Monday, November 10, 2008

I Stole All of Matt's Photos so This Post Would Be More Interesting (dot-gov)

Dear, dear, dear Matt Smith,


You are very dear today. I am not sure why. I can only attest to a single "dear," but my fingers seem to have gotten into their little finger-systems to type the three "dears" you see above. Perhaps you are so dear because it has been so long since I have written. Perhaps you are so dear because "the iPhone is better than nature." Perhaps you do not recall either of the previous things and simply put, you're dear because you're dear...

Time will tell.

Matt and I have been exploring our new nation (um... yes... the Great Nation of Texas joke lives ON, much like "your mom" jokes) lately. We take a weekend here or there and drive off into the sunset. Or more than usual, we drive off around 10:30 on a Saturday morning, cursing ourselves for not getting ready sooner so we can make it to McDonald's for a EggaMooby Muffin breakfast. This past weekend we went to Austin (which is only an hour away), and two weekends ago we went to Houston.

Houston is like Rock to Temple's Scissors in the beer department. To the casual viewer, it may have seemed that Matt and I went to Houston simply to find delicious beers. This is not the case, although we came away with more than a case.

We drove to Houston to visit landmarks (Rothko Chapel = most boring artsy-fartsy landmark in Texas, even perhaps, the world) and to visit my friend, Kate (in town from Chicago), who will be designing and putting together my wedding dress. Move over, Hank Azaria. This girl knows what's UP. And now she also knows what's down and around and the length and width of most of my everythings. (Apparently I'm symmetrical. And this is a good thing. I think.)

The best part about Kate is, she's not afraid to be weird. Like so many of the people I love in this world, she sees most things as being possible. For instance, when we had to meet Kate and her husband (also named Matt) at a coffee shop in Houston instead of one of our respective hotels. Kate was not afraid -- nor ashamed -- to break out the measuring tape and run to the ladies room with me. Not weird. Totally normal.

Note: Kate - I'm sorry I didn't ask permission to use your photo up here. I really like the look on your face in the picture... like, "What's it to YOU? I gots some measurin' tape, sucka!" Er... maybe not EXACTLY like that. But you get the idea.


A couple of weeks ago we took another short drive up to Waco, TX. Before I moved to Texas, the only thing I could tell you about Waco was some shoddy information about David Koresh. I probably couldn't have even spelled "Koresh," but I could have sung for you a kitschy little Christmas number about him. I learned it in the third grade. (And who says public education isn't the best?)

It turns out, Waco, TX is the home of Dr Pepper. Matt and I went to the Dr Pepper Museum and that's where I learned that there is no "dot" after Dr in "Dr Pepper." There's a creepy wax man in the museum that talks when you push a button, and Matt took pictures of him. He'll probably write something about it, though, so I'm not about to steal his thunder. I will, however, steal a picture that Matt took of the outside of the museum. It's not much to look
at, but the inside of this place taught me more about soda than I
ever cared to learn.


Also in Waco, we went to the THEE-AY-TER, which is how they say it down here. No lie. I teach THEE-AY-TER ARTS. Drives me nuts. I want to bonk people on the head when they say THEE-AY-TER, almost as much as I want to bonk people on the head when they say "bonk." (Except Emily. She can say "bonk" all she wants.) That was pretty cool, too. Turns out that the lead guy in the show went to school up with us Yankees -- at Boston University.




I think the whole highlight of the past few weeks, though, was realizing that when you live in Texas, gas gets cheaper. We've been having a rather quiet, yet ongoing celebration in our heads every time gas goes down by a few cents. Our largest celebration to date was on the trip to Waco, when gas dropped under $2 a gallon. And who says we're headed for another Great Depression? Don't be fooled by the hat, folks. This is pure happiness.


Those hats really make the recession look attractive.
Until next time...

5 comments:

kimmie said...

Gas was $1.95 yesterday in MPLS! Also, my CAPTCHA is "Unning." I feel like this is a new word that we should invent meaning for.

MY said...

Unning (v); American: making something not quite possible, but not quite impossible, as in "It was possible to get a drink of water until you broke the water fountain. Quit unning the water fountain!"

(Definition courtesy of Matt, from the next room. I think this definition is more awesome simply because I didn't see his face when he explained it to me. All inflection, all the time. We're surfing the inflection network...)

Unknown said...

Hoo Hah! I've been waiting for an M-blog. And Musashi is grabbign onto my leg even as I write this. I will try to blog more too, though I've got school and school and school and roommate with nasty unending intestinal virus and niece with need to work on relationship naivete, if that's a word. Oy veg, says the struggling vegetarian... Love, hugs, and scritches to all,
SUE1

Anonymous said...

BONK BONK BONK

I miss you.

Oooh, and I got "unned." As in the past tense of "unning." Sweet.

Kate said...

Hah! I'm in your blog again! I'm a total celebrity. Watch out -- I'll be on the front cover of "US" pretty soon.

Give me a cut of whatever you make by selling your photos of me.

Everyone at work thought I was NUTS when I told them the sheets I got in the mail were to be used to make a wedding dress. Gawd, I love me some Meredith.