San Diego: Arrival & Zoo

Dan & I on the plane heading to San Diego!

Where we were immediately fed

View of the main house from the treehouse

Dan walking from the treehouse to...

The outdoor bath.  Amazing.

Friday & Oliver taking a nap

Paula eatin' some donuts

Nic obviously also had to have some donuts

Dan and I headed off to the zoo!

Polar Bears!

Panda Bears!

Gorillas!  They're super chill

A Panda just hanging out on the top of a tree

Balboa Park

Yummy Bertisan dinner

Summer 2013: Week 1 (Part 1)

Seeing as how my Summer technically started last week, I'll give a little recap for that too.

Wednesday, the last day of class for kids, some teachers and I hit up Dart Bowl.  I spent a good chunk of my time convincing people that Dart Bowl's Enchiladas are world (... Austin) famous.  Then I proceeded to get just over 100 on two games.  It's really sad.  My bowling game sucks.  Then again, I'm still just doing that thing where I don't get strikes but 9s.  9s!!! EVERY TIME!  EVER SINGLE TIME! (Anybody know where that last part is from?)

Anyway, Thursday I had to go up to the school for a bit, but then I... umm... what did I do on Thursday?  Oh yeah, I met up Caleigh and Esther at Baby A's, and then... went shopping.  I shopped a lot.  It's a bad sign when you spend that much on your first day of summer I think.

Friday, I hung about the house for awhile.  I don't remember what all I did except that JJ invited me to Barton to meet her up.  Oh and then I went with Hannah to Grace's harp recital.  It was awesome.  :)

Saturday, Dan and I WENT TO SIX FLAGS!  It was great!  We rode the Iron Rattler first.  Then a water ride, then we rode Poltergeist?  I think that killed us both a little.  It was really fast and just... well I'm just glad I didn't have the beer that Dan did right before.  :)  We went on the Scooby Doo ride, which was TOTALLY MY FAVORITE.  Dan beat my score literally by 50%.  I had 1440, Dan had 2160.  WTF?!  Anyway, overall, it was a great time.  I think Dan liked the wet rides the most :)  Oh yeah, and we stopped by Bucee's to get coke cans to get $15 off each ticket!  :)  And also because it's Bucee's.  And we have to go.  You know what else I had to go to?  JOHNNY'S HALF BIRTHDAY. Had to.  I met them up at Pour House, but was too exhausted from rollercoastering to do karaoke afterwards.

Sunday, Dan and I went to go see The Purge.  Johnny joined us at Alamo.  The movie was meh, but my pizza was EN POINTE!  :)  Yes, EN POINTE.  Not on point.  Dan and I hung out at his place for a bit before we went to Massage Envy.  Dan got his FIRST MASSAGE EVER.  Yeah.  It was awesome.  He got a girl, while I got a dude.  My first dude.  Pretty interesting.  Felt his hairy arms.  His airy arms being AWESOME!  Afterwards, we went and got some food, hung out for a bit, and then I took him home... cause you know, he has a job he has to do during the summer.  :)  Then I went to Lisa & Mike's to hang out with Lukemeister.  :)

Good start to the first week!  

Not A Very Prolific Year

For a year that was supposed to see the world's end, you'd think I'd want to document everything I did in 2012.  Or not, because if the world ended, who would be there to see it?  Like I've said before, the more I actually am busy DOING, the less I find the time to write about what it is I'm doing.

That being said, 2013 doesn't seem to be all-that prolific either.  It's practically June and I've had 3 posts.  THREE posts.  What gives, Mel?

Well... I guess the big BIG news is that there has been a new leading man in my story lately.  His name is Dan.  We call him Dan Lawyer for fun.  I met him on match.com.  Oh, did I tell you I got on match.com?  Hah, yeah.  That happened.  It was MLK day and I just finished watching Obama's 2nd inauguration.  I sat myself on the couch and, influenced by Sarah's online dating stories, I decided to go the Nike route and "just do it."

I went on 5 first dates.

They were all tolerable and decently pleasant.  Dan won out, though.  So, to the victor go the spoils.  He gets me and all my crazy.  (Well, the crazy hasn't quite come out yet.  It will though.  Oh, it will.)

at Spiderhouse, which coincidentally was where we had our first date (this was not from our first date, don't worry Chi Thu, I looked a lot cuter than that on our first date).

It's only been a couple of months, but we've had a great time getting to know each other.  So far, other than weekly movie nights, our days together are pretty random.  Planting succulents, camping in the backyard, Renaissance Fair(e?), reading in Mayfield Park, long walks on the beach down South Congress, that kind of thing.

Back to the rest of life:

January was alright.  We had Hannah's birthday party at my house and that ended with my group of friends in my bedroom eating taco bell.  Eating about $40 worth of Taco Bell.  Yeah.  That's all I remember about that.  Also, Lisa, Mike and I went to go see Keane.  It was... just as spectacular (if not more so) than it would've been had they performed when they were supposed to back in 2006.

This is what $40 from Taco Bell looks like after you and your friends demolish it.

Keane @ the Moody Theater (ACL Live place)

February was good.  I had my first date with Dan on the first.  He actually wanted to go out for Valentine's day 2 weeks after meeting me.  Chloe and Daniel were in town, so we went to see DIE HARD!  Mom & Dad's 50th Anniversary celebration was great.  I also got to see some good friends running the Austin Marathon!  Maggie, Mike, and I went out and cheered with our posters--it was actually a lot of fun!

Cupcakes from Mom & Dad's 50th

Joel at Mile 24 (aka 92% done!)

Maggie about to give B-Go a high 5 at 92%!

March saw Mr. Matt get married to the gorgeous Alyssa.  Somehow I don't have photos of us at their wedding... meh, I'm sure they'll turn up somewhere, no?  :)  I sang during their ceremony "Make You Feel My Love."  I fudged up part of the song, mostly because I got distracted by the little kiddos walking down the aisle during the instrumental.  Whoops!  Anyway, it was quite a night!  It POURED down rain all night, even when we were going to the bar for the after party.  But not when Schutte and I walked to our secret after-after party.  Hah, oh what a night.  

Schutte & I pre-wedding

Schutte, LC & I post-wedding at... where were we?  McKinney Ave?  Something like that.

March also saw Spring Break.  Ahh yes, my first Spring Break as a teacher... So March looked a lot like this:

Texas Independence Day a la JJ Penny and the gang!

Driftwood Vineyard with Miss Bliss!

TEGAN AND SARA and a badly soundteched Macklemore with JJ, Danielle, Dave Behr and Danielle's engineer friend at Waterloo

Dan and me at our first concert (Alabama Shakes) at the Austin Rodeo!

Pi day pies with Miss Bliss and...

JENNY!  GIARDINA!  (LIENHARD!)

First time camping with Dan (...in his backyard.)

Kayla came into town, which naturally summoned Kristi, Eshe, Johnny and myself downtown.

Yes, we danced for far too long at Latitude.

One of my favorite couples, the Cernys, invited me over for some Elk burgers in Manor!

Early Easter with the Chamberlains, my favorite Austin family :)

Renaissance Fair (Faire?) with Dan and these two, Tommy & Kate

 Geez, March was a full month.  Or rather, I took a lot of photos in March.

April.  My favorite month.  Why?  It's birthday month!  :)  I got three days of birthday!  I got early birthday with some teacher friends at Billy's on the 2nd, real birthday with my family (Dan's first time to meet the Chamberlains and Danielle came for dinner too!) and then a final birthday with the friends at Contigo.  

Yeah... it was cold.  Can you tell?

Everyone's getting cozy, even Eshe and Blake who... have probably met once.

Tommy & Kate came with some pretty flowers!

Caleigh (in my jacket... AGAIN, haha) and Hannah, future roomie :)

Yeah, we're all sick of pictures of us two by now

Other cool things in April?  Ryan & Ellie got engaged and we all celebrated at Opal Divine's, Luke & Nia both had their 4th birthdays!  :)  April was a delightful month!

Waiting for the engaged folk to arrive

Nia blowing out her Dora & Diego cake!

Gosh he's a cute kid.

Luke with his friends at Pump it Up!  May the fourth (birthday) be with you!  :)

May is shaping up to be quite the month too, but it's not quite over yet... so... maybe I'll update more now that I feel slightly more caught up!  :)

Oh-- VIETNAM IS HAPPENING IN LESS THAN A MONTH!

Thanksgiving 2012 Snapshot

My Thanksgiving this year started early.  I had 3 of them too!

Monday - MND: 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Potluck.  We had quite a few regulars in attendance and it was a lovely affair.  Johnny, me, Danielle, Buddy, Joel, Maggie, Kristi, Eshe, Nia Luis, Mindy... Oh gosh... I hope I'm not forgetting anyone (I was just trying to remember who sat where at the dinner table).  Anyway, it was lovely.  We presented Johnny with his "Pampered Chef" gifts.  A month or so ago I went to a PC party that Aberdeen hosted.  Not being the cook that's necessary to need PC kind of stuff, I thought of a great idea--buy Johnny some goodies!  I sent out a message to the MND folks and received a RESOUNDING response.  We pooled our money together and bought him some goodies!  We gave it to him as a birthday present SLASH "Thank you for making us all dinner on a weekly basis."

We shared our pits and peaks.  We even voted on pit of the week and peak of the week.  Buddy won pit... Eshe won peak--and it came with a dance!

Tuesday - Last day of SCHOOL!  Well, before the Thanksgiving break.  Met up Buddy, Johnny and Kristi at Billy's for a much-needed pitcher and FRITO PIE!  I had to meat-load before heading over to Caleigh's where we had a VEGGIE Thanksgiving!  I had Tofurkey for the first time!  It was great!  I met some great people too!  In attendance were Caleigh, myself, Jeff, Will, Esther, Kelcey, Joel, and... Jared?  We played 5 rounds of Catchphrase in which the girls won (holla!) and then many MANY Mariokart N64 rounds.  It was great.  I hadn't played it in so long!

Then I got a text from a really sad and lonely Jake.  Tiffany wasn't home that night and he wanted a movie night.  He said I would get free reign of Netflix.  Clue it was!

Wednesday - Watched Luke while Lisa and Mike were at work.  This consisted of cartoons and lots of dancing.  Butt dancing to be exact.  If you don't know what I'm talking about then you definitely missed out this Thanksgiving.  Eventually we drove home to Houston.  We left around 6.  Got there around 10.  So for the record, it took 4 hours.  I always forget if the drive was long or not.  Now I'll remember (if I remember to check this post).

Thursday - Early morning drive through fog to take Austin to play football with the guys.  I spent most of my time lamenting the fact that my iPhone cracked after just a ONE FOOT FALL.  Poop.  Then I played with Colin and Ashlynn (am I spelling their names correctly at all?)

Family arrived pretty close to on-time.  Yummy yummy food ensued.  We ate a lot, talked a lot, picked Christmas names (I got Bella & Lina!), footballed a lot, and napped a lot.  Then Amanda, Amber, Austin, and I went to go see Pitch Perfect.  1. I love Anna Kendrick and always have since she became my favorite character/actress in Twilight.  2. It's singing so duh I'd love it.  3.  I could live without the vom, though.

Later that night, after more football and more food, Steven picked me up around 11:15 for some midnight shopping.  It took a little while to convince me to go, but when he said he was going alone to pick out work clothes, I HAD to go!  Also, I've never done a late-night Black Friday thing before.  We made a pit stop at Whataburger (cause what is a Mel-Steven hangout without a random stop at a random fast food joint?) and spent about an hour and a half at Baybrook.  It was pretty crowded, though not insane like I imagined.  (I mean, people DIE on Black Friday, yo!)  There was a very exhausted woman sitting around a mountain of giant shopping bags... wish I snapped a photo of her.

Friday - I went to go fix my phone.  It was a short and pleasant experience.

Then I went to Target.  Another pleasant experience.  A little pricey, but I do have lots of new DVDs for viewing.

That night we went to Kim Son and then Anh Vien's place (with a trip to Anthro of course) and spent most of the night eating.  And drinking.  And eating.  And eating.  And singing.  Oh and Chi Thu showed us "SongPop" which I'm officially addicted to.  So annoying.

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to mention how Chi La got caught hiding in the car.  Classic.

Saturday - Woke up and picked up Scott Saunders at Hobby.  We caught up and had lunch together at Black Walnut Cafe.  It was delightful.  Who doesn't love seeing Scott Saunders?

Then in the mood for seeing more Singers (and finding out that my siblings were all too busy for me this Saturday, haha) I called up Sarah Bowers (Robinson, oops!) to see what she was up to.  We ended up heading to Baybrook where we both bought clothes we didn't need but wanted.  Ehh, c'est la vie!  I also bought the world's most ridiculous iPhone case (and ironically too).

I'm trying to remember what all we did that night, but I think it consisted only of Psych.  I watched a lot of Psych and hung out with the nieces and nephews.  We were also cooked a smorgasbord of yummy foods and it was awesome.  Luke and his family hung out with us too.  He mostly played with Aaron, though he would occasionally donned us with his presence (and butt dance).

Sunday - More Psych and eventually drove home (we left around 1:30... I kept getting sucked into more episodes of Psych).  The drive home was on par with regular drives home, by the way future Mel.  :)

Overall, GREAT Thanksgiving :)  I'm positive there are things I'm forgetting to say, but oh well.

I Should've Written, "5. A Million Dollars!"

In general, I don't expect gifts.  Well, okay, I take that back.  Thomas I expect something from.  (Not always, we did have a deal a couple years ago to not give any gifts!)  :)

This year, I got literally everything I wanted and more!

On Monday (the day before my birthday) I jokingly (and randomly) wrote a list of things on the dry erase board in the class I was subbing for.  This was more my way of getting their attention (they were all talking to each other when the bell rang, but they got a lot quieter once they started trying to figure out what I was writing):

1. green
2. size 7
3. Anthropologie
4. gerber daisies

I proceeded to ignore their questions and comments ("Miss Nguyen, 'anthropology' is spelled with a 'y'") and take roll.  I then went through the instructions for what they were supposed to be doing that day and right when I was done, on the tail end of the last instruction, I pointed to each item on the board and said,

"My birthday is tomorrow.  Oh and by the way my favorite color is green, I wear size 7 shoes, my favorite store is Anthropologie," (here you see some girls nod in agreement, and the rest of the class still remains clueless as to how there is a store dedicated to the discipline of anthropology), "and my favorite flowers are gerber daisies!  So, you know... just... saying."

The next day, I actually had some students bring me things!

Not only did I get green things (a green bag with an umbrella and some green lotion and body mist and also green cards), but I also got some flowers including (of course) gerber daisies!  :)

That night, Lisa, Luke, Thomas, and I went to Jasper's.  We had some (and by some I mean all) of their happy hour bar menu.  My favorites were the: pizza, sliders, and pork satays.  Skip the blue cheese potato chips--especially if you're expecting it to be as awesome as Plucker's version.  Then we... went to... *drumrollnotreallyneeded* ANTHROPOLOGIE!  Where I found myself some silver shoes... size 7.  And my sister was, of course, sweet and wonderful enough to treat me to it (this is after she already treated us to said dinner at Jasper's)!

Probably could've gotten a better photo, but too lazy.  :)

So there you have it.  My four things that I randomly off-the-top-of-my-head listed, and I got all four!  I even got a couple more things I hadn't expected (but would definitely be somewhere on my list of favorite things): TWO--yes, count it--TWO bottles of sriracha--one from Miss Maggie and the other from Thomas's family.  Thomas's family then threw in one more really really awesome thing:

Seth Meyers @ Paramount Theatre

I have such an awesome nerdcrush on him.  I look forward to weekend updates so this SNL Headwriter can make me giggle.  I still haven't decided if I have a bigger crush on him or Tina.  It's a tough one.  Now, if I got this combo, I might not have such a hard time making the decision:

Or, even better (if you're not reading this from your iPhone and/or the book I plan to print and make of this):

Yes, guys.  Really.  This was a GREAT birthday!  Much like Edwin McCain, I've got all I've waited for, and I could not ask for more!  (Yeah, I went there)

My birthday cupcake!  Luke helped me blow out my candles!  :)

Kite Festival 2012

3/4 - Mom's birthday!  :)  Also, Austin's salute to kites day!  So Thomas and I went with Lisa and Mike (and of course Luke) to Zilker to enjoy some fun in the sun and some height with the kites!  Luke and I had some fun throwing popcorn into each other's mouths (or just at each other's faces...) and Mike seemed to have fun trying to get the world's most dangerous looking (pointy) kite up in the air!

Lisa and Luke chowing down on some kettle corn!  (Man, I REALLY want some now!)

Lisa feeding luke some delicious corndog, while Thomas and Mike try to get the kite up!

Beautiful.

Just beautiful.

Our town and the awesome people in it