Hooray interweebz!

Wow...it's been almost an entire year since we've posted on this bad boy.

Let's catch up...

We're now living in Dallas, TX after moving from Portland to Houston. Lasted less than a year in Houston before we decided to move up here to get the ball rolling. Amy needs to go back to graduate school and UTA is the only school in Texas that has an accredited Urban Planning program and isn't located in an obnoxious city. (Yes, I'm talking about Austin.)
We figured that we might as well move with a new WFM opening in Dallas. It meant better odds for both of us to be able to land a job as opposed to waiting for the off chance that jobs that we wanted would magically post at the same exact time in the same exact city.

So far...and to my loves in Houston, please don't judge me for what I'm about to type.....we actually like living in Dallas. I know, I know....I winced just typing it. But seriously, it's been great so far. Our neighborhood is extra cute, our apartment is decent enough for something that we found in less than 3 days on Craigslist while still living in Houston, the city actually has a decent public transportation system, and we are saving enough money on rent that we can actually afford cable/internet. OH, and we got a kitten!!! She's the cutest, tiniest little kitten ever and she's god awful.



Doesn't she just look like a trouble maker? Hah!

In other news, Amy and I are going to the Musink Tattoo festival this weekend. Mr. Tracy Lambright will be *hopefully* finishing my gramps' anchor on my forearm and will then be moving onto Amy's arm. She's going to get a gypsy lady, half beautiful/half dead with straight blades underneath and "mind is a razorblade". Super excited to spend too much money. =]


I've had one session of color since this but I'll take better pics after I sit for Tracy tomorrow.



Alright...on to more cable watching.

Here's an image to make Amy smile:


-Amanda

Papas Don't Preach!

ALRIGHT! A chance to actually update this thing fo' real!!!
We came to the Starbucks just around the corner from our place to use their interweebz to finish filing our state income tax for Oregon...more on that later. First, the goodies!
Our visit to San Francisco was amazing! We must've both put on about 10 pounds from the amount of food we were eating. The weather was perfect for the entire week that we were there so we were able to walk around and see the city and we have a ton of pics that I guess we'll save for a later post. The few pics we will share though are the ones of the tattoos we got while we were visiting. This must've been the one time that our luck turned out to not be catastrophic. Amy's cousins happened to live right across the street from a tattoo shop so we figured what the hell...let's just see what they have to offer. The portfolios that we looked through were all amazing but only a few of the artists actually had some time to fit us in while we were in town. So we made appointments with a guy named Juan Puente. Amy, being the internet junkie that she is, googled the guys name after we left. Turns out he's the mother fucker! I mean this guy's in Juxtapoz, a well known photographer/film maker, has published a book on Horiyoshi, and much to Amy's enjoyment even tattooed Davey Havok!!!! Anyway...here are some pics...

Mine:


Amy's:


We had a chance to do quite a few more things but we're crunched for time so I'm gonna keep it short n sweet.

As far as state taxes go... THEY FUCKING SUCK! So here we are, we just paid the state of Oregon a total of $22 collectively (not including the $31 each that we had to pay to actually file it). Sure it doesn't sound like much but those motherfuckers taxed the wages we made from Texas and Oregon, instead of taxing Oregon only. You're right, we probably did something wrong?! I don't really know but we used Turbo Tax and apparently a lot of people are having the same issues as well. Anyways, it's a little frustrating considering we want to move back to Texas soon. Yes, that's right. We love Texas! Oregon is for suckas, fo' real! This state is so broke and the people here suck. The weather is beautiful though, but that can only take the state so far with us. I'm sure Oregon thanks us for allowing the junkies and homeless to suck all of the lifeblood out of the state and its taxpayers. Fuck this place. TEXAS IS FOR LOVERS!!!

Love always,
Amanda & Amy

Hmmm...

I wonder if I can convince Amy to have a cleaning party tomorrow with me...

It's our Friday night and I desperately want the next 48 hours or so to pass extra slow! Tomorrow morning...a nice pot of Stumptown coffee and maybe a great breakfast. OR...a few extra hours of sleeping in and a great lunch. I think I'll try to get Amy to eat Pepino's for lunch too. = yummy vegetarian "mexican" food at a really cheap price. Man...so much that I want to cram into so few hours.

Houston...I miss you. I never thought that I would miss the weather. But I do. Really! I miss the humidity, the heat, the rain, the wind, the thuuuunder. ALL OF IT! I'm so homesick I can hardly stand myself. I'm fighting every muscle in my body to not load up the car with the bare essentials and blow this popsicle stand. Even if I could take the weather with me, I don't think I would. It wouldn't be Houston without the moaning and bitching about the weather. What was that mix tape called with all the Houston bands? "I hate this place, I never wanna leave." My sentiments exactly!!!

Te amo,
Amanda

YARRRR!

So...sad to say, we are no longer internet pirates. We lost the unsecure signal that we used to get at the apartment. I'm updating from work because I got here super early. Good news though! I am in early discussions with the Team Leader at Kirby to come back onto the team some time in the near future. I'm really excited!!! Amy and I are going to San Francisco in a few days for a whole week and we've made an agreement that when we return to Portland we are going to focus all of our energy on getting back to Texas. We'll try to post more when we're in SF. We're staying with Amy's cousins so we'll have legit internet access! Hooray!!!

Much love,
Amanda

Inspiration!!!

So, if you are at all interested in interior design, we highly recommend that you go out and pick up the Domino Book of Interior Design. It has so many great ideas, much like the magazine of the same name (Domino) that I only recently discovered has now gone under. This past issue of Domino is, disappointingly, their last. One of the best tips that the book has to offer is the idea of gathering anything at all that might inspire you. Make a file and include anything in it that you find interesting, inspiring, or just flat out gorgeous. Then when you're ready to design a room, you can pull from all of your resources in the file and find any sort of theme or common factor that you admire about the pictures and design the room accordingly. As Amy and I are quite picky in our choice of decor, and both lacking in long term memory, we figured that this would do us a GREAT favor when we finally decide to plant our roots somewhere and buy a home (which at this point both in our lives and in the economy is seeming more and more like a joke!). Either way, my plan is to make a post as often as possible and include at least one picture that possesses some quality that I admire and would be willing to include when determining how to decorate our home in the future. Today the picture is one that I've found through a blog called Black*Eiffel:



Things I love about this pic:
The clawfoot tub as a planter!!! Absolutely gorgeous!
The light fixtures hanging from the ceiling
The blue tile used as flooring

Off to watch Nightline and help Amy finish a Times crossword puzzle. We bought a whole book of them today on a Powell's City of Books excursion. (An aptly named bookstore that we adore and is luckily only blocks away. Seriously...one could spend days in this shop and still not have seen every title they have to offer.)

Oh yes...I also intend to post which books I'm reading. Today I picked up a book called The Urban Homestead. It's basically a starting point for living a more sustainable lifestyle even when you don't necessarily have the resources that you would were you living in the country as opposed to a big city. I'm really enjoying it so far and it's sparking lots of little ideas for projects that I would love to take on once we're back in good ol' Texas!

Nights,
Amanda

New Bike Day

A while back I decided to take Amanda's wheelset and use them for my own which left her bike sitting in a corner with no wheels. Since moving to Portland, Amanda also decided she no longer wanted to ride "Fixed" anymore but wanted to ride "Free" instead. I had a spare Velocity 36hole Aerohead wheelset laying around so I decided to use this wheelset on her bike. Her original ratio was 49/18 and was pushing about 73.5 gear inches. Since Portland is somewhat hilly I decided to lower her gear ratio to 49/19 which pushes about 69.6 gear inches. The only problem was I needed to get a 19tooth freewheel cog. Taking the advice from my friend Ben, I went down to 21st Avenue Bicycles. Man! That place rocks! Everyone there is really nice, especially Hugh. He helped me out this whole weekend with parts and explaining tricks of the trade to me. Anyways, luckily 21st Avenue had a 19tooth freewheel cog in stock, yay! While Hugh was taking off the previous cog and installing the new cog I decided to look at some tires for Amanda's new build. Her previous rims, the one's I stole, were bright blue. I wanted to stick with the blue theme and came across some blue tires which were perfect as well as some matching bar tape for the handlebars! Since the bike is now a freewheel bike I needed to get more housing and cable for the brakes. The bike already had a front brake but I wanted to put a rear brake on to ensure the safest ride for my one and only true love! The bicycle chain however needed 3 links added to it because of the bigger rear cog, Hugh was awesome and hooked me up by finding and old chain and adding the links for me! I really suck with the chain breaker tool so I'm glad he did that for me. Anyways, there are still a few things I need to work on such as the rear cable line which I have excess of and needs to be cut down (it's very apparent in the picture)and buying a new stem because the one I put on there I got from a dollar bin. Other than that, I think the bike looks good for a quick build up! Here is a before and after of the bike! Enjoi!
- AMY!

Before:



After:

Clean Day!!!

Much to my enjoyment, Amy and I spent the majority of yesterday planning, organizing, and executing our Spring Cleaning project. Amy isn't a big cleaning fan so this basically consisted of Amy organizing some drawers and stuff while I cleaned. I realized just how much alike my mother and I are in that we don't really like to have people around while we clean. I'm entirely too scatter brained and move from one project to the next without finishing it but with the intention on coming back to it in a minute. We have our ways! Don't even get me STARTED on how to correctly fold a towel. Regardless, I had a pretty large list and am surprised by how much we actually got accomplished. We eventually succumbed to "taking a break" which meant a lot of internet browsing and Tetris playing, and never returned to our cleaning list. So...I woke up early today, had a (veggie)sausage and biscuit, glass of oj, and pot of coffee and got back on track. There are quite a few things left to do (mainly sorting through piles of clothes!) but am pleased with the progress made today. I'm hoping that Amy will come home and be soooo excited that she will work her way through the rest of the list. (Hahaha...jk babe! I'm sure you have about 6 or 7 tabs already set up that are eagerly awaiting that left click button!)
Anyway...here are some pics that I decided to take since we have yet to post any of our home.


Traded in the bleach for my new fave cleaning products!


Our small but functional kitchen!(stove not pictured, but I guarantee you, like any good Mexicans we have the comal sitting on the burner. I never learned the english term for it so you'll have to "spanish to english translation" that one. Viva la raza!)


Our dining room used to have a dining table that we never in 6 months of living here have used. So we set up the desk yesterday. I love that it's facing the window.


The living room


I love the lockers that our '08 stimulus checks stand on!!!


Our very cluttered yet much loved books in all their glory. (Can you tell we love IKEA?)


We try to use our shopping bags as much as possible to reduce the amount of bags we waste/use. But we gotz ta look fly while we do it! Keep it Gangsta! HTX represent!!!

There are more but we'll forgo the bathroom, closet, and bed areas for now. I suppose I should try to finish things up a bit. Maybe walk down to Zupan's to pick a nice bouquet of flowers up for my lovely lady.

Skibs not ribs!
Amanda B.