wherein I do things that cool people do on their weekends.

Lots of work.  Whatever.

Some studying.  Whatever.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddddddddddd...

WICKED!

Lauren, a friend of mine, got tickets for Wicked at Bass Concert Hall last night and invited me to go.  (Of course, I immediately said yes!)  There were 5 of us that went and nobody previously knew each other (except that we all knew Lauren) but we all got along famously.  We had sushi and sake at Afin (I had a killer veggie tempura) before and then crowded in one car, found some magical campus parking (I never knew you could find such a thing before this) and headed into Bass.

 I've seen the show once live, but I keep the soundtrack on a pretty constant rotation in my iTunes.  It's based on a novel by Gregory Maguire called Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.  I have the book (it's about how the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz story came to be so wicked) and it's pretty awesome, but you know me, I like anything better once there's singing involved.

(But definitely check the book out)

The musical originated with Idina Menzel (who also holds a giant place in my heart for her original casting in Rent as Maureen) as Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda (who I played quite memorably in Dripping Springs High School's 2002 production of The Wizard of Oz - ha!) and they pretty much ruined the roles for anyone that followed.  (Enough parentheses in that sentence?)

The actresses last night did a great job (especially considering I listened to the music with Kristen and Idina's voices in my head) but I wasn't the giant-est fan of the lady who played Elphaba.  She had a weird nasal tone to her voice and seemed like she was listening to the same recording I was (the Idina Menzel one).  Despite her killer rendition of "No Good Deed", I definitely preferred Glinda in the show.  Kristin's voice is so unique and full of life, but it's her personality that made Glinda so beloved in the original casting of the show.  I think that makes it a little easier for a someone new to step into the role, and last night's actress took advantage of that.  She definitely put her own personality in the performance, and I loved her take on the song "Popular".

The sets are in-freakin-sane.  Seriously.  They're these giant, imaginative, fantastical things that have crazy mechanical dragons and all these gears and clocks that make it look like a steampunk version of the best Emerald City you ever imagined.  Seriously.

It was a little disappointing last night, though.  Elphaba didn't fly.  Now, admitting that I noticed a technical malfunction during the big number that ends the first act is a little nerdy.  But let's be honest, this whole blog post is about a Broadway musical I saw last night, so I can't exactly pretend I'm being super cool right now.  She was supposed to fly - it's very exciting and poignant, just trust me.

All that super nerdy stuff to say, I had a phenomenal time.  Lauren and I often say that we're the exact same person and oh, did that show itself last night...  We kept turning to each other during the show to say stuff like, "This is my favorite song" or "Oh! That was her best performance so far" and sadly, "Why didn't she fly?"

There are still tickets, (though they're pretty expensive now, I think) and I can't encourage you enough to catch the show while it's still playing in Austin.

Now, I'm gonna go do something cool and totally un-nerdy, like... study.

This is how you pretend you're a really good cook.

It's really easy to fool someone into greatly over-estimating your culinary skills.  All you have to do is have a handful of seemingly difficult (but secretly easy) and impressive dishes in your pocket.  You pull one (or more) of those out on appropriate occasions and voila!  You look like a serious cook.  It's not until someone eats multiple meals that you're cooking that they realize that you only know how to make so many things.  The goal is, that by the time your subterfuge has been discovered, they've fallen in love with you/become your best friend/are so enthralled by your sparking personality and wit that your dismal abilities in the kitchen don't even matter anymore.

I did this on a bigger scale with Thanksgiving dinner in 2010 for my father and it totally worked.  He loved the entire thing and thinks I'm a killer cook.  (I kind of ruined it this Thanksgiving when it didn't turn out as well, but the glory of a year ago might still be enough to cloud the sad memories of this year.)

I'm starting to gather recipes that will fulfill this deceitful plan. (I really wanted to use the word nefarious instead of deceitful, but I know the situation isn't dire enough to use it.  Wouldn't that be awesome though? A plan involving recipes that is wicked and criminal enough to actually warrant the use of nefarious?)

Anyways, Hannah and I came up with a killer peanut sauce (by came up with, I mean, googled, obviously) and realized that making spring rolls is deceptively easy.  (Why am I using so many ridiculous words when I'm talking about cooking?  Deceitful, killer, subterfuge... nefarious?)

We use rice noodles and rice paper, cucumber, lettuce, carrots, avocado, shrimp (optional), mint and cilantro.  

Just google summer/spring rolls.  It's so easy.

What did I say?  Impressive, right?

I found a dessert to add to my list.  (The other dessert I can whip up?  So easy... Take your George Forman grill, and throw sliced peaches on it.  Right as you take them off - and arrange them beautifully - sprinkle some brown sugar on them.  It'll melt and be amaze-balls.)  This is called a Three-Ingredient Nectarine Galette, but I totally count four ingredients.  I'm not stressing about the accounting inconsistency, because this thing looks GORGEOUS!  (Imagine I just sang out that word.)

Riiiight?!?!?!

It says that you can use berries, apples, cherries, or any seasonal fruit.  I'm so excited about trying this one out.  I'm pretty sure I'd look like a total bad-ass pulling this out of the oven.  (In my world, bad-assness involves nonchalantly pulling complicated-looking pastries out of the oven.)  

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Other super easy/looks complicated/tastes amazing recipes I'm willing to share? This sun-dried tomato pesto couscous is fantastic.  I always up the pesto to couscous ratio and add a few more sun-dried tomatoes to the mix.  Take out the Parmesan/butter (totally do-able) and it's vegan!

We can't forget the entire dinner from Katrina's 30th birthday party.  That was a total pretend-like-we-know-what-we're-doing-because-we-suddenly-don't-have-anyone-to-cook-dinner moment and we rocked it.  Bri, Loryn, Mel, and Matt?  You know how awesome we are, right?

If you didn't already love her...

You will now.

I'd like to thank my old friend Jack (from my first waiting tables job at the Olive Garden) for letting me see this little clip.  He's got a killer blog (in name and content) called Motorcycle Sidecar Drama and every time I read it, I feel a little less cool about my iTunes contents. I'm pretty sure he might be one of the funniest people I've ever known, and despite the fact that I haven't seen him in at least 5 or 6 years, the internet/facebook lets me keep up with his  hilarious status updates and KILLER Halloween costumes.  (Otherwise known as facebook stalking.  Don't judge me, you all do it.)  (Oh, and if I've ever been talking to you about awesome Halloween costumes and I ever said, "Oh! I've know the best ones ever!" and then I went on facebook and showed you pictures of some guy you don't know...  That's this guy.)

Dear god, Jack.  How did this blog about how cute Kristen Bell is on Ellen turn into love letter to you?

Anyways, Jack posted this video on facebook and I think it might be the most charming thing I've seen in a while.  Evidently Kristen Bell really loves sloths and when she... Well, just watch the video.  You won't regret it.

I got really into Veronica Mars a while ago, and I'm pretty sure we (Kristen Bell and I) would be really good friends.  This just cemented it.

Favorite line: "He's coming for the party?"

EDIT: I was going to add a photo Jack and I once took that is probably in the running for best photo ever.  However... I can't find it.  This is very disappointing.  But... it actually might be a good thing; I'm pretty sure (from what I can remember) that it's a pretty embarrassing picture.  I'll try to find it so I can show you (or not, if it turns out to be as ridiculous as I remember.)

Who wants boring folders?

Not me, obviously.  I bypassed all of the cheesy "GO UT! HOOK 'EM!" ones for brown recycled folders that remind me of my beloved kraft paper/make-every-present-look-so-chic wrapping paper.  A sharpie doodle later and they're perfect.

I'm at Epoch (my favorite coffee shop ever) doing a little catch up on school work.  You see, because I'm a super cheap-o, I refused to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for my textbooks at the Co-op (UT's official bookstore) this year and searched for them online.  I probably saved about $250 doing it this way, but they were at least a week and a half later than they said they would be.  This is why, exactly 2 weeks into the school year, I'm a week and a half behind on homework.  I got caught up (ish) in one of my classes today, so I'd really like to get on schedule in the others.

Unfortunately, the internet has a lot of things with which to distract me.  I'm fighting valiantly against it, but the past has shown I've not much a chance of winning.  I did get a chance to hang with the littlest seester for about an hour after class tonight, so the night's not a total waste.  (Blog shout out, Larisa!  Oh, everyone should follow her on instagram (laweesa) - she's really popular, for good reason.  Excellent taste does run in the family.)

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In writing that first paragraph about my folders, I've realized that I really have searched high and low for substitutes for "typical" college school supplies.  I spent last semester practically ruining my beloved teal suede fringe purse with my massive/heavy textbooks.  (By the way, "teal suede fringe" is pretty much the best combination of words ever - to describe a purse, that is.) So, I spent a lot of time combing the internet for a perfectly sized bag with enough durability to hold my stuff and enough style to suffice as a purse during the day.

I found this one at Urban Outfitters and though it's not exactly the color the photo shows, I still love how it holds everything I need.

I also refused to use the horribly designed (yet completely ubiquitous on campus) planners the Co-op sells, so I searched high and low last semester for one.  I discovered this undated one from Little Otsu last year and I la-huv it.

This thing takes a little commitment and concentration at first, because as an undated planner, you have to go in and write all of the months and days in yourself.  It was totally worth it for me, because besides being able to use my own handwriting (which I pretty much love) I get to use a 100% hand-drawn planner that starts whenever I need it to.  (Starting a planner in August is much more useful to me than one that begins in January.)  I've got plans to keep buying the newest volume for next year (and from what I can see from the past volumes, it'll be just as perfect.)

Anyways, I didn't mean for this little note to turn out as long as the original post, I just feel the need to laugh at myself sometimes.  It wouldn't be that bad to use mass-produced and aesthetically-unpleasant school supplies... It just makes me so happy to find/make cuter versions for myself.  I had enough of the ugly stuff that first college go around.  

Isn't it all so new and pretty?

I think so.

(Photo by Streetsfn Via A Cup of Jo)

This photo has nothing to do with anything, I'm just obsessed with the outfit of the girl on the far right.  I've got some fabric that beautiful mustard-y yellow all ready to make a skirt out of, but I'm worried that it's the wrong weight.  We'll see.

Anyways, pretty new blog, huh?

The art is pretty and all, but I WANT MY METRO BACK!

So, I'm back at UT (graduation is 325 day away!) and there are quite a few changes from when I was a freshman 10 years ago.  One of the most heartbreaking is the loss of Metro.  Metro was this all night coffee shop right on the Drag that was old, gross, cheap and my absolute favorite place on campus.  In high school all of my friends and I would hang out there (for hours with one cup of coffee, I'm sure they loved us) and when I lived in the dorms it was my go-to all nighter spot.   A few years ago, they replaced it with some place called Caffe' Medici.  It's fine and whatever, but (in case you can't tell) I have a bit of a grudge with the place for replacing my beloved Metro and their magical chocolate banana milkshakes.  For some reason this week, I decided to do a bit of studying there and while the soy mocha wasn't anything to write home about, I found a bit of design inspiration hanging on the wall.

On their website, it says that this is an ongoing installation, where they are giving the same image/paper (the dude drinking coffee from their logo) to their customers and local artists.  The whole thing looks like it's just hung up with binder clips and seems like it would be pretty easy to recreate.

This might be really easy if you've got some artistic friends to help (you could do it yourself, but I like the mix of styles that you see here.)  Just find a black and white image, print it on some sturdy paper and get to colorin'!  Hang them in rows with the binder rings and you've got a totally customizable piece of art.  It seems like they nailed a piece of wood at the top and hung/nailed the rows to that.  The inch or so that it's off the wall gives it a little bit of dimension and lets the binder rings hang flat.  It's perfect for a weird/large area of wall space that needs to be covered and I'm pretty sure it could be done for under $10.  (Printing 20 or 30 at Kinko's on some card stock, a package of binder rings and a couple of feet of 1X2?  Nice.)

Now, call me a genius, but I also LOVE the idea with children's artwork.  Make the image something pretty graphic and clean (because children's artwork usually is a bit all over the place - "organic" if you will) to balance the drawing/painting.  Pick the colors the kids can play with and let them go to town.  I think it would be a fantastic piece for the living room, over the couch.  Oversize artwork like that is expensive and this is so much more personal! (I have a special inflection for when I'm saying that something is really expensive.  You should imagine that I just said expensive in that way.) Who says kids artwork only belongs on the refrigerator?

Things that I think are awesome (the sweet, nostalgic photos I found on my computer edition)

Sometimes I decide that I know what Bri needs to do with her life and I send her emails with subject lines like this.

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This just might be a perfect morning.  Breakfast tacos, topo chico, and my laptop (used for blog reading not studying) sitting at a coffee shop downtown, looking out the window (doing some serious people watching.)

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I used to have a hundred million pairs of shoes and one time I thought I'd document them all.  So, in the hallway of my house, I laid on the ground (to get the perfect shot!) and photographed all of my shoes just like the photo above.  I only still have a few of these shoes (I pretty much live in flip flops, cowboy boots and my old man loafers) but I do have all of the photographs.  And those are awesome.

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The Zilker Kite Festival is one of my favorite things to do in Austin.  The photo above is from 2008, I believe, and though you can't really tell, all of those dots in the air are kites.  Zilker park fills up with people and everyone is flying kites.  You've got little kids with their tiny kites a few feet up in the air and then people with their hardcore I'm-really-good-at-kite-flying kites way up, doing sweet tricks.  I haven't been in a few years, but I'm so there this March.  (March 4th this year, by the way.)

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This is part of a photobooth strip that Mel, Josh and I took forever ago, before they even started dating, much less getting married or having a baby (that's not even a baby but an adorable toddler that loves me so much more that Aunt Lala.)  I love the face Josh is making.

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This is my grandmother (Granny, as I will refer to her from now on) and my next-oldest cousin, Kelli.  I think we're at the courthouse for my uncle Chris's wedding, in about '88 or '89.  I love this picture because of the bratty look on my face (and hers, if we're being fair.)

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The incident documented in this photo spawned a favorite phrase for Chris and I during the end of our time together in Longhorn Singers... "Wha' happen?"  (What happened was that Chris and I were playing bartender and didn't think about why we should add Sprite to our cocktail until after we shook it up.  Then, it might not have exploded all over my sweet Olive Garden uniform. As as a side note, I'm proud of myself for working through college, but someone should have told me to change out of my uniform when I went to a party or hung out with friends after work.  I didn't do that, and so there are about 3 years of photos where I'm wearing a white button up shirt, black dress pants and usually that heinous green "Hospitaliano!" button.  In. Every. Single. Photo.)

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I don't work with these guys anymore, but the Texas Star crew from Trudy's is a damn good group of folks.  This is a shot from the company-wide Easter party, where all four stores come together in the park to eat barbeque, let the kids hunt Easter eggs, play kickball and drink beer.  All of the other stores bring chairs and their families and kids, but we would just lay out on blankets and soak up the sun and laugh.  The "hippie" store indeed.

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You're welcome for all of that.