Filed under: family, life | Tags: animals, austin, beagle, jack, jack the beagle, king tilley, kk tilley, life, pets, pixielove
Jackson Browne…Jack Attack…Pooty McStinker…Poots…Jackolantern…they all call up the same crazy dog that we adopted last year: Jack the Beagle.
During our adventure at Eeyore’s Birthday last weekend (where Jack saw his first horses and a macaw–all at the same time…and learned the joys of baying to the beats in the drum circles), we met a lady who organizes the Austin Beagle Brigade. I imagined chaos with loud, howling beagle dogs running around like my Jack…clearly, I had to see this in person.
Jack loves to ride in the car. He thinks anyplace the car takes you is the park. Sometimes, the parks are pretty bad (like when we go to the post office, or our old duplex that we’re renovating). And sometimes, they are awesome (like Red Bud or Auditorium Shores or Onion Creek). Regardless, a trip in the car is exciting for Jack.
First, there’s the joy inside the house as he sees that we’re not going to work. Then, there’s the race to get to the car first. He can’t bear to think that Townes might get his window seat. Pancho and I always carry earplugs for the ride…poor Townes smiles and hopes we get there quickly. So much anticipation and excitement for our little Jack, and then…he doesn’t even play with the other beagles. He doesn’t like being separated from Townes.
It turns our our guy was the loudest in the group, and he eventually took on one good chase with the beagles, running all over the park baying at the group. When he wasn’t baying, he was climbing in the laps of onlookers…he thinks he’s a small lap dog even though he’s 50 pounds.
Our Jack…you gotta love him.
Filed under: wedding | Tags: austin, bridal portraits, broken spoke, dale watson, king tilley, kk tilley, life, mary sledd, pancho, pixielove, texas capitol, wedding
I never thought I’d be the kind of bride to take bridal portraits. So formal and stuffy and weird…like a glamour shot in a wedding dress that captures you so full of hope and anticipation of your big day. I may vomit just thinking about it.
We postponed these a few times because I somehow picked the rainiest days of the year to try for my bridal glamour shots…and we finally got them done two days before the wedding. Like I said in my earlier post–we waited until the very last minute for just about everything. And just like everything else, this turned into a great adventure for all.
Fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to meet the photographer, my mom calls to say she has to make an emergency visit to the pharmacy. Not sure what that means, since she was completely fine one hour before when she left to check into the hotel. No stress.
Mom eventually shows up and gets into the Ford F350 with Pancho’s mom to drive to the Broken Spoke. If you’ve ever seen a Ford F350, you know that there couldn’t possibly be a larger truck on the road than this behemoth. Pancho’s parents drive it when they pull their fifth-wheel trailer on their travels. And we’re driving on the narrow city streets during rush hour traffic, making as many left turns as possible. Fun times.
I hop in the car with my friend the dress designer (we’ll call her Fairy Godmother) to head to the Broken Spoke for our first location shoot with the photographer and realize as we pull into the parking lot that I’ve left my nose ring at home. Well, that’s what moms are for…right?
I send the moms up the street to the nearest body piercing shop with instructions on what jewelry to buy; they look at me in disbelief and turn the behemoth back onto the streets to complete their mission. We’re talking about two grandmas in their 60s whose total body piercing experience has probably been at Claire’s in the mall. I’m not sure how this will turn out, but I’m desperate.
Fairy Godmother and I wander to the dance hall in the Spoke, where Dale Watson and his band have already set up for their show that night. I love Dale. We shoot for a while and the moms arrive with the nose ring; with that mission accomplished they go to work as sentries to tell us if anyone heads our way while we photograph on the stage where we ought not be. Poor moms…so many new, unexpected experiences all within the first hour.
We do the stage, the Wurlitzer, the God Bless America sign, the Lone Star bus…the one where my veil is blowing in the wind along the side of the bus is the shot we used for the 16×20 mega-portrait at the reception. So much for the stuffy glamour shot, right?
At this point, Sharona arrives fresh from the airport and Fairy Godmother takes off…and the group piles back into cars to head to the Texas Capitol.
It turns out the Capitol isn’t as perfect a fit for me as the Spoke was…shocking, I know. We got a few great shots outside on the lawn…Mary (the photographer) climbed up a ladder to photograph me through the tree branches and got several great shots straight down my cleavage. Boog loves those. We did get one fantastic shot with a branch covering the scandalous spot…I really like that one.
At the end of it all, here’s what I have to say about this experience:
1) Hire Mary Sledd to take photos. She is awesome and her work is incredible.
2) Thank you Broken Spoke and Dale Watson for providing an awesome backdrop for my photos.
3) If you’re a bride, get the portraits done. Just be creative and make them reflect who you are.
Filed under: life, wedding | Tags: austin, king tilley, kk tilley, pancho, pixielove, wedding
It’s been a while since I’ve truly blogged…three years. It’s been a busy time.
After the night with Sharona and The Scabs, I spent New Year’s Eve with Pancho…whom I met at my birthday happy hour earlier that month. That was NYE 2005…and here we are in 2008. Since then, I’ve:
- fallen in love Pancho
- traveled to Thailand, Australia, Singapore, India, China, South Africa
- moved in with Pancho and blended a family of five cats and a dog in a two bedroom duplex on the creek
- lost two cats who wandered off in the night
- got engaged and bought a house
- adopted a wayward Beagle
- found one of the wandering cats
- got married
- lost the found wandering cat
And here we are.
The wedding was all they promise it to be–it was the time of our lives and we really enjoyed every minute of it. The mad dash in the last month to design, print, and mail invitations…design and make the dress…pick out the menu…hire the band…plan the ceremony…write the vows…plan the honeymoon…basically do everything except book the venue and the photographer (which we did 9 months before).
I work well under pressure, I suppose.
Another day, another blog, I’ll post some pictures and share some stories. In all honesty, it was magical and beautiful and sentimental. Far too sappy for one of my blogs.
Filed under: life, wedding | Tags: austin, king tilley, kk tilley, pixielove, resurrection tattoo, tattoo
Finally, we’re getting our act together and planning this wedding…I haven’t managed to get invitations done yet, but I did get the tattoo! The art is gorgeous thanks to the very talented Annie Mess at Resurrection Tattoo–she created something so beautifully delicate and colorful and I absolutely love it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been busted with my arm down the back of my shirt, scratching at the flaky healing skin without realizing I was doing it…nice.
Filed under: music | Tags: austin, bob schneider, music, pixielove, scabs
It’s a bizarre magic that takes over an evening with The Scabs. For most of my fellow Scabs Survivors it’s an out of body experience of sorts, where you commit acts that are completely out of character and have no certainty of where you will sleep until you wake up the next morning.
And then phase two of your Scabs adventure begins as you piece the night together over the days that follow and examine yourself with a blend of shock and disbelief with a dash of shame and a touch of pride. Of course, you keep that pride hidden because you know that no one will understand why you admire this reckless, trashy, vulgar side of yourself.
Talk to others who’ve been to a Scabs show. They’ll understand.
So this year’s Eve of New Year’s Eve worked out perfectly for a night with The Scabs. It’s been several years now since my last Scabs adventure, in fact the only one I can even remember was six years ago when I first moved to Austin. (You’ll have to ask me about that one in person over drinks.)
Originally, I had a date with a guy to see the Austin Pops…should have been a very elegant evening with a nice dinner and nice music. But the universe had other plans and sent my best friend from college whirling into town at the last minute and The Scabs were exactly what we needed.
We arrived at Antone’s and sauntered up to the bar for Tito’s & Tonics…a delicious treat as I programmed my address into Sharona’s phone just in case she needed to find her way home without me at some point. We were excited and anxious to see what the night would hold for us as the crowd closed in and the Scabs took the stage.
There was dancing…singing…flirting…Tito’s & Tonics…and then the lights came up and we found ourselves wondering what had happened to our night that promised ridiculous shenanigans and secrets we would take to our graves.
We pondered where we went wrong as we feasted on pizza from Roppolo’s around the corner. We lamented the run-of-the-mill concert experience as we rode in the cab back to my place. And then halfway home, I realized I did not have my keys. Here it was.
The cabbie turned back to downtown and dumped us out at Antone’s door; the bouncer reluctantly let us in and we searched every inch of the club as the staff hosed off the floor. No keys. We traced our steps back to Roppolo’s to find where we might have dropped them. I couldn’t remember taking them out of my purse, much less leaving them somewhere. Still no keys.
It was well past 3am at this point and we were back at the house assessing our chances of getting a locksmith out to let us in. We spoke with someone on the phone who said he’d be there shortly, and in our post-Scabs haze this made perfect sense to us. We waited…and waited…and then called another cab and found a hotel.
The desk clerk at the Holiday Inn Express grinned as we walked in, checked us in, and said, “Must be a love triangle gone bad.” We took our keys and walked up to the room with no comment and no idea what he was talking about. We smelled like booze and smoke and had no way to brush teeth or wash our faces or take out contacts…not the best conditions for a rest.
In the morning, we called my pet sitter and begged her to let us into the house…called our fourth cab and headed home.
I never did find my keys. But I’ll never forget how I lost them!
I should be napping right now, and I’m sure I’ll regret not doing so later, but I wanted to get my thoughts down before I forget… The brain’s a bit fuzzy these days – I suppose that’s the ‘disorientation’ they refer to in the jet lag literature.
I’m enjoying Bangalore so much more than Mumbai. It’s much cleaner here (both on the ground and in the air), and lacks the shanty towns throughout the city that we experienced in Mumbai. The weather is slightly cooler, so the humidity doesn’t get to you as much. There are a lot more cows roaming the streets here (where I saw more goats wandering in Mumbai).
The domestic airport was an interesting experience. I checked in after Oh (from the Wal-Mart commercial) and somehow I managed to get confirmed on the plane and she didn’t. Then, we thought they told us to go to the lounge on the other side of security (which was a mistake), and Oh got into all sorts of trouble with the army lady at the security checkpoint for even attempting to get through without a boarding pass. Immediately after she left the line to head back to the ticketing counter, they paged Oh’s name over the loudspeaker for a last call to get on the flight. We thought we were going to leave her behind…without any of her stuff.
It all worked out and we arrived safely (but hungry) and we began our day of meetings at the local office for our company…where it turns out that I may be assigned as the liaison to this region (meaning I will be doing this all again in a few months). More malaria pills…more Jungle Juice in my skin…more Cipro for when I eat something that decides to eat me… But the scary part was that something inside of me jumped with glee when I heard that. This, after the heat and the humidity and the dust and the smells. What am I thinking?
Tomorrow the real adventure begins…as Oh and I strike out on our own to a much smaller city in India. We’ve been trying to follow the rules from the travel clinic – shower with your eyes and mouth tightly shut so no germy water gets in…don’t eat anything that you don’t recognize or that’s not piping hot. But the reality is that you do get water in your eyes and mouth when you shower…and you really can’t recognize most things on your plate. I think I’m a little scared about the state my body will be in this time tomorrow. Eek!
Finally, I’m wrapping up my first full day in India, and man it was a long one! After this, I’m off to bed for a couple hours of sleep before my 4am wake-up call. I really miss my 9 hours of sleep a night…
We visited several stores for our business research and found almost opposite ends of the spectrum. Some were in big consumer electronics stores with air conditioning and sparkly equipment…others were tiny, stiflingly warm shops down small, dingy alleyways in random corners of the city that would have been intensely frightening in the dark.
Throughout the day, we were overwhelmed by the poverty. I had heard of people living in shanty towns and was warned that beggar children would follow us around, but it was more than I really expected to see. Some of the poor housing combined cardboard and thin metal siding for walls and rooftops. Women scrubbed their clothes on the dirty sidewalks. Trash piled up in many places, as if the poor were relegated to living within the grounds of the city dump. And the children so tiny and skinny, not really old enough to communicate at all they appeared out of nowhere and followed us through the city streets, often frightening us that they would get hit by oncoming cars.
There is a need here to widen the roads to improve transportation (believe me, after spending a better part of our 15-hour day in a car crowded with 8 people, I’m ready to lobby the government to fix the potholes), but they would have to tear down the slums in order to do so and the local politician draws much of his support from those who live in them. Until they can find an alternative where they can relocate these homesteaders, there will be no improvement to the roads.
It’s so strange to see what happens in places where the population and economy explode at the rate that some of these emerging markets are experiencing. The infrastructure just can’t support it. And on the flip side of these impoverished slum dwellers are individuals renting apartments starting at $150K per year. When you consider that a lunch that would cost $10 in the states costs you $5 here, you can adjust that rent upward to $300K to make it equivalent to what you would pay at home (I’m not a statistician, so my math could be way off…either way, it’s a lot of money for an apartment).
How can there be such disparity between the two? I know we have it at home, but it’s invisible to us there. What does that say about our society? Many questions to hurt my brain…
Traveling here wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Actually, the trip to Zurich from Dallas seemed much shorter than the 9.5 hours it took. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, though. At one point, I dozed off and startled myself awake with the thought that I hadn’t reminded Elvis to not erase Battlestar Galactica from the DVR. Note to self: refer back to New Year’s Resolutions – watch less TV.
I got weepy on the way to the airport again; leaving Elvis is always so difficult for me, even though it’s only a short time away from him. Maybe I just worry that it could be the last time I see him again or that something could happen to one of us. You never know. But I still feel silly every time I cry at the airport drop off.
So now the adventure has begun. I haven’t seen much of Mumbai yet, as the hotel is right around the corner from the airport. I can say that riding in a car is possibly more frightening here than it was in Beijing. At one point on our 3 minute car ride last night, our driver pushed head-on into opposing traffic to make his way to the hotel driveway. This, of course, was after we narrowly missed several pedestrians on the way.
It’s very smoggy here, reminding me of the haze that Austin gets when the fires in Mexico burn every spring. There’s also a distinct smell to the city that’s a mixture of all kinds of things. But you adjust and get used to it. I’m sure it will seep into my pores along with the Jungle Juice that I have to apply every morning to stave off the mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue fever.
On the plane, I debated about the Jungle Juice as I was caught between the panic raised by the Travel Clinic and the warnings on the Deet label. I ended up applying some to my exposed skin, and I was certainly glad for it later. Not more than 30 seconds after commenting on the false alarm about mosquitoes attacking immediately after disembarking the plane (part of the Travel Clinic panic), we were swarmed.
Looking back at 2004, I realize that it wasn’t such a bad year for me after all. I always tell people that nothing exciting is going on in my life, but I had some good times this year.
Over the summer, I started to get back to the singing (just a little, though) and recorded a demo for my friend, One, who is trying to sell a song she just wrote. It turned out really nice…we’ll see what happens.
I also filmed a commercial for Wal-Mart with my friend ‘Oh.’ It’s already played nationwide, and has been spotted during the Alias premiere, Good Morning America, the Today Show, and Oprah! Tune in to Good Morning America on 1/20 to see it, or maybe you’ll catch one of the other placements in January and February.
Vacations were close to home this year, with a fabulous week in Mexico and short weekend getaways to San Francisco (to visit Kleep-Ton), Los Angeles (to visit Sharona), and a birthday trip to Vegas (including a stay at the Bellagio!). Plus, Elvis and I both made the trek up I-35 to Dallas for Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family (not that I really count that as a vacation due to the stress). I think I’ve been out of town about half of the weekends of every month since October…
As far as work goes, things have really picked up at the end of the year. I’ve taken a new position at my company that has me traveling to several exotic destinations to meet with our marketing teams across the globe. In December, I spent 2 days in Beijing and was able to take a little stroll through Tian’Anmen Square and the first few gates of the Forbidden City. [While it sounds a little glamorous, it's actually exhausting work...spend two days on a plane to get there and then spend 1-2 days working for 16 hours at a time while trying to remain sharp and focused. By the time you start to acclimate to the new time zone, you're on a plane headed home to be jet-lagged for two weeks. But I love it.]
New Year’s Eve itself was enjoyable, but we felt as stressed out about attending all of the friend parties as we did the family holiday meals. Next year, we’re heading out of town for a real vacation!
New Year’s Resolutions:
- Elvis: Learn to play guitar.
- Me: Meditate once a day, and learn one Tarot card per week.
- Together: Spend more time with couple friends and less time in front of the TV.
Filed under: family | Tags: austin, christmas, dallas, family, holidays, pixielove, santa
Christmas this year was all about change, with a mixture of laughter and tears that left me slightly unsatisfied, yet happy and fat.
For the first time in at least a decade, we didn’t spend Christmas Eve at my dad & stepmom’s house opening Santa gifts. In Christmases of old, we sisters would make the trek to our parents’ house in the burbs to indulge in a feast of cold cut sandwiches and open the crazy gifts delivered early by the jolly fat man.
Every year, Santa brings us little individual packages containing the same gifts for each of us that have to be unwrapped by all at the same time. The ritual goes something like this:
“Let’s open the Kleenex!” calls out Disney, my step-sister who interns for Mickey in Orlando. We all dig through the stack of gifts to find the little rectangular package and tear it open to confirm that yes, indeed, it is Kleenex. Next come the calendars, then socks, then underwear of course, we get great gifts too, but it’s the Santa gifts that provide entertainment for the whole family.
This year, Elvis (my boyfriend) got to participate for the first time…and brought his own brand of entertainment to the family. Early into the Santa process, I realized that Elvis needed to experience Santa before he could ever truly be part of the family. So I dug a small item out of the pile and handed it to him. He examined the tiny tissue-wrapped trinket with confusion, laughed and asked, “What is it? A joint?”
Leave it to my boyfriend to make a drug reference about the Santa Chapstick at his first Christmas with my family. No, really Dad, he’s not a pothead
just a drunk.Another big change–Mom and Dad celebrated the holidays with us at the same gathering for the first time since they divorced almost 20 years ago. My sister hosted us at her new house out in the boonies north of Frisco (who knew there were any homesteads that far north). It wasn’t too bad
just a little competition between the moms to see who could tell more stories about Dad and boss everyone around the most.
For the most part, it was a relatively bloodless holiday.
It also happens that Disney shares her birthday with Jesus Cristo, so the evening portions of our holiday celebrations are typically spent devouring strawberry cake (yes, pink cake and pink frosting) despite the 4 helpings of holiday potluck and samplings of all 6 pies just a few hours before.
This year, the excitement was not so much the number of candles on her cake, but more about the tiny little matchbook used to light the candles. At first glance, it seemed innocent enough but the slogan “Any jail, any bail” really caught my eye. We opened the matchbook (because you have to open a matchbook with a slogan like that) and found a poem on the inside that detailed the journey of needles, pills and booze on “THE ROAD TO HELL.” Not bad for a family gathering makes you kinda wonder who brought that one into the house and why they had it in the first place.
