prayin' for tidal waves

1. it RAINED at our house. after what seems like an eternity. hopefully the grass and trees will be happy.
2. it is hard to get something started where nothing is happening. especially when disillusionment is high and people are feeling like nothing makes a difference. but! it will be fine.
3. i am finally comfortable enough with who i am that i can just be myself upon first meeting someone. i've done it with recent political events. i've done it with other generic strangers. this is big.
4. went on a date tonight. no details. :)
5. DC in a week and a half

switzerland

"So appealing is the image of Switzerland as an affluent, clean, and well-run society that other countries fancy themselves the Switzerland of their particular region. Singapore is the Switzerland of Asia, Costa Rica the Switzerland of Central America. But here I am in what can rightfully be called the Switzerland of Europe. The real deal." The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner

i've just begun a book about one NPR correspondent's search for the happiest place on earth. so far, we've gone through the netherlands, switzerland and bhutan. his writing style is very similar to bill bryson.. who for some reason i really don't care for, even though he's kind of a cult classic for travel nonfiction. but this author is very dry and entertaining.

i kind of forget what he said about the netherlands. there's an institute there that puts a number on happiness. switzerland has lots and lots of rules, and people go out of their way not to flaunt their wealth or rock the boat. and in bhutan, no one sits around thinking or talking about how happy they are, but they are very happy. (funny how you think you have an understanding of something you read, and then when you try to explain it, you realize you haven't actually retained any details at all).

looking forward to the thailand and great britain chapters.

a dollar

let me preface this by saying: this is the dumbest post i have ever written. but! i promised, so. 

jeff lets me use astringent on his face like once every couple months. i think it's magic. you see sooo much yucky stuff come off your face. but jeff's theory is that no matter how many times you do it, stuff always comes off your face. so you must not actually be seeing real dirt coming off. it's a chemical reaction. or something. 

so tonight we did an experiment. if the cotton balls looked the same each time, i owed him a dollar. if the amount of dirt decreased, i won. 

but i lost, friends. we had maj guess the order of the cotton pads, and she guessed the opposite order.

on a related note, do not buy dickinson's brand toner. it gets good reviews on how well it actually works, but it smells hoooorrrible. hard to describe, but it's like alcohol + decomposing matter + something sweet. and the smell sticks in your throat so you don't forget about it quickly. not to mention, the clean and clear brand works better anyway.

sweet baby squeeel

i didn't realize i've been gone since wednesday. whoops. on friday, i hung out with zach, jill and cate for the afternoon at her family's lake house. they're living there for the summer before the move to houston in september. i am so bummed. jillian is soo much fun, and we can talk about anything. not to mention, cate fulfills my baby-holding quota. 

they're housesitting for a family whose house is right on the lake. it's 3 stories and faaancy. the woman owned a monogramming shop in town, so everything is monogrammed. we did a little house tour before spending a while in their lakeside pool. it was lovely.

cate'll be 6 months tomorrow. time is flying. 

spent alllll weekend at the lake. it's nice outside before 10am. i think we're in the 90's by 10. it is hooorrrible. on the drive home, i was noticing that the trees look like they're turning colors for fall, but it's because they're drying out and dying. a lot of them have turned orange or red when you're driving through the hill country. 

should be a fun week coming up. my glasses will be here tomorrow! waiting on/tracking packages is the best.

find my forever a home

this evening i went to a meeting of [what i assumed was] my local chapter of obama for america supporters to make phone calls in honor of the president's 50th birthday. the event said '485 NW seniors' POTUS birthday celebration' .. i asked my friend dave what we thought that meant. but it said it was sponsored by seniors for obama and veterans for obama, so that made sense. it wasn't necessarily all seniors, right?

so i'm driving there.. i get to the address, and it turns out to be a retirement community. i call majjy, we laugh, and i decide to just go in, fruit plate in hand.

i knock on the door and this tiny black woman named faye answers. when i walk in, the crowd is made up of elderly black women, two men over 60 and one white-haired lady in the corner. i sign in and put on a name tag. as i go around the room introducing myself, i find out that the lady in the corner is bernice, the elderly hostess with the mostess i used to work with at a restaurant in college. it was saloon themed, so the hostesses all wore these dresses with feather boas around the shoulders. 
(she's the one in red)
ms. bernice worked there for 35 years. every day in a long black dress with a big sweeping black boa with silver tinsel hanging out of it. anyway she remembered me. she lives in the retirement community now.

we had a lot of fun though. at one point there was a live webcast from the president to thank everyone who was at these house parties around the nation for his birthday.. but everyone (mostly bernice) kept talking through it. she asked faye what the president was saying and she just looked at her and said 'well I would KNOW if you WEREN'T TALKING.' faye is a spitfire.

anyway i'm relatively sure i was a party crasher. at one point, one nice woman said 'so, megan... how exactly did you hear about this meeting?'

anchor me

..today i made this succotash (pretty yum in spite of our cobbed 'sherry vinegar' that was sherry + red wine vinegar), but the bacon was supposed to be used by june 23.. it looked fine. and it's cured meat, right?

then tonight i made 'dericious chai' as we call it, and you're supposed to use it within 7 days of opening the box. i think i opened it in april. but there was nothing in it that could really go bad.

me: if i'm throwing up tonight, it was either the bacon or this chai
mom: well, i ate the bacon, so if i'm throwing up too, we'll know it was the bacon. don't tell jeff about the bacon.

today was weird. the old bacon. then in the afternoon i made this chickpea salad, and i guess after tending  to the chickpeas so lovingly as i changed their soaking water a few times today, i forgot i hadn't actually cooked them before adding the peppers, capers and dressing. so i had to pick all of them back out, cook them and add them back in.

then i almost killed myself in yoga. ok not really, but it was farrrr more difficult than i had anticipated after 2 and a half months off. holding a lunge for 10 breaths 4 times was toooo difficult. my legs were shaky and burning. so i stood up.

then i went to the restroom to change after class for happy hour with stacy and i thought 'i should lock the bathroom door, even though i don't need to because everyone knows that when the door is closed, someone is in there' ..so then 20 seconds later as i'm standing there in my unmentionables, dress in hand, this woman walks in! i apparently hadn't actually locked it, even though i had that thought.

i was too chicken to close my B of A account. but i will tomorrow. ...

mademoiselle

it's a wonder that i don't weigh 300 lbs based on how much i love chopping, cooking and eating. on my first day home from camp (after a lovely lunch with the staff for the last time), i made alex's mom's green smoothie. 

when i was on the phone with gram walking through the grocery store, i was telling her how green smoothies are all the rage in blog world and how it's like a regular smoothie but with added kale or spinach to make it a little healthier. she said 'whenever they add vegetables to smoothies, i think it tastes like mud.' (or something). i triedd to tell her that everyone says they're delicious and you can't taste the hidden stuff.

anyway it turns out that you don't taste it at all. i used curly kale so it didn't want to completely blend.. (and i have limited patience to wait for the blender to completely liquify..) but it was really tasty. majjy made a smoothie of strawberries, frozen pineapple, blueberries and yogurt tonight. it was delicious. i couldn't talk her into adding kale though.

and thenn for dinner, i made smitten kitchen's ratatouille for the first time, with a mandolin bought expressly for that purpose.

it was fun to slice everything and layer it. she created the recipe based on the ratatouille in the movie. really yummy on top of cous cous. i used cotija cheese instead of goat cheese (not in the picture), and it was delicious. 

yoga tomorrow! and i'm closing my bank of america account. they're charging me a monthly fee now that i'm not a student. good riddance.