on Dumpster Diving

There comes a time in everyone's life--I'm pretty sure--that, when driving by a dumpster, they think to themselves: "I just have to have that _______."

Today, that ______ for me was a beautiful, turquoise-stained wooden pallet. I've been craving a pallet for quite a while now, and it just so happened that the perfect pallet was waiting for me on top of the dumpster at the Toys-R-Us at Blanco and 410. There was no question in my mind: I had to have that pallet.



After climbing on top of my car (sorry, car), lifting the pallet out of the dumpster, almost dropping it and falling off the car instead (with the pallet landing on top of me, of course), I managed to scoot it over to my back seat. This thing has to weigh at least 50 pounds, but there is no way I'm leaving it here... I've gotten this far.

Lucky for me, a nice guy pulled over to help me load it up, and the awesome manager at my apartment complex helped me get it out of the car and into the house.

So, now I have a pallet. A perfect, beautiful, heavy-as-hell pallet ...that I have NO idea what I'm going to do with.







Just look at it! Look at the details, the colors, the little dents and etchings...
this is going to be a project of epic proportions!

on Weekends

It's been a while since I had a "Weekend," but in the past couple of weekends, I've had some amazing ones.

Three weekends ago, I took a semi-spontaneous trip to Chicago. Train rides, day drunk, Michigan Avenue, art school, Chinatown, downtown, and about 40 miles of walking later, I realized what'd I'd been missing out on: genuine, non-stop fun. Then again, it was one of my first real "Weekend"s since college, and I suppose I'd just been missing it more than I realized.

But this past weekend was no match for that Illinois city... who knew that so much else could happen right here at home. On Friday I got stuck in a flood, had someone run into my car in a parking lot, dressed in a Dirndl, chugged beer with the German club, bought shots for some European guys in a sketchy smokey bar, built an amazing art project, drove three hours through a hurricane, took Julie out for her 21st birthday in Houston, got pulled over and sobriety-tested while wearing boxers and a hoodie, lost my ID, found my ID, went to Buc-ees!!!, got home at 4 in the morning, went to church, cooked homemade biscuits, and got 1/4 through building a website.

Next weekend is La Grange and maybe Mexico; two weekends after that it's back to Chicago again. All with 6 bucks in my bank account and two massive blisters on my heels.

David was right. It's a pretty exhilarating feeling, to start conquering the world again.