austin-tatious

i took a little 24 hour jaunt to my favorite place last weekend to help dani celebrate her 24th birthday. i hadn't been back since october 4th, so i've been itching to get back there for 110 days. almost 4 months. not ok.

i just love how i feel there. i'm not sure if it's that i'm more familiar with the area or i'm in my comfort zone...but i get instantly more secure, confident, joyful, inspired, what have you...when i barrel down 35 and see this...that'd be the view of campus/downtown from the highway. west-sideeee.

i rolled into town just in time for a lovely dinner at shady grove to celebrate dani and then went to a friend's apartment afterwards. they picked up 40's for us and it was my first experience drinking one - dani made sure we drank them out of paper bags so it was legit.

we played taboo and rock band. most of the taboo rounds went something like this:

michael (the clue-giver): ok, uh...SCANDAL. SEX TAPE. BLACKMAIL...
matt (a guesser): PROMOTION!!
michael: correct.

after belting a little alanis (me) and rage against the machine (dani), we headed DT for a little mooseknuckle action (of course). it was really nice to chill, visit old hangouts, and just be there. happy birthday my beautiful dani!! i loves you mucho.

i also had the privilege of staying the night at the house liz and i lived in senior year. caroline still lives there, lucky little ho. it was the place i lived in the shortest amount of time, but lots of awesome shiz went down in there...so it holds such a special place in my heart. not to mention it was badawesome. many thanks to caro, can, and alyssa for the use of their most comfortable couch.

THEN i met up with the person who pretty much got me through college emotionally...and that'd be april. i'm not kidding you, we kept each other sane most times. one lunch or dinner with this chick and i was footloose and fancy free, lovin' life and thankful for her presence. we ate at magnolia cafe on south congress (another favorite must-go-here ATX spot).

so co

goodbye for now, austin. i promise i won't stay away so long this time.
love/miss/namaste.

the coolest thing i've seen in a long time:

thanks, etsy.

love/miss/namaste.

boom boom pow

i could tell you the story of how i was strutting around work in my adorable booties and then bit it hard in the huge main hallway sending a stack of papers scattering all over the floor and CC laughing uncontrollably...

or i could tell you the story of how i was gingerly gliding down my stairs to watch a movie with a dude and then slid down about 4 stairs on my tush while clutching the rail as hard as i wish i could hold on to my dignity. but i'm not gonna do that either.

instead, i'm going to tell you a story of triumph: i paid off my credit card this week. POW. i finally made the last payment from the smallish debt i got myself into last year when i was flirting with depression and got hair extensions and enough forever 21 clothes to outfit an entire teen movie. my debt is gone, my hair is sort of long again (although it's black and i look like snooki) and i am feelin' fancy.

i came home this morning to get a massage with my mom and grandma - real nice. we attempted to cleanse ourselves from all the toxins in our body by drinking lots of water, but then we went to snuffers. oh well. now i'm just chillin' at home with fred and charlotte and it's good times. i love 'em a lot.

love/miss/namaste.

do you know who hates 6AM spin classes? God.

i have been getting so much better at working out it's ridiculous. it's like jillian michaels possessed my body or something. but not really, because i'm still the same lazy ass i've always been, i'm just adding frequent workouts to my weekly activities so i can slowly but surely get some actual muscle on my bones.

so anyway, i'm in love with yoga class. i go at least twice a week. i'm pretty sure it's my favorite because it tricks you into working out. you start out in complete stillness just breathing and then the next thing you know you're muscles are shakey and burnin' like the sidewalks in july. then on wednesdays, CC and i go to that 24 lift class where Legs (the instructor) blasts our bodies until we want to slap her face and then hug her at the end.

i have been avoiding the spin classes though, i'll admit. i hear they are quite difficult and require serious endurance...so naturally i said, "nerp. not for me." but my roomie was all, "i'm going to the 6AM spin class tomorrow! let's both go! come onnnn." and i don't like to say no to people (except for STOP RIGHT THERE, 'the other sister' style), so i agreed.

thursday. january 7, 2010. i wake up at 5:45AM and am shivering in the car by 5:50AM (slept in my clothes for minimal morning effort). it's icy out, i know this, so i take caution to use the service road route instead of getting on the highway. i turn left onto central expwy and begin to accelerate for mere seconds before breaking to stop in front of 2 busted up cars that were blocking the entire road. except WTF??? i am not stopping?!?! JEEP, WHY ARE YOU FAILING MEEEeeeeee! crunch. calypso slams in between an SUV and some piece-of-crap white car. the space between the two vehicles was wide enough for me to pass through, but not without contact. it was the worst on my side, i lost the fender. no damage to the right side of my car. but guess who conveniently moves his piece-of-crap car SECONDS after i come skipping down the road of doom? white car dude. so now i've got a car to fix, dignity to find, and i don't even have a toned ass to show for it. i went home and sat on the couch and whined to my mom on the phone until i had to go to work and sulk some more.

tuesday. january 12, 2010. i wake up for a second attempt at spin class. KH and i walk out the door and begin the freezing-frick shuffle to the car. something falls. it's KH's iphone, we pause. i reach down to grab it and there it is: a completely shattered screen. the thing that makes this all the more tragic is that she treats that phone like it is the egg of an endangered animal. and she had only just received the cover she ordered for it after over a month of iphone nakedness. i kid you not: God is completely opposed to spin class.

so after KH's phone suffers major wounds, we hop in the car (thank you Jesus for her heated seats) and make it to spin class just as it begins! the last 2 bikes are on the front row (sarcastic hooray!) and on KH's left is this super buff chick who makes me want to cry. on the other side of me? a grunter. all i'm going to say about him is that it was rhythmic and made me wildly uncomfortable.

oh. but not as uncomfortable as the actual "bike" aka: instrument of crotch torture. 60 minutes we cycled. 60 minutes i cursed my bones. sitting on that seat and peddling was probably one of the most agonizing experiences i have ever put myself through. i even tried to put my little towel on the seat just to provide myself some shard of cushion but no. no. you go back and forth between standing and sitting, and that towel did exactly what i wished i could do: leap off that bike seat into the fetal position.

all that to say, i'm honestly proud of little dudsie for making it the whole time. i pushed myself as far as i could go and endured an hour-long class that was actually enjoyable (minus the grunter, the screeching instructor, and the horrible techno tunes). truth be told, i was planning on bailing after 30 minutes. i thought i couldn't take it anymore, what with my pubis bone being corroded...but then in the middle of the screecher's god-awful mix tape, Beyonce starts telling me to push through. so i did. i did it for her.

all in all, it was a pretty good day.

love/miss/namaste.

an afternoon at the office

this happened yesterday:
as usual, CC and i were singing lyrics back and forth in our cube. then it turned into an email chain that looked like this:

we always surprise ourselves with how many random song lyrics we know. we can go for a long time. anyways...

ME: danggg, we are such good rappers.
CC: i know, we're like salt 'n peppa
ME: who would be salt and who would be peppa?
CC: well...peppa was kind of a ho...so probably you.


it's the little things that get you through long days in a cubicle.

next up: why God hates spin class.

love/miss/namaste.

christmas in jackson hole

this is the first year that my dad has had christmas off since before i was born. obviously holidays that are geared toward "togetherness" creates busy schedules for pilots. it's the nature of the business you know. it never bothered me growing up...all you have to do is move christmas to a different day, no bigs. i have always been annoyed by those christmas movies that center around whether or not someone's parent is going to be present on christmas eve/day. you know the ones: workaholic father, adorably disappointed kid, the parent's choice... i think those movies are ridiculous. did you know that you can actually celebrate christmas on the 26th of december and it does not change it one bit?? stupid brats who have no regard for the fact that their parent is actually working that hard so that they can buy them sh*t really chap my shorts. come on, precocious little menace. the world doesn't revolve around you and your lofty holiday expectations. you'll still get that barbie bicycle or the tonka truck...know why? because your daddy got a paycheck. anyway. i digress.

sooooo since my dad had his heart attack and is out on sick leave until the spring, we decided that we'd take a little family adventure vacation to jackson hole, wyoming, have a little white christmas for ourselves and get away just the 3 of us. it was short and sweet and action packed. the two full days we were there, my dad arranged for us to take tours of yellowstone national park and the hot springs on snowmobiles...

we got picked up by our guide around 6:30 the first morning. he was driving one of those 15 passenger vans with a couple other families who had already been collected from their respective hotels. i kid you not, this dude looked like a hybrid of Johnny Depp and Val Kilmer (circa 1986). we'll call him Johnny Kilmer (see below, i know right?!?). he was also crazy.
Johnny Kilmer is originally from arkansas, which you can immediately detect as soon as he opens his mouth and words come out. he is insanely friendly and outspoken, so mix those qualities with southern hospitality and comedic relief and that is a recipe for a Laura swoon. uh oh!

he's one of those dudes that is a reckless adolescent trapped in an adult body. i'm not kidding, he feared nothing. he'd whip the snowmobiles around with authority, man. he is a true outdoor dude. the things he said yielded a "WTF??" glance between my mom and me about 95% of the time. he told stories about "tacklin' a cy-ote that was takin' a dump by the side of the road" and "grabbin' a big ole crow and tuckin' it under his jacket and lettin' it lose in the bar just to see how people'd react," and such. there are really no words to respond to his remarks, only "ha..haahahha...ok...." here's another:

JK: "Yeeah. ever wunce ina while, i gotta check peoples fay-ces fer white spawts 'cuz that thurs the beginnin's of frawst bite. i knowed a gah who's nose got it and it dun turned black and fell awff. this wun time i was huntin' and decided to get in the lake and gave myself hah-po-thurmia, ya know. just so's i'd know whut it felt like. mos people don't know when they's got it 'cuz wunce you get it you think you're hawt so ya take off all ya clothes."
My Dad: "So you just sat in freezing cold water and gave yourself hypothermia?"
JK: "Yeeeah mayn."

this was nonstop randomness for 2 days.

we had a blast on those snowmobiles. the first day, we traveled over 100 miles throughout the park. each of us had our own snowmobile and we rode like little ducks in a row. i had issues keeping up with the group because i'd get caught up looking at the lovely landscape daydreaming, pretending that "1901" was the soundtrack of my journey. other times, "let it ride" by ryan adams would be playing in my head and i would feel like a badass sittin' back gangsta on that sno-mo, marshmellowed out in about 34 layers of clothing. cause i'm cool like that.
we stopped and walked around the sulfur springs where scalding hot water bubbles in patches beneath the snow-covered earth - it's so cool but it smells like farts. i walked behind my mom on the trails and every 5 seconds she was either hitting the snow off a tree branch or kicking the snow mounds like a little kid who leaves destruction in his wake. "um, mom...what are you doing?"
(she innocently looks back and grins) "i just can't help myself."my parents were giving me a hard time about driving so slow and not keeping up with the person in front of me, but... SORRY. sno-mos aren't the easiest machinery to operate, you pull the gas lever and lurch forward like a kid learning to drive a stick, then as soon as you let off the gas you basically come to an immediate complete stop no matter how fast you're going. it's tricky, ok? so it would only be appropriate that the most cautious driver would be involved in the only collision 5 minutes before we returned the vehicles. yeah. i rear ended my mom and my hood popped off... let it ride indeed. it was not badass.

nevertheless, we enjoyed the rest of our journey unscathed. on the way up, johnny kilmer was offering his usual ridiculous commentary: "awwwlright. we're comin' up on sum sulfur springs so don't think somewun dun fawrted in the vayn." ok...thanks....
we got to the park to begin snowmobile journey #2 and rode our sno-mos up to the granite hot springs. it's a natural outdoor hot tub! the water comes out of the earth at 112 degrees right in the middle of an atmosphere of 10 degrees. changing into our swimsuits and walking down to the pool was borderline unbearably cold but totes worth it. after our sno-mo adventure, we were ready to be back at our hotel for some r&r for our last night in the JH. we were mysteriously the first family to be picked up for the day and the last to be dropped off... hm...could it be that johnny kilmer felt a special connection to us? it's possible...
we said our goodbyes and went to the room. i threw on sweats as we prepared to go down to the hotel restaurant for our last meal in town when, out of nowhere, dad's phone rings. minutes later, with a bewildered expression, my dad reveals that johnny kilmer will be joining us. what in the sweet name of mary??? our tour guide wants to hang? sorry parents. i need a minute to spruce.

i felt totally awkward about it because i mean really...who has game when their parents are sitting inches away? come on. i have the tendency to be epileptic around dudes as it is. but oh, no worries. after he's chillin' with us for a few minutes i realize that he's not there cause he thinks i'm a cute out-of-towner...no no. he's got a man crush on my dad. see, he's an aspiring pilot.

ego deflating. i return to dallas with my tail between my legs and ready to begin my "better men in 2010" mentality.

merry late-christmas, loves. i hope yours was filled with happy memories, awkward family stories, and love. thanks for coming, Jesus!

love/miss/namaste.