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!

me-ow

at one point today, i was curled up on the couch with the cat in my arms and ripley wedged in the crook of my legs. the 3 of us took a nap for an hour or so. nice way to spend a sunday.

stay close to me

it must have been a full moon today because too many out of the ordinary things happened.

i woke up and faj was all ready to go to the big house and clean it out. a little history: my dad works in california but lives in texas. so he flies home every weekend. all week, maj complains about how when dad gets home, all he wants to do is go to the lake and veg and nothing ever gets done at the old house.. which has to be emptied out, cleaned and sold. so it was a surprise when he wanted to spend all day doing all of that.

we took everything in the kitchen to goodwill and then jeffy joined us after school and the 4 of us took almost all of the rest of the goodwill stuff out. we installed the new stove, vacuumed, emptied the kitchen, laundry room and jeff's room. mine is just full of boxes waiting to be moved into storage. so, major headway. it's weird to go to that house when all of my memories there are of having a bunch of friends over and playing scattegories or watching football on weekends. but to walk into a cold, almost empty house is pretty unpleasant. it's like all of the life was sucked out of it.

tonight when we got home, mom dad and jeff watched the entire miss america pageant with me. bizarre. awesome. i didn't think i'd get away with it.. but since miss texas made it all the way to the end, we kept watching to see how she'd do. she made top 7 but miss virginia won. i usually watch it alone in my prom dress [it makes you feel more like a part of the action], but providing commentary in southern accents with jeff was a lot of fun.

baby all i got is this beat up leather bag

some days are slow around here and the highlight is moments like these. eating dibs out of the carton and bumping jeffy's hair.

before:

after:
he commented on his natural highlights when he looked at the after photo. he has a point.
and look who has a new favorite spot.