secret society

so while i've been in houston, i've been meeting up with several long lost friends. last night i met up with a guy who i met one time at a birthday party in 2006. we hit it off then, and we've chatted once or twice a year since then. so when he heard i was in houston, he said he had the perfect place we could go to.

his text was kind of like a treasure map. 'go to this location, take a right, park in the first garage. it's on the first foor, i'll meet you there.' so i got there a bit early and sat outside while i waited. there was a bouncer checking ID's and greeting everyone by name. and when i say 'everyone' i mean, men in suits, women with high high heels, people with fancy bags, people my age in button downs and slack. my favorite was an asian businessman with a gray suit and bright blue (like M&M blue) patent leather shoes. he waltzed in like he owned the place.

so my friend got there and we went in.. at the desk there were 7 or so iPads for you to check in on, and then they gave you 3 gold coins as drink tokens. turns out the place was a popup bar for Chivas called 1801 club. there are several throughout the US, apparently. you 'become a member' by filling out a form online, and then they have lots of promo events like last night with free drinks and whiskey tastings and things.

it was all marble and dark wood inside. my friend said the man who used to own the building worked for bernie madoff, and he was liquidating his assets now, the club being one of them. i forget the guy's name.

anyway the most amusing part was making friends with one of the waiters who was walking around with the passed hors d'oeuvres. they had seared ahi tuna on a cracker and a little chicken thing with spicy guacamole, and chocolate, but our favorrrite was a teeny pancake, the size of a quarter, with fresh mozzarella and sun dried tomatoes on top. the guy got a kick out of the fact that we loved them more than anyone else in the club, so he kept swinging by with more. it was fun.

and that was my tuesday. jill left for work an hour later than usual today and she gets back almost 2 hours early, so today is easy.

fish face

went to dinner with mark tonight. we used to work at the paper together in college. his family is from taiwan, so we always discuss taiwanese things. today we met in chinatown and went to get rose milk tea (my faaavorite. i bought some loose oriental beauty rose tea to make at home too. soo excited.) and hot pot. it was so yummy. his family always has it with noodles and without rice. i've always had it the opposite way. yum though.

in china, they do this double hot pot with the divider in the middle. usually one side is plain and one is spicy.. whereas everywhere i've gone in taiwan, there's either one big hot pot in the middle with plain broth, or everyone at the table has their own individual one. i like having my own. i also like the taiwanese style broth and dipping sauce better. they have all sorts of interesting stuff you can mix into your sauce.. peanuts, peanut butter, soy sauce, fish flake stuff, scallions, spicy peppers. i guess everyone likes what they're used to. 

and this is how the rest of my day looked. cate is such a good girl. she took two long naps today. we're working on her walking and holding onto only one of my hands. she's strong enough to do it, but she doesn't know she is.

sunday

i went back to austin this weekend for a couple of parties and a day at the park with the boy. it was a lot of fun, but exhausting. i don't know why my legs are so tired after a three hour drive. i guess just lack of movement?

friday i went to karaoke with friends. i've never had so much fun at karaoke. i don't like to sing up at the front, but i do like to sing seated with everyone else. saturday was a house party. the people who own the house are two of my most austin-y friends. they used to live in a bus. they have chickens and ducks. they have a foreign exchange student house mate. they have a garden. one's a physicist and one's a journalist. at the party, people brought honeydew wrapped in prosciutto and all sorts of interesting potluck fare. you could hear groups of people speaking spanish-from-spain and there were lots of boys in tight pants and glasses.

and today the gentleman friend and i spent five hours lounging at the park, chatting and eating early dinner.  it's really odd to talk to someone who's so much like myself. i don't have any friends who i have sooo much in common with when it comes to how we think about things and what we want for the future. so that's been fun. also kind of an interesting mirror into what it looks like when you overthink things, as i tend to do, as you might have noticed. ;)

one more week of babies!

stop to hold their hand

i used to be a really good girlfriend. i often ignored the rules of waiting to call such and so amount of time or the appropriate time to bring up certain topics.. but i always felt like i had a good sense of how things were supposed to go, and i'm good at dinners with parents and dinners and a movie.

but it has been so long since i've done any of that properly that i've completely forgotten how to do it. i say that keith was my boyfriend in taiwan, but we were only there together for like 2 months, and we really weren't in a relationship. and 'bf' is part of 'twbf', but we never even kissed. so. not counting them, it's been almost four years since i've been in a relationship. !. (jim just got engaged a few weeks ago, incidentally).

also before i go too much further, i should mention that this guy is definitely not my boyfriend. it's been two dates since we even met, but my point is that i feel like i've never done this before. suddenly i'm thinking too hard about how often i text or email or call.. and all of the protocol for the time period before you're officially dating someone. now that we've kissed once, do we always kiss goodnight now? do i invite him to group stuff as my date? when do we chat about exclusivity?

..i guess the only thing you can do is let it happen naturally and all of that just works out. it's definitely fun to have butterflies and someone always running through your mind though. it's just a little bit hard waiting to define it when i really want it to stick. keep crossing your fingers.

barefoot

we made it through half the week! it's downhill from here.. until monday when a new week begins. jill and zach are very interesting parents. you could have guessed it if you knew her in college, but jill is one of those moms that eats the food of of cate's face. the most disgusting thing that happens is the snot sucker.

(photo from amazon.com)
it sounds gross, it looks gross, it is gross. but jillian and cate both love it.

other than that though.. everything is good. cate kind of has a cold and a cough, but she was really happy today, and i think i've mastered nap time. she starts face planting on the carpet when she's tired, so we just get a bottle, lay her down in her crib and she's usually out within 5 minutes of me closing the door. it's baby magic. today we walked around in the grass outside because it was so nice out. windy and in the 70s. she can stand holding onto one hand now.

she may or may not have eaten a few pieces of grass.

in the middle of a rock show

well, so far so good with baby cate. she can crawl now, which is very exciting. her favorite thing is holding your fingers and walking around. i wish i was like 6 inches shorter so i could do it without slumping so much. it's fun though and it tires her out. she took 2 long naps today.

met a friend from college for tea tonight. mark and i always talk about the problems of the world/nation. he just began his masters in counseling, and i'm an over-analyzer, so i guess that comes naturally to us. i told him about how majjy raised us telling us to find what we love to do and then find a way to make money at it, and that we could accomplish anything. he said those are very well-adjusted psychological techniques to use.

driving in houston is no fun. it's confusing, there are lots of lanes, the roads aren't that good. fajjy kept harping on this GPS app he bought for his phone and i kept declining.. but i think i might download it. the problem is that i don't seem to get service everywhere in this city.. so i guess that might not be that great. for tonight's trip, i used the old paper + pen method. it worked surprisingly well. it really feels like my life has hit some kind of magic green light with the way things have been working out. about time!

sunday

right now i'm in houston so i can help out jill for the 2 weeks between when she starts her new job and when her childcare is available. cate and i are going to spend the days together. she's 9 months now so she can crawl and she's babbling a lot. it should be fun. we're going to split our time between jill's parents house and her grandma's house. they live about three blocks away from each other.

other than thatt.. it's been beautiful in austin lately. we're in the mid 90s or high 80s and it's just beautiful out and you can open the windows in the morning which is nice. the last couple of weeks have just been going exactly according to plan.