both trying out to be RAs our sophomore year. neither of us got it, but we had the same math class so we sat together and we've been friends ever since. we lived together in the dorm junior year when i got back from studying abroad. so at one of her birthday parties, i sat next to this guy, anand. we talked for 2 hours or so over margaritas as we were sitting there. that's the only time we've ever been together in person, but we catch up over facebook every 6 months or so.

it's all to illustrate how amazing facebook is in that you can meet someone for 2 hours and stay in touch with them even though you never see each other. and it's also to say that anand is one of those people i felt a special connection to even though we chatted so briefly, and now we keep in touch and it's like we've always been friends. so thank you, facebook.

glooooooooria

this is one of the coolest people in the worldd. he has some stories to tell. can you imagine being the person who smooths over all of the problems that pop up? amazing.

easy day. volunteered at a high school, went to a bake sale, listened to a cool talk, read a little bit at the end of the day. piece of cake. what's not a piece of cake is this weather. today was frigid and light rain that came at you horizontally, making umbrellas almost obsolete. and i busted out the berry colored wool beanie with a pom pom on top. i think jonny was embarrassed to be seen walking beside me.

i obviously need some of these $300 handmade moccasins from j. crew

are they serious?! seriously though they do look pretty toasty, don't they? i think i'd rather have 4 sweaters, 2 pairs of shoes and some pants.

funniest moment in a long time: my friend was going through a security gate and she started talking to me and wasn't paying attention and somehow the turnstile bar came right up between her legs and she let out a little yelp and got temporarily stuck for a minute while figuring out how to swing a leg over one side. we both giggled uncontrollably until the security guy also started laughing. it took us 7 minutes or so to get it out of our systems.

parumpumpumpum

sometimes i wish i was a guy so i could just wear a gray/black/brown suit, white shirt and different colored tie every day without having to think about it. instead, i'm armed with 7 cardigans in all shades of the rainbow, a couple of white shirts and a couple of other solid colored tank tops.. which is boring in its own right, but i feel like a canary yellow cardigan stands out a lot more than a yellow tie and thus you have to pay slightly more attention to how often you wear what, as a girl.

i am so exciteddd because miriam is home and andy is flying in from austin tomorrow! i haven't seen him since my birthday.

almost our entire core group of friends will all be together briefly.

random observations about the hill: each office can decorate however they want. some are full of stuff from their state, some are generic office-y. some are filled with friendly, engaging people.. some are filled with office drones who have had the joy sucked out of them, or maybe never had it to begin with. there are cute boys, dressed up women, lots of mahogany desks, navy carpet and doors that slam hard behind you.

i spent a few hours this morning going from door to door, handing things out.

p.s. you know at least one person who will be going on this tour next week! i'll fill you in.

little town, full of little people

i'm bummed tonight because i went to get a hair cut because i wanted an inch off and i ended up with 3 inches off :( and i was just loving my long hair. but. it's only hair, it'll grow back. and now the ends aren't crispy which is always a nice feeling.

don't let the smile fool you.

aside from thaaat.. aren't mondays fantastic? i'm always so ready to see everyone by the time monday rolls around. the 'sandwich artists' at the subway by work are getting to know me now. i switch up the bread, but they know everything else. now i just have to work on CVS man. i buy a raspberry arizona iced tea from him every single morning.. and at this point it's been 3 months, and we still act like strangers. i just don't know what to say to him. we're stuck in a rut.

time to keep practicing the french twist. i seem to have lost an entire thing of bobby pins.

p.s. don't you wish your brother was cool like mine? this is the song from mulan.

me: lets!

get down to business

to defeat

the hunssss

Matt: did they send me daughters

me: when i asked!

Matt: FOR SONSSSSSSS

me: for soooonnnssss

we can go anywhere

well, regardless of whether or not all of my friends up and left me to enjoy thanksgiving with their families, i continued on with the new tradition of sunday brunch, this time featuring the newest DC transplant, marc. in spite of his chronic tardiness (half an hour, friends), marc is good people. he's done lots of interesting things and i appreciate that i can talk about thailand and asia with him and he knows what i'm talking about and is happy to recount his own experiences.

if you've ever done anything that most of your friends and family haven't done, you can relate to the awful phenomenon of telling stories about moments and experiences that changed your life for all of 6 minutes before their faces glaze over and you've lost any hope of regaining their attention. it isn't their fault, but it does make you feel a little like an alien. that's why it's meant to be that i share a room with miriam, who will happily spend hours on end recounting asian fab stories with me.

while i'm on that though, it's a good time to say thank you again to those of you who stuck with me during blonde in taiwan. i was always excited to know that you would be just as excited as i was to learn new things and experience weird asian stuff. even though i was the furthest i've ever been from home, i did feel very connected, and that was all thanks to you.
now to all of these pictures. after brunch, i headed down the hill to rock creek park which is the park in the woodley park area. as you can see from the second picture, it's less of a park and more of a grassy hill with a four lane road in the middle. not quite zilker, but it worked for me today.

i counted 8 spiders crawling either on me, my book, my jacket or the surrounding area so i eventually headed home feeling creepy crawly. julie and julia is a really nice little fluffy book though. lots of swearing, which i wasn't expecting. but it's really entertaining and her writing is engaging and you feel like you really know her.

loook this is my name in chinese 梅根小姐

hear them ring

today was a lot of fun and very touristy. my mom's sister, aunt margi, was in town. she, her boyfriend [of 24 years or something, what do we call him?] and his parents and i roamed around downtown and ended up at the national gallery of art. lots of interesting paintings in there. we ended up in the creepy part for the first half.. lots of paintings of dead people and other creepy things.

they had to go to a tour at the capitol so i stuck around the american indian museum and had delicious lunch.. which didn't seem that expensive now that i'm used to DC prices. my totopos con pollo was $8. and deeeelicious.
apparently every single native american tribe in america contributed at least a little money to the museum, so they all own a little piece of it. their flags are hanging across the rotunda.

today was the 20th anniversary of the bill that approved it passing so they had a lot of cool stuff going on. i stayed to watch a family sing a couple of traditional songs and dance. in the middle, there's a giant 'sawdust carpet' made of colored sawdust. i wish i had taken a better picture of the thing itself. it was really impressive. and they're going to sweep it up in 3 days!

other than that, i'm just enjoying these lazy days. funny how you'd do anything to be able to take a nap at 4pm on a work day but napping all day long for 4 days gets kind of old.

i made cranberry sauce because i had so much fun doing it at becca's for thanksgiving. who knew it was so easy?

1 cup of sugar + 1 cup of water + 1 package of cranberries. boil for 10 min.

they start off shiny and then get dull and then pop open like pop corn as they heat up. and here' s the secret to making cranberry sauce: cranberries are sooo sour on their own. you neeeed to make sure every one pops open so it can be filled with sugar syrup. i just pop them with my fingers once its cooled down.
voila! it makes 2 1/4 cups.
here's a picture from the football game last week