White

After a third night of not sleeping well, I woke up today to find snow everywhere. It's only a couple of inches, but it's pretty. Yay!

My visit home has been pretty good.

Christmas was great! My parents totally spoil my sister and I. We get up early, unwrap a bunch of very nice presents, make breakfast, and go take naps around 11 am before heading to my Aunt's for dinner. My almost 3-year-old cousin is the star of the party. Broden is adorable and fun to be around.

After dinner, I met my high school friends Billy and Mike for drinks. It was great to see them, since its only about once a year the 3 of us get to hang together. They are coming to visit me in February and I'm already looking forward to it. Since our 10-year high school reunion is this spring, (which I surely won't attend), we tried to name all the people we graduated with (there were 47 of us). We got to 40. I was impressed.

In a Coco family tradition, we went to NYC yesterday for a Broadway show and dinner. It was freezing so we didn't do much walking around to look at sights (my least favorite part of the family tradition) We saw Movin' Out, a pop rock ballet?! It was a dance performance set to Billy Joel songs. Everyone entered the theatre thinking they were seeing they typical Broadway musical and instead got sing-along ballet. There wasn't actually any singing along, but we could've if we wanted to.

I didn't love it, but it was definitely original, something that is hard to find on Broadway, and enjoyable. Plus, watching good-looking, strong, flexible people fling themselves around the stage is an OK way to spend a couple of hours.

After the show, we went to dinner at a totally average restaurant. I wasn't feeling very well, so I wasn't a fantastic conversationalist, but we all had a good time.

Tonight, my best friend Kristen and her family are coming over for dinner - the 6th over-indulgent dinner in a row. Last year, both of our dads left work early the day after dinner because they were hung over.

Now, I am hiding out in my bedroom since I'm overloaded on interacting with people. I never realize how much I like living alone until I come home and spend a few days in a house where there is always someone around.

The Dribble

I've been purposefully refraining from political posts here. There are plenty of blogs out there that devolve into political dribble. While a few have been interesting and informative, many are propaganda for the believers. And since I am making a conscious effort to not just speak and hear from people like me, I don't want to contribute to the political blogsphere.

That said, there are a couple of things I'd like to share because I think they will make you better informed Americans.

Center for American Progress has been sending me daily updates for about a month. I stumbled across them in my post-election research. They care about progressive values, and more importantly, they following the money between corporate America and the government. Their emails are chock full of links to other organizations, media outlets, and government reports.

They clearly have issues with corporate/government entanglement, and want to better educate their constituents on a breadth of political and policy issues, but mostly avoid the conspiracy-theory and elitist undertones of some other progressive organizations. And really, the number of links per blurb is impressive. Since subscribing, I've read the government report about how abstinence-only education programs are misinforming teens in an epic way, the transcript where Donald Rumsfeld insulted our troops, and several articles about how poorly the FDA is monitoring pharmaceutical companies.

So check out Center for American Progress.

Buy Blue came to me by way of an editorial Harvey forwarded. Side Note - I hated the editorial. Really the Bible-thumping, don't know any better Red staters slamming is old. But the editorial pointed to a website that seems likes it's trying to be the centerpoint of a movement to put your money where your progressive mouth is.

In short, it lists corporations' donations to the Republican and Democratic parties. It's still an infant site, but it has promise.

This past year, I've been making an effort to spend my money at stores I support (especially local businesses), and more importantly, NOT spend my money at stores whose policies I find deplorable (Walmart, Curves gym). So a website like this is a good resource. Clearly, I can't always withhold my money from corporations who donate to Republicans, and frankly that alone may not be enough for me. But supporting chains that give money to Democrats is definitely something I can make an effort to do.

That'll make Starbuck's terrible coffee easier to swallow when its the only coffeshop to be found (like here, in my hometown, for instance).

Ahead of Schedule

My packing routine usually begins a few days before a trip when I see the large mountain of laundry in my bedroom. I start working my way through it, and making mental notes of all the other things that have to be finished before I go.

But the real packing routine begins in earnest the night before where I take 4-5 hours to clean my room, fold all the clean laundry, pay bills, and back up data. Usually I start the actual packing very late.

And that always takes a while as I have to reconcile Austin casual style with (usually) East Coast metropolitan. I check weather.com multiple times in hopes that looking at the temperatures will better remind me how I am supposed to dress since its always much warmer here than anywhere I usually go. Needless to say, picking outfits takes forever.

Usually, I flop onto my bed at 3 am, exhausted, for a short nap before my insanely early flight (I actually like traveling before the sun comes up).

But tonight's not 3 am. It's 10:57 pm and I am ALL DONE. The bags are packed. The plane outfit is on my dresser. I actually started last night to ensure my house would be clean when I come home. I am even tired enough to go to bed responsibly early for my 6:45 am flight. I feel like a real adult. It must be all the gray hairs I've been yanking out.

Windy Enchantment

So I went camping at Enchanted Rock this past weekend. I meant to post earlier, but I’ve been busy.

In short, it was an awesome trip, which made up for having to cancel our trip in November since the weather was abysmal. This time the weather was perfect - sunny and warm during the day and cold, but not freezing, at night. We had a campsite nested away from a bunch of children. There were cocktails, music and good conversation. The sky was filled with more stars that I’ve seen since Yellowstone and there was all this crazy wind.

Here are my unorganized, unfiltered, unflattering pictures that I’m sure I will get shit about posting.

Saturday afternoon, we hiked up Enchanted Rock where we all snapped similar, but slightly different pictures of the gorgeous views (and each other). For the hundredth time, I cursed my college smoking habit that causes me to run out of breath easily, such as when faced with a steadily steep, but not difficult, climb.

There was a group effort to get the fire started. I participated by knowing to keep my mouth shut and eat chips and salsa, since there were clearly enough fire-starting experts working on kindling placement.

Chris, Katy and I cooked in the fire and my first campfire meal was pretty damn good. Especially after a couple of cocktails and all the climbing. Unfortunately, Chris and Katy didn’t stay overnight since Katy was sick and wanted a good night’s sleep. Good call on her part.

The crazy wind made sure that sleep was not part of this camping trip. It sounded like a train charging toward the tent and more than once I thought we were going to get swept away all Wizard of Oz like. Even with 2 sleeping bags and 2 sleeping pads (one of which is Kent’s fairly heavy Porsche of sleeping pads) in the tent, it did get knocked over a couple of times. Really, the wind was impressive.

Sunday morning, Dan, Kate, the dogs and I hiked up the peak next to Enchanted Rock. It was just as steep, had less interesting views, and more interesting landscape. We arrived back at camp hungry, tired, and ready to pack.

Amber and I were dirty, exhausted, and very happy when we got home.

Dirty Rabbit

Danny, the newest addition to cooking night, hosted our weekly affair on Wednesday. He just recently moved here from Minneapolis, and is house-sitting for a childhood friend. Her place is awesome. Great space, great location, and great decor. It's eclectic, colorful, and delightfully dirty.

Her dining room chairs and windows sport this gorgeous fabric.

Yep people, there are rabbits doing it in red embroidery.

Cooking night was fantastic. Maybe it was all the satisfied rabbits looking down on us.  We had a Hanukkah theme since it was the second night of the Festival of Lights. Danny's friend Isis, who flew in that morning, spent hours making latkes and he invited a bunch of new people. There hasn't been a large cooking night in a long time, but there were 12+ people crowded around the dining room table eating latkes, (my delicious) applesauce, salad,  kugel, and eggplant. We finished off a lot of beer and 3 bottles of wine. We stayed late chatting around the table.

Next week, we're spoiling ourselves instead of making a mess of someone's kitchen. Liz, a massage therapist, at the Ritz Carlton, is booking us a table for dinner there. We get 50% off the bill at the supposedly nicest restaurant in town. We're going to get dolled up (boys too), splurge on good food and get shitty. I can't wait.

Project Politico is a No-Go

Right after the elections I was inspired to get more involved... somehow. I had a vision for my learning. I would become knowledgeable on many issues. I would present articulate positions that didn't use inflammatory language to an audience of like-minded people. There would be generous amounts of data on legislation, as well as the counter-arguments for points of view that don't make a lot of sense. In short, I wanted all my research in one easy-to-access place for people to share, use, and link to.

And if I had an annual budget and a staff of 3, I would be able to enact my vision. Clearly there are alternatives that could take less time and energy, but after some thinking and researching, I've realized that this isn't what I want to spend my time on.

So there is no project in the works. There will be no website with a mission statement, charts, or links to more information.

Over the last month, I've expanded my list of groups who send me information. I read the newspaper daily. I click on links to go to the source of information (government reports and the like). I've collected information from people who have a different viewpoint than I do. I feel like I better understand what is important to them and why and shall continue to engage in thoughtful discussions about politics because I want to learn. More importantly, I understand better what is important to me and why.

And I’ll continue spending some of my time doing all that, but I need to start seriously thinking about whether activism should be a career. I've been rolling this idea around in my head since college and if the magic "here's what you want to do with your life" wand hasn't found me yet; it's not going to.

So I am not going to distract myself with a project that is too grand, too complicated and frankly, beside the point. The information I am looking for is out there, I just need to do a little work to find it. So will you.