capoeira

 We had a very very busy weekend!  Friday we went out for happy hour with our coworkers where we attempted to ride the new metro rail but it was too full.  Saturday we went to the farmer's market and then stumbled across a huge mall and the best grocery store in Austin.  I'm talking normal grocery store -not Whole Foods or any of the other 'foodie' type stores.  I've been searching for an equal to the Kroger in Jackson and I just might have found it!

Once we got back to the center, it was time to go see a capoeira group perform in the center's outdoor pin-up/bbq/lunchtime/gathering space.  Capoeira is a mixture of dancing, music and low-contact martial arts.  A friend of the center was going back to Brazil and his group had a farewell performance for him.  In the video, he's the one in black pants with the beard and hat.  

Sunday, I painted our front door and bathroom door while Nick hung blinds and weed-eated around our clothes line.  In the afternoon, we met up with an old professor of ours.  It was great to see an old friend and have him affirm that yes, we are living in crazytown.

unhappy hipsters

This site has provided endless amounts of joy this afternoon.

Mr. Catfish

That's a whole lotta catfish!  Nick ordered 2 Mr. Big Cats thinking they'd be normal catfish.  What arrived were two genetically engineered freakfish.  He only made it through one (plus fries and hushlogs - no normal round hushpuppies, they always look like mozzarella sticks in Texas).

I had a catfish fillet and the best bowl of red beans and rice I've ever tasted!  If you come visit us, be prepared for a trip to Mr. Catfish!

SXSW

Nick and I (plus some other interns) headed out to SXSW on Saturday.  The weather was frigid and windy and generally horrible but we braved the cold and got to see some amazing bands (and some not so amazing ones).

This is Bubblegum S*#tface Experience.  They had a bubble machine... and bottles of bubbles were passed around the crowd... and it was weird.  Very very weird.  I feel bad for the band that played after them because Bubbleface made the crowd disperse rather quickly (with their fingers in their ears).  I highly recommend clicking on the link above and listening to the awesomeness that is Cholozone Boner.  Trust me, you'll see why everyone left. 

Luckily, Bubbleface was the only bad band we saw.  The rest were fantastic.  At the Moose Lodge, we saw Senryu, Munch Munch, and Bubbleface.  I really wanted to see Walking Sleep but after Bubbleface, our ears couldn't handle much more.

After grabbing some dinner downtown, we left our coworkers and met up with an old college friend at the Mexican Cultural Center.  It was a completely different vibe from the Moose Lodge.  There was a mini-carnival with rides and funnel cake and lots of beer.  People were dancing like crazy!  The band/DJ was called Major Lazer.  I can't even begin to describe their performance.  It was amazing and so much fun!  If you want a peek at what it was like, click here.  (NSFW; we didn't even realize half this stuff was going on because we couldn't really see the stage)

We headed home around 10 and wouldn't you know, the shack key had fallen out of Nick's pocket at some point in the night.  We had to call our miracle worker (the guy that's been fixing the bathroom and roof) to find a key and let us in.  One good thing that came out of that experience is that we now realize the shack is not so easy to break into!

pets

The pets are settling in surprisingly well.  Oscar had no trouble at all.  Well, he does get frustrated because he can't see out any of the windows.  All of the windows have corrugated plastic over them (for insulation and noise, supposedly).  You can see the plastic in the picture of Amelie.  Hopefully, as soon as it warms up, we'll remove the plastic and will then be able to see out.

The cats have adjusted really quickly.  I think they've chased our mice away (no nibbled food or poop anywhere) and there are plenty of places for them to hide away from Oscar.  Now if only Nick could adjust as seamlessly.

progress

Mom and I have been working hard - mainly sewing curtains. I had planned to use this fabric as a skirt for our bathroom sink. Turns out the sink isn't cast iron (so the magnets to hold up the skirt won't stick) and there is no lip to tuck the skirt into. Fortunately, we had just enough fabric to make a skirt for our kitchen sink.

Before, the sink had plastic corrugated panels (some of which were falling off) covering the pipe-structure that holds the sink up. If you look closely, there are two tiny doors cut into the lower section which is the only way to access storage below the sink. I have no desire to store anything under there so we sewed a skirt, attached it with magnets and voila! No more unsightly sink base.

*The before is exactly how it looked the day we moved in. There were dirty dishes (which I removed promptly), old pasta (that's what's on the shelf), a candle and miscellaneous junk.

I'll post more pictures of the kitchen once we finish sprucing.

the weekend

My mom arrived late Friday night and we have been out flea-marketing and garage-saling and thrift-storing all weekend! Saturday morning we went to a local flea-market that is open every Saturday and Sunday. Turns out it wasn't a flea market at all, more like a Spanish Walmart. You could buy everything from toothpaste to birds to quinceanera dresses to car floor mats. Not the kind of flea market we were looking for. We did buy some german sweet breads from the only non-Spanish speaking person there.

We met Nick for lunch downtown and ate at a collection of food trailers! It was over 80 degrees out - the perfect weather for wandering around town!

In the afternoon, we went to a city-wide garage sale. We bought a pound of old linens and the most awesome microwave cart ever!That's a 1950's oven/cart once owned by Elvis' songwriter. And it works (our german sweet breads are being broiled in it)! I don't think this is what Nick had in mind when I said I found a microwave cart. But, considering our oven has no temperature gauge (which this one does), I think it's perfect. Plus it has a rotisserie. I love it! On our thrifting adventure on Sunday, we did find the most perfect green and metal microwave cart - and they seemed interesting in buying this oven - so we might be parting with it.

They also had this at the garage sale:
Saturday night we went to a hockey game. It was sold out a few minutes after we bought our tickets (the arena only seats 8,000 so that's not saying much). It was a great game - lots of fights and slamming into walls.

curling

The Austin Curling Association hosted free curling lessons last Sunday. After watching curling on the Olympics and learning a few pointers from Nick's dad, we decided we were hidden curling olympiads. It is definitely a lot harder than it looks.

We showed up at the rink a few minutes early and there were already over 300 people there! It was insane. We only got 20 minutes on the ice and were each able to push the rock twice. I got a bruised knee from my turn and Nick was extremely pigeon-toed but he did a pretty good job. Then we were allowed to sweep. Nick has a theory that the sweepers are there only to give the other teammates something to do. After sweeping myself, I think he's spot on. We had a blast and might even put ourselves on the waiting list to join the Austin Curling Team!

Roommates

After seeing all the rat poop, we just assumed it was old and that the rats had moved on. We weren't so lucky. When a guy came to fix the oven (which, by the way, is only either on or off - no temperature controls; see exhibit A, below), he found two nice surprises for him in the broiler drawer. There was a huge rat huddled in the corner. When he came back from getting a box to capture it in, there was a smaller rat there instead. The rat ran behind the fridge and obviously ran into his mate because there was lots of squeaking and scraping. Apparently, the rats have now taken up house in the bottom of our refrigerator. ugh!

When the oven was finally lit (we have a gas range), the aroma of cooking rat pee filled our lovely little shack. And that's when we actually viewed an apartment and put a deposit down. The icing on the cake was when I grabbed the tortillas to make dinner. There was a huge hole in the bag and we discovered that the rats had eaten almost half of our brand new tortillas!

Home Sweet Home

Well, this is it folks! When we pulled up to our new abode on Friday, we immediately hoped in the car, headed to Sonic and began googling apartments in Austin. It's taken us the past week and a half to come to terms with the fact that yes, we are going to be living in this place. We'll post pictures of the inside later but for now, take a gander at what was waiting for us in the dresser:

That would be a (human?) tooth and a pile of rat poop! We have definitely come down in life.

We're Here!

This is not really our house... but close enough.