yesterday rules!

i currently have, in my grubby little hands, a brand spankin' new macbook to call my very own. we weren't going to order it until monday, but last night jeff decided that we should just go down to the apple store in the galleria (a horrible place i hope to never see the inside of again) and pick one up. this was after he picked me up from work (i've developed a bit of a cold or something and didn't really want to walk home) and cooked me dinner! for the first time ever! and it was delicious! yesterday was pretty awesome, indeed. oh, and aside from all that, i put a new battery and pack of film in the polaroid 440 and took my first shot with it!! hooray! i'll post it on flickr later, but it's not a great one.

we watched a french film, blame it on fidel, too. it was pretty good.

and we're back.

this christmas =

netflix all around!!

too many trips to the hospital (for loved ones, not ourselves)

long long car rides, which included seeing a helicopter land on the highway! also, a long long wait for that helicopter to leave.

kolaces...mmm

SNOW.


i loved being home. i loved being with jeff for christmas. i loved seeing my family and driving in snow and buying some freakin' polaroid 690. hell yes.

or otherwise.

friend breakups suck.

last year.

feeling listy.

this just made me laugh out loud.... the most rented movies for my area, according to netflix:

1. a day without a mexican
2. george lopez: america's mexican
3. george lopez: why you crying?
...cut to
9. why did i get married?

and really, that's houston in a nutshell.

i woke up an hour too early this morning and it's raining and i'm wishing i wasn't here by myself. though, it is nice to have 3 little puffballs following me around.

christmas songs

that i can't stop listening to:

lo how a rose e'er bloomin- sufjan stevens
it's christmas time- yo la tengo
baby it's cold outside- leon redbone and zooey deschanel
christmas party- the walkmen
the christmas song- the ravonettes
last christmas- fonda
fairytale of new york- the pogues
my evergreen- squirrel nut zippers
the friendly beasts- sufjan stevens
winter weather- squirrel nut zippers
my favorite christmas (in a hundred words or less)- of montreal
deilig er jordan- kings of convenience
o come o come emmanuel- belle and sebastian

p.s. happy solstice!

a few things.

i am addicted to netflix. and i'm not alone. the day i subscribed i spent hours going through the movies and rating and queuing (a fun word to say, btw) and pretty much loving everything about it. we even installed windows (gasp!) on the mac so we can watch the free instant movies. (seriously, what's up with not being able to run their instant movies on macs. not cool) so the next day was jeff's first official vacation day, and when i got home from work he was still in his pajamas. he had spent his entire day watching the a team and the office. the following 3 days produced much of the same.

we're going home for christmas!!! hooray! jeff actually left today (with the laptop, and i swear to god he better not watch any of the office without me) to work on a project he and his collaborators have been putting off. i have to work through christmas eve, so i'll drive up on christmas day. or eve, i suppose, if i get off work early enough. a few short days in okc and then we'll drive home together. fun stuff.

i finally finished all of my projects, except a few for jeff. everything is in the mail tomorrow, hopefully. started 2 more tonight for a friend's new baby. woohoo!

i'm actually enjoying christmas this year. the last few years i've spent nearly every holiday alone or feeling alone. this year i'm not, and it's a good feeling.

also, jane austen is, like, wow. true, her plot lines are similar and you can almost always predict what's going to happen... but geez, it's still so great! it is a world i think i would've enjoyed seeing.

just the facts, folks.

i'm saving my tree this year. no letter. it breaks my heart a little, cause i love writing, sending, receiving, and pretty much everything associated with letters in general. but guess what. time keeps on slipping. i can't even decide on a picture to send, so you'll just have to rely on flickr... which is remarkably kept up to date. i will have treats in the mail soon, though.

so. useless facts and stuff you already know (but it was an eventful year, so what the hay?):

momentum 2007. i had 2 pieces in an okc art show (showcasing works by artists under 30... sadly i wouldn't have been able to contribute much longer...) in january. it was COLD. located in an airplane hanger mere days after this year's first major ice storm. but exciting nonetheless.

and then there's jeff. all of a sudden, there he is. sweet and wonderful and a million good things. i probably could never stop giving him praise. he arrived at the perfect time, and made my life much cozier.

loss of friends, by miles or otherwise. saying goodbye is not one of my better traits. a couple of my best friends moved to colorado in may. it's a great thing for them- something they've been working towards for a few years. plus, it's a GREAT place to visit! i just miss them more than i ever thought possible. friends that i used to see almost daily, now scaled down to twice a year is a hard thing to get used to.

jeff got accepted into a ph d program at rice. duh, of course he did! how could they resist a smarty pants like him? we made a short tip to houston to find an apartment and check out the campus, and he had another meeting with some bigwig guy at baylor who insisted on collaborating with him on some of his fancy genetics hoopla.

i became debt free for the first time in... well, years. many many years. it is such a relief to be out from under all that. i was able to quit the 2nd job i had taken, and start planning our big move.

leaving oklahoma. not as easy a task as one might think. i've spent much of my life wanting to leave, and now i think i must've had some kind of brain-eating worm or something. so we spent a lot of time packing and throwing things away and on july 4th we made our way to houston. why oklahoma is great: old, real friends. family. and family again (and again). cost of living. beer biking. familiarity. it's quiet. it's friendly. it's home. why oklahoma sucks: it's not where i am right now.

why houston is great: uh. well, the pbs station is pretty good (they play independent films every week, like the museum!). and rice is here. cold beer in the grocery store. why houston sucks: the npr station is awful. hot & humid nearly year round. insane traffic. expensive. there isn't a whole lot to do if you don't want to go to a bar or eat a steak. crappy sidewalks (it may seem like a small issue, but try walking on concrete that's turned into a mountain range for 5 miles). we never feel safe. they have an ongoing ad campaign that reads "turn around, don't drown," because it's constantly flooding. we didn't even get hit by a hurricane, try as we might!

rice. jeff's research work over the summer kept him busy. but when school started, i don't think either of us had any clue as to the increase in amount and severity of his workload. it's beaten us (yep, even me) down, tied us to a chair, bitch slapped us a few hundred times, and set our hair on fire. i mean, really. jeff is right this moment finishing his last final of the semester, and there will be much celebrating tonight. despite it's wrath, rice is proving to be a good place for him. especially for the work he's going in to.

i got a job on my first try at a gallery specializing in antique maps and prints. it has given me an eye into a world i had always hoped was exaggerated. sadly, it's not. people around here have serious money, and they like to spend it on (in my opinion) ridiculous things. but hey, it gives me job security, so i aint knocking it. (aint. ha.) i do all kinds of things; an ever increasing variety of things, which actually adds to my enjoyment of the job. i love being busy. mostly i prepare pieces for the gallery, but i also do some custom framing, data entry, and a bit of photography for their website. occasionally i do some design work with customers, but as i've concluded previously in my life, i am not much of a people person.

we have currently survived almost 6 months here. i think we'll live. i've spent the last few months sewing and crocheting and crafting it up. we finally got my website online. that was a biggie for me. i try to take pictures as often as possible. it turns out (surprise surprise) that using film is a bit of a burden on the finances. so, i shoot when i can afford to :) we still haven't found an exceptional thai place, but we found 2 that we go to fairly regularly. no edible pad thai in the area, unfortunately. and though it doesn't get driven terribly often, jeff tries to keep up with maintenance on the beetle when he has time.

i guess that's it. like i said, it's been a busy year. lots of love to everyone. miss you guys!

thai night.

well, i went ahead and added a new gallery to the website. i'm pretty excited about it. i should have a few more things to put up this week, too.

after a lengthy discussion at work today, a coworker and i concluded that there are only 3 places in the world that it would be appropriate to wear an oversized belt buckle reading "i love my wiener," with a silhouette of a weenie dog on it: a bachelor party, a dog show, and the weenie dog races. i was so embarrassed for the poor man who spent his entire day wearing it in our store. he must really love his dog.

we finished watching season 2 of gilmore girls tonight. i'm ready for the Obscure Reference Fairy to drop off season 3. just sayin.

i only have 2 more weeks that i'll have to work 6 days. which means only 2 weeks til xmas. which means i should probably start mailing stuff.

setting records.

guess who's wearing shorts today? everyone in houston, myself included. 80. it's 80! temperatures over 65 in december should be illegal. in my opinion.

i've spent the morning taking pictures of all my various projects, with the idea that at some point i'll add a section for them on the website. it may have to wait until after xmas, though, so i don't ruin any surprises.

quote from jeff regarding lola: "she's presenting her butthole for a kiss."

this kitten amazes me. who knew she'd come so far in less than a year. when i first met her, her main activity was staring at walls close range (still a favorite), and now she talks and snuggles and gets under the covers and plays and asks for attention. it's a beautiful thing.

so it's december.

i feel like i have too much to do. i certainly don't feel overworked, just overwhelmed. i have exactly 5 1/2 projects to finish before xmas- a figure that really kinda makes me angry, given my whole stand on "no presents at xmas," yet here i am crafting it up for everyone cause i just can't help it. and these projects aren't hard or time consuming, and i've been working on them fairly consistantly... i'm just losing all my downtime and it's stressing me out.

one thing i had to cut for sure is the pola-book. it's just gonna have to wait til january.
it makes me sad.

but the good thing is that i have surprises for everyone (even jeffy- and it is no easy task!), so that makes me pretty happy.

we're under a freeze warning tonight. weird.

lola is chasing her own shadow on the wall.