fall is here, hear the yell

ten seven reasons why i'm glad it's fall:

1. it's not 1,000,000 degrees

2. it's not too hot to wear closed toed flats

3. it's not too hot to wear tights/leggings

4. it's not too hot to walk to the mailbox 

5. my sunglasses don't fog over when i get in my car because of the heat

6. i can run errands without breaking much of a sweat

7. it's not summer

i wanted to come up with 10 but this was as far as i got. really, the temperature is probably the only reason i'm glad it's fall. i don't like football, which is something most people get excited about in the fall, and regular season baseball is almost over and that definitely doesn't excite me. so, the fact that it's below 95 is why i'm glad it's fall. if i lived somewhere that had a really beautiful fall leaves situation that would probably be all over my list. but i don't. 

a confusing evite or how my heart stopped beating for 3 seconds

on monday afternoon i got an evite invitation email with the subject sam turn's 29th birthday. if you really know me or have been reading my blog for a while, you know that sam died in the late hours of december 6th last year. i would be lying if i said that i don't constantly think that it's some sort of weird and sick joke and that she's actually still alive. i can't help it. i know it's not true but i still find myself confused over it all and actually thinking that maybe i imagined all of it. the early morning phone call from sarah, the resulting phone calls i made and emails i sent, and the most emotionally draining day of my life...maybe none of that happened? but it did.

so imagine my shock and confusion when i saw that email. i am not kidding when i say that for a split second i thought i was actually going to celebrate sam's birthday with her. i thought, "oh sam's coming to austin for her birthday again this year!" what the hell is wrong with me? when am i finally going to understand that she's really gone?

and for those of you wondering, the evite is for some friends to get together to celebrate sam's birthday by going to a bar that she liked, drinking cheap drinks, and reminiscing about our wonderful friend. and if i happen to get emotional it won't be the first time i've cried about sam in a bar.

the lovely sam and me...i miss her every day

why i should never take mucinex

last week i had a bad cold. bad bad bad. i took nyquil/dayquil for a couple of days but it just wasn't cutting the mustard. i had to call in sick to work on friday and i decided i needed something other than nyquil to try to treat my symptoms. i made a miserable phone call to my mom and said, "moooommy, i need medicine." i told her to ask the pharmacist what i needed and she came home with mucinex d. i had never taken mucinex before and i honestly cannot tell you the last time i took anything that contained psuedoephedrine. after the second dose on saturday morning i started to feel a million times better. it dried me right up. i was thrilled! then the bad stuff started happening.

i was ridiculously irritable all day saturday. as i was getting ready to go to work my cat would not stop meowing and i literally thought i was going to have to boot her ass out of the house. she was driving me up the wall. the irritability continued along with panicky feelings. not to mention, starting friday night my urine smelled weird. i know that's a gross thing to blog about but it's true!

and just when i thought these side effects couldn't get any worse, i was practically sleepless on saturday night. i slept for maybe 3 out of the 7 hours i was in bed. i was completely miserable. my body was exhausted but my brain felt so speedy. i had even taken a muscle relaxer before i went to bed because i was worried i might have trouble sleeping and it was the only thing i had around that would put me to sleep. sunday was still a little rough even though it had been over 24 hours since i last took the evil mucinex. by sunday night i think everything had finally worn off and i managed to sleep for about 9 hours. i needed it!

so even though mucinex made my cold symptoms go away, i won't be taking it again. i would rather take nyquil and sleep until my symptoms finally go away. the mucinex experience was a total nightmare. i suppose if i had researched it before i took it i probably would have found all of this out. now i know.

this is a story about pot roast

via

what meat eater out there doesn't love a good pot roast? when i was little my grandma used to make one every sunday. well, i assume she did it every sunday and not just the sundays that we were visiting. i do not care for cooked carrots but you better believe i piled my plate high with potatoes and meat then completely soaked both in meat juice. you know, the juice that's at the bottom of the roasting pan after the dish is finished cooking? that delicious meat juice. 

when i was 13 or 14 i went to spend the night with a friend at her dad and step-mom's house. they made a lovely pot roast for dinner and i was super excited to dig in. it's always been one of my favorite dishes, especially homemade. as we sat down at the table i started to peruse all the items set out in front of us and then panic set in. "where's the meat juice?!" i thought to myself. okay, a well made pot roast doesn't require meat juice but potatoes DO. how was i going to eat this without that sweet sweet nectar? i can't even remember what the meal was actually like, apparently i blocked it out of my mind. i imagine i choked down a few bites of potatoes, ate my meat, and was done. what i do remember is that as i was helping clear the table i took a stack of plates into the kitchen and saw my friend's step-mom pouring the meat juice down the sink. i was mortified. "that's not what you're supposed to do with it!" i screamed, in my mind. 

what have i been up to?

yep, i've got the good ol' end of summer cold. on monday i felt pretty craptastic but i thought it was just allergies. after taking zyrtec (which totally controlled my fall allergies last year) and benadryl, i had to admit that they weren't offering relief because i actually have a cold. the nyquil seems to help but the dayquil doesn't do much for me. i think the problem is actually that when i take the nyquil i'm also relaxed, at home, probably in my bed and when i take dayquil i'm at work for 8 hours running around like a crazy person. it's easy to think you feel better when you're not doing shit. 

so this weekend will probably be spent working and sleeping a lot when i'm not working. my only big plans aren't until 9/22 so hopefully i'll feel better by then. 

kids are so entertaining

if you're my friend on facebook then you've probably already seen these videos. i took all of these last week and i laugh every time i watch them. my sister and dad are taking the boys to kansas tomorrow so i'm going to have to watch these to tide me over until they get back.

last week i had lunch with jenn and she was telling me how they've been trying to get their daughter to say, "say what?" but she just says, "whaaat?" i told my sister about it and she thought we could get nels to do it. we were wrong.



a lovely rendition of little bunny foo foo. my favorite parts include "popping through the forest" and the way he pronounces "head" at the end (along with bopping himself on the head)



and finally, here is nels watching this video on papi's "coober" my favorite part of this is when he says, "where his mommy?" aww!

brendan hines

if you watch fox's lie to me (which you should because it's great), then you know how foxy eli loker is. what you may not know is that the actor who plays eli, brendan hines, is also a very talented singer/guitar player and clever lyricist. i actually became familiar with brendan's music before i knew he was an actor. brendan's album, good for you know who, is one of my most listened to albums on itunes.

here are some of his songs, via youtube videos. this first video is kind of ridiculous but it does help you pay attention to how clever the lyrics are!











if i had to pick, guess what is probably my favorite song of his but i really do love them all. if you want to hear more, this youtube user seems to have most, if not all, of the songs posted.

austin weirdos: walkman guy

austin is weird and we like it that way, hence the small business slogan keep austin weird. i have no problem admitting that i'm weird but the people i'm going to sporadically write about in this series are even more weird than i! from time to time i encounter some truly interesting, weird people and i'm going to try to document them with text, pictures, or both.

for the first installment of austin weirdos, allow me to introduce you to walkman guy.

photo courtesy of my friend bonnie

a couple of months ago i was at spiderhouse with dana and bonnie, having drinks before going to lisa's art opening. poor bonnie had a view of this guy, who was completely staring at her, the entire time we were sitting at that table. and dude was listening to walkman. not a discman. a take-out-the-tape-and-flip-it-to-side-b-walkman! i can't for the life of me think of the last time i even saw a walkman. my feelings towards this are best summed up by this quote from mean girls when janis, damian, and cady see ms. norbury outside of school, "it's like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs." so, while i do not appreciate the skeeve factor that this guy brought, i do appreciate his totally retro media device. 

*the sole purpose of this series is to highlight some of the rather interesting local color we have here in austin. it is in no way intended to make fun of or belittle anyone. i'm more interested in celebrating weird than looking down upon it. 

if benjamin were an ice cream flavor

in 1992 at the ripe old age of 9 my mom took me to see wayne's world. i don't even remember much about wayne's world as a skit on saturday night live because a)i was young and b)i went to bed before saturday night live even came on! but i loved that movie. we bought it on vhs after it was released and my sister and i must have watched it 200 times. i'm not kidding. we could, and still can, quote pretty much every line in that movie.

a couple of weeks ago my sister said to me, "i think steve lost some respect for me this weekend." when i inquired about this alleged loss of respect she replied, "we watched wayne's world together for the first time." say no more, sister. we are both physically incapable of watching that movie without reciting every line. i'm sure that's unbelievably annoying to a fellow viewer who does not have everything about that movie memorized.

other (non-kid)movies that were on heavy rotation in our household:
batman
beetlejuice
ghostbusters
indiana jones and the last crusade

i probably have all of those memorized as well but they're just not as quotable as wayne's world.

do not feed the trolls

one of the downsides to being involved in any sort of "internet community" is that you are pretty likely to encounter some evil troll bitches. they're everywhere. they leave comments on your local newspaper's online articles, you find them on your celeb gossip sites, you see their awful comments on your bloggy friend's posts, and these trolls might even have the same favorite band you do. the latter is where i really experienced this troll phenomenon. i supposed i may use the term "troll" a little differently than some. to me, they are people who found their piece of the internet the same way the rest of us did but once they got there, they took shits on it on a daily basis.

i had my fair share of drama-rama on the gomez message board until i ultimately decided to leave about a year ago. it wasn't as much fun as it had been when i first joined and met so many great friends, so walking away was a pretty easy decision. i'm not going to tell you all that i was completely innocent because i know i wasn't. i'm opinionated as fuck, just like most other people on the internet, and i'm stubborn sometimes. i will debate you in a friendly manner until you start saying nasty things just for the sake of being nasty. however, i think the big differences between myself and the troll bitches is a)i don't hide behind the internet to make snide-ass comments about other people b)i don't say rude, hurtful things to people just for the fun of it and c)i'm not contrary just for the sake of being contrary. that has to be one of my biggest pet peeves ever. "oh, everyone likes radiohead? i hate radiohead. i don't have a reason to hate them, i just do because you like them." ughhhhh.

the trolls claimed that they felt "left out" because some of us had closer relationships with others. welcome to the real world, idiots. that shit happens everywhere all the time. so we have the same favorite band? neat, but if that's where the similarities end, then that's where the similarities end. if some of us happened to bond over different things and develop real friendships, that's nothing to get your panties in wad about. don't chastise people for being in a "clique" when you're also in a clique: the clique that only has negative things to say all the time and tries really hard to make people interested in your "inside jokes." to quote my high school drama teacher speaking to dana, "nobody's interested."

i'm not really sure what even made me think about this after all this time. i'm not still sore about it because i know that i came out ahead in the end. i think part of what got me thinking about it was jenn's recent post about drama in her area of the blogosphere. i guess i just don't understand what makes people want to start drama. i have always tried to live a low-drama existence and for the most part i've been successful at it. there's a socially incorrect analogy about fighting on the internet but, well, you already know that one. but seriously, who are these people? who thinks, "i'm going to join this little section of the internet to stir up drama and piss people off!" apparently their own lives are so boring that they don't have any real people to fight with. and now i'm left with a question? did these trolls begin their awful internet behavior because they have no friends in real life or do they not have friends in real life because deep down they've always been trolls? the world may never know.

a game changer

can you think back to one incident or circumstance that significantly changed your life? i can.

in august of 2003 i applied to work at this bbq restaurant here called rudy's. my friend i was with at the time scoffed at me and basically told me, "fat chance." apparently rudy's is (or was) known for only hiring a certain type of person and he didn't think i fit the mold. little did he know i'm a shape shifter. no, not really, but i did get the job. because i'm awesome.

now fast forward to june of 2004! i had been working there a little less than a year and over that time i made some friends that were fun to hang out with but they weren't necessarily my people. then one morning one of my co-workers who was not my friend (not only was he not my friend but i don't think we had really even spoken to each other before even though we had worked at the same place for 10 months. i think i had been to a couple parties at his house but we never interacted there either) mentioned something about how he was about to go on vacation. i asked where he was going and he said he was going to bonnaroo. bonnaroo 2004 was set to be one of, if not the, first wilco performance since jeff tweedy got out of that dual diagnoses rehab clinic. i was so jealous that this guy, kelly, was going. then we got into a conversation about music and discovered that we had a lot of similar tastes. but then he dropped a bomb on me: his favorite band was the dave matthews band. i might like a lot of music that somehow gets lumped into the same general genre as dave matthews but make no mistake about it, i am not a fan of dmb. anyway, rather than this news being a deal breaker i thought, "i should introduce him to lori!" (because lori was my only dave lovin' friend at the time). i did and they have been the best of friends pretty much ever since.

then kelly introduced me to his harem. really, he had, and still has, a harem. it's pretty intimidating to be thrown into a mix of dynamic, beautiful, hilarious women but that's exactly what happened. it took a little time but i eventually formed unbelievable friendships with these people. some of my very closest friends are people i met through kelly and i will always be grateful for that. i will also always treasure all the amazing times i have had with him. there are little things that pop into my head now and then that literally make me laugh until i tear up. i wish i still got to see him on a regular basis to expand that list of memories but he's living it up in boulder and i can't hold that against him.

but that's not all! through kelly i found out about a little band called gomez, who also changed my life. the friendships i have made because of my love for gomez have impacted me in a huge way. sometimes i stop and wonder how i got so lucky to have these people fall into my life. it sounds cheesy but i truly have some of the most wonderful friends a person could ever hope to have.

when i think about the friendships, memories, and experiences i wouldn't have had if i didn't know kelly, i wonder what the fuck my life would be like today. there's no sense in looking back, especially if you don't regret any of it (and i don't) but sometimes i just wonder how very differently i could have turned out.

and now, kelly and stefanie's greatest hits! and by hits i obviously mean pictures.

kelly and me june 2004

this is where we learned that it's really hard to take a long arm picture with one tall and one short person

january 2005

i have horns

halloween 2004

march 2004

totally awesome totally 80s party

august 2005

another party

february 2006

at coldplay in houston

may 2006

new orleans trip to see gomez

december 2006

tacky christmas sweater party at my house

new year's eve 2006

january 2007

kelly passed out in my coat on my back porch

february 2007

me wearing kelly's hat in petaluma, ca

april 2007

wig party!

june 2007

at molotov celebrating sam's graduation from massage therapy school

august 2007

at a colorado rockies game after we moved kelly to boulder :(

april 2008

beauty bar for robin's birthday

january 2010

in front of zoosk's headquarters in san francisco

march 2010

my birthday brunch

ps-i know another person whose life would be nothing like it is now without her stint as a rudy's employee as well! 

nightmare!

i was pretty young when my grandparents moved "to town" from the farm. maybe around 7? i don't remember. what i do remember is my anxiety about sleeping in their basement at the new house. on the farm, we slept upstairs. not "upstairs" like the ground level, but the 2nd floor. it was awesome. we had a little window we could look out and see for what felt like miles. it was the prairie after all. it was the bedroom (and the 2 twin beds) that my dad and uncle grew up in. the beds were moved to the basement in the new house but it wasn't the same. after that, the only time i was excited to sleep there was winter because that meant we got to use electric blankets. i'm from texas, y'all, so electric blankets are still pretty uncommon to me.

i rarely had nightmares as a child. in fact, i only remember one and that's probably because it was a reoccurring number. this nightmare first made its debut while i was sleeping in the basement. i never woke up remembering much about it other than a woman (who honest to god looked like the evil version of mary poppins) breaking down the door from the kitchen to the stairs leading to the basement, knife in hand, coming to kill us all. it was scary as shit! i can't remember if i ever even told anyone about this dream when i was little. i'm pretty sure in my little kid brain, i thought if i talked about it it would really happen.

now, believe it or not, 20 years later i still have that dream from time to time. i would say that i probably remember having it less than once a year. but the fact that i have it at all is so bizarre to me. i don't have any other reoccurring dreams. i have the teeth dreams all the time but the circumstances are always different in those. i've never had the same teeth dream twice. i'm still pretty terrified by evil mary poppins, too i wonder if that will ever go away?

well i'll be a monkey's aunt (and sister)

gosh, do you think these two are related?

cecily at the san francisco zoo 1982

nels at the domain 2010