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.