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.

you always shine

[top and bottom from about.com]

oh south congress cafe, i love you so. your queso flameado is always delicious, and the homemade tortillas, even though theres only 2 of them which is clearly not enough, are warm and lovely. the light makes you feel pretty and every member of the wait staff stops by your table to see if you need anything.

[pbase.com]

tonight patrick and i attempted to do first thursday which is apparently when all kinds of vendors and musicians are out on south congress (a road south of downtown) and there are happy hour specials and stores stay open late. i've never been and it's an austin institution. but tonight was rainy and gross, so nothing was really open/out. but we did have yummy dinner at soco cafe.

keep on fallin'

two new blogs on the side.

desire to inspire is frequently a source on a lot of my favorite design blogs, so i'm going to try it out. they have bunches of pictures of pretty interiors. so we'll see how that goes.

goodbye dallas, hello world is a girl named meredith who must know marisa since they both live in chicago? i dunno. but she's taking an around the world trip with her boyfriend in may and you knooow how much i love travel books/blogs.

patrick and i have been playing this impossible game on lumosity.com called dual and back. a square appears and the computer says a letter at the same time. first, you just have to remember what it previously said. eventually you have to remember what it said/showed 2 times ago. it makes my brain feel like it's going to explode. we both gave up.

you have to make an account to play, but they really haven't emailed me since i signed up. my favorite game is word bubbles. it gives you the first 3 letters and you make as many words as you can.

cer-

certificate.. certified.. etc.

keep austin weird

one of the best things about austin is the people. they're creative, they care about the environment, they lean to the left. tonight i went to a bar with old friends and made some new friends. two of them live in a bus to reduce their carbon footprints. that's the guy's brother in the pictures/video. he lives next door in his own renovated bus.

the buses have kitchens, showers, shelves and a wood stove. they run on vegetable oil and generate electricity with solar panels. 40 square feet. the way kira described it, it sounded kind of fun.

so there are some perks in this town.

p.s. bread round 2: anadama

it's got a half a cup of molasses so it's dark and kind of sweet. i hit a tiny yeast snafu. it didn't 'foam' as it was supposed to, and wasn't rising. but with a little help from google, i got advice from a baker who said you can stick a heating pad under your bowl if it's a cold day.. and voila! in the third hour, it rose.

it tastes just like the bread at the county line. now all i need is some whipped honey butter.

i like when we sleep

it's fun finding out the reasons behind why people do weird stuff. i have 2 collections: sand and rocks.

girls always end up with all kinds of little things that people give you. at one point i realized i was swimming in all of these little things. not that anyone doesn't love when someone thinks of them. but if they're going to bring you back something, it might as well be something you looove. and i love the idea of dirt from different places.
every little tag is a memory of someone who remembered me when they were far away. that's better than any key chain or glitzy little thing. and it's free!