the manhattan transfer

Roughing It

2010-09-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

On any given weekday morning, my roommates and I don't cross paths with one another. Our schedules are different enough that we shuffle around our respective morning routines without running into each others coffee cups and hair-dryers.

Last Friday, however, I had taken the day off from work to wake up extra-early, shower, wake up KS at the offensive hour of 6:15 AM and get the car packed to leave for the airport. Our flight destination was San Antonio, but our final destination was Whisper Valley Ranch in Camp Verde, Texas, where we were to congregate with our friends for our third annual reunion with our girl-friends from college.

We all knew this year was going to be different than the past for two small reasons: Lydia and Staples.

"Who are Lydia and Staples?" you ask. Lydia is the 6 1/2-month-old daughter of our friend KM, and Staples is the 5-week-old daughter of my dear old roommate, KB.

To put things in perspective as to just how much of a difference a year makes: last August, KM was barely showing at the reunion and KB wasn't even pregnant yet.

Thursday night before our departure, KS had made homemade cinnamon rolls to bring along for breakfast one morning of the weekend. Because I'm evil, I posted a photo on Twitter of the final product just as the maple and coffee-enhanced frosting was poured on, and after generous sampling we dropped them off at KR's house on Friday morning because she was going to be driving down to the ranch later in the day, with AV and BF and her own homemade peanut butter cup cookies and AV's homemade brownies. Just imagine what their car smelled like for six whole hours. The repetition of the word "homemade" should not be lost on anyone, either.

Some of our friends had flown/driven in the Thursday night prior, but KS and I were the first to arrive on Friday around lunchtime. The ranch we were staying at for the weekend belongs to KB's grandparents-in-law and she and her husband got married there a little over two years ago.

So if you're paying attention, KB gave birth to her first child five weeks ago and is hosting her college friends at a ranch for the weekend. Just pause and consider, if you will, all that caring for a newborn entails, and then pause and consider the pandemonium that 16 girls are capable of creating. Now think about the limits of one's sanity.

Mr. B, the darling man who owns the place, came to the ranch for the weekend, and took those of us in town on Friday afternoon on a Jeep-tour of the property. It felt like being on safari because we saw everything from whitetail deer (which are native to Texas) to more exotic game like blackbeak antelope, scimitar oryx and lechwe.

It took a lot of brain cells for me to remember the names of animals I'd never seen before and more than a few Google searches to get the spelling down, so I felt the need to list all of them. High-five.

We knew going into the weekend that activities like horseback riding, fishing, and skeet-shooting were options, and after our guided tour, Mr. B took us to shoot skeet. Mike and Kenny, who work at the ranch, already had everything set up for us: guns, ammo and shooting earmuffs. After receiving the Reader's Digest version of gun safety (always keep the gun pointed down-range, etc.) they let us take turns practicing. I was less than great- I'm sure it had nothing to do with the ruffly white dress and red t-strap sandals I was wearing and more to do with "holding your left elbow too high" as my brother and father critiqued from the pictures I showed them after the trip.

And people wonder why I quit the golf team after my sophomore year of high school.

I got over my nervousness on Saturday morning because I didn't want to be the lame one of the bunch, so after Mike reminded me for the fourth time to shut my left eye and aim with my right, I ended up hitting five of them.

The rest of our friends starting arriving throughout the day on Friday and we sat and ate enchiladas, drank margarita bombs (don't ask) and talked and migrated around the house well into the night.

Saturday morning I woke up at a leisurely hour to a mostly-quiet house and a "gone fishin'" note from a few of our friends who had decided to get out early. A few of us got the coffee pot brewing and sat down to a Saturday morning free of errands, phone calls and obligations.

I don't know if there are many better weekend mornings that I could imagine than that one of drinking coffee, eating a warm cinnamon roll, staring out huge bay windows at a view of nothing but grass, trees and sky with my favorite people wandering in one-by-one. I challenge anyone to find better than that.

I neglected to mention that The Lodge (the house we were staying in) also had a pool in the backyard, so if you weren't inclined to the ranch-ier activities, you could lie in a lounge chair with a beer and a book.

KB would bring the Staples back and forth with her from the main house the entire weekend so that we could coo at the baby and ask her all of the things you never wanted to know about being a new mom. Lydia slept like a champ (12 hours at night + two daytime naps) and KM would even bring her in the pool with us to play, which she loved. Both moms somehow managed to juggle their always-moving little ones without missing the slightest beat in conversation.

After a full day of ranch activities on Saturday, KB's brother-in-law was nice enough to pick up barbecue for us from a nearby town. He's a year younger than us and most likely thought we were crazy, but he stuck around to make us a campfire for s'mores and stayed around to listen to the cadence of 16 girls talking at the same time.

Truth be told, the entire weekend was a blur of friends, babies, wilderness, good food and rest. This year has been lighter on weddings than the past two, so with friends that don't live in my Dallas radius, I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while. It was easier to part ways this time, knowing that even if I don't see some of them over the course of the next year, I know there will be another reunion.

Come what may: be it weddings, babies or different zip codes... none can stop what was started the day we met each other in College Station, all those years ago.

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

-Henry James

Since You've Been Gone

2010-08-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

{Disclaimer: MG left for Australia a week ago and will be there, on an internship, for five months. We miss her terribly.}

Dear MG-

Hi! How are you? How's tomorrow going so far (since it's still 11 PM in Dallas)?

A great many changes have happened in the neighborhood since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled; and one of my own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in the Times and the Courier, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be.

Oh wait, no, I think I stole that from someone.

So you emailed me to blog and update you on what's going on around our lovely home- I'm glad you did since it's forcing me to sit and write, which I haven't had the patience to do recently.

We have been readjusting a bit since you left- getting used to the extra 5'10, 25-year-old girl-sized space that we have to fill. KS is slowly but surely transforming the downstairs hallway where your bedrooms are into a suite for she and Ruby. Valuable air conditioning and closet space should never go to waste, after all.

We went to Northpark together to go shopping last weekend (I know- who let that happen?) and we did the most damage at Lululemon, of all places. There's nothing like skin-tight yoga clothes to keep you motivated and attending bi-weekly power yoga classes though, I will say that. I'm also mere centimeters from being able to touch my toes, which I consider an accomplishment since my hamstrings have the natural flexibility of a 2 X 4.

We saw Inception last Friday night- have you seen it yet? I thought it was great, but the most recent movies I had seen prior to it were Charlie St. Cloud (I know, don't judge me) and Eclipse, so the bar was embarrassingly low. We went with AW, KR, MK and CC- MK was the only one who has seen it already and she took a 30-minute field trip in the middle of the movie to go check out a shirt she wanted from J.Crew.

You'll be pleased to hear that the Rangers are still playing well, though I went to the game last night and watched them lose 7-6 after being up 6-1 over the Yankees. It was frustrating but still a good game and they're still playing well with a good lead in the AL-West. KS kindly lets me turn on the games seemingly every night, and the length of the 162-game-long season is not lost on her at all. She is a saint.

You should check the weather to give yourself a good laugh- it's unbelievably hot here. Snuggle up in your North-Face when the temperatures get into the 50's at night in Sydney tonight and congratulate yourself on migrating to another hemisphere. That was a brilliant move on your part.

Ruby is still alive and told me to send you her love and favorite tennis ball... though you could probably do without the tennis ball.

Tomorrow night I'm going out for our friend RM's bachelor party. Yes, you read that correctly: bachelor party. He's doing a bigger, more bachelor-y weekend in Norman next month with his groomsmen, but he wanted a fun night out in Dallas with his best girl friends as well. I don't really know what to expect, since in the words of MK: "For this night, if we are asking ourselves if it's too much, it's just right."

Wish me luck? I'll need it: I'll be in heels.

I miss you dearly, but I'm excited for you. I can't wait to hear more about Sydney very soon- do we need to start skype-ing? Hope you have a great Friday, M.

Love,

Amy

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.

-Andre Gide

The Thing About Roller-Skating

2010-07-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

One of my best friends from college, KB, is supposedly having a baby tonight, though I wouldn't know because apparently you don't text when you're having contractions and under the influence of an epidural.

Who knew?

Also: please don't Google Image "epidural"- just take my word for it.

She is experiencing her first night as an almost-mother, I found myself needing to make my first trip to American Apparel.

My how things have changed.

So yes: American Apparel. I needed to make a trip to the store because there is an 80's-themed roller-skating birthday party for my friends CC and MK on Friday night (yes- we are 25-year-olds) and American Apparel is nothing if not known for their outlandish leggings/leotards/cropped t-shirts.

I thought I could find something that would work. I thought wrong.

I found myself in the back of the store with a dude wearing a tank top with a sleeveless button-down sweater vest and loose khakis that look like they had been rolled almost to his knees. What for? I don't know. Maybe he had to cross a river on his way to work (on foot) today. Maybe he really likes the Huck Finn look.

Anyway- Huck Finn was telling me about a girl getting ready for an 80's party who had come in and purchased the black lace leggings with a tutu, some random top, a leather jacket and accessories to look like Madonna. From what I could tell, that was an expensive costume.

The shiny leggings that he was showing me were $42 alone. $42 for terrible spandex pants in colors that cannot be named.

I should also mention that I have no plans to actually roller-skate at this party. My last roller-skating experience came and went at another birthday party for a friend (I think we were 6 or 7) and some maniac racing across the rink flew across traffic on the floor, taking me out with him, and resulting in a broken arm for me. The following day was also the first time I ever fainted in my life, so all-in-all it was a great weekend.

The whole point of this story is really the fact that my 80's outfit will not actually see any action on Friday night- I will be content to hang out with my friend AS, who is pregnant, or MG's boyfriend, who wears a size 17 shoe and suspects that the local roller rink does not carry that size.

I eventually gave up on AA after giving it a five-minute window of opportunity, so I headed to my happy place: Nordstrom, where I was pleasantly surprised to find that their Anniversary Sale is still going on.

And maybe I bought this:

While I'm proud to be a child of the 80's, I thankfully don't have to dress like one.

Farmer Ted: You wanna know what happened? Buy the book.

-Sixteen Candles, 1984

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

2010-07-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't been taking the time to blog recently. Probably because... oh, I don't know, I was underwhelmed by Eclipse? I've given yoga a second chance? I've been baking birthday cakes? I've been watching soccer and baseball and wondering what in the world LeBron James is thinking?

And of course, it's summer, and since I spend all day working, the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer.

There it is, and here we are.

So: down to business.

Let's start with Eclipse. I started reading the Twilight series in the first place because I missed the thrill of the Harry Potter novels (which I started reading as a teenager). I read all four Twilight novels and liked them well enough, but I knew even two years ago that they paled in comparison to what J.K. Rowling created. Are Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner attractive? Yes. Did I leave the movie theater Sunday night swooning over fictional predators? No.

I've also been on a birthday-cake-making kick recently.

KS and I made Ina Garten's Double-Chocolate Layer Cake for MG's birthday about a month ago (which I would highly recommend if you enjoy the combination of coffee and chocolate) and I also made BF a red velvet cake a few weeks ago using this recipe I found via TasteSpotting. I can't recommend that website enough, by the way.

After being disappointed over the lackluster showing of Eclipse, I asked KS if she would want to try another nearby yoga studio on Monday morning, since we had it as a holiday.

(MG has been gone a lot recently, if you can't tell. Come home soon, dear friend!)

We found a power yoga studio near us and ended up in an 8:30am class which was thankfully about 25 degrees cooler and far less crowded than the Bikram class we took a few months ago. And you know what? I liked it. A lot. All I needed was a little climate control.

As for the world of sports: the World Cup final is this Sunday. Spain will take on The Netherlands and both teams will be battling for their first-ever World Cup Final win. It's compelling and rich.

The Texas Rangers are currently leading the AL West and have been fun to watch the past six weeks or so from the comfort of my couch in my air-conditioned house, because did I mention how much I enjoy climate-controlled rooms? (Even though, as I type this, they are having an 8th inning melt-down against the Baltimore Orioles).

Regarding LeBron James, NBA free-agent extraordinaire who created quite the circus and landed himself an hour-long show tonight on ESPN called "The Decision"- I'd love to know what he is thinking. He just left a solid career with a team built around him (players, coaches, GM) for Miami, where he undoubtedly hopes to win championships by joining forces with Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. He essentially broke-up with the city of Cleveland on live television.

Is he deliberately trying to alienate himself from his home state? What does his behavior say about kids my age (we are both 25 year old)? And why does he wear so much Louis Vuitton?

So many rhetorical questions; even fewer answers.

Good night, world.

Ousier: I'm not speakin' to you.

Drum: Oh, what a shame!

Ousier: I mean it, Drum.

Drum: Ouiser, can we call a truce long enough for me to get a piece of cake?

[Ouiser slices him the tail piece of red velvet armadillo cake]

Drum: Aww, thanks Ouiser. Nothin' like a good piece of ass*.

-Steel Magnolias, 1989

*Please pardon the French.

Sonnet #18

2010-06-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

I had to memorize this as a 5th grader and I still know it to this day. Since summer officially began this week, I thought it was appropriate- it's one of my favorites.

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-Shakespeare

Weekend Leftovers

2010-06-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

For all their transience, I still love having fresh flowers around the house.

One of KS's best friends from college, AL, got married on Saturday. KS hosted a brunch for her at our house the morning of the wedding (and gets top-marks for pulling it off as she was also a co-Maid-of-Honor and understandably busy).

As KS and I were up assembling tea sandwiches until about half-past midnight on Friday, we had to laugh at the number of late nights we've spent in the kitchen in the name of being good hostesses and wanting people to feel welcome in our home.

And we love it.

I sadly did not manage to take any photos at the wedding, but KS and our fun guest for the weekend, Dani (who flew in from England to attend the wedding) brought home about eight vases full of flowers from the reception.

Dani was darling to have around and even left us chocolate that she brought over from London as a gift.

In all my admiring of the flowers, I didn't look over to the couch in our front room until later in the evening, asking aloud: "K- is that AL's veil?" K: "Oh yeah, I had to grab it before she went into the reception- it ended up in my backseat."

And now it has its own couch.

And we have flowers and chocolate.

Everyone wins.

Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nacogdoches, Texas

2010-06-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

My roommate and fellow World Cup (ahem- Fernando Torres) lover, KS, invited all of the Community Group girls down to her hometown of Nacogdoches, Texas last weekend.

We happily obliged and left directly after work on Friday- piling seven girls in one Suburban and hitting the road. (And get this- we didn't. Stop. Once. It was a Christmas miracle.)

KS left on Thursday to prepare for our arrival and greeted us right at the sun was going down, at her parents' lovely home on the end of a one-lane road in East Texas, three little King Charles spaniels right at her heels.

Nacogdoches was the place to be this weekend because of the annual Blueberry Festival that was going on. There was blueberry pie, cobbler, ice-cream, lemonade and anything else you could dream of that would be good with fruit on it. It was fantastic.

Nacogdoches is also the proud hometown of US Soccer Team star, The Deuce: Clint Dempsey, if you've been following the World Cup. Apparently we brought him luck, since he scored against England to tie the game on Saturday afternoon.

We spent the better part of Saturday afternoon, evening and night next to the pool in the S's backyard- laying out, chatting, grilling burgers, corn and peaches that tasted burger-ish (but tasted great with Homemade Vanilla Blue Bell), then settling in for a great late-night chat until about 3 AM.

We had agreed to wake up and get going Sunday morning for the girls who needed to be back for church commitments- so we were up by 7 and on the road by 7:45 AM and once again made it home without stopping. Instead, we ate our body weight in pretzel sticks and listened to a WoW 2000 CD that MK's mom had in the car.

It took us back to the good old days of high school youth group- when four hours was considered a sufficient night's sleep and didn't cause you to collapse on a Sunday afternoon and be completely out of commission for an entire day... like it does when you're in your mid-twenties, evidently.

It was just what we all needed...

No errands to run or places to be but on pool rafts and patio chairs.

No people to worry about but each other.

The perfect little getaway.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person...

-Cyril Connolly

Throwing Like a Girl- World Cup Preview

2010-06-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

image

I did some purging of the DVR recordings tonight.

Why, you ask? Because the World Cup is starting.

I think it's safe to say that I enjoy watching the World Cup more than the Olympics. Bold claim? Maybe- but I stand by it.

No matter where in the world you live, the chances are that one of the many televisions you will pass in the next month will be broadcasting one of many World Cup games. Though not every game is an elimination game, each one, each goal even, is still critical.

The World Cup only comes around once every four years. This time four years ago I was taking finance in College Station. In preparing for the second half of my summer, to be spent in Europe, I decided to embrace a huge part of their culture: soccer. Or football, depending on which side of the Atlantic you grew up on. Fast forward a month and a half to mid-July 2006 and I watched in the most crowded bar of all time in Caen, France with one large screen showing the game, as France lost to Italy in the finals. It was one of the most heated sports-viewing environments I had ever experienced, and I knew I would forever be hooked.

Daily Candy sent out a great little snippet of a video the other day with a skimming overview of things to know and players to watch. It would be wise to heed their advice and not ask if one team or another is off-sides.

Personally, my loyalty is to the U.S., but I'll have a close eye on Christiano Ronaldo (see below- shirtless...) and basically all of the players from Argentina and Brazil (see above.)

image

This is the first World Cup that does not include any teams that are qualifying for the first time (all of these teams have competed in the World Cup before.)

Teams from 32 nations will be competing.

This will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation. (South Africa)

The team of the country hosting the World Cup automatically qualifies for the tournament.

Until 2006, the defending champion from the previous tournament also received automatic qualification, but the rules were changed and that team has to qualify as well.

The defending champion from 2006 is Italy.

Brazil has won more World Cup titles than any other country.

The much-anticipated first-round match-up of the U.S. vs. England is this Saturday!

Feel free to read more on Wikipedia about how the actual tournament works- they explain the round-robin and the single-elimination better that I can (and I must credit them for some of these facts, but some of them I also knew on my own, thankyouverymuch.)

If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.

-Bill Shankly

Three-Ring Circus

2010-06-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Friday night around 8:30 PM, KS, MG and I were all home for the evening.

I mean, you know- we were painting the town red: dancing the night away, flirting with boys in button-down shirts and were dropped off at our house by a cab just before sunrise.

(No but seriously, we were all home for the night at 8:30 PM.)

MG finished up school last week and we were all ready to wind down and hang out, so we ventured into the backyard with Ruby and Michelangelo (our turtle).

Poor Mike lives a pretty limited existence because he resides in a cage with some rocks and shallow water, next to a tea light and a hoard of cookbooks. We've recently been letting him "play" in the backyard, but he has to be supervised because he's about the size of a pocket watch and can be easily misplaced.

A month ago we got three plastic Adirondack chairs for our little porch and have thus been spending more evenings outside recently, so while Ruby was running around and Michael was trying to flee (he's surprisingly fast), we sat down to sit and chat.

Soon enough, we saw something scamper across the fence furthest from us, and subsequently heard rustling in the tree in the far corner of our yard. Squirrels don't really come out at night, so we thought it was a little odd, and then we remembered the ominous words of a recent exterminator who came to assess our ant problem: "You need to have someone come and check the attic- there are a few holes to the outside, which suggests there might be rats."

RATS.

KS, who is fascinated by things that make me cringe, ran inside to grab a flashlight and investigate. Still in her work clothes, which included a floral-print pencil skirt and a ruffly cream-colored top (her four-inch Michael Kors heels were discarded by this time) she started creeping towards the noise with the stealth of her former life as a ballerina, holding the flashlight behind her back. MG was trying to make sure Ruby stayed away from Mike and that we knew where he was- lest we lose or step on him.

Not long after, KS and her flashlight indeed spotted a rat.

Then another, then another.

I was horrified by this point and MG brought her Mac outside and started Googling what to do when you have a rat problem. The idea of getting an outdoor cat was thrown out as a possibility but quickly disregarded because we decided that KS would probably secretly bring it inside during days that were too hot or too cold- feeding it warm milk and coddling it until it was fat and no longer had a rat-killer instinct.

Plus- can you even train a cat? That just sounds like work.

Because of Ruby, we can't just throw around rat poison either. She eats any and everything and while she has survived a harrowing Halloween candy-debacle, and trash and pantry raids, our neighbor told us that they attempted using rat poison once and their dog had to go to the animal hospital twice.

At some point MG went over to check out the rats and Ruby was cowering near the porch with me while I was trying to find the turtle, which I had misplaced. Poor Michael probably felt like Rick Moranis in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Meanwhile, we had visitors arriving. Our friend AL came over with her fiance, and MG's boyfriend Z stopped by to see what was going on. I picked up Michael since there were way too many feet in the backyard at that point, and immediately Ruby became curious as to the edibility of the squirmy thing I was holding that was trying to swim through the air.

We took a tour of the perimeter of the house so that KS could show us where each of the alleged rat holes had been found.

Since there was nothing we could do about it at the time and KS "didn't have her BB-gun," we retired indoors for root beer and peach tea.

Because we all know that ignoring a problem is the best way to make it go away.

It is cheering to see that the rats are still around- the ship is not sinking.

-Eric Hoffer

What's Old is New Again

2010-06-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

I spotted this little framed piece of greatness at an antique store in my hometown over the weekend:

I considered buying it, but I was already purchasing a few framed prints from other vendors for my newest home decorating project: my staircase. We just signed on for another year in our rental house and I'll be darned if I didn't walk into the newly renovated Kate Spade store in Northpark mall the other day and see this decorated wall and immediately decide to attempt something similar:

Forgive the poor iPhone photo- it was taken surreptitiously. You get the idea.

Oh and I bought this chair at an estate sale last Saturday. For $24:

Who wants to go look at fabric samples tomorrow? Nothing against the color pink but this fabric has seen better days. The better days were probably 40 years ago.

Have a great weekend!

A cheerful disposition is one that allows a tea kettle to sing while up to its neck in hot water.

-Unknown (from first photo)

Memorial Day {Photos}

2010-06-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

I figured that the day after Memorial Day would be the best for sharing some of the photos I took when I visited Pearl Harbor last month...

I think it's one of those places every American should visit once in their life.

And this is actually a photo of Omaha Beach from my study-abroad trip to France. It has to be one of the most peaceful places on Earth.

Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of a free and undivided Republic.

-John A. Logan

The Birthday Girl

2010-05-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

As is customary for a roommate birthday, I have dedicated a post to MG, who is 25 today!

It has now officially been a year since MG, KS and I moved in together, and about a year and a half since MG and I were talking after Community Group one Thursday night and she introduced the idea of us living together.

I remember someone once asking us about the worst roommate argument we've had, and we all looked at each other like "Argue? We don't argue." It's true- maybe it's the fact that we each have our own bathroom, maybe it's that we all agree on the thermostat or pizza toppings or maybe three really IS a magic number- I don't know.

I'm glad that whatever we have, works.

Once again, I have to note that there are funny things you'll never know about people until you live with them. MG practices what she has coined "preemptive pepperminting"- grabbing a handful of mints upon entrance to a restaurant and eating them on the way to the table. She does not own a pair of plain white socks- they are all colored and patterned and there are dozens of them. MG loves anything she can buy in bulk and will also buy anything Cath Kidston puts her name on.

Every night when we are sitting around, chatting and winding down from the day, all 65 pounds of Ruby will climb on MG's lap and cuddle like a child. MG is the sun around which Ruby's whole existence rotates.

It frustrates you, MG, that I will never battle you over riding shot-gun, when in fact I prefer the back seat because it relieves me of navigational duties, it means I don't have to crane my neck around to talk to anyone and it allows me to smile conspiratorially at the drive in the rear-view mirror.

I'm thankful to have a friend like you who seems to be always on my wavelength. It's good to know that someone else in the world who understands what it is to love friends, love family and still crave time alone. We took the childhood lesson of not talking to strangers to a whole new level.

I love that literature has had the influence on your life that it has had on mine- that we can talk about anything from our favorite childhood books to our recent favorites. I think that both of us reading The Fountainhead even originated from taking a walk together and saying how grating it is when people are discussing a classic we haven't read.

Music, on the other hand, neither of us know anything about.

I hope that the teenagers in your classroom will one day overcome their apathy and understand how much they can learn from you. You are so darn smart.

I have a tendency of saying: "Surely not..." and you always cut me off with: "Don't call me Shirley." It never fails.

Should you ever end up living in a foreign country for a while, you can bet that KS and I will be your first visitors.

I am thankful for that semester we spent saving each other seats in freshman history, even though we were both too reserved and serious to actually talk to each other. It could seem like an odd beginning to great friendship, but I think for us it's pretty fitting.

Happy 25th birthday to someone who likes to fly under the radar. You give and serve and love in a real and genuine way, but your faith is what I admire most about you.

Hugging you will always be weird.

I love you, MG!

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!'

-C.S. Lewis

Secondary Comfort

2010-05-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

It's just a fact of life you learn when you are a woman, that certain clothes were never meant to have a functional purpose.

When you were little, it was probably the tights your mother insisted you wear to Sunday School at church every week.

As you got older, you realized that while high-heels make for a more visually-appealing look, several hours in them at the expense of foot-circulation is a high price indeed.

I bought a printed sundress recently and loved the fit of it in the dressing room. Strapless, structured without being formal, interesting print, fitted from the top to the waist, then allowing for more movement and give from the waist down to where it hit right above the knees.

I put the dress in my closet where I left it to wait for warmer summer temperatures.

The other night I was at dinner with my parents, my mom's sisters and their families. My cousin KH and I were at one end of the table eating guacamole and talking about how irresponsible we feel for shopping when we have clothes with tags still on them, just sitting in our closet.

Then MK and I were emailing and she said that she needs a new hobby "other than, you know, spending money." And, again, I found myself agreeing.

So as I was getting ready for work yesterday morning I resolved to take a fresh look at my clothes and wear one of my recent purchases from the past few months.

I spotted the strapless dress and threw it on for work with a black cardigan and gray flats, then congratulated myself on a cute, work-appropriate outfit.

I wasn't paying attention to the binding nature of the top of the dress while driving, but after sitting at my desk and work, I became acutely aware of the boning in the top of the dress.

You see, this dress was not meant for the practical, everyday occurence of sitting down.

It's meant for a bridal shower, a night out with friends on a patio perhaps, or window shopping in a beachy locale. The boning makes you stand up straight and I would imagine it looks good with heels, therefore gives you a more flattering overall look.

It was not, however, intended for someone to wear while working on spreadsheets, sitting at a desk for 7-8 hours a day.

Hencefore I'll prefer my daytime, non-event dresses to be boneless.

The dress must not hang on the body but follow its lines. It must accompany its wearer and when a woman smiles the dress must smile with her.
-Madeleine Vionnet

Team Players

2010-05-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

I made pulled pork for dinner on Sunday night.

It was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. I don't do a lot of slow-cooking for the sake of timing, but on a Sunday afternoon, it's completely doable.

Unfortunately for everyone else, the only photo I took was of the noble clean-up efforts by Ruby. MG, KS, BF and Molly's boyfriend Z ate the entire 2 1/2 pounds of it. Oh and myself, I may have helped a bit too.

With peach cobbler made by MG and homemade vanilla Blue Bell for dessert.

I plan to make it again soon, since it was so easy and delicious. I'll be sure to get photographic evidence and post the recipe since it would seem downright unfair to keep it to myself.

BF also had us over Friday night for a cookout- sliders with all sorts of burger-topping options and anything you could ever want to eat with burgers, so we were really just returning the favor.

I adore nights like those- I wish I could make them happen more during the week days, when a home-cooked meal is exactly what everyone needs.

Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-Walt Kelly

The Tarzan

2010-05-13T22:48:00.000-07:00

image

There was a sale that started at Neiman Marcus today.

If a panic just set in and you're screaming: "Why did no one tell me?" please just know that I did it for your own good. Believe me.

KS has a radar unlike anything you've ever seen as to the goings-on at Neiman's. She already had a few things on hold a few days ago, when MG popped in last night with two dresses- one to keep and wear to a graduation she is speaking at for an elementary school that is uber old-school and requires a demure, non-pants-wearing dress code for their teachers. Oh and she's supposed to return the other one.

Right. Mhmm. I know that game- I've played it well.

So anyway, while she was trying the dresses on to get our votes, KS filled me in on the sale: today all of the new Neiman's merchandise would be 40% off. Shop early and find a well-stocked store waiting to take your money. Shop late and they'll have nothing left.

Equally frightening prospects.

I looked online and found that one Ali Ro dress I had spied recently fell under the umbrella of this sale. It's the only thing I allowed myself to consider purchasing because I knew if I started in with the Rebecca Taylor dresses and the Tory Burch sandals, then that would be the end of my bank account. The problem with ordering it online was that I hadn't tried it on- so I made my way to a nearby Neiman's location during my lunch hour.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not sure which, they did not have the dress, period. When I glanced back at the online listing in my phone, I noticed that they were out of all but one size online and it wasn't mine.

Did you hear that noise? That was a sigh of relief from my checking account. It will live to see another day.

While scanning the racks for my elusive dress, I noticed one-shoulder dresses everywhere, or as my friend AS called them in high school: "Tarzan dresses." I would by no means make an entire wardrobe out of them, but I think one could make a nice addition to my closet this summer.

Particularly there is pink dress one I keep seeing on SJP in the SATC 2 trailers, which I believe to be the Halston Heritage dress I found on Net-A-Porter, below...

image

This one is aiming a bit high for me but I would love a more casual version of a one-shouldered look.

Particularly with the long sleeve too. It might not go so well with the backyard cookout I'm attending this weekend... but I never really need an excuse to wear a dress, anyhow.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?

Nobody.

-J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Pairings

2010-05-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photos from the past few months and realized that most of the ones I take I don't end up posting.

Possibly because I'm not too quick with the camera-to-laptop upload. There is some bureaucracy that involves me not always being able to find that particular USB cord.

Anyway,

I found a few photos of twosomes that I particularly liked, so I wanted to share...

In an old house in Paris

That was covered with vines

Lived twelve little girls

In two straight lines.

-Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans

From Scratch

2010-05-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit uncreative recently. I haven't felt much like reading novels, which I typically love, and I feel uninspired to write. I'm not sure if the two are connected.

I've been writing this blog for almost two years now, and a lot has changed since I began. I am now almost two years beyond my time living in New York City. I started blogging in the first place on The New(York)Comer because I moved to NYC with my friends AV and KR and I wanted to chronicle our journey together. I got a huge kick out of writing about all our crazy stories and hearing from random people who had been reading it.

About a year later, I moved back to Texas.

I wanted to keep blogging, so I started writing The Manhattan Transfer to talk about the next step in my journey: transitioning to life in Dallas. While New York was an invaluable and humbling experience for me that I will always view as important to my spiritual, personal and career development, I've grown up a lot since then and a lot has changed.

Half of THIS blog (if we're talking about humbling experiences) was written while I was still living under my parents roof in the suburbs after moving back from NYC. I'm now coming up on the one-year anniversary of living in Dallas with KS and MG and I feel more established here. I had never lived IN Dallas until I moved here last May. If I'm going to have a blog, I think it should reflect where I am in my life.

I mean, for the love, I was wishing friends MY AGE a happy Mother's Day today.

You know?

There are a lot of things I enjoy doing, but writing is at the top of the list. It really is. Rather than frustrate myself over how to re-mold this blog, I think I prefer to archive it and start afresh. The New(York)Comer reflected what it was: my friends and I as newcomers to New York, right out of college. The Manhattan Transfer reflects what it has been as well: transitioning my life to Dallas.

Now I have to figure out what exactly I want my next blog phase to look like.

I wish I could whip up a new blog name and design as easily as I can put dinner on the table (that was a bit self-congratulatory, I grant you), but alas, I confess I'm a bit incompetent when it comes to web-design. Hopefully there are some web designers who confess they don't know a shallot from a spring onion or how to use a pastry bag, and then I'll feel better about myself.

I'll cook you dinner- you design my blog. If only starting from scratch could be so easy, right?

I'll keep y'all posted on my progress and keep writing here in the meantime.

After all, the show must go on.

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

-Benjamin Franklin

"I'm not really a dessert person"

2010-04-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

One great thing about Hawaii is that there are no snakes there. No snakes! The largest land predator in Hawaii is the human.

Strange as it may sound, this helped me sleep at night.

Once you venture out into the ocean though, it's a different story. People would say things like "Oh I don't like that beach, too many sharks." And I would be calm on the outside but thinking: "Too many sharks? I'm inclined to think ONE is too many."

Needless to say, I have what I consider to be a healthy fear of the ocean. I respectfully keep my distance, admiring the lovely coastline, lying in the powdery sand and occasionally dipping my feet in when I need to cool off.

It's probably a shame that I am seafood-averse, since it's everywhere in Hawaii. Probably because it's an island.

Ignore my obvious commentary.

Anyway, even someone with a limited palate, such as myself, can eat amazing food in Oahu.

After picking me up from the airport with a lovely yellow lei (sometimes things are just like the movies), ND took me to the only five-star hotel on the island for dinner at The Halekulani.

Everything in Hawaii is set up to make you feel like you are outdoors, which with their weather, is quite lovely. We ate at House Without a Key and I had delicious roasted chicken with cilantro butter (combining two of my favorite ingredients) a green salad with balsamic and asparagus.

ND, meanwhile, had eaten sushi right after school and ordered only drinks and dessert. The dessert? Coconut cake. I'll caveat this by saying that I'm not really a dessert person. I like it, but day to day I live without it**.

I can honestly say that now, in my post-coconut-cake existence, that I don't want to live in a world that does not include that most heavenly of cakes. It was that good. That perfect, even. The cake was light and sweet, the frosting was creamy and there were raspberries involved. We went back to the same place on Saturday night and ordered different entrees but split another because we could not pass it up.

Another restaurant ND raved over and took me too was an authentic Greek place called The Olive Tree. Their hummus and pita could have filled me up for the evening but the chicken souvlaki won me over as well. I was sorry not to have KS with me to try the house-made baklava at the end of the meal, since it was easily the best I've ever had.

Since it got windy and chilly at night, we also ventured out one night with ND's roommate E for some Vietnamese pho. I had never tried it and for something that looked like a broth-y soup, it was actually very filling. I put some sriracha with it as well, which made me want to learn to cook more Asian dishes.

As is well-documented on this blog, I am also coffee drinker. No, that's being too polite to myself: I am a coffee snob. No one makes better coffee than me and my N'espresso machine. Away from my beloved coffeemaker for an entire week, I knew I would have to make due. What I did not anticipate was liking the local, Kona blend coffee so much. I'm used to one cup of coffee a day and so I got a little amped up on refills a few days when we were having long breakfasts or brunches.

The Saturday morning I was there was a treat because we went and visited the big local farmer's market. I just went to a farmer's market in my hometown a few weeks ago with my mom, so I was expecting something small-scale and charming with a few merchants.

Not at all.

The farmer's market was huge and bustling and a culinary adventure completely on its own. I should have known I would like it after an unassuming table with an espresso machine at the entrance sold me a truly fantastic latte. We walked from table to table to see and smell all manners of fresh fruits, flowers and vegetables; curries, eggs benedict, sushi, pizza, snocones, before settling on slices of pizza that I kept seeing everywhere: a layer of pesto topped with yellow and red tomatoes, fresh mozzerella and chopped basil. For breakfast, no less.

I followed that up with purchasing a fresh coconut, whose water I drank through a straw. It made me look like a tourist but I loved it.

During one day of my trip I randomly asked ND about Leonard's, which kept catching my eye whenever we drove down the same main road through town. ND wanted to curse me for noticing it, but Leonard's, she told me, is an institution in Oahu. Leonard's makes delicious, Portuguese donut-like balls called malasadas, which you can purchase coated in something as simple and time-honored as cinnamon and sugar, or you can get them with different flavored fillings like chocolate, coconut cream or mango.

Needless to say, we stopped and bought half a dozen different flavors to sample.

One book I was particularly glued to during my trip was The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. If you're not into cooking or don't find culinary school interesting, you probably wouldn't like it, but it made me look at and appreciate the food on my plate and the labor that went into making it so much more. It's such an art form.

My friends in Dallas can expect me to attempt making coconut cake, the farmer's market pizza and chicken souvlaki in the near future. And probably homemade hummus. I'll spare them the guilty-pleasure malasadas.

For now.

Food is our common ground, a universal experience.

-James Beard

**This would later prove to be a false statement, as evidenced by the remainder of this post.

*P.S. I did not link any of the restaurants listed, but if you ever find yourself in Oahu and would like a more comprehensive list of restaurants to visit, feel free to e-mail me!

*P.P.S. Chocolate-dipped macadamia nut cookies. That is all.

The Island Report

2010-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

*Tap tap*

Is this thing on?

Hi! Remember me? I'm alive!

I've (reluctantly) returned from island life and I'm back on "the mainland", as the Hawaiians call it.

People keep asking me what I did on vacation and the short answer is that I went to Oahu to hang out with ND, relax and get a tan.

I got in the lovely routine of going to bed around 10pm at night and waking up at 6am every day, completely on my own and without alarms. ND showed me around the island that she has called home for the past three years and I got to drink various tropical things on various coasts on the island- all harboring clear water and sand comparable to superfine sugar.

While ND was at school I would take long walks around Waikiki, grabbing my morning coffee, reading the paper, going to the beach and listening to sports-radio all day (my favorite local Dallas station, thanks to the Wunder Radio app on my iPhone).

And no, I am not to be confused with a senior-citizen.

I realize this might make for a less-than thrilling vacation story, but it's exactly what I wanted. ND was just back to Hawaii from a visit to UC Berkeley, where she will be a first-year law student this fall, so we got to celebrate her last five weeks as a teacher and we were very much on the same page as far as soaking in island life and UV rays.

I also ate a lot of great food and I got to visit Pearl Harbor, which was definitely a highlight for me (it was me and the veterans at 7:15am, but again I remind you: I'm not a senior citizen). I'll expand on both of those things later this week- you will read ALL ABOUT my culinary experience in Oahu and my trip to Pearl Harbor, which I think every American should experience if they ever possibly can.

I actually got back to Texas early Friday morning, but I slept most of that day and night and spent the rest of this weekend catching up with my friends and watching the Mavericks lose two awful play-off games against the Spurs.

I've also been avoiding my Google Reader, which is reporting that I have a foreboding "1000+" new items to read.

I might be in denial; about my basketball team, my Reader and the fact that I won't wake up tomorrow morning in a high-rise condo three blocks from the beach at sunrise to the sound of doves cooing.

Which reminds me... I need to set an alarm.

The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears or the sea.

-Isak Dinesen

Aloha

2010-04-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

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I subscribe to 97 blogs.

I had never taken the time to count them all, but using Google Reader and seeing things like "390 Unread Items" made me look and count the total a few weeks back.

So yes, 97 it is. It seems that the "Add a Subscription" button is quite easy to utilize.

I realize that this devotedness to other blogs means that I myself have been writing less often recently.

Don't think I've forgotten about blogging, or that my sports-related Throwing Like a Girl posts are going anywhere anytime soon (you know you like them).

The only thing I can really focus on right now is the fact that I'm going to Hawaii this week.

Hawaii. This. Week.

It's okay to be jealous.

I'm going to visit my friend ND, who has lived in Hawaii teaching high school for nearly three years, and will be leaving this summer to attend law school in California. So this was my last chance to go visit her before she leaves.

And not to mention, spend a week perfecting a tan in utter paradise.

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided.

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

You Still Don't Know

2010-04-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

As someone who used to work for a magazine and who spent hours upon hours scouring every issue of every popular women's magazine you can possibly think of to provide comprehensive information on competing periodicals, I don't read magazines just for fun very often.

KS, however, does receive a few magazine subscriptions to design magazines, and to Real Simple, which I'll occasionally peruse. I found myself reading an article in Real Simple's "Life Lessons" section tonight, because the content piqued my interest. I'll share the following excerpt, taken from Kristin Van Ogtrop's article entitled: "Can I Call You Back In 15 Years?"

"Then you hit the age of 25 and you realize that your days are numbered, so to speak. You begin to understand that time is no longer infinitely elastic, and that while you spend hours attending to one priority, you are stealing those same hours from another. And why did nobody warn you that you would be spending 30 percent of your time on things that are really tedious or difficult, like trying to find a rental apartment you can afford and a nice boy whom you can marry and stay married to forever? This is a terrible time of life, the mid-20s, because you still don't know what real adulthood looks like. And since you probably don't have children yet, you can devote entire afternoons to questions like "Who am I? which rarely lead you down a pretty path."

I could go into more detail on how she discusses maintaining female friendships when your time is already divided into oblivion as you get older, but suffice it to say it was an insightful article and I would recommend it as a quick-read.

If you read the whole thing, you would see that I successfully cropped out the one part pertaining specifically to ladies my age. Obviously.

Fortunately there is no "tween" word-equivalent for someone my age, who has reached the both accomplished and confounding quarter-century mark but still is yet to experience major life triumvirate of marriage + children + mortgage. While being 25 is fun, part of its charm is that there is an air of transience about it. Seeing other friends grow up to play house (but with a real house and real people), you start thinking about things in the tied-down category and you have to wonder what that's like as well.

Because in all honesty, you (and by "you" I mean "I") don't know what that's like at all. Part of you wants to know and part of you is okay with the fact that your life still allows you many freedoms. It's a strange tug-of-war of wanting what you don't have while also enjoying what you do have, however temporary it may be.

Also... I love funny mom-writers. They have the best wisdom because they don't take themselves too seriously.

Definitely not a bad lesson to learn.

Throwing Like A Girl- Championship Party

2010-04-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've successfully turned my friends into basketball-watching enthusiasts and trash-talkers.

I couldn't be more pleased about it, either.

Much to my delight, my Ladies-Only bracket pool leaders are neck-in-neck leading up to the final game. Husbands and boyfriends have complimented me on the idea, and another friend in Ft. Worth even copied it with some friends who live scattered throughout the country.

I myself am currently sitting at No. 17 out of 18 ladies which is pretty typical at this point. The one person I'm ahead of is MK, who threw caution to the wind like she always does and picked Xavier to win it all. I'm ashamed to face facts and admit that Xavier made it further in the tournament than my winner-pick, which was Kansas.

Let's not talk about it. MK is also primed to win the last-place participation award.

I'll be weekend-ing at my parents' home this weekend to celebrate Easter and let someone else decide how to entertain me for two days, but that will also give me time watch the Saturday night basketball games and menu plan. You might not know me at all but those are basically two of my favorite things to do: watch sports and cook for people.

My immediate thoughts turn to things that keep well and taste better after a day, like pulled pork or brisket (for sliders) and sangria wine, which sounds like something a ladies-only party would enjoy.

If you would like to brush up on your statistics for each team leading into the games this weekend, I would recommend checking out ESPN. The great thing is that the explanation of each statistic is provided at the bottom of the screen. Gordon Hayward for example, who plays for Butler, is an 82.7% free-throw shooter on average for this season. (FT% = Free Throw Percentage; .827 = 82.7%).

Hope everyone has a great weekend cheering on whichever teams you need to save face in their respective bracket pools!

And, of course, Happy Easter.

Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.
-Wilt Chamberlain

Danger & Pineapple

2010-03-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

I think I could just write this post with the following message:

Bikram tried to kill me last night.

The end.

And if you knew what I was talking about, you would offer your condolences, maybe make a masseuse recommendation and ask me what I was thinking.

Because really, what was I thinking?

I would then post a photo of my roommates and I dripping in blood, sweat and tears- (did I mention the sweat and the sweat?) and those of you who previously did not know what Bikram entailed would NOW know the aftermath.

The brochure MG, KS and I perused after getting our cheap, one-month memberships informed us that an emotional response was possible when participating in Bikram. I was also trying to gauge the possibility of me passing out in such a setting.

Seemed pretty likely to me.

I wasn't wrong.

MG suggested we come up with a code word when once of us started feeling light-headed or blacking-out, since she and I have been known to do such things. She offered up the word "pineapple" while I went for the more obvious "danger."

In preparation for our first class, we all drank water all day. I drank three regular 16-ounce bottles of water this morning and then two 34-ounce bottles of Smart Water with electrolytes. I ate light and nutritious all day and didn't eat three hours before classtime. I thought I was ready.

Au contraire, mon frère.

The class was wall-to-wall packed and after about 20 minutes of poses in the heat, I could feel my heartbeat getting a little higher than it needed to be. Even sitting perfectly still, criss-cross applesauce style on my mat, I was completely out of breath and dripping with perspiration. The three of us were separated due to getting there on the later-end, and I could gradually see MG slowing down as we went along. I had less of a view of KS, but she powered through about 75% of the way before hitting a bit of a wall.

We all got plenty of practice with the corpse pose, let's say that much.

I left class what I thought was early when I just couldn't take it anymore, but what turned out to be exactly 90 minutes from when we had entered. The class ran about 15 minutes late, and MG clamored to get out the door into the breezy outside to be able to breathe again. KS appeared a few minutes later and her face was kind of frozen and swollen-looking, which I've never seen happen to her.

We dragged ourselves to the car and picked up Crystal Light Icees at a nearby 7-11 as a reward.

The silver lining in all of this was that I think I would actually benefit from these classes if they kicked down the thermostat from Sweltering Amazon Rainforest to Breezy New England Beach Town. I'm strong but inflexible, which Yoga is a great fix for, so I'm inclined to try it again.

In the air-conditioning, of course. Just wanted to be clear about that.

Bikram is one-and-done.

Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.
-B.K.S. Iyengar

More Than They Bargained For

2010-03-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I am no stranger to wardrobe malfunctions. They seem to catch me when I'm least expecting them.

On Saturday, after leaving the gym, KS received word from KR that she was inviting us over to make homemade pizza and watch the just-released Twilight movie, New Moon. Saturday was a dreary, cold day, so the plan sounded ideal.

We had some time to clean up and relax when we got home, and KS started searching for a good bruschetta recipe to make over at KR's house.

On our way to KR's we stopped at Central Market for groceries, and right when we walked in KS spied a promotion going on, where you could buy a pre-made family meal of baked ziti, salad and foccacia for $19.99 and receive a copy of the New Moon DVD with your purchase. A $20 dollar meal, a $20 DVD, together for only $19.99 while supplies lasted. I think our expressions went from wonder to elation at this discovery. We are incredibly easy to please.

The prepared foods section is at the end of the store from the produce entrance, where we began, and Central Market has a very windy design and is always as crowded as most grocery stores on the day before Thanksgiving, so we covered a good deal of space and dodged a lot of other shoppers while grabbing tomatoes, basil, bread and everything else we needed for bruschetta.

It was literally freezing outside, and so KS and I were both wearing coats. At one point I felt a little warm, so I unbuttoned my favorite plaid coat and kept walking. I had on a light blue button-down tuxedo-inspired shirt from J.Crew, belted across the waist with jeans and flats.

KS and I finally came to the complete opposite side of the store from where we found the New Moon promotional deal. I think we were about to high-five when I saw this girl looking at me like she knew me. (Please remember the part about me unbuttoning my coat, combined with the fact that this grocery store was very busy at this point in time.) As I racked my brain as to where I might know her, she approached me and standing right in front of me said quietly:

"I just wanted to let you know that your shirt came unbuttoned and your bra is showing."

Nothing squelches New Moon euphoria like public exposure, let me tell you.

I thanked her profusely while the guy she was with, bless his heart, stood a few feet back, looking absolutely fascinated with the ceiling. I probably turned the same shade of red as the tomatoes I was carrying, while I looked down and found that she was indeed correct. My shirt was unbuttoned down to that place on your stomach/chest right below your bra. There was nothing subtle about it. The patrons of Central Market got a little more than they bargained for... as if dinner and a movie wasn't enough already.

I am a modest and oftentimes reserved person, so laughing this off took some assertion of will, but I managed. I hope that my shirt wasn't like this for too long, since KS and I were together the whole time and she obviously would have noticed while discussing which of the artisan breads she wanted to use for the bruschetta.

This wasn't the same kind of embarrassment as the day I wore the exact same purple gingham shirt as one of the MALE publishers in my office in New York, but it was in the same league.

I was still in a bit of a daze when we left the store a few minutes later, but snow flurries, on the first day of spring, no less, had started to fall.

The things I do for food and Robert Pattinson.

We never forgive those who make us blush.
-Jean-Francois De La Harpe

Throwing Like a Girl- March Madness Begins

2010-03-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

You might live under a rock, in which case you could be pardoned, but I hope everyone else is aware that the March Madness games started today.

I'm pleased to say that there are 18 ladies participating in my bracket tournament idea from two weeks ago and I have successfully made gamblers and college basketball-watchers out of all of them.

Granted, $360 in gift cards is also good motivation, but I received many nail-biting messages all afternoon regarding the close games and we had a full house over to watch more of the action this evening.

If you didn't watch basketball today, you missed out. I don't recall such an exciting opening round in recent years. Out of the first four games this morning, two of the games went into overtime (one game had two overtime periods) and the other two games were decided by one point each.

The Villanova vs. Robert Morris took a few years off my life- thankfully Villanova survived by three because I have them in my Final Four.

Georgetown, on the other hand, lost by quite a margin to Ohio. I had Georgetown in my Elite Eight, so I don't really want to talk about it.

Other upsets today include Old Dominion over Notre Dame, Washington over Marquette, Murray State over Vanderbilt, St. Mary's over Richmond and Northern Iowa over UNLV.

And this is just day one!

I'm sitting on a couch perpendicular to MG right now, who keeps picking up her laptop periodically to check her picks and her rankings in our tournament as each game wraps up. This is unprecedented behavior.

Also: Wake Forest and Texas just went into overtime, making this the third overtime game of the day.

Did I mention how much I love March?

MG: "I can't believe I'm watching this."

Me: "You can't believe you're watching basketball?"

MG: "...and caring."

Premature Celebration

2010-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

80,000 of my best friends, AV, KR, BF and I got to hang out in the beautiful weather on Saturday. We attended the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Greenville Avenue in Dallas- a long-standing tradition of a parade whose qualifications include registering a float... and that's it.

It was quite the experience. We hung out on the sidewalks, drank beer (open container laws were waived for this event) and stood amidst the masses heckling the passing parade floats to chuck Mardi-Gras beads and Jell-O shots into the crowd.

When our group decided to get a move on and head to a guy's party down the road, I first discovered that I needed to go to the bathroom, badly, and secondly that I had no where to "go."

We walked for about 20 minutes and came up on the big intersection at Mockingbird and Greenville, I spied port-o-potties outside of the Kroger grocery store and the neighboring gas station. To my bladder, they looked like an oasis in a desert.

I held up my hands as if in surrender and broke it to the group that I would need a reprieve. Someone suggested relieving myself under the bridge, which was where I drew the line. How would I be able to face those people again? I just don't think you can look at a girl the same way after an episode like that. Not to mention, I was not going to risk getting some sort of ticket for Public Exposure. Imagine me trying to recover from/explain that.

So with resolve, I marched down the hill and planted myself in one of the port-o-potty lines. I was about 15 people back in my line. I waited, I scooted, and finally I was one person from the front. I was staring at the ground, counting the seconds (yes, it was that bad) when I felt a person very close to me. It was KR.

I heard a quiet "Can I hop in line with you? I can't hold it."

I told her she could before we were interrupted by the dude behind us, clearing his throat in an impatient, "ahem" sort of way.

KR spun around and said "I'm sorry, I've been waiting for her right over there (points). I'll go in with her, we'll be fast!"

"I'll go in with her?!"

You know how your friends do things sometimes that make you give them a momentary bewildered "What the H?!" look before remembering that this (whatever "this" is.) though alarming, is not actually surprising at all.

Like back in the day when MK decided it would be a good idea to bathe our class hedgehog in 8th grade science. Or when she did the same thing to the class kitten later in the semester.

Or that time you wore a dress to an 80's party in college and admitted to everyone that you wore it to a formal in high school in 1999.

Come to think of it, it's an accomplishment that something I wore at 15 still fit at 19.

Anyway.

So KR volunteered for us to go into the port-o-potty together. I don't know if you've ever been in a port-o-potty, but there isn't much room. At all.

It came to be our turn and, as promised, KR and I sardined ourselves into the tiny, free-standing stall. I'll spare you the details, but needless to say, we were very snug and extremely quick. We also received some applause upon our exit and to be honest, we deserved it.

I felt like a new person and was able to enjoy the rest of the day, even though we were completely exhausted after walking what turned out to be about four miles in non-walking-friendly shoes.

Somehow I think Wednesday (the real St. Patty's Day,) won't be quite as exciting.

It's not easy being green.

-Kermit the Frog

Quote

2010-03-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

image

I have to know where you are at all times, especially when you have my shoes on!
-Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

Throwing Like a Girl- Conference Tournaments

2010-03-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Conference basketball tournaments are going on this weekend- which actually started on Wednesday if you are okay with letting the end of your work week blur into your weekend.

I'm okay with this, for the record.

The conference tournaments can help escalate a few teams that may have been on the "bubble," so to speak, but for the good teams it can only slightly affect your seeding in the NCAA tournament. The Big East, for example, had upsets in three of their four games tonight, so it might put a little dent in the seeding for some of them.

You want your team to play well in their respective conference tournament not just for bragging rights, though that's a nice bonus and recognition of a great season, but you also want your players geared up, full of adrenaline and confidence for March Madness, which starts next week.

Since the field for the March Madness tournament is 65 teams (including the play-in game), there is a good chance there will be a few teams that you haven't seen play this season.

Well... okay. The chance is better than good. But you have the opportunity to brush up before making any "I wrote it in pen already" decisions.

If you are planning to fill out a bracket this year to enter a pool of some sort, then make Sunday a day where you pick up multiple newspapers. Grab a local paper, (for me it would be The Dallas Morning News,) and a copy of USA Today. Spend some time reading about the teams in the tournament you are unfamiliar with, consult ESPN.com which has a wealth of statistics on teams and individuals. Pay attention to the teams in the middle- the 5-8 seeded teams especially, because that is where brackets start busting a few weeks down the road.

Happy Bracketeering!

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I've made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

-Coach Mike Krzyzewski

Jesse's Girl

2010-03-09T21:29:00.001-08:00

I think we can all agree that Saturdays are wonderful.

Unless you work on Saturdays, in which case they may be a little bit less than wonderful to you, but let's not ruin my story.

Saturday morning I woke up to glorious sunshine. I had plans to meet AV for brunch, so I showered, put on a cute little outfit, opened my sunroof and drove to meet her at Toulouse in Dallas.

MK gave us a ring and picked us up to go with she and her friend in town, C, to the Nasher Sculpture Museum. The Nasher is free on the first Saturday of the month, and since it's partially outdoors and the weather was gorgeous, there were people everywhere. There was a yoga class going on, children running in all directions with face paint on, security guards fighting the uphill battle of telling said children that they were not allowed to play on or touch the statues, etc.

We weren't in a hurry, we were just... there. I loved it.

After departing the Nasher, we walked down the street to the Ritz-Carlton to sit outside and get a drink.

Drinking in the afternoon... at the Ritz-Carlton.

Nothing to see here, folks.

After being told that the pool was on the second floor and available to hotel guests only, MK thanked the hotel employee and in true MK fashion, turned around to us and said: "Let's go find the pool."

So of course, we ended up sitting by the pool at the Ritz in lounge chairs, sunglasses on, loving life. MK's friend C had never been to Texas, and was already getting a favorable first impression.

We had just received our drinks and while sipping from our mimosas, a familiar face walked outside to join a rail-thin girl who had finished a work-out and was relaxing in a chair to our left.

I'm not a fan of celebrity gossip, but I love movies and watch T.V. and all, so on rare occasion, I recognize people.

Bringing the long-stemmed plastic glass up to cover my lips, and without looking at her I said very quietly to AV:

"John Tucker Must Die?"

Without flinching and reaching for her own glass, I heard a very quiet "mhmmm" to confirm.

That's right- John Tucker, aka ridiculously good-looking actor Jesse Metcalfe, was also at the Ritz pool.

All I can say is thank goodness we were all wearing sunglasses, because I think any one of us could now tell you that he was in Dallas filming the pilot episode for a new show after mercilessly eavesdropping... and could also tell you exactly where the tattoos are on his shirtless body. I'm pretty against asking photos and autographs in general, but I did manage this one behind-the-scarf candid...

You're welcome.

Cause she's watching him with those eyes...

-Rick Springfield, Jessie's Girl

Throwing Like a Girl- March Madness Edition

2010-03-04T22:34:00.000-08:00

You may or may not have participated in a March Madness pool before.

You may not even know what March Madness IS, bless your heart.

If you are American and work in a 9-5 office that has even the smallest percentage of male employees, chances are you've at least seen the flurry that happens when the first games of the men's college basketball tournament begin. With football season well-over and baseball season only just beginning, the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is the perfect opportunity to greet spring by sitting indoors, glued to flat-screens of Dick Vitale yelling about bracket-busters and Cinderella stories.

This year, I want to get my friends involved in the fun. I want all the ladies (not just the single ones, either) to see that March Madness can be a good time for everyone.

So this is what I'm thinking:

1. Email female friends and solicit their participation in my March Madness pool.

2. The buy-in to participate in said pool is a $20 gift card* to any retail store or restaurant of your choosing. Popular choices might include: Anthropologie, J. Crew, Starbucks, Mi Cocina, Zoe's, Amazon, etc.

3. Ask everyone to fill out their brackets and submit their gift cards before the start of the first game, which will be played March 16, 2010.

4. Enjoy all-girls college-basketball banter via reply-all emails over the course of the tournament.

5. Host a championship-watching party for the final game (there will be food involved, which should be implied), crowning a winner** with lots of great cards to use to eat out and go shopping. (Also do something fun for the second-place winner and the girl in last place.)

I figure that first and foremost: everyone likes to win. Close behind winning, women enjoy shopping and eating, so this would combine all of those things AND college basketball. Obviously some girls would have the help of husbands/boyfriends/brothers should they so choose, but in all reality, the chances of picking the perfect bracket are something like one in 9,000,000***, so I doubt there would be much of a competitive edge.

All-in-all, I think it seems like a great way to get my predominantly female friends interested in March Madness. I may be luring them in with food and prizes but I think they'll actually enjoy the games as well.

There are really only two plays: Romeo + Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket.

-Abe Lemons

(Please let the record show that I tried looking for a cute picture of my friends and I from a basketball game in college to no avail, but I found plenty of hilarious shots of us from date parties (which all had themes.) Call me conservative, but I just couldn't bring myself to post anything from pirate, hippie, cowboy or gangsta-themed events. It wasn't THAT long ago, after all.)

*Another option for the buy-in would be for everyone to submit a bottle of wine, so the winner would take home 10? 20? 30? bottles of wine. Is that a better idea?

**In the event of an unlikely tie, I would motion for a 100-yard dash between the winners to determine the tie-breaker. Pure entertainment.

***Completely bogus statistic, but something like that. You get the idea.

Warmer Weather

2010-03-01T21:05:00.000-08:00

I ran across this dress online the other day, and I saved the link, labeling it:

"I want this dress."

Ballet Interlude Dress

I felt the need to share. Can't you see why?

Sure, that dress would be pretty if it were strapless, but how much more interesting is it with the black straps?

While shopping over the weekend, I started seeing the first signs of spring: Easter and prom dresses. Pink in particular, was everywhere.

Pink isn't really my color though.

I'm a brunette with brown eyes, and my skin tans easily in the summer. I will always stand by my love for neutral colors, but I don't think they have to be boring and they certainly are not limited to winter-wear. I spotted the two dresses below and they are only perpetuating my love of the color combination that these all have of a shade of nude/beige with a bit of black contrast.

I love these scalloped edges...

'Priscil' Scalloped Dress

... and this zipper.

Tiered-Skirt Contrast Dress

Since I'm not big on pastels (including pink), I like that these dresses are still ruffly and light enough for spring.

Now to find the skin-tone that matches them so well...

The best color in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.

-Coco Chanel

A Better Understanding

2010-02-26T08:10:00.000-08:00

(Photo credit to my aunt and uncle, whose ranch was covered in a lovely layer of white this week.)

My Gmail needs a good purging. I try to delete emails as I see fit, but I also don't like deleting particularly funny little exchanges between some of my friends. I keep the gems.

I ran across this email that I sent to MG last week as a follow-up to a discussion on pronunciation woes that we had had the night before. I realized that this email is so very me, it is such the perfect example of my personality and how my brain works, that it's almost comical.

Sometimes I capitalize words that need to be capitalized, other times I'm too lazy and use all lowercase letters. Sometimes I just find all lowercase more charming. When I run across a word or a phrase I don't know (I think I'm the only person who still wants to learn Latin), I look it up immediately, though I should probably pay more attention as to how to pronounce the word itself instead of the definition.

I realize that I'm strange. At least I embrace it.

from: Amy
to: MG
date: Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 8:56 AM
subject: pronunciation

remember the crudites conversation from last night? (side note: i don't always feel like looking for letters with accent marks and i don't know the short cuts, but i know one should be there. by now i could have found it and not been annoyed with it, but i still don't feel like it... just had to get that off my chest.)

okay so i was trying to think of a word that tripped me up in a similar fashion, and i found one!

"dossier"

i used to say, in my head of course, "dough-shur."

it is, in fact, pronounced "dos-ee-ey."

i won't even admit that it was an episode of gossip girl that revealed this to me.

we can't have these french words embarrassing us up like this, it's unacceptable. we are more cultured that this. our next continuing education class needs to be beginning french.

peace, love, appetizers of raw vegetables and a collection of documents about one subject,
amy

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
-Oscar Wilde

Throwing Like a Girl

2010-02-25T21:12:00.000-08:00

I hope you didn't think I totally forgot about this Thursday thing I've got going. Though I suppose two weeks on, one week off is hardly a solid pattern at this point, is it?

UPDATE: The Dallas Mavericks

The Mavericks are looking revived after the trade they made at the All-Star break. Seeing them go 2-5 before the break and bounce back to 5-1 after the break is a big swing, with what was probably their most difficult win last night against the Lakers.

In the trade, the most significant players that were traded away from Dallas were Josh Howard and Drew Gooden. Gooden played well for Dallas, in his short time here, but Howard was increasingly seen as a liability, both for his injuries and his unpredictable behavior off the court.

In exchange, we got notable additions Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson. Haywood is getting a lot of playing time and press because he's a 7'0 center and he is a presence near the basket. Butler, who did not play in the game against the Lakers due to an averse reaction, is already looking like a great small forward who can score. Stevenson did a great job guarding Kobe Bryant last night, holding him to 20 points.

Twenty points is no small feat, don't misunderstand me. I don't think I scored 20 points in my entire 5th grade Boys & Girls Club basketball career. But this is Kobe we're talking about- and 20 points constitutes a less than stellar night for Kobe.

The great thing is that playing with the new guys has revived Nowitzki, Kidd, Terry and Marion, whose skills are looking even better alongside their new teammates.

Hopefully the rest of the season will be this fun to watch.

They tell you that nobody is perfect, then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.

-Wilt Chamberlain

Breeding Potential

2010-02-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in earlier last week that a large group of friends and I went to Joe T. Garcia's for dinner last weekend in Ft. Worth. I didn't delve into many details of last weekend because most of them were completely overshadowed by the huge amount of snow that fell and the fact that we had no power for three days and woe-is-me, but it was actually a lot of fun.

At dinner that night I was sitting next to KR and her brother TR, who was in town visiting for the weekend before he heads to Scottsdale, AZ in a few weeks for spring training. TR's friend J was also with us and before long, we heard them commenting on the waitress serving the table next to ours and discussing her "breeding potential."

Say what?

Allow me to explain, or at least allow me to try and describe this as it was explained to me.

It has come to my attention that there is a contingent of men who do not merely survey a girl as attractive or not, but they actually take into consideration physical qualities such as height, coordination and athletic prowess. The waitress, for example, was brunette, in the 5'8-5'10 range, left-handed (TR's observation) and clearly coordinated, as waitresses are required to be. This qualified said young woman as "a breeder."

TR is an athlete, a baseball pitcher by profession and is 6'5, so in his words, if he were to have kids with a girl who is 5'10, "Do you know what our children could do on the athletic field?"

What indeed.

I had a similar conversation which I filed away for such a time as this at a party last fall. I was in the kitchen at my friends CC and AH's house while they were having people over, and found myself chatting with SR and her husband and LS and her husband.

Fifth wheel: present.

The girls were discussing the conundrum between being tall and wanting to wear heels and the various benefits of low heels and wedges, and the guys somehow ended up talking about the factors that went into choosing their wives. Both of their wives are beautiful blond, and interestingly enough, they are both around the 5'10 mark. They both discussed the fact that marrying a tall woman was definitely to their advantage. Siring future basketball and football stars was mentioned.

I know what you are thinking: compelling and rich.

Men also don't really consider that they also have equal odds of having a girl, but don't tell them that. It's like what Henry VIII's wives did, they just nodded and said "Yep, I can have sons!"

Worked every time.

I'm 5'7 with no shoes on, meaning I am upwards of 5'10-5'11 in heels. The average American male is about 5'10, meaning if I am wearing heels, I'll be looking most guys straight in the eye and maybe scoping out a few premature bald-spots from my birds-eye view. This can sometimes be an issue- it feels unnatural to look down at a guy when you are talking to him, and no one looks their best when they start hunching over.

I always thought that guys were more attracted to short, tiny women as a rule. The kind of women who shop in the petite section of Ann Taylor, where MK and I found ourselves admiring ruffly tank-tops last weekend before wondering aloud: "why are these so SHORT?" I can answer that. Because they are worn by women who are short and therefore wear everything well and who don't have to search for especially-long pants or need borderline could-be-a-minidress-long tank tops because anything shorter and you would see midriff... that's why.

Tangent is over.

So anyway, I was glad to learn, in the most roundabout of ways, that being tall and female is a good thing.

It's good-breeding, in fact.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American.

They both have good skin.

-Virginia Madsen

Addition & Subtraction

2010-02-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

Hi there!

How are you today? Meh? I understand, it is Wednesday, after all.

I'm guest-posting over at Alana's blog today. She is one of those people I only know in blog-life, but I feel like I know her because I've been reading her blog for so long. You should check it out- it's fashion-y, or as Alana likes to call it, a "Stylish Snippet" and probably a bit different than what you usually read from me.

Or not. I don't really know.

Now I'm rambling.

Did you give anything up for Lent? I opted for diet drinks, which is the standard thing I need to ax anyway. But still, I love them.

I'd also like to add something, instead of just giving something up, so I'm going to write letters of the hand-written, no-reason, just-hi, funny-anecdote variety. Let's start with one a week. If it makes anyone smile, I will have accomplished my goal.

The great opportunity is where you are. Every place is under the stars. Every place is the center of the universe...
-John Burroughs

Quote

2010-02-16T07:31:00.000-08:00

Trager never looked the part of a hopeless romantic,

but in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. The hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie-like pursuit of his long-reputed soul-mate, a woman whom he only spent a few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure. Yet even in certain defeat, Trager secretly clung to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. Uh-uh. But rather, it's a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan.

-Serendipity, 2001

Let There Be Light

2010-02-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

Early Thursday morning, it started snowing, which persisted into Friday. This would not be out of the ordinary in many parts of the world, which I realize, but in Texas that much snowfall is most unusual.

On Thursday night schools started canceling class for Friday and local weathermen were having a heyday because of the record-setting inches which kept falling. Emails started buzzing about snowball fights and huddling up indoors to watch movies and drink cocoa.

Friday morning I woke up and immediately attempted to turn on my TV to see what the traffic and road conditions would be for trying to get to work. No luck. I then tried turning on the lamp on to my left next to my bed. No luck again. I sat up in bed and brushed the top of my duvet, which was freezing.

We had lost power.

I washed my face and threw on jeans and a North Face because there would have been no way of drying shower-wet hair, nor was I having much luck finding anything in the darkness of my closet. I was even on my hands and knees feeling each one of my shoes as I would imagine a blind person reads Braille. Efforts at looking presentable were futile.

My roommates kept me up to speed with the power-situation throughout the day, which was that we didn't have any, and MG told me that we could stay with her parents who live five minutes from our house, until our power returned. I drove home after work to check our house and get what I needed to stay away from home for a night so that I could have everything settled.

Friday was my dear friend AVs birthday, and a group of us drove from Dallas to Ft. Worth to eat dinner at Joe T. Garcia's and then go to Billy Bob's for a Miranda Lambert concert. MK was driving us and while trying to park in a snowy field next to the concert hall for $5, her car got stuck. AV, CC and I hopped out of the car in our cowboy boots and started pushing while MK tried the gas pedal to get the car to budge. I was thankful to be wearing old cowboy boots that can withstand the elements, because we were sliding all over the place after falling knees to the ground into the snow and finally getting MK's car moving.

AV has had more white birthdays in recent years than I have, a fact of which I am supremely jealous because I also have a winter birthday but very few of my 25 have seen snow. We scurried inside to get out of the cold wind with our cold and now muddy tights, and MK threw a snowball at me as I told her to "walk with purpose" after she was offering up ill-advised piggy-back rides.

We had a great time and I returned to MG's family's home feeling like a teenager sneaking in after curfew. I woke up Saturday morning to find that the G's were also harboring MG's brother, his wife and their golden retriever, who live a street over from us and were also still without power. Seven people and three dogs under the same roof.

We made more trips to our house after coming to terms with the fact that we would need more clothing to survive the weekend, and somehow I ended up bringing five pairs of boots into the room where I was staying. Five pairs of boots and my own room and bathroom in the G's house... you can tell we were really roughing it, can't you?

MG and I were feeling both productive and a little helpless today after church and finally decided to face the carnage of our refrigerator before it got any worse. With the power still out, we opened all the blinds in the kitchen and filled four trash bags with the contents of both our fridge and freezer, save for the alcohol, which was unaffected. I ascertained during the purge that we have an affinity for cheese, hummus, barbeque sauce and frozen pizza at our house. On the bright side, our fridge has not been this clean since the day Home Depot delivered it.

KS and I went to dinner tonight (she was a lovely Valentine, I must say) and while eating I got an email beep on my phone that MG's brother had sent, telling us our power was back on. We bolted as soon as we could sign our checks at the restaurant, did a quick drive past our house to make sure he wasn't playing a cruel older-brother joke on us and confirmed the power was indeed on, then went back to pack our things. No one else was home and we left a note but otherwise I felt like we were thieves in the night, stealing away with bags of ours clothing, hair-dryers, boot collections and other essentials that had been brought with us. The G's could not have been better hosts- I think we were just thrilled at the idea of waking up in our own beds and not having to make anymore trips for those one or two things we forgot at home.

My immediate concern after packing up was the fact that we were now without coffee creamer at home. This may seem trivial, but when you can make the world's greatest coffee at your house and you've been without it for three days, your priorities change accordingly. Never mind milk and bread; I needed Original Fat-Free Coffee-Mate. I went three places to find it too.

Our refrigerator is now home to multiple bottles of beer, wine, prosecco, strawberry yogurt and Coffee-Mate, naturally. The freezer has ice-cubes and one loner bottle of Tanqueray gin.

Home sweet home... and happy Valentine's day.

He made the world to be a grassy road before her wandering feet.

-W.B. Yeats

Throwing Like a Girl

2010-02-11T23:08:00.001-08:00

I'm a sports-enthusiast who happens to be a woman. I am thrilled when my teams win and get frustrated when they lose. I have a hard time understanding why there is such a disconnect between women and sports and I aim to help, by providing once-a-week posts on the goings-on in the world of sports. I throw like a girl.

This is a big weekend.

The Winter Olympics are upon us; "us" being the world.

The NBA All-Star game is upon us; "us" being Dallas.

Things to know about the Vancouver Olympics...

There are 15 sports in the Winter Olympics, including crowd-favorites like Freestyle Skiing and Figure Skating, but also some lesser known but still notable events like Skeleton and Curling. Skeleton sounds terrifying, racing head-first, downhill on a sled-looking contraption called a "sledge" and Curling is like an oversized game of shuffleboard.

If you find yourself watching the Olympics and are curious for more detailed information on each sport, the dates they will be aired or the athletes competing, ESPN has a thorough break-down of everything.

The All-Star Game...

The NBA All-Star game is being hosted in Dallas this weekend, and following it, an influx of 250,000 people are expected to show up. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you to prepare yourself for the fact that the All-Star game itself coincides with Valentine's Day, if in fact your are celebrating this day and if in fact the person you celebrate with happens to like basketball. I think that the Saturday events are fun to watch but the game itself depends on who is injured and who will be able to play.

Here are the basketball events:

Friday, February 12 at 7 PM ET- Celebrity Game

Friday, February 12 at 9 PM ET- Rookie Challenge

Saturday, February 13 at 8:30 PM ET- Skills Challenge, 3-Point Shootout, Slam Dunk Contest

Sunday, February 14 at 8 PM ET- NBA All-Star Game

The NBA is on the All-Star break until this weekend is over, the will resume play as normal. The trade-deadline is quickly approaching, meaning any changes that coaches want to make to their rosters have to be done by February 18. The Mavericks have had a bad streak running into this weekend, including their worst loss of the season to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend!

The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else, it has to be yours.

-Peggy Fleming, American Figure-Skater

Guinea Pigs

2010-02-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

My friends love making plans. Plans for the day, plans for the night, the weekend, trips- anything.

When we are planning to cook at one of our houses, I usually assume the role of menu-planner. Weekends especially allow me the freedom to cook as I wish and unless otherwise noted, my friends let me use them as my guinea pigs for trying new recipes.

I have chopped, diced and baked with my friends around enough to know who I'm dealing with. I know that MG, AV and I will not eat fish, CC and MK will eat most anything but CC does not like celery and MK gets nauseous around bananas. AV does not like to mix salty and sweet in the same bite, KS is allergic to red meat and chocolate (I know, so tragic), and I can tell you that KR will eat sushi but also gets goobed-out handling raw meat. I can tell you who drinks coffee and who drinks tea, who prefers white wine and who prefers red, and so on.

Two weekends ago I decided I wanted to cook fried chicken. I felt like it was one of those staples that Southern women should just know how to prepare for lunch on a Sunday afternoon after church, so that's what I did. With the help of KS, who stayed hard at work making homemade biscuits, I made fried chicken in a cast-iron skillet, how God intended. It fried and then baked for an additional length of time which made it more crunchy and delicious.

Thankfully we cooked an entire chicken for just the two of us, along with mashed potatoes and the biscuits covered in honey butter. We even listened to a nice mix of country music the entire time and wore our favorite aprons, which should really complete the vision of domesticity in your head right now.

This past weekend it was decided that we would eat over at KR and MK's place. I was set on using their grill and decided that it was as good a time as any to learn how to grill steak. My dad makes amazing food from the grill so I consulted him on a marinade and got my shopping list together.

KR helped me light the grill and after turning on the gas and the knobs, as per instructions, we still managed to create a small atomic bomb-like explosion of fire as the grill roared to life. Eyebrows were thankfully spared. KR, AV, KS, BF and I enjoyed a night in and had dips, roasted garlic on crostini, filet mignon and Gruyere-Parmesan scalloped potatoes. KS also made us Sidecars (which were a hit, thanks for my friend CT's recipe) and KR made Nutella cupcakes which completed our decadent meal.

I bought a dining table for our front room tonight (thank you, Craigslist) and plan to add some cute covered chairs with it, so you'll hear about more dinner parties soon.

Explosions will henceforth be kept to a minimum... people start talking when someone singes an eyebrow.

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

-Harriet Van Horne

Throwing Like a Girl

2010-02-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have a hard time understanding why there is such a disconnect between women and sports. Some of the best outings to me have been attending live sporting events and getting to watch players duke it out with a crowded sea of thousands roaring alongside them- the energy is infectious.

I am thrilled when my teams win and get frustrated when they lose.

I'm a sports-enthusiast who happens to be a woman.

The night of my 25th birthday I was about to leave to meet my friends for dinner and was yelling at my basketball team- heels and dress on, hair curled and all- while I watched them lose in overtime on T.V. I often check score-updates on my iPhone, I listen to sports talk-radio and I always choose one of the treadmills in front of ESPN at the gym. I'm also not a retired female coach sitting in a booth giving commentary and I'm not a swimsuit model who moonlights as a sideline reporter, who are the typical women seen in sports-news. I am not an athlete and I do not keep up with sports to please a significant other- I genuinely enjoy it.

I have actually been mulling over the idea of talking about sports on here for a while because I feel like someone needs to make sports more relatable for women. With all of the statistics and analysis provided for any game on any given day, I realize that it's challenging to even know where to begin. What I aim to do is to provide the knowledge in a relatable way so that you know what is going on in the world of sports (specifically the Dallas/Texas/Big 12 world of sports but also overall information), basics about how different games are played and who you should know about.

The thing you will have to remember is that I am a girl and I throw like one. I have never been a tomboy a day in my life, I get lost even with a GPS and I don't know a fraction of what the nearest male in your current vicinity probably knows about sports. But I still love it. I plan to keep educating myself so that I can better equip you to, for example, walk into a crowded living room during the Super Bowl and not ask: Who is winning?

Please don't do that.

So this week, we will briefly touch on the Super Bowl, in which the Indianapolis Colts will face off against the New Orleans Saints this Sunday afternoon. Wherever you go will probably have greasy food, beer and hang out around the focal point of the afternoon- that football game on T.V.

The Saints have never made it to the Super Bowl and getting this far in the season is a great accomplishment for them. The Saints went 13-3 in the regular season (pre-playoff games) led by quarterback Drew Brees, and their three losses during that time were consecutive; all at the very end. New Orleans since bounced back for a big win against the Arizona Cardinals and then beat Brett Favre and the Vikings in overtime to become the NFC Champions (National Football Conference) advance to the Super Bowl.

The Colts are looking for another Super Bowl win with their quarterback Peyton Manning, who is arguably one of the best quarterbacks of all time. They went 14-2 in the regular season with both of their losses also coming at the very end of their schedule. They defeated the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Jets in the playoffs to advance as the AFC Champions (American Football Conference) and go on to the Super Bowl.

(Side-note: the AFC and the NFC are the two conferences in the National Football League {NFL}. There are 16 teams in each conference and the teams play each other within their conference until the Super Bowl, which faces the AFC Champion against the NFC Champion. Many other sports operate under a similar system.)

I am much more familiar with the NFC because that is the conference the Dallas Cowboys fall into and therefore I have watched the Saints play more than the Colts and I have a better idea of the strength of teams they have played. That said, I also know how good Peyton Manning is, and if his team plays up to his level then I think the Colts will have a great chance to win, even if it's by a small margin. The Saints can put points on the board so I think everyone is hoping for a good game.

I'll stop there for today. Hope you learned something!

The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

-Phyllis Diller

Renaissance Blogger

2010-02-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking.

I've been thinking about this blog and the purpose of it and what I'm doing with it. I want a more defined idea of what I'm doing, even though the great thing about blogging is that it becomes whatever you want it to be.

If you have been around a while, you will have seen more pictures from weddings than you ever thought possible. You will have read about the irreplaceable people in my life, my faith, my ongoing internal long versus short-hair debate, teaching my parents how to work their iPods, running through airports, that time I gave up eating meat and my complete lack of knowledge regarding any person of the male gender.

I don't want to switch over and only start discussing a single topic, so I'm not going to. There are so many bloggers who excel at discussing one topic, but rather than focusing on one thing, I want to keep the personal, introspective level there while also trying to write more regularly on various subjects like my version of cooking, books I read; maybe talk a little wedding etiquette and whatnot. I also know that I specifically want to discuss sports on a regular basis is such a way that makes them more interesting and relevant for women.

Whaaat?

You heard me: sports. I've got some ideas; we'll see how they turn out. I don't know how successfully anyone has ever been at dabbling in a little bit of everything but it's worth trying.

I plan to invest in a digital SLR picture-taker to give more depth and detail to my photos; what I see and how I see it. I love blogs with great writing most of all but I do appreciate good photos as well.

Here's the thing: I don't view writing or blogging as a chore. I write because it feels natural to me, because I enjoy it and because thoughts, memories and ideas become more tangible when I put them into words. I have never been great about keeping a journal but for whatever reason, I've stuck with this, so I'm going to keep on sticking.

If nothing else, you can count on the quotes I post. Those definitely aren't leaving any time soon.

Elizabeth Bennet: I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women, I now wonder at your knowing any.

Mr. Darcy: Are you so severe on your own sex?

Elizabeth Bennet: I never saw such a woman. She would certainly be a fearsome thing to behold.

-Pride & Prejudice (2005 movie version. FYI the A&E version is also wonderful.)

Flew By

2010-01-29T13:12:00.000-08:00

{This is my cousin's new baby Otis- he's so glad it's Friday. Being two-weeks-old is hard work, you know.}

It looks like an entire week has passed and I posted one lame excuse for a blog post (ie. mostly pictures and few words).

This week kind of flew, but I'm glad because I need some quiet-time. And by "quiet-time" I mean concert-time. Let's hope I have a second-wind hiding up my sleeve.

Winter has returned to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, so I will have a good excuse to read and watch movies and try some new recipes. I may even run to the liquor store because I'm on a new Sidecar-drinking kick. Sounds like something served during Prohibition, doesn't it? They are delicious but I haven't attempted making one on my own.

I'll let you know how my experiments turn out- I'm considering whipping up some homemade granola and fried chicken as well. We shall see!

Happy Weekend.

There is little chance that meteorologists can solve the mysteries of weather until the gain an understanding of the mutual attraction of rain and weekends.

-Arnot Sheppard

Vegas in Pictures

2010-01-26T20:33:00.000-08:00

{That's the dress on the right- you can't really tell but there is practically a jigsaw puzzle's worth of beading on the front. I liked it. A lot.}

Vegas is a funny place. Funny and ridiculous, cheesy and entertaining. It's like people cross into the desert and see slot machines and suddenly they exchange common decency for poker chips, yard-long margaritas, tiny dresses and impossibly-high heels.

KH and I had a great time relaxing at The Mirage, where we were staying, seeing Garth Brooks at the Wynn on Friday night and the Cirque du Soleil show "O" at the Bellagio on Saturday night. It was fun to see two completely different shows and we were big fans of both.

KH is only 2.5 years younger than me, but growing up it seemed like a bigger gap because her brother and my brother are in-between us. Our moms are sisters and have similar mannerisms which we make fun of ourselves for mimicking; our dads are both hard-working, more reserved men and we have their similarly dark features (though she is ridiculously more tan than I am right now). Our personalities are very different but we have an understanding of each other and her role in my life in irreplaceable. She is the closest thing I will ever have to a sister.

It's fun.

We came, we saw, {we ate, we shopped}, we conquered.

I check the odds

And I place my bet

I pour a drink

And I pull the blind

And I wonder what I'll find

I'm leaving Las Vegas...

-Sheryl Crow, Leaving Las Vegas

Vegas Attire

2010-01-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to Las Vegas this weekend.

Hooray!

My cousin KH and I will be flying there tomorrow afternoon and will be there through Sunday evening. She is a senior in college (translation: legal) and newly single so we have some fun plans in mind, but I'm also hoping for quality time with my pillow, a visit to the spa, yoga by an infinity-pool (just seems very Vegas, right?) and some leisurely book-reading and brunching.

I am selective about the way I like to plan things and what I actually take time to plan. I like to plan outfits and menus most of all. I put things together in my head so that I don't destroy my room every morning picking out something to wear for work. I successfully make a mess anyway, mostly with the 11 pillows on my bed that end up on the floor, but that's neither here nor there.

I began my Vegas wardrobe planning earlier this week because I've been to Vegas before, but only for work. Based on my experience, work clothes and Vegas clothes may as well be opposing forces. Business professional does not overlap- in any universe- with lucite platform heels that have goldfish swimming inside of them.

I'm a pretty modest person. I'm 25 now, and a frayed denim mini-skirt circa 1998 Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't really scream "I take myself seriously" now does it? I also don't believe that modest has to translate to homely. Modest can be sexy, it's just a different kind of appeal.

When I looked at what I wanted to pack, it ended up being various forms of black, gray and white. Black blazer, black cardigan, white cardigan, gray tank, white tank, black boots, dark jeans etc. This completely works for me on a daily basis and after all, it's still January. I needed something fun, something different from my every-day staples to wear, and after taking stock of my closet a bit better, I noticed that I completely prefer color in accessories. I love a bright pink clutch, my ubiquitous blue wrap or my quilted yellow Tory Burch Reva flats. I had good choices but still wanted one new dress or piece to wear for the trip.

I started looking and most everything of color that I found was not my taste, for example the neon-orange strappy cork-wedge heels with metallic studs all over them which made me want to run in fear back to J.Crew to hide behind their ruffly cardigans and tailored City pants.

After that initial defeat of finding only offensively bright items, I remembered a dress I had spied right after Christmas. It was an unusual Phillip Lim 3.1 shift that was colorful in a striking way. I remembered wishing at the time that I had a New Year's Eve party to attend that would be worthy of such a number.

{Insert Vegas trip.}

I located said frock and ended up purchasing it, and the print reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting. It is perfectly modest-sexy; the pièce de résistance to my Vegas wardrobe.

Pictures will come- since we all know that what happens in Vegas ends up on the Internet.

Alan Garner: Can I ask you another question?
Lisa: Sure.
Alan Garner: You probably get this a lot. This isn't the real Caesar's Palace, is it?
Lisa: What do you mean?
Alan Garner: Did, umm... did Caesar live here?
Lisa: No.
Alan Garner: I didn't think so.

-The Hangover, 2009

Image found here

25: The Aftermath

2010-01-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

Turning 25 ended up being all it was cracked up to be after all.

I received an out-pouring of love and well-wishes from all over via hugs, calls, texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter, cupcakes, gifts, cards, flowers, carrier pigeons, telegrams and airplanes spelling out 'Happy Birthday' in the clouds.

You get the idea.

I ate delicious Italian food at Nonna on Saturday night with friends and went to The Grape on Sunday night with my family.

What wonderful people I have in my life.

I am not young enough to know everything.

-Oscar Wilde

{Literal} Scoreboard Victory

2010-01-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

I am a Dallas Maverick's basketball fan. There have been a lot of improvements to the program since Mark Cuban bought the team, over 10 years ago now I believe, and one good shift during this time has been the move to the American Airlines Center.

I have never met Mark Cuban, but based on everything I have heard, he is very much in the trenches making decisions for his team. He's a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy who prefers sitting next to the bench on the floor rather than in a suite, removed from the action. Before this season started he had huge new four-sided HD screens erected above the middle of the court, and there are also boards on the walls at both ends of the court that have team statistics updated throughout a game.

I was at the Maverick's game played against the L.A. Lakers on Wednesday night of this past week with my dad, and when looking up to see the points and fouls of the different players, I noticed that everything for the Maverick's was in a blue font, and everything for the Laker's was in white. In past experience, even earlier this season, the scoreboard font was all white. The white was fine to read but the blue I found impossible. It made me cross-eyed and squinty, which I'm not accustomed to experiencing unless I'm not wearing my corrective lenses. In fact, if you ever see me doing anything without glasses or contacts on, it should only be because I am sleeping because otherwise I am a total hazard.

So I mentioned my difficulty in reading the blue on the scoreboard to my dad, who was also finding issues with it, and he suggested I email Mark Cuban and give him feedback. He claimed that Mark had his email address on the team's website for the purpose of being accessible and that he likes to respond to each one.

I found the email address easily and emailed Mark the next day and informed him of my issue, to which he responded in seven minutes and let me know that the feedback he has received actually says the contrary, that people prefer the blue font. He also said that he actually agreed with me though.

He thanked me for my email, there was nothing to indicate a change being made, but I had mentioned that I would also be at the game the Friday following (two nights ago) and upon arrival I quickly noticed a difference.

This photo was taken at the game Wednesday night. Notice the blue font on the right and the white font on the left at the top of the scoreboard:

This photo was taken at the game Friday night. Notice the white- the score itself is in blue, but the names of the players and their point and foul numbers have all changed to white from the Wednesday picture:

See the difference? It's so much easier to read, and that was because of me! Little ol' me!

To be honest, I actually have no confirmation of my influence over the scoreboard change, but I'd like to think I had something to do with it. Apologies to all of my friends who are reading this and were with me upon making this discovery Friday night, or one of the other seven times I told this story this weekend.

I just like thinking my voice was heard; my email was read. And somewhere out there, someone listened to a small sports-related opinion from a woman.

It's about time.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches.

-Louis L'Amour

Twenty-Five

2010-01-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

I am 25-years-old today.

There is nothing particularly momentous about this age or any trappings that come with it, but the number means that I have lived a quarter-century of life. Yesterday I went back and read posts from my 24th and 23rd birthdays and got to remember where I was and what they were like for me.

I look at my life and where I am today and I can't help but feel incredibly fortunate. I am a blessed individual. By contrast I see the pictures and read the stories of what is going on in Haiti this week and just think that nothing I have ever experienced could compare to what those people are dealing with right now. This is my 179th post on this blog and I generally talk about myself and my life and ME, but today my heart is elsewhere.

I look around and I wonder why it is that I have countless daily luxuries and yet don't always see them as the privileges but obligations. Why is it that there are people who already live in a third-world country and who are suffering to an even greater extent because of this huge tragedy? There are many questions and prayers that could be lifted up at this time, and are, but obviously there are other immediate needs for humanitarian aid efforts in Haiti. Many of us have already heard about making financial donations, but I have also heard about the need for Red Cross blood donations, so I took a big gulp and swallowed my dislike of needles and seeing blood in general to find out where I might go to get poked. Eligibility criteria for donating blood can be found here, in case you were wondering.

I think we all can forget that even when news stories slow down following a tragedy, the aftermath remains. Just because you don't see a headline, doesn't mean that people's lives are stable again. This story will soon wane from our daily viewing but the devastation will be far from gone.

I praise God for the 25 years I have spent on earth and I pray that I can live in a way that honors and pleases Him for the next 25.

I helping God's people in Haiti is a good start.

If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.
-Betty Reese

lowercase

2010-01-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

photo

i am enjoying...

looking for old hardbacks of classics at half-price books

reading the names of paint colors in design magazines

cold weather, warm drinks and soft blankets

seeing something i like, a gift idea for someone or a recipe and actually remembering to write it down

the abundance of restaurants in dallas making refined southern food

friends collaborating to cook over the past week: taco salads and football, dinner party with homemade ribs, bacon-wrapped meatloaf on a monday

the young victoria

my new boots

inspiring words

discussing and planning what our front room will ultimately look like

a quick weekend trip i have coming up soon

the cowboys in the nfl play-offs

my quarter-century mark which is rapidly approaching

I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.

- Charles R. Swindoll

Honey, I'm Home

2010-01-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

My roommates and I have different schedules, making the time we do get to spend together restful and something we all look forward to.

KS is home at the most off times because her time is split between school and working for an interior designer in Dallas. For the first six months or so of living together, whenever MG and I returned home from work, KS was typically there. I became accustomed to returning home to lamps on in our cozy house and KS and Ruby there to greet me on the couch. She always asks how our days have been, and usually gets a cursory "fine", "good" or "it's over" from us.

We are such joys to be around, let me tell you.

Recently though, with Christmas followed by a trip to Jamaica, KS has returned to a full work schedule. This means she is working until about 7pm some nights and MG and I come home to an empty house. No lamps on, no news program on a low volume in the background, no KS and Ruby on the couch.

After coming home consecutive days to a lonely, empty house that looked much like it did when I left for work the same morning, I asked MG if it ever feels like something is missing when she comes home and finds herself alone. We laughed because we agree that KS is treated as the wife of the house and we have grown accustomed to having her there all the time, so when she's gone, we notice.

I always thought it was kind of funny when I was younger that my mom made a point to greet my dad when he came home from work. She still does it too- a hug and a kiss and dinner ready or in the works for him when he walks in the door. It seems like a simple ritual, but for him it makes coming home a welcoming experience every day.

As a working adult I now I see the value that having someone smiling at you on the opposite side of the door can have at the end of a long day. I think we all sometimes forget that enriching daily life in small ways can actually make it so much more enjoyable. You don't have to wait for grand gestures- a great opportunity lies simply in asking a question and sticking around for an answer.

"So how was your day, after all?"

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

-James M. Barrie

Fredericksburg, Texas

2010-01-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

My friends and I woke up January 1 in the year 2010 only to pack and get going for a road trip.

I'll give you three guesses of where we were going or more appropriately, for what purpose.

...

The only reason I go anywhere is for weddings, so if you guessed anything other than that, you must be new around here.

We traveled to Fredericksburg, Texas this past weekend for the wedding of our friend KK. We got there via Secret Service detail (three black Tahoes) which transported us 280 miles southwest of Dallas. We coordinated last week which was helpful because otherwise we would have ended up with about nine cars across the state for no reason at all. If you think that's ridiculous then you have no idea what we are capable of. We listened to enough country music in those 10+ car hours and spent enough time on Texas backroads to twang up our accents and convince a less-discerning ear that we grew up in tiny triple-digit population towns rather than the Dallas and suburbs of our youth.

MK, LB, KR, BF and I were all staying at a B&B for the weekend. The owners were attentive to the point of asking about food allergies and showing us the proper way to close the icebox. We used six-inch voices the entire time we were there, but we had a great time and drank all of their coffee.

So the wedding itself was planned in eight weeks. This is a tall-order on it's own, so the fact that everyone was in place and the couple were pronounced man and wife after all was said and done was nothing short of an accomplishment. While some of our friends had wedding party commitments, the rest of us got to go to dinner together Friday night. Apparently a couple owns the restaurant; the wife is Greek and the husband is Cajun and the it's in Middle of Nowhere, Texas with Zagat ratings, so you can imagine how great the food was. Our friend AH pointed out that we made it through several bread-baskets and a bottle of olive oil with gusto, and likewise we managed quite well through salads, entrees and dessert. The place was very honky-tonk burger place looking, but if you used their same menu in any big city and put white tablecloths down, no one would ever know the difference.

The B&B girls got up Saturday morning and were served breakfast by the owners, which was great, then we went and tooled around Main Street in Fredericksburg for a few hours. The church where the wedding was to take place was about 30 miles from us, in Hilda, Texas, so we were showered and dressed and had our hair did and heels on by 2:15 PM. The church was even more remote than our restaurant the night before, but we found it and parked on the side of a narrowly paved stretch of road next to the church. Amid the gravel and rugged terrain in my patent leather heels I was thinking "why didn't I consider wearing hiking boots with this BCBG dress before?" which suddenly seemed like a valid option.

KK and her fiance had already decided they would see each other before the wedding and AH, the photographer coordinated to have the wedding party out at a family friend's ranch to take pictures the afternoon before the ceremony, so when we walked up they were taking more photos and seemed to be enjoying themselves. We made our way into the church and were shown to our seats by a bevy of 8th grade boys. NS, the groom, has been their Bible Study leader for the past few years, and one of their parents drove them down to the wedding to participate. They were very uniform in their blue blazers and even though were was some confusion over the proper way to escort a lady to her seat, they managed very well for being so young.

MG had an arsenal of bobby pins with her when we were seated because she had been on hair-duty all day with various members of the wedding party. Fifteen minutes before show-time she got another call and disappeared to the parsonage-looking house next to the church where the bridal party was waiting. The ceremony went well even despite a brief moment when the pastor put his left hand on the back of the groom's head and his right hand on the back of the bride's head to pray over them, and every girl on our pew let out a collective gasp because he was bear-clawing her chignon. I mean, thank goodness for hairspray.

We returned to Fredericksburg for the reception where we were greeted with delicious food and blue margaritas. We ate dinner and had wine and of course ended up at the table next to the 8th graders. KK's uncle and his band, who play country music from the 1960's and 70's were the entertainment for the evening. The music was great but the dancing required a partner, so after joking about it amongst ourselves I actually ran into the group of boys after a trip to the bathroom. They were sitting in a semi-circle of chairs and it did not take any convincing for me to get them out of the chairs and back into the reception room after I promised that my friends and I would dance with them. After a trip down middle-school dance memory-lane, complete with sweaty palms and non-reciprocated questions, the boys parents acting as their chaperones for the evening thanked our group saying that the dance "made their week" as the boys were finding the groom to high-five him and yelling "score!" If only guys our age were so easy.

Our night ended with a detour to Dairy Queen and a Mariah Carey sing-along before the carpool dropped us off at the B&B, only we were detained for a few moments by siren lights and a very serious police officer. Turns out MG had forgotten to turn on her lights after the DQ stop, which necessitated research that most likely included her SAT score and blood type because it took about 15 minutes and resulted in only a written warning.

On the way home the next morning CC, MG and I were driving back together, taking the scenic, non-I35 route and explained to every other driver poking along on the road or barreling through blind turns with a trailer hooked up to their Dodge Ram that they needed a seminar on road etiquette. Every time we passed one of them MG accounted for their bad driving by declaring "that explains it" regardless of the driver's gender, age or nationality.

We returned home to regale KS with tales from our weekend before crashing face-first into our respective beds. No one else crashed? That was just me? I would have taken my shoes off but my shoes were actually my Ugg slippers so there was no need. I couldn't help but think that a tornado must have whirled through my room while I was gone because surely I did not throw around the contents of my closet in such a reckless fashion on Friday morning.

I probably also thought I would never dance with another 8th grader after graduating middle school.

I love thee, I love but thee

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars grow old...

-Bayard Taylor

Back in Session

2009-12-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

I did not intentionally plan it to coincide with the New Year or any resolutions, but within the past few weeks I have signed up for two classes to take which both begin in January.

Just sharpening the old noggin.

Please ignore me.

My personal training sessions run through January (which has been a great experience- lost a few pounds, got a lot stronger, got back in the gym period) but since I plan to take my physical fitness into my own hands after that, I need other interests to pursue.

The first class I signed up for is a series on The Bible: A-Z (that's what I keep calling it, it's really Genesis to Revelation I think), which will be taught at my church in Dallas and covers the story of the Bible. My Community Group and I will be taking this class together as a way to start 2010 together, learning about the Lord and continuing with purpose that which we started in 2008.

Purely for my own amusement, I have also signed up to take a continuing education course to learn calligraphy at Southern Methodist University (or SMU) here in Dallas. I like my handwriting- I'm a swirly cursive kind of girl, but I would like to learn different styles, adding a certain panache to my thank-you notes and invitations. I think it's such an interesting talent.

I like that I will be learning alongside people who want to be in the classes. I graduated college two and a half years ago, so learning is no longer obligatory but elective. I get to sit among people who desire more, beyond what they know.

I turn 25 next year (and by next year, I mean two weeks from now). One of my friends said she was ready to "wreak havoc" on 25, and I'm on board with the idea.

There is no time like the present to pursue things, people and places that interest or intrigue you. And while you're at it, buy some sparkly nail polish for New Year's Eve. I know I did!

Why the heck not?

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein

Merry {Day After} Christmas

2009-12-26T19:23:00.000-08:00

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders...

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour too.

{C.S. Lewis- Miracles}

...And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

{Isaiah 9:6}

They Know Me Too Well

2009-12-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night KS, MG and I celebrated roommate Christmas together. We had on Christmas music, we sat by the tree in our front room (complete with the PB couch, which arrived) and opened each other's gifts.

It was cute.

Anyway, sometimes I falsely assume that I notice things about other people, but they don't notice things about me. Like I have some personality shield that makes me impervious to observation. This is wrong, as evidenced by the gifts I received from both of them.

Apparently they've been watching me.

KS gave me a 2010 Kate Spade planner as well as some accessories from Anthropologie. I love both of those places and could outfit my entire life from either one, if possible. KS has a good read on style, both mine and her own, and her gift was a combination of both. Her gifts bring out my more girly side. Both of my sides are actually girly but KS appeals to the ruffles-and-bows- and-headbands-oh-my side. She also gave MG and I cute luggage tags with our first initials on them and Kiehl's hand cream. Every product KS uses smells good, feels good and makes you look good, so her beauty recommendations are heeded.

MG gave me a booklet of sticky notes for the kitchen and cookbooks, which combines so many things I love about cooking and note-making. Since adhering to the instructions and ingredients of any one recipe is apparently against my moral judgement, I will use them often. She also gave me a blue Martha Stewart ribbon box. Who could give a gift like that save for someone who knows how much you love the Martha Stewart aisle at Michael's, would recognize the fact that it is the perfect shade of robin's egg blue for your room and would have knowledge of the seemingly ridiculous quantity of ribbon you keep around?

It's been a great seven months with these two. They're the kind to which you can say "hm hm hmm hm-hm-hm" with a toothbrush in your mouth, and they'll respond back to you "yeah, let's do brunch tomorrow at 10" like it's totally normal.

Because it is.

Sweet hymns of joy in
Grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us
Praise His holy name!
-O Holy Night, words by Placide Cappeau

And To All a Good Night

2009-12-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

Remember how it was just Thanksgiving?

Yeah, me too.

I recall many years spent in eager expectation of Christmas, thinking about this time that it would never get here, whereas now I wonder how on earth it is December 20th today.

There was one year (emphasis on ONE) that my brother, cousins and I (pictured) and our cousin BG, our ring-leader (not pictured) were all under the same roof for Christmas Eve. We were all in the same room, actually, which was mistake numero uno. There was a lot of giggling, shushing and no sleeping whatsoever. We all received assignments like Flashlight Holder from BG and even after strict instructions from our parents, we still snuck downstairs at some ridiculous hour to see our presents in the living room.

This year BG is about to be a dad (in January!), my brother and I will roll downstairs at the leisurely hour of half-past whenever we wake up, but my cousins KH and BH maintain their principles of waking up in the early morning to open gifts. They are now 22 and 24-years-old, respectively. I don't know why exactly they do this, but I do recall them being beside-themselves one year when their parents sneakily turned off their alarms, causing them to sleep in heavenly peace for hours past their usual wake-up call. My poor aunt and uncle found out that spite is a beast that will unfailingly wake you up at 6am on Christmas morning.

And yes, my cousin IS wearing flip-flops in that November photo, in case anyone needed confirmation.

Lucy Van Pelt: I know how you feel about all this Christmas business, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes or something like that.

Charlie Brown: What is it you want?

Lucy Van Pelt: Real estate.

-A Charlie Brown Christmas

Moths & Cashmere

2009-12-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

I don't have any sisters, so sharing clothes was never something I did growing up. I didn't really have to share anything because as soon as I was old enough to establish dominance with the bathroom counter-space for all of my pre-teen accessories and hair products, my brother moved into the third upstairs bedroom. We would steal t-shirts from one another during college, when he took hostage my Aunt Carrie's shirt for a few years (it's from a restaurant in Rhode Island, it's soft, t-shirty perfection) but I won the war on that one.

A few months ago I wore a cardigan that belongs to KS a few times and then took it to the dry-cleaner. I don't take things to the cleaner's very often and it's always a massive heap when I do, so when I started examining everything as I was paying, I saw the condition of the sweater and thought it was ruined. I panicked, thinking that the sweater must be the most important and pivotal piece of her wardrobe, and I would need to take her to J.Crew and pick out something she would love, just not as much as the yellow cardigan I had destroyed. Upon further examination, it looked like they had washed it and had knotted it and let it dry and it was just terribly wrinkled.

I don't know how everyone else's dry-cleaner operates, but wrinkled is not typically the look I'm going for. Glad we are on the same page.

Ultimately they fixed the sweater (after three attempts) and ironed it to within an inch of its' life so as to get out the wrinkles and I was able to return it to KS with profuse apologies of tardiness and she was nice as could be. That's just how she is.

Fast-forward a few months to yesterday as I returned home from work and found a cardigan of mine that KS had borrowed was hanging in the laundry room. KS and MG had been cooking for MG's family who were coming over, and KS said "I have something to tell you about your sweater..."

I saw the look of fear and worry in her eyes, the very look I had when I thought I had ruined her sweater. Before she could continue, I said "The little holes in the sleeve? I did that while moving a mirror." She looked confused and said that she thought they happened when she had been holding her dog Sadie, how she had been wriggling and thought that she snagged the two little holes and how she had fretted over telling me for months. I told her for first thing that the sweater had been gone for a while and obviously I was okay without it, secondly that it was not her fault in the first place and thirdly that it would have been okay had that happened anyway.

I realized it was completely true- it would be one thing if things just disappeared all the time but were never returned, but that doesn't happen at our house. It makes life so easy. In both cardigan situations, we both spent a good deal of time worrying about something that would have been okay either way. I have become more of an advocate of borrowing from each other out of convenience and in that it is non-budget-threatening way to wear something new. We have nice things and take care of them, but accidents happen.

Moths also happen, apparently.

Evidently a moth found my favorite blue cashmere wrap in my closet recently and decided to have a snack, leaving two finger-poke sized holes behind. I will not be so forgiving, should I find him fluttering around my closet again.

The culprit is still at-large.

I've got to get home - Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there

Say, lend me your coat - It's up to your knees out there...

-Baby It's Cold Outside, lyrics by Frank Loesser

Wallflower Tendencies

2009-12-10T22:39:00.000-08:00

On the precipice of a busy weekend filled with parties and holiday cheer, I find myself preparing to face an inevitable evil:

Talking to people I don't know.

Oh, the horror!

I dread small talk. Or rather, I'm not good at it.

It's not as though I dislike people on the basis of not knowing them- I just get stressed and clammed up when a meeting occurs. When it comes to small talk I am an epic fail. If I don't know someone, beyond a few intro questions I run out of things to say. For someone who had a lot of random blind dates for date parties in college, you think I would have made some improvement in this area, but you would be wrong. First impressions are rarely smooth-sailing for me; they are more like a perfect storm of uncomfortableness and forced questions.

There are things I consider myself good at, such as cooking, choosing outfits, holding my own in a sports-related conversation or giving unqualified relationship advice, and then there are things I am less-inclined to, like pop-culture references, making music recommendations and talking to strangers. Those do not come naturally for me.

I am thankful that I live with MG because my social anxiety, as I have found out, is not weird. Or maybe we are just weird together, which I can also live with because MG is very funny and likes to talk about novels and eat chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. I can appreciate all of those qualities. We have been, among other things, known to avoid random acquaintances at church, disappearing with the stealth of undercover spies until the coast is clear while one of our friends like CC, for example, hugs and greets every familiar face she sees. It's torture.

It's a deceiving sort of anxiety that we have because because we function normally in society. We both willingly joined a sorority and were actively involved in other activities in college. We have many close friends and both have jobs that involve talking to people for many hours of the day. When we are home with KS, we are rarely in our rooms because we are hanging out together. KS is good influence because she is nice to everyone, could talk to a wall if you asked her too and she's a master at flirting. Flirting is advanced on the socializing ladder, in case you were wondering.

An added issue is that most everyone by their mid-20s seems to develop the habit of saying: nice to see you. It is a practiced response and many people seem to say it without much consideration to whether they have met you or not. I like believing that politeness should be genuine, not generic. It is perfectly normal for two people to have run in similar circles and never met each other before- stranger things have happened, I assure you. My social anomalies give me a heightened sense of awareness around strangers, so I usually know if I have met you before. People who actually take the time to remember make themselves memorable to those who pay attention.

There are two things I have found that make meeting people easier: first would be that they are already a friend of a friend and you are meeting them in the context of people you already know. This makes any situation more automatically more relaxed because you are with people who put you at ease.

And the second? The second would be having a few drinks and hoping for the best.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

-Robert Frost

Stockings Hung By the Sony With Care

2009-12-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have been a bit detached from the blog world the past few weeks. I don't find myself at a loss for words, it's just that not every stream on consciousness forms itself into a blog post.

My friends and acquaintances have outdone themselves with the Christmas parties this year- so much so that KS, MG and I elected to wave the white flag this December and let everyone else entertain us instead. We'll have a party when people least expect it. You just wait. Our house does have nice holiday touches throughout, though as you may have guessed our stockings are literally hanging down below our T.V. on the media console because we have no fireplace. Santa will have to ring the doorbell.

I am currently chipping away at The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The complexity of the story reminds me why the classics are the classics, and why they continually withstand the test of time. Knowing full-well that I could not read consecutive novels this engrossing, I am still enjoying it.

There is also this new application I have downloaded on my phone called Words With Friends, which is terribly addicting. It's more about strategy than actually knowing how to spell, which I'm trying to learn. I recommend it.

I cooked Italian over the weekend- first was eggplant parmesan with BF on Friday night, which MK came over and ate with us. I had honestly never tried it before, and as MK described it: it's one of those dishes that you see on a menu and you are thankful that vegetarians have it as an option, but you don't think to order it yourself. We cooked enough to feed an army and the man at the liquor store pointed us in the direction of a huge bottle of inexpensive red wine that "all of the old Italian people" buy in his store. I had no idea there were so many old Italians in Dallas, seeing as we have Mexican food on every corner, but the wine was good both in the dish and to drink, so he seemed to know what he was talking about.

The second meal was manicotti which I helped my mom with at home yesterday while my family watched football and relaxed at home. I had never made either dish before which made them interesting, and both were delicious. I find that with new recipes I am most concerned with timing- I can tell by looking at a recipe any ingredients I want to add or omit but I always read directions multiple times to get a handle on what needs to happen when.

So if anyone needs to eat this week, please let me know. Leftovers abound, though I cannot promise garlic bread because I'm fairly confident that BF, MK and I did a number on it Friday night.

After my snow report from last week I am pleased to say that the cold weather persists. I did not love it so much when our heat was out at the end of last week and MG and I had to sleep here in the 53-degree temperatures, but now that it's working again I can fully embrace the weather outside as being frightful. It must be my winter birthday doing the talking, but I do love it.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

-Victor Hugo

Crying Wolf

2009-12-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

One of the truths I hold to be self-evident as a kid born, raised and colleged in Texas is that when the local meteorologist starts talking about snow, you can't get your hopes up. You really need to get your hope down, in fact.

I cannot tell you how many mornings I woke up as a child after being lulled to sleep with promises of freezing precipitation on the news, only to wake up and find a bone-dry driveway out my window and not a flake in sight. Snow in Texas means that regular schedules cease completely. People don't know how to drive in it and we are ill-prepared for temperatures below 32 degrees.

I know better now than to dream of a day off, but if you think the possibility of an inclement weather day is not just as enticing now, as a full-time working adult, as it was when class was cancelled in elementary school, you are mistaken.

Last night the murmurings of "weather" started, but my friends and I went about our business, celebrating our friend KR's birthday unhindered by the rain and the freezing cold. This morning my mother called while I was still in bed and it was still dark outside, which would typically mean emergency because why on earth would anyone call before 7 AM? She reported that it was snowing at my parents house, 30 miles from me, and was it snowing at my house? I hopped out of bed with the enthusiasm of my younger self, only to find that no, it was raining.

I continued to get ready and did not open the blinds in my room, I was so annoyed by the false hope I had allowed myself. Keeping with my normal routine, I walked downstairs an hour later as usual, turned on the coffee machine as usual, and opened the blinds... as usual. Only then was I taken aback by the scene in the window above our kitchen sink: snow. Huge flakes of beautiful, white snow. Very few moments in life are poignant or breathtaking, but that was one of them for me- when a normal day was made surprisingly beautiful.

It was not sticking to the ground, so after walking in the backyard to be awestruck for a moment, an effect snow has always had on me, I had to leave.

Oh well, makes a normal Wednesday that much prettier...

Loralei Gilmore: The whole world changes color; flakes flurries swirls crystals. whatever form it comes in- I'll take it. We go back, snow and me, we have a beautiful history.
-Gilmore Girls

Enjoying the View

2009-11-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

One benefit of living in a room above your garage, affectionately known as the Tree House, is having a nice view of the neighborhood's changing foliage.

I think I'm the only person I know who takes pictures of flowers and trees on a regular basis.

It's cool.

I don't know how much my neighbors appreciated my creepy afternoon photo-op, but leaves don't always change color in Texas. Some years they are green one day and dead and brown the next day with the first cool front.

This year the they are putting on quite a show.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

-Walt Whitman

No Subject

2009-11-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

I have been all over the place this week. Nothing was adding up to one cohesive post, so everyone is getting a random compilation from me today.

MG emailed me yesterday to point out that we had exercised for three consecutive days, so why not keep the dream alive and go for four? Since I've actually been in a pattern of losing, rather than gaining weight (as would be typical this time of year), I was on board with the plan. Last night we (BF, KS, MG and I) went to a Pilates class. Other women were shocked at our age, after assuming we were in high school (which I took as a compliment), and after an hour of torture our instructor pointed the four of us out and said that we need to be sure and make it back next week. Something about inflexibility and inability to hold the plank position for very long... or maybe it was the pained faces we were making at each other the whole time. Not sure.

I gave myself a break last night and after we returned home from class (followed up with a stop at Chipotle, let's be honest), I watched Twilight and read some of KS's magazines while she made homemade pecan pie. She is supposed to be delivering it to a very lucky young man today but it did not escape without us sampling it. Had to.

While reading recent issues of House Beautiful and Real Simple, I realized that I really have not taken time to explore the designer haven of Etsy. I like the idea of people being able to start out small with an online storefront as opposed to investing in actual real estate. It makes starting a small business more accessible. I love that.

In my reading I found out about a similar website, Foodzie, and now my eyes have been opened to all sorts of amazing gift ideas and things to try. Who wouldn't want an assortment of cheesecakes in jars, or skillet bacon jam? There is even a tab called "Discover" which finds you geographically and tells which vendors produce things locally in relation to you.

I leave tomorrow night to go to Houston, where I plan to see a few friends, enjoy a Friday off then head to College Station, where I attended college at Texas A&M for four years. I visited once after graduating but am sad to say that I have not been back in over two years now. AV, BF and KR will be driving down on Friday, so I'll meet them there in the evening for dinner, drinks and a favorite tradition of mine: Midnight Yell Practice. I cannot wait. College Station holds great memories for me and fostered a group of friends that has continued to grow and stay close even 2 1/2 years out of college.

A near afterthought is the fact that New Moon comes out this weekend and I have friends all aflutter with the ongoing Team Edward vs. Team Jacob debate. It's very heated and there are many compelling Vanity Fair photos making the case for each.

With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.
-John Irving

The Dream

2009-11-15T21:12:00.000-08:00

Me.

Sitting at a desk by a window... {maybe with some lovely hydrangeas?}

Writing.

A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything,

should conceal it as well as she can.

-Jane Austen

Images via Delight by Design & Country Living

The Birthday Girl

2009-11-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

A privilege of living with me includes receiving birthday tributes, so let me tell you a little bit about KS, who started her next quarter-century of life today!

There are many things you will never know about someone until you live with them. I know that KS leaves her beautiful blue topaz Yurman ring in random places throughout the house, kind of like a big Where's Waldo game, but it can most often be found in the china cup in out kitchen that holds the Splenda packets. She has ninja skills like knowing how to change a tire, assembling furniture that involves the use of power tools, swatting bugs with precision and applying flawless eyeliner. KS loves YouTube- I never knew the greatness of David After the Dentist or Kittens Inspired by Kittens until living under the same roof as her.

Thank you KS, for thinking I'm funny on occasion and for asking my opinion on things like fabric samples even though you have impeccable taste. You make people laugh at the most unexpected times. You are a calming presence and I admire your ability to be frustrated without getting angry- it's very lady-like.

Thanks for baking MG and I delicious things like homemade strawberry pie and sugar cookies and for introducing me to Tanqueray gin. I can't believe I was of legal drinking age for three years before ever trying a Tom Collins.

I love that you had polka dot tea cups and curtains displayed in our house before we even had a refrigerator, microwave or washer and dryer. Your penchant for polka dots is rivaled only by your love of monograms.

I'm jealous that you get to sleep later than I do and I'm convinced that you are always trying to put me to sleep when I am in your car by playing Ray LaMontagne.

I'm glad that you both make and understand nerdy Harry Potter references.

I'm sorry that MG and I bought you a baby turtle thinking it would be a fun gift for an animal-lover such as yourself, only to find out it's illegal and could give you salmonella poisoning. Our bad.

Happy 25th, KS. I think you are just wonderful.

A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

-La Rouchefoucauld

Women at Sporting Events: An Exposé

2009-11-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a little story about what happens when you give 11 girls suite tickets to an NBA game.

My friend BF invited our friends and Bible study girls to go to the Mavericks vs. Rockets game last night. The company she works for has season tickets to many Dallas sporting events, and she was granted sole use of their suite, including 12 tickets, at this game.

Job perks? Check.

We all met up and BF and LB were driving us to the game, each with a full car of girls talking a mile a minute. Once we got close to the American Airlines Center, traffic picked up and LB lost sight of BF's car. Turns out we were in a turn-only lane complete with a wall of orange cones to enforce the right turn, while we actually needed to drive straight to get to our parking garage. Traffic, mind you, was horrendous and there were pedestrians everywhere. LB stopped before turning, rolled down her window to talk to the police officer directing traffic, smiled and asked if he could get us to the gold parking garage.

The man literally stopped traffic for her, moved cones and directed her into the middle of the intersection where he guarded her car until he could let us through and told her exactly where to park. This same officer blew his whistle at a guy jogging and told him to get back on the sidewalk while we were waiting. LB, happy and universally adorable as she is, thanked him with such praise as: You're my hero! and my personal favorite: You're a pal!

Lesson learned: never underestimate the advantages of being a woman. It is a powerful, powerful thing.

I already knew it was going to be an entertaining evening, not only for the fact that we would be in a suite at a Maverick's game, but also because what on Earth was going to happen with 11 girls left unchaperoned at a sporting event? It's almost confusing to people to see a bunch of women together to watch game. Shouldn't we have been dragged there by dads, husbands, boyfriends or dates?

How quickly you forget that girls will go anywhere that involves some level of sitting around, eating and socializing. Especially if you want to give us VIP entrance access and popcorn.

CC and her roommate AH were already exchanging fighting words over gmail- CC being a Dallas native and Mavericks fan; AH being a San Antonio native, NBA photographer and a Spurs fan. They are the greatest of friends, let me tell you, but they are both fiercely loyal and their NBA team rivalry is actually one of the only things they ever argue about. Thank goodness we weren't playing San Antonio or else I think we would have had to put them in separate camps.

The suite had two tables, one short and one tall, and eight chairs in the middle with a huge flat- screen T.V., then several stools and seats where you could sit and watch the game. I figured there would be lounging at the tables- girls hanging out and catching up without paying so much attention to the game hoopla, kind of how women typically congregate in the kitchen when you go to someones house and while guys watch the game.

Would you believe that every girl present eschewed network television to watch the game the entire time?

Believe it.

Of course we were chatting about life, guys, KK's impending wedding and there was talk of whether or not the tight-rope walker at half-time had reproductive capabilities after having so many unfortunate falls on the rope, but all in all everyone knew what was going on. KR and I even discussed possibly coordinating a double-date between she, Kris Humphries, Dirk Nowitzki and myself.

I honestly would not have guessed that 11 girls would be so into a basketball game. I would have predicted more bonding over Diet Cokes inside the suite, roaming around the club level, possibly browsing pink and white Nowitzki jerseys and leaving early. There was none of that, though KR did spy the dessert cart sometime during the third quarter. CC and I have a long-standing bond over our love for the Mavericks, so we sat together during the fourth quarter having a tête-à-tête to analyze our new players added this season, who on the team has shown improvement, etc. I even consider that to be quite normal though because we've been to so many games together over the years.

I've definitely been at sporting events before and heard girls mess up in asking which quarter/inning/set/period the game is in. For example, asking: Which quarter is it? at a baseball game. Along those lines would also be: Did we win? -or- Who are we playing again? How much time is left? Who has the ball? The kind of questions which make guys roll their eyes and wonder why they brought girls along in the first place. We had none of that- I was so proud.

It was a generous gesture of BF's employer to let us use his tickets- that's not the kind of thing we get to do every day and it was enjoyed by all parties... except for maybe the tight-rope guy.

He's still recovering.

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

-Dianne Feinstein

Earlier Every Year

2009-11-09T21:36:00.001-08:00

If you have had the slightest brush with retail since Halloween, you've seen that stores have their Christmas decorations out already. Everyone acts like it's so outrageous whilst secretly not skipping Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You when it pops up on shuffle in November.

My roommates and I ventured over to the Knox-Henderson shopping area of Dallas Sunday afternoon and watched it go from light to dark from the inside of Pottery Barn. Translation: we were there for about an hour and half with two detour visits to the Apple store by MG. KS was analyzing the sofa selection, seeing as we plan to have a Christmas party next month and still need to furnish our front room. KS is knowledgeable about furniture and knew to quiz the sales staff on how many times the covers had been pre-washed, how long each fabric grade would take to make, if the cushions could be ordered overstuffed, if the sofa came in other sizes than those on the floor, etc. I don't think I can ever make a major furniture decision without her again.

During her inspection I found new lampshades for my bedside table lamps (the ones they came with were cheap and dented) and ornaments with our initials on them for our impending Christmas tree purchase. While perusing the store I also came across bedside tables that I loved at first sight and momentarily deluded myself into thinking they would be a wise purchase. Thankfully MG was nearby affixing silver holiday bird clips onto various baskets and voice-of-reasoned me out of the purchase.

KS, while also getting her sofa questions answered by two Pottery Barn personnel, managed to find Christmas presents for both of her brothers and also something I can best describe only as bark hurricanes. Here is a picture of the candle version to give you an idea:

Time to spare at Pottery Barn is a dangerous thing indeed. MG and I inspected all of the holiday decor, she discovered little fur wine holders (I am terrible at naming Pottery Barn inventory) and I found oversized silver glass ornaments which I envisioned hanging from the ceilings with rich, red satin ribbon.

I looked at a bag of pine cones and automatically flashed forward to a month from now, thinking: Will I need these? Can I fill a glass container with them and set them on my mantle? We don't even have a fireplace, or a mantle for that matter. Where will the stockings go? How will Santa get in?

I think our prospective Christmas party might send MG fleeing for the hills after Thanksgiving. Her eyes get big and terrified each time she spots my copy of Williams Sonoma: Holiday Entertaining. I emailed the two of them last week about invitations and slid in MG's co-coaches and non-favorite people on the list just to see if I could get a laugh. Amusing, no?

It might be no accident if I slip some Peppermint Schnapps into her hot chocolate. That is, if it dips below 75 degrees long enough to warrant hot beverages at a Christmas party.

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

-Hamilton Wright Mabie

Literary Cardio

2009-11-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

While doing my requisite 45 minutes of cardio activity on the elliptical at the gym tonight, I brought a book to distract me from the repetitive motion and fluorescent lighting.

In front of the digital timer and calorie-counter I placed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel which popped onto my radar when MG said she read it in two days, she found it so enjoyable.

Short story tiny, the fictional book is comprised entirely of correspondence written between a writer, Juliet, to friends in British territories after World War II, and to a group of people she does not know personally on the island of Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of France, and the historical context of the book includes the fact that the people there were essentially cut off from outside communication and news for five years during the war.

Five whole years.

No internet.

No newspapers.

No tweets or texts.

All they had were books and each other.

Maybe I should cut myself off from communication and focus on writing with this much cleverness; anyone who can make me smile or laugh with their written words is a winner in my book. I can only hope to do the same for others one day...

From Juliet to Sophie

"Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It's a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways..."

A tuba among the flutes. I love it.

Stirring the Pots

2009-11-02T19:56:00.000-08:00

Most of what I cook is inspired by something I have had at a restaurant or someone's home.

I love to recreate dishes I have enjoyed and I search cookbooks and online recipe sources and menus for what I want. Even then I add and subtract ingredients as I see fit because I love herbs, spices and all things garlic-related. If you ask me for a recipe I'll be able to recite the ingredients but never the amounts- that's not how I operate. The exception to this would be baking, obviously, and anything my paternal grandmother made, God rest her soul, especially around this time of year for Thanksgiving. Homemade cornbread stuffing and broccoli cheese casserole are not walks in the proverbial culinary park, and I don't take liberties with her old recipes because they are sacred and already perfect.

In addition to enjoying time in the kitchen, I am also a cookbook junkie. I was at my friend LS and her husband's apartment recently and while she and other friends were whipping up chocolate peanut butter cupcakes for football-watching men-folk, I was pouring through the enviable collection of Williams-Sonoma cookbooks she received as weddings gifts.

I know you're thinking I need help but you've probably never tried truly delicious chilaquiles verdes, have you?

Anyway, in the interest of shelf space and reviewing my options, I also enjoy finding good online sources for recipes. For example, I recently discovered that the magazine Texas Monthly has a great online archive of recipes; many from Texas chefs.

One of my favorite online recipe sources for over a year now has been The Pioneer Woman's blog. KS and I made a variation of her breakfast burritos for a hungry crowd at literally four in the morning after our friend HA's wedding and the party-fatigued people were pleased.

Pioneer Woman has a huge following and just had a cookbook published, which I obviously took care of pre-ordering weeks ago from Amazon and received with glee from the hands of my postman on Saturday morning. Most of the down time I had this weekend was spent sitting on our couch with her cookbook in my lap, reading all of her hilarious commentary about her family and their life on a ranch in rural Oklahoma. I'm still deciding which recipe to try first and hoping that the Grocery Store Fairy will magically stock my kitchen with all necessary ingredients to make PW's great-looking lasagna. I'm getting over my fear of failure with recipes involving yeast and specific measurements, so hopefully I'll get to her cinnamon rolls one day soon as well.

The Pioneer Woman may never know this but she is a bit of a celebrity amongst Dallas girls my age. Something about being unfailingly funny and having a great husband and four kids; finding a sense of humor in everyday situations and loving food.

Yeah, suddenly her appeal makes perfect sense.

She probably also doesn't know that we'll be at her book-signing in Dallas next month, but if she's wondering about the 20-something clan of girls staring at her with star-struck awe and saying "you are my hero!" I can pretty much guarantee that's us.

Anyone hungry yet?

I hope you get a kick out of this book of mine. I hope it makes you smile. I hope the recipes bring you recognition, accolades, and marriage proposals. And I hope it encourages even the most harried urban cook to slow down, relish the joys of family, nature, and great food, and enjoy life.

-Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Greater Restraint

2009-10-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

I don't talk about my weakness for shopping all that much, but be advised:

I have a weakness for shopping.

This could be brushed off as: oh, all women love to shop, or my personal favorite, which is: I need this dress because I can wear it to work OR to dinner with my friends but I have finally come to the conviction that those excuses are just that- excuses. I am a materialistic human being and while more socially acceptable, it doesn't make it any better than other vices.

I am blessed in that I have no debt and actually have money saved. I trivialize my retail spending by thinking that because of the fact that I am debt-free, I'm justified in spending what is there, when in fact I would rather be in an established pattern to tithe to my church and save first. I know what I want to do, but practicing it is a different story because that means changing my habits.

I met with my dad and my family's financial advisor last week to discuss my investments, and also moving forward what would be the best way for me to save more of my income. Saving more for me will mean actually having a budget, taking a close look at where I spend my money and deciding which areas can give a bit. I say actually having a budget because up until now, I haven't actually had one. I know- ridiculous. I like to throw out the adage used by liberal arts majors everywhere of I don't do numbers, but we're talking calculator work here. Definitely something a college graduate can handle.

Oh, math. I still don't like you.

I've have budget-related discussions with friends also recently, and found that many people are still doing what I'm doing: eye-balling their expenditures vs. their income on their online statements and just trying to keep expenses in-check. I have even started emailing my friend BF for accountability with my shopping habits- telling her what I buy when I shop, when I buy it and how much it cost. For every $100 I spend, I also have to get rid of two articles of clothing from one of my closets*. She actually called me the other day as I was departing the Anthropologie dressing room (impeccable timing) and as I confessed where she was, she replied with "this is your conscience speaking, it's time to leave."

My bank actually breaks down my monthly spending into categories online. This is great but also alarming, and as I start digging deeper into my spending and keep going into months further back I have been disappointed at how much money I spent on retail while I was living at home with my parents through May of this year. Money that could have been invested or saved for spending on more furniture for my house in Dallas. I was gchatting with KR regarding this and we were wondering how much of a disaster unchecked spending creates when women get married and have never been told "no."

I am thankful that I have much more of an awareness of spending now than I did this time two years ago, when I was fresh out of college and my parents paid for everything. It sounds elementary, but you don't understand the satisfaction and independence of financial freedom until it's actually yours. Granted, instant gratification would tell you to buy the new boots now because retirement is not any time soon, but given a bit of perspective and some financial goals, I can now more easily walk away.

{If this were a talk show, you would clap now.}

It would be bold of me to claim that Neiman Marcus and J.Crew are dead to me, but avoiding them does leave more zeroes in my bank account. I refuse to be a slave to money- a paycheck is just a means to live a life, not perpetuate a lifestyle.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

-Winston Churchill

*I have a full closet at my house in Dallas and additionally one in my room at my parents' house. I know, it's shameful.

Weekend in Photos

2009-10-25T20:46:00.001-07:00

Lily!

Hometown football game.

RM's mom has her own box... we stayed for exactly half-time and one quarter.

Saturday DIY project: MG making a headboard.

Fetch with Ruby and her sidekick Murray.

Drilling is more glamourous when you wear Uggs.

Tennis ball.

Close monitoring... I was so helpful.

Chicken pot pie- homemade, of course.

Sharing.

I recommend you take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.

-Earl of Chesterfield

Bundle of Joy

2009-10-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

My friend EL and her husband had a baby at the end of September, Lily. She told me yesterday that she was in town with the baby, staying at her parents' house, and since I was going to the suburbs to have dinner with my family for my mother's birthday I asked if I could stop by and meet the little one.

I called when I left dinner and she told me Lily was asleep and to come over. EL has twin siblings still in high school, and one of their friends was on the couch, holding the sleeping munchkin. She passed her over to me and I took her with the same carefulness I give my cup of coffee while walking to my car every morning, so as not to wake her up.

She stayed in my arms for quite a while and I talked to her closed eyelids about how much she looks like her daddy and played with her tiny hands which EL told me she likes to ball up at or around her face while she sleeps. I told EL that my dad always reminds me I would roll my wrists and ankles around as a baby as well as sleep with my arms above my head, and I still do both of those things as a 24-year-old.

Lily started getting squirmy and crying which immediately made me think I had done something wrong, but EL was unfazed, saying she was just hungry. She took her into her family's study and we sat and talked while the baby nursed for a half hour. I asked her a hundred questions about her labor and contractions and how much she's sleeping, if nursing hurts, how often you have to do it, how strange it is for someone to need you constantly, etc. Her answers confirmed that there is so much I don't know about pregnancy or babies, but even more so that things completely vary case-by-case.

It was a surreal experience to be in the room with her last night because we would sit around and talk in the same fashion when we were roommates our freshman year of college... only then it was on our twin beds with coordinating comforters. She was so calm; very much herself, just tired and with bigger boobs. (Crass and off-topic, but it's true!) EL's own mother is very calm even with four kids and she seems like she will be the same way. Lily sleeps fine on her own during the day but apparently likes to sleep on the stomach of a family member at night with her legs hiked up like a frog... a seven-pound, three-week-old frog.

Pretty stinking adorable.

I might just visit her again tomorrow to get a picture.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
-Leo J. Burke

Weekend Update

2009-10-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

I got my car back! Good as new. Literally, I mean new- I have had to reprogram all of the settings because apparently they had to take the battery out during the repairs, which resets everything. You know what's on 89.7 FM? Absolutely nothing.

I joined a flag-football team. Should be interesting and muddy, considering it will not stop raining or misting in Dallas for longer than 24 hours. I told my trainer about my new recreational adventure and being a former football player himself, he's super pumped and wants to get me in "football shape," which is frightening.

I got my chair from Crate & Barrel on Friday. Finally. I ordered the thing in July. I was concerned about the delivery people being able to get it into my room since I have the added complication of stairs, but I double-checked the chair's measurements and figured they would just have to pivot a bit. I Googled "standard doorway dimensions" on Thursday and found that people use ridiculous measurements like millimeters when describing doorways. Seriously? Save the millimeters for chemists who measure the convex meniscuses on lab-beakers. I don't have time for you and your tiny units, Wikianswers, give me feet and inches.

Diet drinks are back in my life. I think I needed a detox because for a while there I had Diet Sunkist at home and was averaging two a day. It's amazing my teeth aren't orange. I'm not drinking them everyday, but if I feel like it, I will. KR put it well when she said via gchat one day: "I don't do drugs, I'm not promiscuous... give me this." Amen.

I went to church by myself this morning and it was lovely. The sermon was on how people, us, we were made in the image of God. Our very worth is derived from this fact, and because of this every life has intrinsic value. How you treat/view/love others is inseparable from the way you treat/view/love God.

For probably over a year now some of my friends and I have talked about starting a book club. EM got on the ball and emailed a few of us to see if we would be interested, we selected a book, date and time and decided to go with it. The day was about a month ago and it came and went with no book club, but tonight we're actually meeting to discuss our first selection, The Friday Night Knitting Club. I liked it- it was not my favorite book of all-time, but it was a good read.

I think that's an important concept to learn; that not every book you read will become a favorite, but you can still enjoy it for what it is. Non-fiction, for example, is not typically a favorite of mine, but I still read it and find it interesting and informative.

To top off this random and unrelated post, MG just walked out the door to have dinner with her family and reminded me firstly that there is raw chicken in the sink and Ruby is home and secondly that there is a candle burning in the foyer, so if the house catches on fire it likely derived from said source.

Hope everyone enjoys what's left of their weekend!

It's a scary thing, when a person you admire is suddenly revealed to be absolutely, truly human."

-Kate Jacobs, The Friday Night Knitting Club

Wedding Photos

2009-10-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

Here are a few of the pictures I took Saturday night... Enjoy!

You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine...

-Frank Sinatra, Best Is Yet To Come

Half and Half

2009-10-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

Half of this weekend was incredibly fun.

People started flying into Dallas late last week and KS and I decided to have our friends not in the wedding party over for dinner Friday night.

Opportunity to be hostesses? Seized.

After work that evening I prepped ingredients for salad and the pizzas we would be baking while KS nailed prints onto the wall of our small foyer and arranged a table with flowers and lovely, house-warming things. The new Michael Buble CD was bumping from the iPod dock and we were hardly speaking; the girl equivalent of being "in the zone".

KS arranged the Waterford glasses (I know, yes we have Waterford) in perfect bowling-pin formation as some of our friends began to arrive. KB, BF, JP, HR, AV and KR all came over and we enjoyed a ridiculously fun night which mainly consisted of wine refills and a spotlight on HR and JP, who entertained everyone the whole evening.

Our friends in the wedding party who were staying over at our house: AR and LB, came home with MG and also with the bride herself, HA, who was cool as a cucumber and not nervous or anxious in the least about her impending wedding the next day.

Everyone went their separate ways for the evening, and Saturday morning MG, AR and LB left for breakfast with the bride while KS and I laid on our couches drinking coffee, eating Multi-Grain Cheerios and watching College Gameday on ESPN. I was content to stay there indefinitely, until KS got a phone call from EM in Ft. Worth, reporting a sale at Neiman Marcus.

It was a false alarm, not what we were expecting, but we were there in minutes and KS consulted with her favorite Neiman's sales lady only to find out that the sale we are looking for is actually in November. We made the best of it, since we were already at the mall, and spent a solid hour looking at every single item in Anthroplogie. It was productive; dresses were purchased.

My afternoon centered mostly around picking up CC from the airport. I checked her ETA via the FlightTrack app on my iPhone (very helpful) and found that her flight was about 20 minutes late. I panicked for a moment when I realized I was an idiot and had failed to put a book in my purse for such an emergency, but thankfully I had my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in my backseat, so I was content.

CC texted me when she landed and flew threw the doors of Gate B20 minutes later wearing a dress and heels from wedding numero uno, which had been in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had her bridesmaid dress for wedding two in my backseat, and in true Katherine Heigl fashion she climbed in the backseat to transform for her next appearance, talking a mile a minute about the wedding in Little Rock (her cousin's) and asking about HA and how she was doing. Luckily CC's roommate was also one of the photographers for the wedding, so she was safe and miraculously pulled off her two weddings in two states stunt.

The wedding was beautiful- MG showed KS and I HA's bridal portraits a few weeks ago and we chose about 18 of them as favorites because she is gorgeous. Her sisters, also, look like they could be the spawn of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

The reception was a blast- there were somewhere in the ballpark of 400 people and somewhere in the ballpark of 400 bottles of wine and beer consumed. Just throwing those numbers out as a rough estimate. If it's any indication, at the end of the evening everyone was yelling "one more song" at the DJ until he played "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus. You may scoff but the crowd was loving it.

After the bride and groom left, everyone in our age bracket at the wedding moved the party over to Knox Street Pub, where dancing continued until the bar closed at 2 AM. Beyond that, some of the crowd came over to our house where KS and I made everyone potato egg and cheese breakfast tacos and everyone watched SportsCenter until 4 AM.

Seriously- the hostess gene does not turn off.

I set my alarm to wake up for brunch on Sunday morning and felt like an anvil fell on my head. It was pretty much downhill from there... and that was the other half of my weekend. Another story for another time.

Pictures tomorrow.

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

-Robert Heinlein

Grand Finale

2009-10-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

We'll keep this short and sweet because it's Friday, it's 55 degrees and there are no fewer than four bridesmaid's dresses circulating in and out of my house this weekend.

The final wedding I will attend in 2009 is tomorrow. My friend HA is getting married in Dallas and as usual, our college pals are flying in from their various corners of the U.S. to be here. She and her fiance are the same age, had overlapping groups of friends and have been dating since college, so this will be quite reminiscent of a sorority date party.

New friends, old lovers... old friends, new lovers... me driving to the airport to pick up CC tomorrow, who is attending two weddings in two states on the same day...

Should be interesting!

Jane: You write the most beautiful things. Do you actually believe in love and marriage and just pretend to be a cynic or are you actually a cynic who knows how to spin romantic crap for girls like me?
Kevin: I didn't follow that at all, but I think the second one, the spinning crap one.
-27 Dresses

A different kind of foodie

2009-10-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

My experience with Labrador retrievers was nearly non-existent until I started living with one.

My parents have a dog, Lucy, a 12-year-old Bichon who has been mistaken for a baby sheep by small children and Australian Shepherds in her lifetime. She's small and cotton ball-looking and not Lab-like at all.

I've mentioned before my roommate MG's black lab named Ruby who lives with us. Ruby is a two-year-old trained guide dog and she's great to have around. She is extremely active and likes to give subtle hints like "hey let's play fetch" by dropping a tennis ball into the refrigerator drawer when you're unloading groceries. She will carry newspapers, tennis shoes and even logs for firewood for you.

She also loves people food.

We have come home various times to find loaves of bread demolished, empty bags of tortilla chips and torn-open bags of powdered, white, brown and raw sugar. Anything left on the counter is fair game, but she can also get into some of the cabinets. One day she feasted on a pound of chocolate toffee, which was wrapped with a bow in a brown box, and there was also a bag of grape tomatoes squished and scattered throughout the downstairs area of our house. She likes rifling through the contents of the trash can from time to time too. She learned everything from her predecessor Belle, RIP, who was known to hide food throughout MG's family's house and once ate a squirrel whole while on a walk.

You heard me right- we're talking tail and all.

Last Friday morning I came downstairs to make coffee and found a new box of raw sugar sitting on the counter, unopened. I looked for the box I had already been using all week but it was nowhere to be found. Not up for mind games at 8 AM, I opened the new sugar and went about my day.

We spent the weekend at MG's family's lake house, and she realized she hadn't told me about the most recent sugar incident. Turns out, Ruby ate my raw sugar, a box of yellow packets of Splenda with fiber (yeah I know, fiber) and also managed to get some caramel rice cakes by opening the cabinet under our kitchen sink and pulling them out of a drawer with a small opening into the cabinet. I started calling her MacGyver after that.

Did I forget to mention that she ate a whole bag of Goldfish, a PBJ sandwich and a carton of yogurt while MG left her in her car while running an errand one morning? She also ate an entire bulk-sized bag of Frosted Mini Wheats cereal yesterday.

I learned at the lake that she's also a huge fan of swimming, seeing as she would drop a stick into the lake and launch into a full-speed belly-flop after it to get it. Her parents have another black lab puppy named Murray, who enjoyed waiting for Ruby to fetch the stick so that she could wrestle it away once she got back to the dock.

We also had a chocolate lab puppy, Sawyer, come to stay with us a few weekends ago while her owners were away for a weekend. Ruby was annoyed for a solid 48 hours and Sawyer gave my little basil plant a run for its money:

It now looks more like something in league with Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

(This is actually Sawyer's sister Kenna, who belongs to a couple we know, but they look like twins so you get the idea.)

MG has taken some preventative measures and Ruby now has a shock-collar which works remotely, so we may or may not set her up for failure in the form of Halloween candy to deter her sneaky tendencies.

Can you really blame this little face for anything though?

"A dog has no use for fancy cars, big homes, or designer clothes. A water log stick will do just fine. A dog doesn't care if your rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb. Give him your heart and he'll give you his. How many people can you say that about? How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?"
- Josh Grogan, Marley & Me

Substance

2009-10-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

Like clockwork, I found that it had been eight weeks and I was scheduled for another hair trim yesterday. I also had Community Group so clearly I was stretching it with a two-commitment evening and a rental car with no GPS.

I should really get out more...

Or not, since I'm driving a rental car sans-rental insurance.

While robed, checking Twitter and waiting for my appointment I realized I was the only brunette getting my hair done and found myself vastly outnumbered by Dallas Blondes. It was like being stuck in Austin Powers with a room full of femme bots- only I was in the Park Cities and there were women everywhere with frozen expressions, staring into mirrors or at magazines with foil all up in their hair. Someone needs to study the effects of peroxide fumes on the brain, no?

I left to go to KR and MK's place for Community Group, and it ended up being only MK, MG, CC and myself. With the majority of the group unable to attend this week, we sat around to chat, eat grapes and sample various flavors of Braum's ice-cream. Peanut butter and Snickers? Surprisingly good.

Conversation floated and I noticed that MG was making a list in her journal; creative writing courses, calligraphy class, living in Spain, teaching English in Latin America... Just things that had been on her mind making their way to paper. We discussed continuing education, classes we would consider taking and how we just miss talking about books and literary things.

Hi, welcome to life with English nerds. Non-stop fun.

We talked about ideas for the future, in a hopeful but directional sense. I see now that graduating college and working full time puts you in a position to realize your talents and what you really care about. And while my friends have goals and dreams aplenty among us, I don't see many examples in my own life of people looking simply to climb the corporate ladder or take a job simply to make more money. This manifests itself differently depending on the person but on some level we all want our work to have meaning and purpose.

I don't mean to paint my friends as pipe-smoking philosophers because that's not the case at all, but I do find refreshing the fact that our conversations have substance. Not gossip or idle chatter but rather honest questions and genuine interest in each other's lives.

We are women and I think that makes us dreamers by nature, but I also like seeing appreciation and "carpe diem" for the now...

The peanut butter and Snicker's ice-cream doesn't hurt anything, either.

Why do so many...settle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.

-Jack Gilbert

140

2009-09-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

I got bored.

That's not true, blogging is still my one true love. Or something like that. Just trying something new for a change...

If you have Twitter, please leave me the link to your page in the comments!

Sorry I've been MIA... will return tomorrow!

"We were on a break!"

-Ross Gellar, Friends

Commuter Woes

2009-09-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Things accomplished today; Wednesday, September 23, 2009:

- TV man came to our house and mounted TVs in KS's room as well as mine. Check.

- Crate & Barrel bumped up the delivery of the chair I ordered eons ago to two weeks from now instead of another month. Check.

- Got in a car accident. Check.

- Missed training appointment because of accident. Check.

- Medicated by going to the gym with MG and subsequently ordered pizza, drank wine and watched the new episode of Glee. Check.

So yeah, productive day. Except for the whole fender bender situation. I won't rehash the whole thing because I will only get annoyed with myself and other people for not paying well-enough attention on a crowded highway to avoid it. "Sometimes these things happen," my mother reminded me one of the six times I called my parents within an hour of the accident, "you can replace cars, you can't replace people." Though she may have spoken a bit soon, considering that I am 24 and clearly still a liability.

I dragged myself home and retold the story to KS, who was getting ready for a date and MG, who was on her way out to go to the gym. KS offered for she and her date to stay and hang out with me until MG returned, which was sweet because she was concerned about leaving me alone after my rush hour trauma, but I assured her that there was no need to put me on suicide watch. I threw on gym clothes, admired my newly mounted TV for a hot minute and left with MG.

We ran a few other errands, including a trip to CVS where we purchased superfluous drinks with electrolytes in them and MG bought pencil sharpeners for her students who apparently broke hers with their ardent sharpening habits. Kids these days.

We watched Glee, which I would highly recommend if you're looking for another TV show to get addicted to, took showers and I called my parents again to get some things organized for my morning tomorrow. I got the name and number for my car insurance representative and also looked up the hours for the service department at my dealership. I took a gander at an accident reporting sheet on their website and there was actually a box on the page where it asked you to draw a sketch of what happened. Pass.

To be really Suzie Organized I got out my cute leopard agenda which has impressive space for things other than calendar days, and I found the Important Phone Numbers section. I was baffled to find that opening right-hand page of this section included places for restaurants, salons/spas, health clubs, cleaning services, garbage pickup, recycling pickup, lawn service and snow removal. Even "decorator" made it in before insurance information or even more importantly, medical information. Is the number for the recycling service seriously that important? How many months out of the year is snow removal really a pressing issue?

This is all rhetorical, of course. You wouldn't want someone who seriously debated which is better: G2 Gatorade or 10-calorie Vitamin Water long enough to fog up the freezer windows at CVS to prioritize the Important Phone Numbers in your agenda either.

"The car goes where the eyes go. It is true, my young friend. It is very, very true."

-The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

Thanks Eve

2009-09-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

I have discussed before my Community Group; a Bible study of girls my age that meets every Thursday night. I love it- it's a great opportunity both to learn about God and about my friends who share that time.

We did fun, social things over the summer since the teachers who get summers off were in and out on vacation, then met a few weeks ago to get back into a routine with the fall approaching and everyone back in school mode. I may not be in school, but I like when everyone settles back down, sharpens a few #2's and restores sanity to my mind so that I don't pop a blood vessel thinking about how everyone is having the time of their life while I'm at work.

That's a big fear of mine: missing out on fun.

So Thursday night rolled around last week (which was not spent blogging, I know) and as our friends dragged themselves into our house, we fed them semi-stale kettle corn and got into our discussion. Anyone who works or goes to school knows that Thursdays are a conundrum. You are happy that the week's almost over but completely exhausted from all of the working and the waking up early; you're happy to see your friends but your eyes are only half-open.

We all recognize this delirium and abate it as best we can during our hour and a half window of Community Group. This past Thursday we were in our discussion of the first chapter of Luke, one of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible, and we got to talking about Mary, who found out she would become pregnant with Jesus, and Zecheriah's wife Elizabeth when she found out after a lifetime of infertility woes that she too would have a child.

Elizabeth went into seclusion during her pregnancy, which segued into how awesome it would be to sit around for months and watch movies and read books while pregnant (unlike women today who work full-time until their water breaks). Since none of us can relate to pregnancy, we then detoured into talking about how women in Biblical times who were "incapacitated" could spend that week out of every month chilling out in the red tent. A better explanation might be that the red tent predated Midol.

What brilliance, we thought, to just let women go hang out together, be hormonal and eat chocolate in peace (or cocoa beans, as someone pointed out that Hershey's was not yet in business). And let's be honest; the ability to have a baby is an amazing gift, but it is a privilege that your body prepares for and recovers from for most of your life.

People paint the red tent to seem like women were shunned back in those days and had to hide out, but we thought it sounded kind of awesome... no complaining to the outside world that your abdomen is staging a coup on your body and affecting your ability to rationalize, no having to say "it's nothing" when someone male asks you why you are in a bad mood and/or crying. Throw in masseuses and central air conditioning and I think we could sell a lot of people on the idea.

Now to convince the outside world we need 4-5 days off every month... we'll have to discuss that at a later meeting.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-Gloria Steinem

Without an Umbrella

2009-09-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

I was in four different states over the weekend: Texas, New Jersey, New York and Arkansas.

The weather was identical in all four locations; a slight coolness in the air and unrelenting rain. I packed poorly, seeing as this meant my favorite jeans were in various states of soaking wet for much of the weekend.

The last leg of the trip; Little Rock, Arkansas, was not a part of the original itinerary (see: weather and technical difficulties) but I made it home today and now find that it is 11:30 PM and tomorrow is indeed Monday.

I couldn't resist, I had to stay up and watch the crazies on the MTV Video Music Awards with my friends. Three words: totally worth it. Or just two: Lady Gaga.

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.

-Unknown

Trust the Expert

2009-09-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

MG came home from school yesterday, debating whether or not she should wash her hair and start all over with the getting-ready process for a date her Aunt set her up on for last night.

KS and I both responded that no, she didn't need to do that because her hair still looked good. KS also pointed out that she shouldn't look like she's trying too hard; look good but not too good, an understandable philosophy but one that confused us. When KS is the one going on a date, she's always dressed to the nines.

KS is our resident guru, mind you, concerning all things Male since they may as well be aliens as far as MG and I know. KS seems to understand them a bit better, on a non-extraterrestrial level.

Without missing a beat or looking up from her laptop, KS pointed a finger in the air and said:

Do as I say, not as I do.

Touché, my friend. Case. Closed.

In Charge

2009-09-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

My friend CC is currently "babysitting" a kid for nearly two weeks while his parents are out of town.

By "kid" I mean 17-year-old high schooler, and by "babysitting" I mean she's making sure he keeps a normal routine and doesn't throw any raves, stay up all night playing Guitar Hero or eat McDonald's for every meal.

Or maybe just the part about the rave-prevention.

I'll be honest, it sounded at first like a super-easy gig. First of all, the kid has a car and can drive himself everywhere, and secondly, I would much rather look after a teenage boy than deal with all the crazy that comes with a teenage girl. CC is getting paid to live in someone's lovely Park Cities home and make sure Sam (we'll call him Sam) stays in one piece. The kid's family and CC's family are good friends, so for all intents and purposes, it's in his best interest to behave. CC is not a mom, but she's one of those people who you just know will be a great parent one day. Completely ideal for this situation.

My family and I flew back from Austin on Sunday morning and CC and I decided to meet for church and go to dinner Sunday evening. KS joined us, and we ended up back at our house with CC, discussing the "sex talk" sermon we had received at church. We had rolled our eyes a little bit at the beginning, but of course if someone mentions sex in church, people listen. (I'm sure you can find it online or on iTunes. If anyone is interested I'll send you more information... it was actually pretty good.)

So while CC and I were discussing some high points of the sermon with KS, CC's phone was going off every few minutes with a new text. She attributed this popularity to Sam, saying that she quickly learned Sam was non-responsive to phone calls, but that texts she sent would be answered promptly.

Sam, she said, was asking permission to see a late showing of District 9. She hesitated because she knew that his friends had recently gotten in trouble while under the guise of going to a movie, though he had not been involved. While she was debating, I checked the times for the movie on my phone and confirmed that there was indeed a showing for that movie at the time he claimed. It was one of those "he hasn't given me a reason not to trust him" moments.

We then checked the length of the film to get an idea of what time he would be arriving home. Parents have to be so thorough these days, you know.

She already had other funny stories from the weekend; she had the inside scoop that he had already asked a girl to Homecoming (the end-all be-all social event for Texas high-schoolers), but was going to play dumb so that she could ask him about it. Such a Mom move. CC, KS and I all have younger brothers, so we are familiar with such tactics.

CC, being a very planny-person, said she had texted Sam to let him know her plans for the day around lunch time, and asked what he would be doing for the remainder of the day. She said that asking a teenage boy his plans beyond the hour was akin to requesting an outline of his five-year plan.

It's almost unbelievable what you can learn about being a mother in a single weekend, and it's probably more entertaining when you haven't had to deal with their antics for 17 years.

And who has a five-year plan these days, anyway?

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
-Mark Twain

Let the Games Begin

2009-09-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

It would be an outright insult to my upbringing and to the entire state of Texas if I did not discuss the beginning of college football season this week.

Ambitiously, I hope to make it to three of A&M's football games; one will be played at the new Cowboy's stadium in Dallas in October, one is the requisite Thanksgiving game against UT which others in my family also attend, and then spend a weekend in Houston and catch another. It's been far too long since I've been to College Station, undoubtedly because of my family and all their trickery.

Yep, with the advent of football season flares the family rivalry, one in which I am vastly outnumbered.

This weekend I will be attending a college football game, oh yes, but it will not be my Alma Mater's game. You see while A&M is playing New Mexico, I'll be in Austin with my family for the UT vs. Louisiana-Monroe game, 120 miles away.

The sunny weather, the hanging out with family and friends who will be in town, the good Mexican food... poor me. Truth be told, I always enjoy Austin and there's nothing better than the opening weekend of college football season.

I don't know what exactly it is about football particularly. In Texas we build shrines to the sport; stadiums that hold upwards of 90,000+ fans on a single day. Maybe the excitement stems from the fact that a football team's schedule is concentrated; teams play only a handful of games and thus every one could potentially make or break a season, unlike in baseball or basketball where upwards of 80 or 100 games are played before the post-season. Maybe there is a buzz because football season coincides with the beginning of a new school year. It could be the tailgating, your team's fight song or a myriad of other things. Football season just comes with an energy that is wonderfully infectious.

Students really don't know how good you have it until you leave college, leave your season tickets and friends and figure out that no, TV stations in New York do not regularly broadcast Big 12 games into your tiny apartment and no, you cannot go to a game a certain weekend with friends because you are traveling for work.

For those of us who have graduated college already, it gives us the opportunity to reminisce for a few hours, to relive the glory days when committed time did not extend beyond 15-18 hours a week, friends became family and studying could wait.

Wherever you are this holiday weekend, be it Austin, College Station or hunched over your iPhone checking scores from an ill-timed wedding, happy football season to all!

Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it's much more serious than that.
-Bill Shankly

"i'm now a blog addict... thanks a lot"

2009-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

... That was the subject line of an email sent to me by KS with the links to a few new blogs she wanted to recommend. She was about four feet to my right at the time, as we sat on couches in the same room. Sometimes we even gchat while under the same roof, which, if you're wondering, is completely normal.

KS is in interior design school. She has a huge drafting board that fits perfectly in the landscape of our even more huge front room and always has scrolls of very thin white paper surrounding her, right next to Ruby (MG's lab) who will prop her chin up on the window and lounge under the desk to keep her company while she measures, draws, erases, reads and draws again. She also has subscriptions to most every design magazine you can imagine.

Being a blog lover and still in need of some decor throughout our little house, I started looking through design blogs a few weeks ago. As evidenced by KS's email, she now joins me in this new search, and even though I started sending them her way initially, she now reads even more of them than I do.

My favorite design blogs are full of pictures, blips of creativity and color in an otherwise text-filled day. Some of them even incorporate clothing, shoes and jewelry inspired by a similar design, which I personally love. Since I know nothing of professional design and my creativity usually comes more in the form of words or meddling around in the kitchen, I look to places like these for inspiration:

Delight by Design
Pink Wallpaper
Absolutely Beautiful Things
Annechovie

A girl can dream.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for.

-Georgia O'Keeffe

Summer of My (Joyous) Discontent

2009-08-31T21:28:00.000-07:00

This being the 31st, I am gladly waving good-bye to August and to summer. It's not that I haven't enjoyed my summer at all, it's just felt like more of a transitional time to me the past several years because summer has always been when I move or relocate. Summer has felt restless.

End of summer also signals the significant slow-down of wedding season.

Emailing my RSVP for SR's wedding rehearsal dinner a few weeks ago, I tried to word it to sound non- depressing, but somewhere in the short email I had to convey that I would not be opting for the "and guest" portion of my invitation.

"I won't be bringing a date- it's just me!"

Never has there been a less enthusiastic use of an exclamation point.

I doubt that I will ever bring a date to a wedding, unless: a.) it's someone I am actually dating and comfortable with asking that of him and I'm positive that it does not coincide with an important sporting event, or b.) in finding that I am the only one of my friends not in a relationship and seriously need a plus one. Luckily, I don't have to worry about that yet.

Operative word being yet.

As a result of my friends marrying loving and wonderful guys, I find it hard not to look around at the increasing number of husbands showing up to social events with my friends (their wives), and hear myself think: "I want one too!"

Part of me loves this stage of my life. I like the freedom I enjoy with my schedule and my budget (or lack thereof). I am figuring out the real world for myself. I got to live in New York, I work with good people, I live near my family, I have hilarious roommates in a cute little rental house with a dog who LOVES IT when one of us walks in the door and I am in a Community Group with new and old friends who encourage me in my faith. Life is great.

And yet.

And yet marriage seems to be where real adult life happens. Sometimes, as a Single, you feel like you are still in your track suit, warming up for a big race; stretching your quads and doing jumping jacks in your Adidas gear while others were somehow afforded an inexplicable head-start. Marriage grounds people, makes them more established with the house thing, the kid thing, the 30-isn't-actually-that-far-away thing in general. And you know what the great part is? They get to do all of it with the person they love most in the world.

I look at my married friends and I'm envious of the pair; the team dynamic. I'm not delusional enough to think that marriage is all love letters and weekend getaways- I know that you have to work for what you have and that, like anything else, you have good days and not so good days. The better and the worse.

I feel like it's normal to want that, right? Something in me is annoyed with myself for admitting it, because I'm at a place in life where dating someone you actually like, who actually likes you back is an audacious enough aspiration in itself; making marriage seem distant, unattainable and something everyone else gets to do.

And yet.

And yet in the midst of feeling discontented, I try to look at what God could be teaching me through this. Patience? Peace? Gentleness? Joy? Joy has taken on a new meaning to me because I spent a great deal of my discontented summer searching for it constantly. Joy is not found in perfectionism. Joy is not found in things. Joy IS found when spending time with my family, realizing for the thousandth time that I could not possibly ask for better friends, focusing on the things I do well and finding satisfaction in my relationship with God as opposed to seeking it in a relationship with another person.

At the end of the day, I know that I often forget I am a mere 24-years-old, a whippersnapper by most calculations, and I'll probably look back on this phase of my life and realize that I didn't always appreciate it enough for what it was. After work today I got to go to the gym without needing to be home at a certain time, I cooked a late dinner; a new recipe I had been eyeing, I got to sample all four of the different flavors of sherbet that MG brought home and then finished my second novel of the week undisturbed on the couch. Everything was at my leisure; my whim. I feel certain that many moms of toddlers would have killed for a night like mine.

Watching friends get married makes you realize that from now on, timing is not the same. Whereas everything was on the same clock for the first 22 years of life, it doesn't work that way any more, but it's actually okay. You embrace it. It's just important to see that there's also nothing holding you back. Not marital status, not a job or school or geographical location or anything else.

Nothing is holding me back, either.

Scatter joy.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brick Wall

2009-08-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Too much "going" and not enough slowing down.

It started Wednesday, with a scratchy throat. I thought I was just thirsty, so I kept drinking water all day to ease the pain. Yesterday evening, my nose started getting stopped up. I can still smell, I can still taste food and I haven't started coughing, so to me that means I'm still functioning.

Today, I'm just tired. I called my mom this morning and told her my symptoms- I'll be visiting my family this evening for dinner and staying the night while both of my roommates are out of town. Sometimes it's nice to just stay at home- you get rest, food and pity in the same place.

It seems like this always happens. I go and go and go and the minute everything slows down my body decides to relinquish responsibility for my health, citing lack of sleep (too many good books read late into weeknight hours) and too much fun-having (weekend trips, weddings, the lake, etc.) as reasons for slowing me down. Let's not forget that I work full-time in the middle of everything else.

Seems as though I finally hit this season's brick wall.

There's lots of people who spend so much time watching their health, they haven't got time to enjoy it.
-Josh Billings