meanwhile at stately wayne manor

This is just part of my usual jog.  Whatever.  

Austin.  Austin Austin Austin.  Have I mentioned it's the best?  It's the best.  Bands tour here.  The Drafthouses are here.  Town Lake is here.  Non-traditional gender and identity presentations are here.  There is more than one coffee shop per capita here.  Everything is here!

Seriously though at the risk of sounding really overdramatic I feel like I can like breathe freely here in a way that was not an option in Provo.

Did I mention our art deco power plant?  I should use another image where you can like actually see it but I took this one so deal with it.

So that last week of school was pretty insane for reasons that I will probably talk more about when it's all resolved slash I get my diploma in the mail so I know absolutely nothing can go wrong.  It involves a super-misogynistic professor and some weird power trips where he tried to, in his words, "teach me a lesson."  What a non-creepy charmer!!!!  Luckily, one of my superpowers is writing cutting correspondence.  Hopefully some formal complaints will make a dent.

This was at the bus stop.  SHORTS THAT DON'T COME TO YOUR KNEE??  YOU DIRTY SLUT.  Have some respect for yourself, as modeled by your invasive and judgmental friends.

That was the weird thing about BYU.  Like the vast majority of my experience was really positive and I had opportunities that I wouldn't have had anywhere else (wonderful wonderful friends and mentors and that stupid thesis and all sorts of things like that) but there were some decidedly weird undercurrents going on.

Stuff like this, of course, supersedes all that other crap.

But anyways.  What I have mostly done since I was home was chill the eff out.  This last year was one of the hardest ones of my life and I didn't quite realize the toll that it had taken.  Since I have been home I have done absolutely zero constructive things.

Except pose four of my siblings as the ice skating princesses they are.

What I have done, is I have gone ice skating.

Bradford is freaked out, since I have obviously unwittingly skated into a version of The Grudge starring Sophie.

I have been driven to a tiny Texas town by a closet barbecue connoisseur where we went to what was essentially a smokehouse and were served pounds of meat pulled from firepits in crumpled paper bags and I was convinced that some meat does not in fact need sauce and I ate one hundred pounds of pickles.

Everything was smoky and charred.  See those wooden crates?  That's where they'd pull your meat from.

Because that's where the fire was.

This was our wadded bag of crumpled meat and sausage and white bread.  Also, the most delicious thing ever.

There is a Hook showing and accompanying "feast"at the Drafthouse to which I am bringing everyone and I will be sorely disappointed if they don't give us empty pots at first so I can say PETER YOU'RE PLAYING WITH US in a creepy little-boy voice when they finally give us the food, which is from the movie if you didn't know, I'm not just being creepy.

"Don't try to stop me, Smee" is another family quote.

I have started jogging in earnest, because that's what happens when all you do when you get home is eat Nutella and Christmas candy and watch emotionally exploitative TLC reality dramas and police procedurals.  You gain ten pounds in three weeks.  That is a true thing.  So you run all the time because all the clothes you got for Christmas that fit you two weeks ago do not fit now.

This is literally a three-and-a-half-foot-tall vulture watching me run.  He obviously has zero faith in me.  Joke's on him, though, I didn't collapse till I got home!

I have also gotten a dinky job as a hostess at a restaurant, which is one step closer to my weird fantasy of working as a hostess at a Japanese superhero theme bar.

I have outlined a YA novel that I should be able to have a solid draft of written by the time I leave for SF in April.

And that is pretty much all, other than like the holidays.

I do miss Provo a million times more than I thought--or rather, the people in Provo.  I keep seeing fun things to do, and keep thinking "OH I HAVE TO TELL (Insert Provo person's name here)!" and then I realize they're a thousand miles away and I can't see them, and I get sad.  I also just miss seeing everyone and doing fun things.

I mean velociraptors do not glitter themselves.

But, I'll see everyone again soon, in April! I hope.  Nobody go anywhere.