Anyway, I decided I wanted to remember these new experiences and lessons and feelings, but I’m too lazy to write about all of them. Instead I return to my dear friend, that little engine of writing–the list!

So, in no particular order, and to be updated regularly:

Out of the Ordinary Things I’ve Done Since Moving to Tucson

• Completed a 15-mile mountain bike ride on a desert (read: cactus-lined) course with a series of hills called The 7 Bitches
• Went salsa dancing. In a Halloween costume.
• Watched a bellydancer backed by a Middle Eastern band
• Adopted a dog named Maeby
• Played in the snow
• Attended a gallery opening of Andy Warhol photographs, complete with live go-go dancers
• Used my bike for transportation
• Learned about the horrendously unorganized adoption system in Ethiopia (via others – not our own experience!)
• Drove two hours just to go to IKEA
• Ate In-N-Out
• Tried a Sonoran hot dog
• Participated in a Moulin Rouge sing-along not at Alamo Drafthouse
• Saw a javelina
• Had tofu for the first time. And liked it.
• Started a photo blog
• Collected fall leaves
• Basically gave up shopping
• Realized UT’s football stadium is just insanely nice for a college facility
• Felt old
• Worked on a Habitat for Humanity home

It’s the Photo 365 Project: My life in pictures. Every day.

And it’s exactly what it sounds like. Every day for the next year, I’ll take at least one photo and post it online. It’s a chance to practice photography, pay more attention to the world around me, force me to think and act creatively and chronicle my life. I know it will be a challenge, but it’s one I find exciting. And if you include my phone, I have 4 different cameras, so I really have no excuse to ever not take a picture. Visit my photo blog to track my progress.

Here’s today’s picture – a shot of my collection of vintage printing blocks. Aren’t they beautiful? I like that taking this photo reminded me of how much I love them.

I must give a plug to the wonderful Wordpress theme I’m using for the project: AutoFocus. It’s free, gorgeous, super easy to use and built specifically for photo blogging. I highly recommend it!

Interested in starting your own Photo 365 project? Check out these blogs for great tips on how to make it work: Photojojo | Digital Photography School | Shutter Sisters

I used to think the first line of our national anthem was “Jose can you see,” because we sang it at Astros games and their star player was Jose Cruz.

1. Craig Biggio.
2. Singing. What other sport gets 30,000 people to stretch their legs in the middle of a game and join in chorus to sing about snacks, rooting for your team and never going home? Take me out to the ballgame, indeed.
3. Food. If it was important enough for the song, it’s important enough for my list. Nothing beats a beer and a hot dog on a sunny afternoon at the ballpark.
4. Wooden bats. I’m looking at you, college baseball.
5. Clapping for the fan who catches a foul ball.
6. Passing your money down the row. Passing the beer/hotdog/cotton candy back.
7. At-bat songs. Penetrating glimpse of a player’s psyche or just something he picked off his iPod?
8. Loyalty. Jeff Bagwell was with the Astros for about 57 years. Biggio for roughly 120. They are beyond beloved by the city of Houston. I know this is getting less common, but I feel like baseball has more long-term franchise players than other sports, and it makes a team feel very special for the fans.
9. The witty, snarky old men who hassle the umps and opposing players at UT games. 
10. Minor League shenanigans.
11. Friday night fireworks. This has become a post-game tradition at multiple ballparks, and next to the 4th of July, it’s about as Americana as you can get.
12. First-base chats between players on opposing teams.
13. The thrill of extra innings.
14. Spring Training. My mom and I went to Astros, Braves and Dodgers Spring Training games for spring break my senior year of college, and it was one of my favorite experiences ever.
15. Dozing off for a few innings when you’re watching a game on TV. It’s the perfect white noise.
16. A perfectly executed double play.
    

Photo by Matt McGee

I’ve loved the Olympics for as long as I can remember. One of my all time favorite gifts was the U.S.A gymnastics leotard, ala Mary Lou Retton, that my mom gave me when I was a little girl. Complete with totally inauthentic ribbon wand. But you can bet I rocked that outfit.

When I was much older, but not much different, the 2004 Athens Olympics kept my mom and I company as we spent nearly 24 hours a day in the hospital with my dying grandma. It is no small wonder to be able to become enthralled and sustained by MSNBC’s coverage of men’s water polo at 2 a.m. in a hospital room.

And while I’m truly awestruck by an incredible athlete performing at the highest level–Michael Phelps, Kerri Strug, Apolo Ohno–my all-time favorite Olympics moment stars someone you’ve never heard of and who will never even come close to being on a Wheaties box.

Eric Moussambani, of Equitorial Guinea (what’s that?), was all set for his 100 m swim in the qualifying rounds of the 2000 Sydney Games, when the 2 other swimmers in his heat got disqualified by a false start. Small, alone and conspicuously lacking the fancy body suits favored by other competitors, Eric stepped up on the starting block to race against no one.

Neither the crowd nor the announcers really knew what to make of this awkward athlete. I remember the broadcasters pointed out that he didn’t have a proper pool to train in back home, so he swam in a river alongside alligators. What?? Anyway, at first the crowd sort of laughed and snickered, but as he pushed through, looking every moment like he was going to just stop and sink, they slowly realized the beauty and heart of the moment. When he finally (barely) finishes the race, every person is on their feet, cheering wildly at this monumental, moving display of mediocrity.*

I was right there with them, cheering him on at home, my eyes welling up with tears. For me, Eric embodies the gut-wrenching, do-or-die hard work and perserveance required, yes, at the Olympics, but in the hard-fought, messy scramble of life. And that’s why I love the Olympics.

*Wikipedia tells me Eric still managed to set a new personal best and national record with that performance. : )

Video of Eric’s swim. Pardon the foreign play-by-play – I couldn’t find an English version.

I’ve lost my husband. He’s crossed over to a mysterious, distant plane where I cannot visit. It’s called grad school.

Oh sure, he tries to invite me into that world, showing me projects he’s working on and sharing a few stories from class. We’ve even spent time together with some of his classmates, exploring Mt. Lemmon and taking in a fantastic Bon Inver show at the Rialto.

But I know there’s so much more I’m missing. He spends his days learning and discussing site analysis, perspective drawings, AutoCAD, ASLA, UofA—subjects and acronyms I know not of. When we’re outside, he starts pointing at plants and yelling out gibberish Latin phrases that sound like Harry Potter spells. He stays up late agonizing over every detail of his schoolwork. Who is this person????

We both moved to an unfamiliar city, but Travis has a place here. A new community of which he is a real and clearly defined member. But I don’t have that. Since I telecommute and work from home for my job in Austin, I don’t have my own new daily adventure. (I stress the word new here – working in higher ed communications is definitely a daily adventure.) I’m sort of a vagabond right now. I feel left out of Travis’s new life – as much as he shares with me, I’m not an insider. And that feels weird.

But more than feeling possessive territorial selfish weird about Travis’s grad school life, I am over the moon about the fact that he’s found something he loves to do and a community that can help him do it. I love that he has a passion to get lost in.

As long as I get him back from the dead grad school eventually.

*This mildly morbid but ultimately optimistic post brought to you by recent excessive viewing of Dead Like Me. Great show, but a little twisted.

Photo by Loz Flowers

Yesterday's Sweet Leaf Tea lid perfectly sums up my life right now. Who needs fortune cookies anymore?

I’m a lucky one. Part of the privileged few. A golden child. You guessed it—I’m a native Austinite.

Not only a native Austinite, but a South Austinite. Even more authentic!

My youth was filled with trips to Barton Springs and Fiesta, when it was still called Fiesta and held on Laguna Gloria’s storybook grounds. During the summers, I learned snorkeling and repelling at the Austin Nature Center day camp. My parents had season tickets for UT baseball and Lady Longhorn basketball games, so by the time I entered UT as a freshman, I had spent countless hours on campus.

I dined on Milto’s, Dan’s Hamburgers, Eastside Cafe and Nuevo Leon. I developed an alarmingly high tolerance for spicy foods. I partook of Austin City Limits and KGSR against my will, before I realized how cool they are.

I wondered about mythical places like The Arboretum and Pflugerville, and dreaded the intersection of South Lamar and Oltorf, the scene of a creepy mural on the side of a taxidermy shop. You know the one!

As I grew older, attended college, desperately searched for employment, got married, bought a house (in South Austin, natch) and adopted a dog, Austin remained home. It was a large and vital part of my identity, of how I saw myself. Austin and I were inextricably connected. It was my city. Austin was easy and charming and cool and perfect. It was the envy of all other cities! I never wanted to leave. Who leaves an oasis?

Then, after 28 years of blissful companionship, I got out. Packed up and left.

My husband was accepted to the master’s of landscape architecture program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and we decided he needed to pursue that path. It was an agonizing decision because it meant leaving everything and everyone both of us knew and loved. But it was an easy one in that we felt 100 percent conviction that it was the right thing to do.

We’ve been in Tucson just over two months now and have been delightfully surprised by so many things: The striking friendliness of nearly everyone we meet; the glory of a sun-washed mountain and wide-open sky; the sheer abundance of locally owned pizza shops.

But the biggest surprise, the thing I truly never expected was this: I don’t miss Austin.

Don’t get me wrong—I very much miss my friends and family. And when I think about our lovely little house, which we still own, or missing the birth of my best friend’s baby, my heart aches. But I’m not longing for the city itself.

It hit me when I traveled there last month for work. (I’ve kept my job with UT’s business school and work from home in Tucson.) I couldn’t wait to get back to my city, hit the regular stops and spend time with my friends and family.

But from the moment my plane landed, I felt off, somehow. I wasn’t overwhelmed with kiss-the-ground gratitude at being back in the world’s greatest hometown. Suddenly I felt like an outsider, an out-of-town visitor passing through.

I spent 28 years cultivating and clinging to my citizenship, and it took less than six weeks for it to disintegrate.

And you know what? It’s kind of a relief. I don’t think I could survive three years in Tucson if Austin still had its hooks in me. I’m thankful that my new city is one that’s easy for me to like, and I’m excited about coming to feel more at home here in Tucson than I already do. I don’t want to live my life just filling time until I can get back to Austin.

Austin is a special place and I love it dearly. It is so much a part of who I am. But I’ve realized I’m in a season of my life when I get to allow another place to become a part of me and shape who I become.

I’m a lucky one, indeed.

Things I’ll Miss About Austin

1. Galaxy Cafe chicken chipotle wraps and french fries (both the regular and -sweet potato variety)
2. Alamo Drafthouse
3. Driving by the lake everyday
4. Working on campus
5. Food served from trailers
6. KGSR
7. All the weird murals
8. The most amazing friends and family a gal could ask for

Things I Gladly Say Goodbye To

1. The death-tunnel known as I-35
2. Spending 1 hour+ in the car everyday
3. Kerbey Lane and Magnolia waiters
4. An alarmingly unbalanced hipster-to-normal-person ratio
5. It’s not the heat, it’s the HUMIDITY

Things I Learned in the Move

1. When handed a walkie-talkie, I MUST talk trucker.
2. Harry Potter books on iTunes are insanely expensive. For $50, you’d better have Daniel Radcliffe, Robbie Coltrane AND Alan Rickman recreating Hogwart’s in my back seat.
3. Some parts of West Texas are exceptionally beautiful. Also, some parts are El Paso.
4. Most gas stations sell t-shirts with American flags and spray-painted tigers but not crossword puzzle books. As engrossing as tiger tees may be, they are a sorry means of keeping me awake on road trips.

Things I Already Like About Tucson

1. Flat roads and wide bike lanes. EVERYWHERE.
2. An apparent obsession with pizza. One spot near our house has three pizza places on one corner. Clearly a town with its priorities in order.
3. The mountain view out my front window. Yes that’s it below. Yes.
4. Really really really nice people. I mean really. I think it’s all the sunshine.
5. Two words: Spring Training. Hopefully Tucson can keep it around.
6. Anonymity. No one knows us here, no one is missing us or needs us. That can be lonely, and I’m sure it will soon change, but right now it’s kinda fun to just be on our own and start building up a new life.