Melyssa-with-a-Y

My uncle sent this today, although I've seen it before. I decided to post it. Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel's part for whatever reason, the following two sentences really say it all. If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today there would be no more Israel.

Today was a big day - I found a place to live! :) I will be moving into a 2BR-1BA duplex (hence the subject line above*) in Northwest Hills . Ok, so it's not Rosedale -- where I'm staying now -- or Hyde Park -- the funky neighborhood where I thought I would end up ... it's a lovely older neighborhood (both age-wise and home-wise) a little bit north and west. It's also $200 less per month than I thought I would be spending, or than I was spending in VA! :) Of course, that savings is going to get used up buying a new desk and a new bed... thankfully mom and dad are going to chip in and help with the washer/dryer purchase. :) I will be moving in around 8/15, so now I have to call the movers up north and say, "Bring my stuff!" In the meantime, the landlady (who lives in the other half of the duplex, and has two wonderful dogs) is going to repaint, take down the icky wallpaper, put down Pergo floors... and a host of other improvements. I am so excited! Went to the ...

So, I've now been in Austin for 10 days... in that time, I survived my first: Week of work at TACC Trip to the UT Campus Ribbing by boss about Longhorn football (blech) TACC staff meeting Step class at the gym Austin knitters meetup The first week of work was really uneventful, although we did have a pizza party on my first day (not in my honor, alas) -- it was a "retirement" party for one of our supercomputers, which was being removed and will be replaced with a bigger, faster one shortly. On Monday, I got all settled in a cubicle (ugh, haven't had a cubicle in three years!) and then got moved to another cubicle across the hall... a larger one with a printer in it, in "the library" -- so named because everyone in there is so QUIET! I wrote myself countless notes to remember my headphones, which I finally did on Friday. In the meantime, to escape the silence, I went downtown to the UT campus to get my ID and parking pass. It wasn't too traumatic, excep...

So, for the last few days she was here (Thursday and Friday), M had been reading the Texas guidebook that Ann & Glenn gave me as a going away present. She suggested the Austin Farmer's Market for our Saturday morning adventure. We figured we didn't need to go for a walk in the neighborhood, cuz we'd walk enough downtown. We were wrong. Of course, it could be that we got there just after the market opened (it opens at 9, we got there at 9:30), or it could be the heat -- it was expected to hit 99 on Saturday. So, the market was about a block long, with two rows of stalls. Mostly fruits & vegetables, but a few others (coffee, honey, jams). We didn't buy anything. On the way back we drove up Congress, so we took nice pictures of the Capital building. (This is one of M's pictures -- she took some great stuff during the week! ) After a quick stop at Starbucks/Jamba Juice, we came home, changed, and went off to Fredricksburg , to see the town and visit some winerie...

Here's a link to the pictures from the packing, the road-trip and around Austin. I'll blog about Saturday's adventure later. (you can get a sneak preview from the pictures...)

Friday, we got up and went for a walk again, only this time we brought a few bucks and went to Starbucks for our morning caffeine hit. :) That made the walk so much nicer! I thought M should see the craziness that is the South Congress neighborhood. We found a parking space (lucky!) and wandered in and out of a dozen shops. I had to take her to see Allen's Boots, of course. (I bought my FRYE's there in September '04...) M didn't buy anything, but she was absolutely amazed at the selection of boots, western shirts, etc. I thought these little pink boots would look good on either Samantha or Hannah... maybe for Chanuka? They had all kinds of other good Texas gifties, too. (hmm... I should have taken a pic of them next to a full-size pair so you could actually tell that they're kid-sized.) We also went into the most amazing costume shop... they had racks of clothes for any theme you could imagine -- 70's pimp outfits, medieval costumes, disco outfits, full-sized ...

So, Thursday was the day to find "supplies." First, we took a short walk around the neighborhood and checked out the architecture. It looks like a lot of them were the small Sears-house type abodes, and then were expanded or rebuilt. Many of them have large, 2-story attachments built onto the back, but the same small one-room looking structure in front. There are some really beautiful homes around here. After showering and making a test-drive up to my office -- it should only take about 15-20 mins, but we'll see what it's like in rush hour tomorrow!-- we went to Target for the basics -- everything from shampoo and sponges to garden clippers and gloves. It also occurred to me (after I started filling the pitcher without them) that I needed BRITA filters. duh. I kept having these moments of "I have that" and M would say, "No, we put that in a box for storage." Oops! So there's a running list of things I still need (like coffee filters, which woul...

The odyssey continues. We left our hotel in Little Rock (after complaining to the front desk about the noise from the basketball hooligans) and headed for the River Market , which we had seen on the way in the night before. We missed the farmers market (Fridays only), but we still got to look around and had some tasty coffee and breakfast. From there, we headed for the Clinton Library & Museum. I was already having second-thoughts about going into the library, if only because of the time it would take to see everything properly vs. the number of miles still to go on our way to Austin. In the end, we took pictures of the building and then went straight to the gift shop. I got a cute magnet that says "I miss Bill" :) Following the signs south toward Texarkana, we headed out. We passed Hope, with its big sign for "Birthplace of President Clinton" but it just didn't seem like we needed to stop. Again, the road was 2 lanes in each direction, trees on either side,...

We made good time on Day 2 of our journey -- which was helped along by the fact that we crossed into the Central time zone and got an hour back at about 12 noon. :) We had a tasty breakfast at Perkins in Knoxville, spent a few minutes scrubbing the bugs off the windshield, and headed west on Route 40. This road basically goes all the way across Tennessee, through the major cities, so it gave us a chance to stop and be tourists. Along the way, we saw signs for a winery in Crossville, TN (Stonehaus ), so we decided to stop. Well, it helped that there was a small outlet mall on the other side of the highway, at the same exit. :) We bought a bottle of their Cumberland Gold wine, which has a decidedly peachy taste to it. Yum. The outlet mall was small and relatively empty. M got some fun Texas-themed underwear, which we will have to showcase for you later. ;) We made it to Nashville around 1pm, and managed to find the downtown touristy area (Broadway and 2nd street, in case you're wonde...

I didn't really sleep Sunday night. I was too excited and nervous and I knew there was more packing to be done. Here's how the pile looked at 1am when cousin Michelle and I went to bed. I sat up at 3am and wrote notes to myself.... and I jumped out of bed at 7, before the alarm had a chance to go off. I sent dad to the Uhaul place to get more boxes before he came over. Mom came over and fretted and paced and made noise about how much was left to be done, and how I shouldn't say anything about Bryan's last minute packing. HA! I nearly fell over. So after a while of that, she had to leave. At least she was wonderful enough to stop at Starbucks on the way over to bring me some iced tea. :) I looked out the window and saw the moving truck at 9:45am, but then it didn't pull into the driveway... so I ran down the street and found them in the other driveway, and had them come back. They managed to park right in front and open the ramp from the truck right to the stairs. Th...

While I'm taking a short break, I thought you all should witness my packing progress. :) Here's what the "box corner" looked like when Kelly left on Wednesday... She was an angel and helped with the kitchen stuff (my cabinets are empty!).... dishes, glasses, mugs, pots n pans, all packed! THANK YOU KELLY! I should have taken a picture of her knee-deep in bubble wrap and newspaper, but we were too busy for that! She also helped me to go Staples and get more boxes, a new tape gun (she, um, finished breaking the one I had already half-broken), and a huge roll of bubble wrap. Thursday I was all on my own. I only left the apartment to take out the massive bags of garbage that have accumulated -- I am fighting my pack-rat genes as hard as I can! I am actually throwing things away!! It's incredible. (feels good, too!) So, after dinner with Suzy (my former boss) at Carlyle -- yummy crabcakes and calamari!! -- I came back and boxed up some more stuff: the top bin is all m...

Hm. Where to begin. Saturday (the first of July... can you believe it's JULY already?) we had tickets to the 7pm Nats game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It started out pretty well, but it was so HOT! Our seats just don't get any kind of breeze at all. It was a 3-3 tie from the 7th inning on. But by then it was 10pm! As the game went into the bottom of the 10th inning, mom and Sally and I decided that we would like to go home when the inning ended. But Dad, being Dad, said we couldn't leave until the Nats won. And right then, whaddya know, Nick Johnson gets up and hits a solo homerun (a walk-off) to end the game!! Nats win, 4-3! Whew! Here's Sally and mom at the "Red Hot & Blue" service area in Sec 323. Sunday was an even bigger day. I used my guest pass to visit the Regency Sport & Health club in McLean (thanks, mom!), and as long as it was early, I decided to go for a swim. I should do that more often, I apparently have no stamina! I maybe made 5 ...