Whodunit

Tonight I was witness to a murder.  Happily, it was not a real one.

Actually, tonight I went to a Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre show with a couple of friends...and it was so fun!  I actually had a lot more fun than I expected to, given my general dislike of actors who interact with audience members.  The show was put on by The Murder Mystery Company, and, through the wonders of Groupon, cost just $20 for a three-course meal and interactive mystery (the regular cost is $60).  Even better, tonight's show somehow got upgraded from the usual venue to Eddie Deen's Ranch, a big Western-themed event venue that was a lot of fun.  The night had a masquerade theme, so we all donned our masks and headed off to solve a murder!

The meal was tasty - salad and AWESOME rolls for starters, then beef roast, mashed potatoes, and veggies, and a fudge/walnut pie to finish things out.  I kind of  got a kick out of the juxtaposition of the Western decor and menu with the otherwise "Billionaires Club Masquerade" theme of the event...but I guess that's Texas for you.  

The show went down in three acts, in between which we guests all milled about and talked to the "suspects," trying to figure out who killed the poor general by poisoned cigar.  There were probably about 15 suspects or so in total, and I really thought that any one of them could have done it.  Although, in the end, the killer was someone that our table didn't even suspect at all...but then again, as much as I love reading mystery novels as a long-time Agatha Christie fan (and Boxcar Children before that), I have NEVER been able to properly figure out the ending to a mystery (that I can recall), so I don't suppose I should have expected tonight to be any different.  It was a really fun night though, and a great way to start the weekend!

After the show, we wandered around the room and took a couple silly pictures with the decor, like this gem of the three of us thrown in jail...

That's probably how we'll all feel tomorrow when we're working on our Doctrine of God papers (due this Wednesday)...glad to have had a fun night tonight!

Cow Statues

My friend Miranda and I ventured downtown today in search of a cattle stampede, in statue form.

The location was Pioneer Park, nestled in among the buildings, and bursting with giant metal cows.  And bulls, presumably.  As much as I refer to all cattle as "cows", I have lately been informed that the designation of "cow" implies "female", but that does not change the fact that my suburban-grown self will continue to refer to both genders as cows.  Deal with it.

The park naturally provided good opportunities for silly photo poses, including the following:

After our Pioneer Park adventures, we took the train over a couple stops to the West End, where we had barbecue for dinner; not the best barbecue I've ever had, but it was tasty.  All in all, it was a good evening :)

As for that "paper writing fiesta" of which I spoke in yesterday's post...didn't really happen.  I spent the whole day trying to fight through just one of the three readings I need to respond to in my paper - even though it was only 16 pages long, it was so dense that I couldn't wrap my head around it.  I wound up taking a nap to firstly attempt to rejuvenate my brain, and secondly to avoid having to work (hence a 20-minute planned nap turned into an hour and a half).  And then came the evening cow statue and barbecue adventure.  Looks like I'll have a lot more work ahead of me this weekend...oh well.

Laura's Visit: A Photo Summary

Well, after an awesome weekend that was absolutely packed full of sightseeing and delicious restaurant meals, my friend Laura is safely back in her old Kentucky home.  I took her to the airport this morning, and then headed off to work, as usual.  It was after work that the exhaustion of the weekend set in - after arriving back at my apartment, I completely crashed.  I wound up taking a 2.75 hour super-nap on the still-inflated air mattress in the middle of my living room, before waking up, throwing a Sweet and Sour Chicken skillet meal on the stove for dinner, and heading off to Bible study.  I fully believe that sunburns and exhaustion are the signs of a good vacation, and according to this criteria I had just as awesome a "vacation" as Laura did.

Since I didn't have time to write while Laura was visiting, I thought I'd recap the last few days with a photo summary of Celia and Laura's Texas Adventure Weekend...because a picture's worth a thousand words, and we both took a ton of pictures this weekend (don't worry, not all of them will appear in this post).

Day #1: Fort Worth

Lunch at Fuzzy's Taco's before hitting the road to Fort Worth for the day!

At the water gardens, we ventured down into the giant canyon fountain (which is entirely legal, in case you were wondering)...

It was absolutely terrifying.  It doesn't seem like the walk down is going to be so intimidating until you're standing at the top about to start the trek.  Those platforms behind us are the stone stairs we took down.

Vacations necessitate jumping photos.  It's a fact.  Eventually, a passerby came by and offered to take a photo of Laura and I jumping TOGETHER...that gem of a photo lies on Laura's camera, unfortunately (watch for it coming soon on Facebook)

Dinner at Risky's Barbecue.  I was reminded of my absolute love for barbecue joints, and inspired to look up barbecue crock-pot recipes immediately upon return to the apartment.  I had a pulled pork sandwich with potato salad, if you're interested.

We spent the evening in the Fort Worth Stockyards...aka, stereotypical Texas at its finest.  It's like walking into a Wild West film.  Seriously.

Laura outside the Cowtown Coliseum (yes, the COWTOWN COLISEUM), before the rodeo (yes, RODEO)

Getting our Texas on at the Rodeo.  We were some of the small number of people not wearing cowboy hats.

We were SO pleased with ourselves...it was just about the most Texan thing ever.

Cattle ropin'.  Other events included bull-riding, kids riding on sheep, and cattle herding.  It.  Was.  Crazy.

That's right people, Fort Worth has rodeos every Friday and Saturday night - a $15 ticket for three hours of Texas fun.  Who knew??

Day #2: Dallas

After beginning the morning at Dealey Plaza (site of the JFK assassination), Laura and I explored the West End...including Wild Bill's Western Shop.

If only we'd had these hats for the rodeo the day before...not that we actually bought them, of course.

Lunch was had at Chuy's...Tex Mex at it's finest!

We spent the afternoon briefly visiting the church where I work (ps, we visited SMU's campus the day before, I forgot to mention that).  Then, we headed out to White Rock Lake to check out the harbors and sailboats.

And for dinner: Pokey-O's.  Because nothing says vacation like an enormous ice cream cookie sandwich :)

By this point, we were (quite obviously) absolutely exhausted, and spent the evening watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Music and Lyrics back at the apartment.  

I must say, after a weekend of doing all of my favorite Texas things and experiencing a rodeo firsthand, I feel like I went on vacation too!

Spontaneity at its Finest

Today my friend Miranda and I decided out of the blue to go to Fort Worth.

It was my last day of freedom before the descent of work and classes (the former of which will begin in promptly 10 hours), so we decided last night to get together and do fun things.  The plan was to meet at my apartment around noon, get lunch somewhere, and then go from there.

Waiting on the train...

So Miranda shows up around noon, with the suggestion that we take the train to Fort Worth for the day.  Since this was worlds better than any potential plan I had come up with, I enthusiastically agreed.  We started off with lunch at Rockfish, a seafood restaurant at Mockingbird Station in Dallas (fish and chips - yum!), and then took the DART train from there.  Things were going very smoothly until it came time to switch trains.  We got on the second train just fine, but soon discovered that that train wouldn't be departing for an hour.  We were at the end of the line, and the train doesn't run as often on the weekends.  So we hung out on the train, happy to be sitting in the air conditioning and figuring that this was similar to what we'd be doing anywhere else.  Eventually, the train pulled out, and about an hour later we arrived in Fort Worth.

Fort Worth Skyline

When we got off the train, it was already 4:30 - a little later in the day than either of us had anticipated our arrival time.  We consulted a timetable (as we probably should have done in the first place), and decided that the best train to take back to Dallas was the 8:21pm departure, giving us about 4 hours to wander the city.  I've been to Fort Worth exactly one time (last weekend, to go to the circus), but that was enough to give me a working knowledge of the city's layout.  I REALLY like Fort Worth - it's a very walkable downtown, and the architecture is beautiful, and it doesn't feel nearly as pretentious or vaguely dangerous as downtown Dallas.

Crawfish Etoufee!

Destination #1 was the Sid Richardson Museum, which featured a small gallery of Western paintings - cowboys and native americans and all that jazz.  It was all interesting and Texas-like.  After that we spent some time wandering Sundance Square and looking around random shops, mostly those involving Texas paraphernalia and hippie clothes/jewelry and whatnot.  Around 6:00 we decided we should start thinking about dinner - not because we were hungry, but because we wanted a good buffer before we had to catch the train.  So we chose a Cajun restaurant...and it was SO FUN and SO GOOD!!!  The inside was all colorful and Mardi Gras-tastic.  I had the Cajun Etoufee with Crawfish (after clarifying that the crawfish wouldn't come with heads on them), and it was absolutely delicious.  Then, even though we were both stuffed, Miranda and I split a Bread Pudding...which was sooooooooo tasty!  After we left the restaurant, we were both stuffed to the point of discomfort, but pleased with the deliciousness of our endeavor.  We ended the day by walking off our food babies (I named mine Bubba), and exploring the Fort Worth Water Gardens, a collection of unique and enormous fountains.  It was super cool!

Fountain at the Water Gardens

Finally, absolutely exhausted, we returned to the train station, and after waiting about half an hour, boarded our train for the ride home.  I timed the trip, and discovered that a well-planned train trip to Fort Worth from Dallas takes an hour and twenty minutes (not including sitting on a stationary train for an hour like our first journey).  That's a bit longer than it takes by car, but it's much more wallet-friendly and works out well when you're too exhausted and stuffed with etoufee to feel like driving back.

So that was my last day of freedom!  It was a day well spent, to be sure :)

Eating Trendy Sushi

There are two things that I really like to do in my free time.  The first is doing things that are free.  The second is doing things that are fancy.

By their very nature, these two things tend to be mutually exclusive..."fancy" implies expensive, and "free" implies that I'm not rich enough to afford the expensive things.  However, through a bit of research, my friend Emily and I discovered a magical place where fancy and free collide:

The Dallas Fish Market.

OK, so the name makes it sound cheesy.  To counter this, I should point out that the Dallas Fish Market is not actually a fish market (as I thought it was when Emily first suggested it), but is a fancy schmancy seafood restaurant in downtown Dallas.  You know the type of restaurant I'm talking about: streamlined interior decor, servers dressed in all black, where things on the menu don't have decimal points and where most of the prices are in double digits.  Thee atmosphere ironically screams of a twenty-to-thirty-something demographic even while appealing more to the budget of accomplished businesspeople than your average grad student.  However, on Wednesdays from 5-9, The Dallas Fish Market serves up complimentary sushi in the bar to anyone who orders a drink.  Yes, please!

So in pursuit of free sushi, Emily and I set off on our adventure into the trendy world of young professionals.  In true city-chic spirit, we took the DART to the restaurant (the Dallas Area Rail Transit, for you non-Dallas folks).  I'm not a fan of driving or parking in major cities, so public transportation was a good idea.  But, it was here that Emily and I began to discover a pattern that would be somewhat consistent throughout our dinner adventure: the pattern of ALMOST being all city-tastic and awesomely trendy, but persistently falling a bit short of the mark.  The first place that this pattern began to reveal itself was in the attempt to purchase a train ticket from the automated machine, while a security guard condescendingly shouted semi-helpful instructions at us from afar.  Finally in possession of the ticket, we proceeded to take the wrong stairs down to the platform (the main stairs were closed), and ended up on a sidewalk hovering about 30 feet above the platform, thereby forcing us to retrace our steps back to the ticket machine (and past the laughing security guard) and take the elevator.

Once we were ON the train, things were a success, and we got ourselves to the Akard station, navigated the short walk to the restaurant, and were immediately seated in the bar.  The bar was filled with high tables and stools and cylindrical lamps, and the restaurant had sort of a bluish glow about it that got progressively blue-er as our meal went on.  The setting was like a scene out of a chick-flick where the fabulous young heroine meets the dashing love of her life...unfortunately, Emily is engaged, and all the men (which were few) were rather too old for my taste.

Over bops our waiter, who hands us two menus and tells us the details of the sushi deal: buy a drink, receive four pieces of sushi.  Buy another drink, receive four more pieces of sushi.  And so on.  Kind of like giving a dog a treat for rolling over, but giving people sushi for increasing their blood alcohol levels.  You know, same thing.

Waiter walks away, and Emily and I start to peruse the drink menu.  Immediately, we discover that the specialty drinks are falling into the $10 range, so we call the waiter back over and ask if there's any discount on the drinks for happy hour.

"Not on the specialty drinks, but the Cabernet and the Chardonnay are $5, and well drinks are $4."

"OK, thank you," we reply.  He walks away.

"What are well drinks?"  I ask Emily.  I'm by and large a non-drinker, and therefore I am not familiar with the associated lingo.

"I have no idea," Emily answers.  

"Uhh, ok...better go with the wine.  What did he say, Chardonnay and what?"  

"I don't remember the other one..."

Drop another notch on the trendy meter.

"So let's get the Chardonnay, yes?"  I laugh.

"Yes!"  Emily replies, also laughing.

The waiter comes back.  "Have you decided?"

Emily ventures forth: "Yes, I'd like a glass of Chardonnay."  I add that I'd like the same.  The waiter walks away to retrieve the drinks.  Mission accomplished.

Like I said before, I'm not really a drinker, but I always feel somewhat more fabulous when I'm sitting next to a long-stemmed glass of wine.  The Chardonnay really wasn't bad as wine goes (all you wine-lovers can scold me later); I've never had white wine before, and I liked it way better than red wine, even if I still didn't end up finishing the whole glass.  

Then out came the sushi.

When I hear "complimentary sushi," I envision tiny little rolls of rice and cucumber, with maybe a hint of crab tossed in for good measure.  After all, it's free; better not get your hopes up, right?  Not so at The Dallas Fish Market: we had pieces of Spicy Tuna sushi and Rainbow sushi.  Granted, you don't get a choice of sushi; the waiter informs you of what the free sushi is, and you happily accept it.  It was fun though, because I tend to play it safe with sushi and get the same things every time, and it was fun to try something new.  I'd never had Spicy Tuna or Rainbow sushi before, and I really liked both - especially the Rainbow sushi, which has a piece of cool white fish around the outside, with crab in the middle.  SO good.

With only four pieces of sushi per person, we finished our mini-meal fairly quickly.  Emily debated ordering another glass of wine to acquire more sushi, but decided against it.  Personally, I had eaten a late lunch and wasn't super hungry, and didn't have a strong desire to order a second drink when I wasn't going to finish the first.  I was happy with my four pieces of tasty trendy sushi.  So we got the check, and headed back off to the DART in good spirits.

All in all, I had a really great time on our trendy-sushi adventure.  I keep meaning to explore places in downtown Dallas and never seem to be willing to do the necessary research, so it was really cool to do something in the city.  And, as non-trendy as I may be, I LOVE trendy/fancy food places, especially ones that   don't leave me broke afterwards.  Emily had fun too; in fact, we may go back next Wednesday, and see if she can bring her fiance along...he doesn't like sushi, but he would order a drink.  And when his drink comes with sushi, we will be there to eat it for him.

Because strategy is a very important part of being trendy.

"I Mentally Shake Your Hand."

That, my friends, is one of the more memorable quotes from the movie version of Jane Eyre, which my friend Miranda and I went and saw tonight.  I plan on using it as often as possible.

Besides the occasional laugh-inducing line ("Ladies, I pray you return to your nests like the dove that you are" was another favorite), I actually thought it was quite the good movie.  It had much more of a suspense/thriller movie vibe about it than I expected; at one point, I made an unmerited and (louder than necessary) squeaky-squealy noise because Jane touched a bit of tapestry and I thought something horrible was about to leap from behind it (much to the amusement of my friend).  That kind of movie.  Unfortunately, although I've never read Jane Eyre, it turns out the one plot point that I was aware of is the big gigantic climactic secret that is supposed to come as a huge shock and give you all this emotional chagrin and such.  Oh well. I saw it coming all along.  I won't reveal it here in case any of you readers are planning on seeing the movie, but chances are if you've read Jane Eyre (or only know one thing about Jane Eyre), you most likely know what I'm talking about.

I came to three important conclusions watching this movie:

1) I'm glad that I live in the days of electricity, and don't have to wander giant 19th century castle-esque English homes in the dead of night with only a flickering candle to light up the space around me.

2) I think that if you were treated well, being a governess would be kind of a sweet gig; paid room and board, and spending the day teaching a kid about stuff and playing badminton and such.  Of course, you could be treated horribly and have really bratty kids to deal with, so I guess it goes both ways.

3) The Bronte sisters must have had some kind of weird childhood to get Cathy's ghost scratching at the window in Wuthering Heights on Emily's end and the creep-tastic moments of Jane Eyre from Charlotte.  It was probably wandering those giant houses at night and eerie stories that some dissatisfied governess told them that did it.

It was a good movie.  If you like movies that make you jump, classic literature, or  the 19th century, you should go see it.

When we came out of the theater, the weather was all Bronte-tastic with foreboding winds.  It turns out these were the precursor to severe thunderstorms that never actually hit Dallas proper, but were strong enough in neighboring areas to give us a few giant thunderclaps and set the tornado sirens going off for a bit from the heavy winds (though not from tornadoes).  I therefore spent much of the remainder of the evening alternately watching TV weather anxiously and looking out the window anxiously.  Thankfully, the storms never did much in Dallas, and now they've completely moved to the east.  I'm not a fan of storms, particularly when they involve tornado sirens and I live alone and don't have a basement in which to take shelter.

Although, this weather is probably the perfect setting for writing a Bronte-esque novel.  I'll keep that in mind next time a storm comes my way.

Sister Adventures: A Photographic Journey of Awesomeness

Well, the sisterly adventures of Hannah's visit to Dallas have drawn to a close; I took her to the airport tonight, said goodbye with much weeping (yeah, we were THOSE people in the airport), and just received a text saying that she's landed back in St. Louis.  And, I'm back to the world of homework and general graduate school realities.

Fun fact:  I've been officially offered the internship at the Filipino church for next year!  Two thumbs up for plans coming together!  I'm going to sign the official paperwork on Monday, and register for classes on Tuesday; between those two events, my life will be scheduled for the rest of 2011 (and partially, through May of 2012).

But more about all that later.  This post is devoted to elaborating on the events of the last few days, via the photographic documentation of our adventures.

Adventure #1: Wandering the lake by my apartment

My apartment complex has quite the lovely walking trail around a couple of lakes, and I took Hannah down to show her around, and also to witness the various wildlife, including normal suburban wildlife like overeager squirrels...

And the terrifying live Turduckens-that-must-not-be-named...

Scary waterfowl are scary.  That one started chasing us shortly after we took this picture.

Adventure #2: Tex-Mex Dinner at Chuys

Yes please.  Enchiladas with tomatillo sauce and a free nacho bar because it was still happy hour.  Mexican food doesn't get much better than that.  If you visit me in Dallas, we're going.  If you're in Dallas and you're not visiting me, you're still going.  No choice.

Adventure #3: Baking Muffins and Cupcakes

To facilitate breakfasts for Hannah's visit, I bought a couple packs of chocolate chip muffin mix, which Hannah happily volunteered to mix and distribute into paper muffin cups...unfortunately, neatness doesn't appear to be her strong suit:

We also made the world's best Pina Colada cupcakes, which involve a batter of yellow cake mix, undrained crushed pineapple, and coconut extract, with a frosting of cream cheese, vanilla pudding, and more pineapple.  They are SO SO SO delicious...but very ugly, as you can see...

As you can see, we'd already eaten a few by the time we took this picture...proving that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (or a cupcake by its haphazard frosting job).

Adventure #4: Celebrity Home Stalking


Following in the footsteps of my friend Brandi and I on our quest to discover Nelly's house last March, Hannah and I found a list of celebrity homes in Dallas (complete with GPS coordinates), and decided to track them down.

We set off enthusiastically to our first destination: the home of ex-President George W. Bush.  We entered the neighborhood with a few trepidations of secret-service people chasing us away, but excited about the prospects which lay before us...

We turned the corner onto the street, and all of a sudden, spied an older couple strolling down the sidewalk with a dog...and started flipping out, because George W. Bush and Barbara Bush were walking towards us!  Hannah managed this paparazzi shot out the back window...

Click the picture to make it bigger

Yeah okay, so that's not really them.  BUT we legitimately thought that it was them, until we were right up upon them and realized that their faces were wrong (not to mention the woman's blonde, non-Barbara Bush-esque hair).  Still, it was absolutely hilarious, and we both agree that they REALLY looked like them from a distance!  In any case, it turns out that we were on the wrong street...we went out to the real place this morning, and were unsurprisingly met by this sight:

A gate, with lots of signs about security and restricted access, blocking our path down the street of expensive homes, including the Bush's house.  I guess we should have known that we wouldn't be able to just wander up to the door of a past president's house.  Incidentally, Hannah and I were thwarted in our ambition to track down the Jonas brothers' house, because we looked it up online beforehand and discovered that it, too, was blocked off by a gated neighborhood.  Shucks.

Luckily, Chuck Norris was more obliging, and only had a gate blocking his driveway, not the whole neighborhood.  Here's his house as we saw it...

Okay, so it's not much to look at (especially with this poor photo that was taken while I was driving, and shows more of the fence than the house).  From the road it looks rather small, and the front is in the middle of a lot of construction work.  BUT, when we turned the corner, we realized that the house went a lot deeper back than you might think.  Just check out this sky view from the website we used to find the house...

Tricky, Chuck Norris.  Very tricky...

Adventure #5: Seeing Where John F. Kennedy was Assassinated


Yes, unfortunately, besides the football, the thing that Dallas is famous for is that it is the sight where John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Hannah and I drove down to Dealey Plaza this morning, and to be honest, it was quite a surreal experience to stand on the grassy knoll, in the spot where the Zapruder film was taken, and look out over the scene.  It was like stepping into one of the most iconic photographs in American history...

The painted "X" marks where JFK was shot

The Grassy Knoll

The Texas School Book Depository

The sixth floor of the building, where Lee Harvey Oswald shot the bullets from, is now a museum, but we didn't want to pay the steep admission charge and contented ourselves to walk around the scene.

On a less serious note, we also walked around the adjacent West End of Dallas, and saw silly things like this dinosaur on stilts:

 And then, on the way back, we swung by SMU to take Hannah's picture by the giant mesh head in front of the art museum...because you just don't pass something like that up.

And that, my friends, concludes the highlights of Hannah's visit.  Of course, there were several things that weren't documented in photographic form, but I think that this post is sufficiently lengthy, don't you?

And now, back to the reality of the daily grind.  Homework all day tomorrow...hopefully, with the renewed energy that a family visit can create :)