road-trip-to-texas instagrams

here are a few instagrams of the long haul south from ann arbor to houston.  it was a pretty spectacular time-- i just wish steve and i had been able to share a car so we could laugh at the same casino-nail-salon-gas-station-home-of-the-original-deep-fried-pie-on-a-stick and play lots of 20 questions with answer "nicholas cage."  still, we made our way down from michigan via champaign, IL - memphis, TN - shreveport, LA and voila home to houston! the apartment is almost clean enough to document and introduce to y'all!

yes, i say y'all now.  and even though i have more reason than i used to, i'm somehow more self conscious about it.  don't worry.  let's move on... y'all...

over the course of our road trip i have upped my "states visited" number from 39 to 42 (i had never previously been in arkansas, louisiana, or texas).  i'm comin' for you oklahoma, idaho, oregon, mississippi, north dakota, montana, alaska, and hawaii!!

settling in so far!  lots of fun ahead!

fantastical possibilities

first off, allow me to apologize to all the lovely bloggers whose posts i've been missing lately.  things have simply been too crazy for me to spend a lot of time frolicking through the blogosphere.  what "things" none of you ask?  allow me to present them in list form:

1.  three. digit. page count.  ok, i know i talked about this one already, but next time you write 106 possibly coherently connected pages i'll let you tell me to shut up about it.  i'm damn proud of myself (proud enough to swear on this blog, which i try not to do).  i'm not sure if i'm proud just for the quantity of content alone, or the fact that a tiny quiet little part of me thinks some of it is actually sorta good.

2.  i'm planning a wedding.  it's rough.

3.  we're going through the necessary steps to get steve's car replaced (we're very lucky that my parents have been nice enough to hold onto my dad's old SUV for us to buy on the cheap).  the '95 monte carlo named herman simply doesn't get our vote of confidence to make it through another winter.

4.  wait, where are we going to be living in 8-12 months?  seattle?  charleston?  houston?  wait... MAUI might be an option?  what?!  could we really stand to live on an island 1/80th the size of michigan with roughly 2500 miles between us and the mainland?  could we stand to live with ourselves if we passed up the opportunity to move to freaking maui?  hold up self, this opportunity doesn't really even exist yet, but still.  all this madness makes it pretty hard to try and plan a honeymoon.  i don't even know what airport we'd leave from.  ugh.  first world problems times twelve.

5.  work is difficult.  sometimes i am given tasks that require taking information at face value and completing them without understanding why.  i am a stressed out, nervous wreck when this happens because i have no confidence that i am completing a task correctly unless i have a concept of how it fits into the larger goal at hand.  it's actually a fairly serious liability sometimes.

hope everyone is still rocking away.  doing my best to keep checking in.  we're hanging in there dreading looking forward to the upcoming holiday season, winter weather, and a whole lot of changes heading our way.  if we could just fast forward to thanksgiving 2014, i think we might actually get another couple days to relax.  any advice for trying to get through it?

word count:  32,035

liebster award!

happy thursday!! today i feel very honored to announce that lisa over at making life's lemons has nominated loosefromthezoo for a liebster award!
as i have already been nominated for a liebster award previously, i figured i would modify the process a little to make things shorter and sweeter.  if you've never heard of the liebster awards, head over to lisa's blog or my previous post to learn a bit more about what they mean!
here are my answers to lisa's questions!
If you could go back to any moment in time or time period, what would it be and why? if i were just visiting moments of history dr. who style, i think i'd try to find f. scott and zelda fitzgerald sometime in the 1920's to party hard.
if i had to LIVE sometime in the past i'd absolutely pick the 1970's.  i like being able to fly in an airplane, but i secretly wish the internet had never been invented.  i also rock a pair of bell bottoms pretty well.
If you had to sing karaoke, what song would you pick? if you get enough margaritas in me i can tear freddy mercury to shreds singing somebody to love.  (though let me add: with the exception of this song, as a general rule, i despise the music of queen.  and journey.  and fun.  basically all bands that sound like queen are terrible in my opinion).
If time and money were no matter what would you do? steve and i would visit every single place on the planet, excluding those locations that are likely to kill me from cold weather or political upset.  i would attempt to write novels in between sight seeing and possibly attempt to become a b-list actress if i got really really bored.
What is your favorite piece of clothing?? Pictures?? i have this emerald badgely mischka silk evening gown that i plan to wear to my friend's wedding in a couple of weeks.  it's pretty fierce.
What would be your ideal vacation? either a multi-country eurotrip, or a two month road trip of the continental united states (i may or may not have created an itinerary for the latter).
Do you have any hidden talents? What are they? i'm not sure what constitutes hidden... 
i can draw decently well.  i also have a small host of skills that have made me what i believe to be a decent actress.  i can do a variety of accents reasonably well and i can make myself cry real tears if i need to.
i can also do a hair-raisingly accurate lois griffin impression. and i can move my eyes side to side independently of one another.  but nobody ever wants me to.
 Flats or heels? varies week to week.  it definitely makes you feel like a beast when you can strut in heels, but if i had to pick one for the rest of my life i would go with flats for the comfort factor.
Where/when are you the happiest? hanging out with steve by a body of water. extra bonus happiness points when one or all of the following are included: snacks a puppy good music alcohol
If you had to change your name what would you change it to? maxine kaye
What's your favorite cookie? a cupcake
What item could you not live without? a car.
word count: 22,833

new week: words of others

i've always loved inspirational quotations, but my internal hipster has always preferred something quirkier than your average "dance like nobody's watching" insta-pic.  to kick off the week, here are a few words i've read over the years that have stuck with me, made me think, and reminded me i'm not alone.  hope everybody has an amazing week!

"any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out." - anton chekhov

"time is not even.  space is not empty." - tite of eiko and koma performance art

"it enlarges the heart. something bigger than the self." - david foster wallace, infinite jest

"you can't regret the life you didn't lead." - junot diaz, the brief wonderous life of oscar wao

"my heart was a hysterical, unreliable organ." - vladimir nabokov, lolita

"does she like a lot of teal?" - my brother, on determining whether or not a woman has taste.

oh and hey PS...

i got a new car!

manly men and iphoto recap

see this extremely macho superhero man?

he's kind of my favorite person ever and, with our incredible expertise ("didn't the video on youtube say to reconnect the negative side first?"), he managed to help me change the battery in my car all by ourselves!

the mechanically gifted among you might be chuckling, but we were pretty darn pleased with ourselves.

and, because it's laughable to suggest this is the only thing we've had going on, here is a recap of my iphone photos from recent days.

nothin' fancy, just some pad thai and easter take out boxes (which are now full of tasty treats).

we popped open the first bottle of wine i brought home from paris last summer.

i made some cadbury caramel egg brownies.  inspired by amy's post on cupcakes and couture (mine may have just been some mini caramel eggs thrown into a betty crocker mix batter, but what can ya do).

anddd bert helped me clean out the fridge.  

he's also taken to killing the mice in my townhouse recently... can you say EWWW?!

noms on wheels

so i have vacation on the brain... because, well, remember?  i live here:

this means i'll have lots to share about the trip over the next week.  i'm putting together a road trip mix so you can listen to some of the jams steve and i will be playing on our 13 hour drive south (though i hate to break it to you, it will not be a 13 hour mix).

we are leaving crazy early in the morning and are really trying to get through the nasty winter weather when the roads are quiet which means we'll need some tasty snacks in the car with us!  if you are planning on road tripping anytime soon here are a few things we are planning on packin' for snackin'!

1.  a big thermos of homemade frappucino!

we'll need caffeine, obviously, but those starbucks bottles are such a rip-off!  

1 cup extra strong black coffee cooled 

3/4 cup 2% milk cold

3 tbsp sugar (or however much to taste)

1/2 tbsp vanilla

combine shake and be awake!

2.  breakfast bagels

while sitting in a car, we will clearly need to carbo-load.  i'm picking us up at half dozen asiago cheese bagels from panera and keeping some onion chive cream cheese in the cooler!  yum and yummier!

3.  crusty baguette sandwiches

arugula, honey mustard, chicken, and muenster anyone?

here's a pro-tip: the best honey mustard your money can buy

4.  snackables:

pitted kalamata olives

and in case you mistook me for somebody classy:

fruit roll ups // gushers // fruit by the foot

doritos (cool ranch for steve, nacho cheese for me)

no we don't live in siberia

one of my favorite ways to get through the miserable freezing unpleasantry that is winter has always been going to the beach on lake michigan.  it is so beautiful and peaceful to see the snow and ice along the shore, covering the pier.

surprisingly we weren't the only ones out there!  it was a really rejuvenating weekend trip... and... my good ol car hit the big milestone turn over of 100,000 miles!  we have a lot of great memories with this old girl, but there probably won't be too many more (i'm shopping around).

hope everyone had a as great a weekend refresher as we did!