Snow Day!

Yep, that's about it

Ok, so it was a little worse in the morning. This picture was taken around noon. UT is closed, the buses stop at 7 and there is widespread panic. I'm about to head out and brave the chaos because The Italian Girl in Algiers is on tonight. The show must go on.

Programming has taken over my life, by the way. I just learned the basics of HTML two weeks ago. But I'm not wasting my time with coding in Blogger.

Emily with our 3rd place growler
I've been rocking trivia at NXNW with the Emilys (Emilies?). We thought we were doing terrible last week and we still got 3rd place. Librarians and trivia just work.
NXNW has a beer that is "brewed in the style of the great ales of the Pacific Northwest" and it is so good! Their trivia is a little too pop-culture heavy, though. I'll take Dad for the beer and we'll do trivia somewhere else.

Mom and Dad are here March 12th!

Butternut squash and bacon mac and cheese

I'm back to my old ways. Except not. I had a modicum of free time last semester, which has dwindled to an iota.

My job is amazing, though! I'm making some how-to guides and things online, so I'll share as soon as those are up. One of the things I'm working on will require me to make a Bitstrip. And get paid for it.

I also am creating a website for a class from scratch. This is what I've come up with so far. Stay tuned and hopefully it will start to get better. Or maybe it's already at its peak, who knows?

This is me dressed up. A couple of the girls threw a birthday party where we had to pretend to be classy. So I got to wear my Dressbarn dress that I thought I would have no occasion to wear.

Cute!

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for positive experiences with me! I think I made a typo in my email and said I would be writing 300 pages when I meant words. I hope that didn't make anyone put more effort into it than they meant to :-) Sounds like I'm doing a lot of soul searching for my Managing class. I'll let you know what I find.

Winter Picture Book

Somewhere, TX

Well, so much has happened, so here's a short pictorial version.

Sarah, Heather and I took a trip to Fredericksburg, TX and did small-town things. Like witness a cow auction, antiquing, and swimming in December.

Emilia and Sarah put on a lovely holiday party and got us December babies a pinata. Santa did not have a chance.

Four weeks at home was almost perfect.

Katie, Dad and I went to a Thunderbirds game, which is where I discovered my previously mentioned love of hockey.

I was able to go to Portland and Vancouver, where, apparently they use the same architect to design the entire city.

Katie and I watched the Canucks game.

I finished my cardigan that I started in about February, along with many other craftsy things. I like to think about when I first started this sweater as a naive young professional in the Northwest. So much has changed. So much.

After reading this article on Jezebel about a call to wear only 6 pieces of clothing for a month (not counting workout clothes, undergarments, outerwear, shoes and accessories, because come ON, we're not THAT minimalist). When I read it I thought "Man, I just did that and it SUCKED". But, apparently I didn't (5 skirts, 5 T-shirts, 4 sweaters, 3 cardigans, 1 blouse, 1 dress and 2 pairs of jeans is more than 6). There is no hope for me.

I ate a lot. No one does food like Seattle.

I lost my buddy, Buck, but he stuck around for the holidays. He also stuck around long enough for his last meal to be a pork chop. He was a smart one.

Semester One Done

I've made it back to Seattle for the break and was hoping to share a few end-of-the-semester photos but my borrowed memory card reader is agonizingly slow, so until I return to Austin, here is an abridged version of the end of the semester/beginning of winter break:

Got a GRA position with Library Instruction Services (woot!)

Got elected to be a Co-Director of the UT chapter of ALA (double woot!)

Two A's, one B (now the pressure to get straight A's is off, yessss)

The first half of my twenties ends soon

Hockey is my new favorite sport

Happy Holidays!

Austin Style Thanksgiving!

Katie escaped Snowpacalypse Seattle 2010 to visit for the weekend in Austin.

Thanksgiving in Austin is not different from Thanksgiving most other places, save for a few things:

Eating on the porch. Outside.
I'm trying to think if I've ever spent a Thanksgiving away from the family, and I'm pretty sure I haven't. Anyway, I put together a small potluck for the few people that stuck around. I made korean tacos and The Thanksgiving, which is simply cranberry simple syrup and sparkling white wine (if you've seen Wayne's World recently, you'll know what I didn't say champagne). We also had mac and cheese, apple pie, squash soup, corn pudding and some potato wedges that cause a small fire in the oven (it's all good).

Football! Ok, that's normal Thanksgiving stuff, but...

A cow on the field is NOT.

I was right about the bad signs at the hexing rally, UT failed! No bowl for the Longhorns. Still, it was a fun game. I was high-fived by The World's Hardest High Fiver after the first touchdown, so minus the minor injury, the fans were jovial rather than scary. Katie and I learned all the chants and sign language that go with the game and got into it as well as we could considering it was 40 degrees out.

Tacos! This has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but Katie loves her Torchy's.

This is the last week of classes and I'm hanging on by a thread! So, back to work!

I Put A Spell On You

Hex Rally 2010

Every so often I have one of those moments where I think "Am I really here?" One of those moments was today at Hex Rally 2010.

You heard me right.

Every year, before the UT-A&M football game (which my lovely sister is taking me to on Thursday), there is a rally in West Campus that aims to curse the A&M team by lighting red candles and singing the UT anthem 3 times.

THESE ARE PEOPLE HEXING

And then this banner fell off the building. Bad sign.

Muahahahaha!


And then the World's Largest Texas Flag got caught in a balcony on its way down.
Did we curse the wrong team?

Here is football player Foswhitt Whittaker and some people I don't know. Pseudo-celebrity moment!

As cynical as I can be, I am actually very excited about the game! It is so crazy to think about where I was a year ago and where I am now. Being in a place with so many out-of-place occurrences, I often stop myself to reflect on this point in my life and where I'm going.

On another topic, look! My cabinet is full of FOOD!

Thanks, Mom and Dad! It feels good not going to bed hungry.

Sunday Reading

This article on hipsters made me laugh out loud:

"When we announced a public debate on hipsterism, I received e-mail messages both furious and plaintive. Normally inquisitive people protested that there could be no answer and no definition. Maybe hipsters didn’t exist! The responses were more impassioned than those we’d had in our discussions on health care, young conservatives and feminism. And perfectly blameless individuals began flagellating themselves: “Am I a hipster?”