Awkward and Awesomes!

So, you know.

It's kind of been one of those weeks. The ones where by Thursday you just want to lay down on the floor next to a used kleenex and have someone throw their dirty t-shirt on you.

Awkward
-Having to explain to people that the reason I am not on Spring Break is because I am in fact, not a student. Yes, I work at a university. Yes, full time. Yes, I graduated. Yes, I am older than 21. Again, not a student.

-I very rarely get up the courage to play my Glee Pandora station at work, as there seem to be pockets of quiet that extend all the way down the hallway into everyone else's office, and though I want Darren Criss's cover of 'Teenage Dream' to be a part of my work day, I'm not so sure they do. However, this past week my office has been a wasteland, so when I found myself alone at the front yesterday, I decided to go for it. I made it through one particularly long rendition of 'Defying Gravity' (Rachel & Kurt's version) before a professor walked in and started asking me a bunch of questions. He did his best to ignore the underscore of a 'A Whole New World', but did let me know that his toddler 'loves that movie' when he left. I am the most grown up of all the grown ups.

-The past two episodes of Once Upon a Time. Ok, all of Once Upon a Time. I love this show. I really do- and not just because I am its target audience so I have been culturally conditioned to love this show from a young age. But, the dialogue. THE DIALOGUE.

Teetering on the brink between Awkward and Awesome:
 -Craigslist, now and forever. I found a listing yesterday for a woman selling a "SASSY red table", which turned out to be a very broken picnic table she had spray painted red and wants you to put in your child's bedroom. Sassy!? Seriously? Broken shards of wood should never be used synonymously with sassy. Unless of course you are discussing Lolita, in which case-- sure.

Another favorite listing this week was for a "Beautiful Vintage 80's Chair", which was in fact an oversized pink floral patterned arm chair with lots of stains and tears, and a big cat plopped down in the middle of the seat. Ok, listen: I'm not sure anything from the 80's counts as vintage. Or beautiful for that matter. And of all the adjectives you could use to describe an oversized pink floral patterened arm chair, did 'comfy' or 'large' not enter your mind? Even 'sassy' would have worked better here.

Awesome
-Mexican Martini's from Trudy's. I am usually a wine and beer type girl, but goodness gracious those things are incredible. Word to the wise: Do not go to Mexico and order a Mexican Martini. They will just bring you a regular martini. Mexican Martini's are a Tex Mex Austin creation. Or at least, that what we claim... so it's probably true.

-The Walking Dead. I have not had mind blowing television in my life since Lost, and sometimes I think Lost just blew your mind by stockpiling secret mystery intrique plot lines and then revealing them so very very slowly that your mind had no choice to be blown. But slow moving farmer Zombies? Apocalyptic discourses on the nature of man? Unhinged regular joe's trying to kill other regular joe's in cold blood? I can't get enough of it.
 
-Speaking of Zombies (and I usually am), I need this t-shirt in my wardrobe. I am not generally an ironic T-shirt wearer, but I could change (change in this context meaning 'change my mind' and not 'change into a Zombie').

-I enjoyed a 13 minute commute to work this morning instead of a 35 minute one thanks to the grand departure of 50,000 students from the UT Campus. Thank you, Spring Break.

-The absolutely heavenly bouquet of lillies that has been sitting on my desk for over two weeks now. I can smell them the minute I walk in the building.

2011 Part Three: Another year older.

 In July, I celebrated my 24th birthday by taking a trip to the Wimberly Markets (it was hot) and going to a wine tasting at the Duchman Family Winery (it was a lot of wine). This fabulous winery in located in Driftwood... Spicewood Springs. Somewhere close to Wimberly. 

Cheers! 

After eating two (three??) baskets of free crackers at the tasting, we decided our tummy's needed a little more sustenance and headed to the Mandola's next door for some delicious pizza- cheese-prosciutto-olives-bread-oil-Italian yumminess.  

Ladies sitting on the fountain. Fun fact: Holly, Carmen and I all have birthdays within 2 1/2 weeks of each other.

Footloose came to the Zilker Hillside in July, and so did we, large blanket and picnic basket in hand. Being the picnic n00bs that we are, Carmen, Adam, Tanya & I packed a bottle of wine, some teddy grahams and a box of mike and ikes.... a combination strangely reminiscent of what I took with me when I tried to run away from home at five (minus the wine of course). Oh, and we didn't eat dinner before hand. Very smart when you are sitting outside for three + hours on a typical hundred degree Austin summer evening. Thankfully, Melanie brought a boxed red and white wine (duh, no glass bottles at the park!), some fancy cheese and crackers, an assortment of Godiva chocolates, two bags of gluten free chips, and a container of grapes.  I love the two girls photo bombing in the back in contrast with the father/son duo trying so hard NOT to photo bomb in the front.

After the show, this stunning southern belle let us snap a picture with her! Meg, that wig is strangely reminiscent of the young Evita monstrosity of your high school days...

 
 Moving along: Adam drank wine out a shoe and then installed our ceiling fan. Well, perhaps not in that order (if this was a highlights magazine, you could circle his curly head in the right hand photo).  Please note the demolished Justin Beiber pinata on the broken futon, it speaks of good times gone by.

The end of July also marked our 1 year anniversary in the apartment. We started to get all spring cleany (except in the summer time) and that led to a huge closet purge, which in turn led to selling a good lot of our furniture (remember the broken futon?) on Craigslist... which of course then led to buying a heck of a lot of new stuff for our apartment, including a dryer, some curtains, and a matching couch and love seat. Being an adult is v. exciting.

Well this doesn't quite look right, does it? So, let's just say we had a little couch buying mishap... let's just also say never buy anything from a furniture store that rhymes with Blooms to Grow... and Craigslist is awesome. Anyway, somehow the stars aligned one evening and we found ourselves with three love seats (one not pictured because Tanya is standing on it to take this picture) and two full size couches. Not girls to let an opportunity like this pass us by, we staged a moving photo jumping from couch to couch, and when that wasn't enough, we took a video. Here is that video:

Epic, no?

Oh, and don't forget Nigel's still cute.

2011, Part 1

Let's see: 2011.

On January 1st, Jessica and Joe got hitched!

That's them.

We danced the first night of 2011 away, and I captured what I think is the crowning achievement in terms of sexy wedding dance faces (get it, girl). I hope to see a lot of this face at her wedding in 2013!

So, I wasn't great about photographing anything until about April... at which point, I obviously had to whip out the camera to get some pics of the Royal Wedding Tea Party we threw! That tea party was a lifelong dream of mine, and now that I have finally hosted one, well, I just want to host more.

 Yummy treats, lace doilies, blue and white things, people getting married while other people wear funny hats-- does it get any better!? The mamas came to mingle and eat, and my Dad came to play the papparrazzi.

 At some point, truly, I don't remember when, these two accompanied me to see this one (the boy not the lion). Houston didn't know what it was in for....

 It is exactly what it looks like.

 Sweet boy. I had this picture on my bulletin board in my old office for a few months when a professor asked "Dat you hubband? He luke like he own you!!"

Oh yeah, Stephanie got knocked up. She debuted her bump around May, and what an adorable little bump it was!

In preparation for the new baby, Nigel began hitting the trails Brad Womack style (you know, shirtless and self-reflective).

Just kidding. Nigel is more shirtless than Brad Womack could ever hope to be... and I think he is lacking in self reflection skills since we have to scold him for eating his own poop. But look at that sweet baby face!! He had no idea what in store for him come November...