i'm in austin, texas!

for the last 30 minutes in the air, approaching austin, i stared intently out the window. i'd done all the school work i needed to do and was feeling a little motion sickness, so i put everything away except my ipod and just stared out at the patterns and shapes and colors and contours on the ground. after a few minutes i realized what i was envisioning was how to recreate the things i was seeing as embroidery or quilting, all in ways beyond my skill level. i like flying into austin at this time of year, seeing the squat, round evergreens strewn across the brown grass. those would be done in french knots. there were other patches that looked like burned velvet, with vibrant green shrubs flocking against dead grass. i spent a lot of time wondering how to get the curved lines just right if i were to make a quilt that looks like farmland from the sky. and then the plane landed in austin.

today my trusty bookbag broke, the one i bought during the opening weekend of the bloch building two and a half years ago. first one strap popped off as i was disembarking from the first leg of my flight; the second split while walking out of the terminal after the second leg. it's not worth trying to repair, and it's my luck that andy got a big sturdy backpack today as a going away present from his education program at the university, so it'll get me and my laptop and my schoolwork home in good shape.

i'm in austin, tx, and it's supposed to snow tomorrow. we'll see how that effects our plans, which includes a high school girls wrestling match, a festival at a food co-op, lunch with a friend of sid's who i've never met, breakfast at the south congress cafe, breakfast at the magnolia cafe, shopping for local crafty stuff at parts & labor, probably going to uncommon objects, and both of us doing a lot of homework. a whole lot of homework.

remember this post?

i think the threat infection is back. by this afternoon it wasn't too bad, but i feel run down and scratchy. everyone should know that sid is an excellent nurse. he was out of the house buying me medicine and orange juice before i even properly woke up, and made me a cozy nest and a breakfast that sent me right back to sleep. anyway we'll see how long this one sticks.

yesterday was thanksgiving! and we ate things. sid was pleased to discover that my family's menu is very vegan friendly. i ate myself silly. holidays with my family are usually pretty quiet - there's rarely more than six of us around, and the core five of us (me, my mom, my grandparents, and my uncle chip) see a lot of each other throughout the year, so there's not all the rowdy catching up and reminiscing that happens in a lot of other families. occasionally my brother's back in town for things; every few years my mom's younger brother and his wife & their son are back, and in that case things are a little peppier. but this year was one of those low key events, and while sometimes i miss having a busier, louder day, i have to admit that i do enjoy the relaxed pace of my family.

my contribution to the meal this year was a tofurkey and two pumpkin pies - one vegan and one regular. i'm getting much better at rolling the crust out smoothly without cracking or sticking, but my fretting about who knows what thursday morning led me to undercook the regular pie a bit so it wasn't quite firm enough in the middle, and my first experiment with vegan pumpkin pie went fine but i know it can be better. pix to come.

after spending the afternoon at my mom's, sid & i headed down to the plaza for the annual lighting hullabaloo. i hadn't been since i was a kid, and sid had never been (and he loves christmas schmaltz) so off we went. in a city that isn't especially pedestrian friendly and has little public transportation, you can imagine what a clusterfuck the traffic situation is. solution? scooter. sid & i took one out of the stable and ended up being able to park a half a block from the heart of the action. i prefer the pretty lights on the spanish architecture on quieter nights, just walking around, but i was glad to be there with sid for what is probably the most popular annual event in town.

tonight i'm rallying my energy and finally got dressed around 6 pm to walk sid over to the nelson-atkins museum (*my* museum!) for the luminary sculpture walk they started doing while i worked there. this will be the first year i've headed over to check it out, having had no had in assembling it. yay!

so

i'd be holding out hope that 29 was going to be my best year yet. one month in, that's definitely not the case. it's been a rough month.

so what i'm thankful for today? 11 more months to get it right.

sid expressed concern the other day that i've fallen off my regular posting; i posited that his concern indicated he had no idea what i was up to or what i was thinking without internet updates. regardless of motive, here i am, honey!

and now i don't know what to say.

it's been 12 whole days since i last updated! since then we:

- went to our old trivia night that's been shifted from saturday to tuesday. it was pretty dead, and our performance was shameful. we haven't been back since.

- gayle, sid, & i went to play tennis one afternoon and i am terrible.

- we went to a surprise party! our friend craig turned 40 and his girlfriend threw a surprise party for him at a record store in lawrence. sid was excited because it was the first time he got to shout SURPRISE! at someone. i was excited for him. sid was also excited because he made vegan pigs in a blanket for the occasion, and it turned out they were a big hit.

- so we have a group project for one of my classes. group projects are frustrating under the best of circumstances, but they're even trickier when you're in a distance program and your classmates can be elsewhere in the state. my group consists of a man apparently in his 60s (here in kc) who has no idea what's going on and a girl in springfield (3 hrs away) who went AWOL for two weeks. when she finally replied, she said "thank god i'm finally in a group that does its work."

- in better school news, i have sorted out a practicum for next term. i'll be working two days a week at the missouri valley special collections room at the kansas city public library. i get to play with maps!!

- ryan & megan had us over for dinner last night. i've somehow married into a family that likes to play cards. they were going to try to teach me to play euchre (again, after a spectacular failure on halloween night), but instead we ended up teaching me & megan to play hearts. i was in the lead for half of the game. that would be the half where i literally had no idea what i was doing. as i started to figure out how to play, my lead shrunk. ho hum! at least i didn't lose.

- did you know being married is hard? who knew! my sense of things earlier this year was to wonder what could be so different. we've both been in long relationships, both lived with people, gone through lots of ups and downs and decision-making. yet here we are - things are hard. but there is good, too, and with a lot of work and a little luck there will be a lot more good.

- school has been making me miserable this term, and it's been getting in the way of every other part of my life, but my grades have been generally great - much better than my last semesters. i'm happy for this and feel like i'm doing pretty good work, but every day that i spend time on schoolwork, i miss the work i'm really good at and really love, and i miss doing work i'm proud to share with people.

- once again i'm trying to get my office in this house organized in a way that feels usable. there are built-in shelves, but they're too short to store a lot of things, and too high to get too easily. maybe a little bookcase would make all the difference. who knows. i just know i don't find myself using my space very often because it isn't a comfortable or efficient space to work in.

- sid & i went to brunch today with a group of my friends who i haven't seen in awhile, on the occasion of laura being back in kc for the weekend. it also ended up being the occasion when sid met chris, but there is absolutely nothing of interest to report on that.

- i have a week off for thanksgiving, but it's not really off - i have work to do on the aforementioned group project and i'd like to make plenty of headway on it in advance. later in the week, i'll make vegan & non-vegan pumpkin pies.

- i think that's all for now.