And the winner of Friday's ornament contest is...!

JESSICA! You must send me your address, because you're getting a gem of a covered wagon! I fully expect this thing to adorn your tree in Ireland EVERY YEAR. No matter HOW many times you have to explain it. In fact, start now by explaining it to Garrett. It will be good practice.

And Katy, I know you only guessed the same thing as Jessica to avoid getting an ornament in the mail, but little did you know, I got an extra just in case! Check out the beauty you get to look forward to! (P.S. I'm going to be driving through Colorado the second week of December--will you be going home for Christmas? If so, I'll totally drop it at your parents' door and ring the doorbell and run. Then spend twenty minutes at the front curb trying to get my grampa's oldsmobile to start while looking frantically over my shoulder.)

I have a confession to make.

I have a confession to make: when I stay at your house, I use your shampoo. And your conditioner. And if your soap comes in a bottle that I can squirt into my hand and it smells a little fruity, I probably use that, too.

You have to hear me out. I am on a lifelong QUEST here. I’m convinced that somewhere out there is the perfect product for my hair, and all I have to do is FIND it. And I’ll know when I’ve found it, because heavenly angels will shine upon me and a chorus will soar and my locks will turn lustrous and bouncy and shine in the glow of light surrounding my blessed countenance all day long.

Because of this quest, at any given point in time I have a half dozen unfinished bottles falling all over my shower. But don't think I LIKE that. I don’t mean to be that person. It’s just that about halfway through a bottle, it becomes clear that this is Not the One. And so when I’m strolling through the drugstore, my eyes start to stray. I’m caught by a shiny new bottle, a new scent, a promise to fix whatever I feel is ailing my hair that particular day. Too limp! Too frizzy! Too dry! Too oily! Why can't I get a combination of them all?? Next thing you know, I'm completely absorbed. I’m just LOOKING, mind you. I’m not going to TOUCH anything. After all, I've got all those other bottles at home. Except...it can't hurt to pick up this one and just read the label....not because I’m going to BUY it, but because I’m curious about its ph balance. And maybe…OOOH! Is this scented with lemon verbena orange blossom bergamot with essence de pinecone?? Will those mint leaves tingle my scalp?? I love that!

Next thing you know, I’m bouncing home with a spring in my step and bottles in my bag. But that’s okay, because I NEEDED these, this could be the ONE, and besides, I was almost out of those other bottles, anyway! What am I supposed to do? Add water to them to extend their lifespan? I’m not my gramma.

And so when I climb into your shower, and I see a host of untried products, I get REALLY EXCITED. A chance to try even more! For free! With no commitment! It’s like a shampoo orgy!

In my defense, if I’m staying with you longer than a day, I probably won’t do it twice. This could be partly due to the fact that I only shower a couple times a week--and the odds of a shower day falling again while I’m with you are slim to none--but I also like to think it’s because of my integrity. In addition, I won’t use your products if they’re expensive. Because I can’t AFFORD to get attached to your Bumble & Bumble. Also I’m worried that because the bottle is so tiny, you’ll notice a dollop missing. A dollop that ounce by ounce probably comes to about 26 dollars. In the same vein, I won’t come near any product that’s Japanese, or has a cow on the label, or is by Aveda. But if you’ve got a product in the category I call Honda-level Haircare, I am POUNCING, and that's all there is to it. And yes, I run the risk of you noticing that I now smell JUST LIKE YOU, but I'm hoping you'll think that's an indication of how much we have in common.

Please don't kick me out. I love you. And there's just one more bottle I have left to try...

I didn't know it was possible to be so happy.

As briefly mentioned in yesterday's post, I have developed a personal tradition in which I allow myself the purchase of one (1) special Christmas tree ornament each year. I can spend an entire season looking for just the right one--the one that's so wonderfully tacky I take one look at it and think, 'dementia, you are mine.'  The benefits of this little game are multi-fold:

1. I get excited when I see Christmas decorations in the shops. Which--if you aren't typically into a holiday that celebrates by putting plastic, glowing reindeer on one's front lawn--means a lot.

2. I get excited when I see tacky Christmas decorations in shops. Which, you will notice, is most of them.

3. I don't go nuts buying Christmas decorations because I'm limited to one. This is actually a key limit in any shopping venture I take.

4. Each ornament on my final Christmas tree is special. And I DO mean 'special.'

5. My Christmas tree ends up the equivalent of a happy, glittery, insane asylum. Much like the way * I * am during the holiday season.

So you can imagine my thrill when TOY JOY! last night yielded the world's loveliest, most tasteless, most fantastic tree ornament selection I have ever seen under one roof. They had a Sherlock Holmes tree, with pipes and cigars and magnifying glasses, a futuristic tree with freeze ray guns and planets, and an 80's tree covered with dangling converse sneakers and round bulbs filled with neon fiber optics. And these were only one fraction of the wonders. I was tortured by euphoria. And shortly before midnight, after agonizing for nearly two hours, I found the winner.

The ornament I chose is one of the below. Try and guess which one it is! The first person to get it right will also get one because I bought an extra. Oh! And there's one clause to this game: if you win it, it must go on your tree. So 'win' could be a bit of a loose term here...

Oh, and family, you can't win because I already have specific, holiday-related tortures in mind for you. You're welcome.

Gourdough's and TOY JOY!: two reasons to come to Austin. And stay here.

Welcome to Gourdough's, the best donuts in Austin. And I can say that having had NO other donuts in Austin, because just LOOK at this place. I have no words to describe the many forms of greatness present here, so let's just sit in silent reverence:

* bowing * Thank you, Gourdough's, for making the world a better place.

And now...the best late-night activity in Austin: TOY JOY! It's not actually titled with all caps and an exclamation point, but I really feel TOY JOY! is much more suitable for the wonders of this toy shop. It was chaotically messy--toys crammed into every available space, cascading onto the floors, overflowing the countertops--and while the staff kept apologizing profusely for it, that just made it even better. It was like walking INSIDE of a toy box. It was like your room as a child. It was a WONDERLAND. A wonderland that is open until eleven p.m. EVERY NIGHT. Except for the weekends, when it's open until MIDNIGHT. Oh, yes, my friends. That board game/smurf lunchbox/deck of cards/rubber doll you desperately need at ten p.m. can be YOURS.

We're going back tonight because today's the day they launch their Tinsel Trees and Ornament show and it's going to be BEDAZZLING.  I will definitely be picking out my annual Christmas tree ornament, which is a personal tradition I started in San Francisco in which I allow myself the purchase of one (1) ornament a year that I hand-pick carefully from a local boutique and rate for qualities like 'uniqueness,' 'awesomeness' and 'I-can't-believe-somebody-came-up-with-this-ness.' One year I actually made my own, but I don't like to talk about how that turned out.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for my big night out.

Oklahoma in pictures (going back a week or so)

How one eats in Oklahoma. I can't imagine why there's an obesity problem:

Chili, covered in chili, covered in cheese, covered in chili. Oh, and a couple of fries underneath. God bless America.

Ron's Hamburgers (& Chili): the gooey-ist, yummiest burger in all the land.

You can order pretty much anything on the menu 'spanish style,' which means fried onions and jalapenos. I thought when I ordered my cheeseburger spanish style, these items would come ON the burger, but the waitress decided that it was cheaper just to deliver it as a SIDE. Like anybody's going to dive in with a fork to a side of onions and jalapenos. But then again...

I unfortunately did not have the pleasure of having Pappy's chicken fried steak special, but boo howdy!

I know you were up all night wondering what Cherokee Gothic was, so I'm here to reveal the answer: it's a style of architecture! Welcome to OU.

At this point in the afternoon, I did not have an OU shirt on. And on a game day, that caused  me to stick out like a sore thumb.  I was reprimanded pretty quickly for calling the school color 'maroon,' which was apparently like spitting in a fan's face. It's CRIMSON, PEOPLE. CRIMSON AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT. LIKE THE COLOR OF THE BLOOD WE'RE GOING TO SPILL ON THE FIELD TODAY. BECAUSE WE'RE SOONERS.

This may LOOK like Chicago-style pizza, but you'd be wrong: the crust is actually really light and puffy. And it was DELISH. Thank you, Louie's. I owe you my hips.

Yes. Football is a way of life; a religion; a fanatical cult. And in Oklahoma, you pretty much worship at the Sooner throne.

Cherokee Gothic by night. With what appears to be a large spaceship in the background. If that's not the clashing of two cultures, I don't know what is.

Day 3: Austin is Awesome.

I arrived in Austin yesterday, after what had to have been The Most Boring Drive of All Time on the 1-35 south from Dallas.  The three hours somehow elongated into two weeks. There was just no other explanation for the shimmering hallucinations, time warping, and zoning that occurred. I left at 10 a.m., which put me in Austin in time for lunch. But in that time span, I aged. I grew a beard. I pondered the meaning of life. I spaced out, revived, slapped myself in the face, hallucinated, and aged some more. The wavering heat the wind the dry grasslands the brown trees all stilled the hand of time. My car stayed in place while the road rolled under it. By the time the Austin signs began to appear, I had forgotten how to read. I was a different person, a worn person, a person who had wandered for years in the desert and didn't know how to speak or comb her wild, ratted hair. And when I pulled up to Central Market where I was meeting Jeremy for lunch, I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing: green grass? a park? organic food? people not in pick-up trucks? Where did this civilization come from? And is that lavender soda??

One delicious beef shawarma later, I had been restored to a former semblance of self. And as I sat blissfully on a sunny picnic bench surrounded by trees and heat and carnivorous black birds, slurping my organic orange-and-cream soda, I patted my wild, ratted hair with content. This is how it was meant to be.

I've got a fantastic to-do list while in Austin this week:

Sunset dinner at Oasis

Fall Festival at Boggy Creek Farm

Lunch at Flip Happy Crepes (thank you for the recommendation, Lez!)

Gourdoughs

Nau's Enfield Drug Store

And last, but not least...a movie at The Alamo Drafthouse. For a little something called Master Pancake Theater, described as "the Alamo tradition of pairing bad movies with live comedy (and beer)! It's smart, fast, and bust-a-gut funny. Master Pancake has twice been voted BEST COMEDY TROUPE by the readers of the Austin Chronicle (2008, 2009)."  And what movie is playing on Friday night? E.T.! I know. I KNOW.  I made it happen with the power of my mind.

Oh! Dallas! I spent a (too short) day there, full of food and old friends and family. It started with lunch with my cousins (one of whom lives in Arizona and was also temporarily in town) who I found out were PIMA Indians. PIMA. How cool is THAT? WAY cooler than Cherokee, which is what I've got. It turns out that  the name Pima comes from the phrase 'I don't know' or 'I don't understand you,' which is pretty much all they had to say to the Europeans back in the day. How awesome is that as a way to be named? I know I find myself in situations all the time in which 'pima' would be the appropriate response. Or rather, 'PIMA.'

Needless to say, I'm definitely making it a point to stay with my cousin on the reservation when I pass through Arizona. (Don't tell her, she currently thinks I'm kidding.) I'm totally gonna rock it native-style. Per a conversation with Joy, who referred to me as 'lil platinum pocahontas,' "One piece of Indian frybread and a pair of spandex leggings and you're all set!" I asked her if I needed a scrunchie, too, to which she replied, 'Yeah, so your hair won't fall in your bowl of beans.'

I also had dinner in Dallas with an old high school friend and his mega-rad fiance, which was wacky crazy cool. It's funny how in ten years, nothing really changes. The people you liked are still likeable and the conversations are easy and  good. This friend I saw was as hilarious as always, with the added fun of his-and-her-joint-storytelling when he and his fiancee got rolling. It was fantastic.

Stay tuned for some delayed photographs I took in Oklahoma, where chili is a way of life, OU football is a religion, and Cherokee Gothic is not what you think it is...

Day 1: Dallas, a death wish, and why I'm taking the scenic route to San Francisco

I'm starting my road trip today. In about an hour, in fact.

I feel slightly nauseated. No, wait. EXTREMELY nauseated. I can't tell if I'm excited or not, as the churning in my stomach is pretty much overriding all other sensations. I feel like I should feel differently right now: like maybe a sense of anticipation, or adventure. But really, I just want to hurl. And scrap this whole idea and jump on the next flight to San Francisco.

I'm not the greatest behind the wheel in the best of times--I am very anxious, very nervous--but now adding to these is the small element of not having driven in years, unless you count that time in San Francisco. Or that time in Maui (thank you, Wendy, for being willing to put your life in my hands). And now, not only am I driving, but I'm doing it cross-country. Alone. In winter.

I don't know where I get these bursts of inspiration, these ideas of RONA YOU SHOULD DO THIS! like the one that hit a few months ago that led to the formation of  this road trip, but I swear these bursts are trying to kill me.

I will be posting again from my next stop: Dallas, Texas. And yes, I know that's only three hours away, which so far makes this The World's Slowest Road Trip Ever, but I've got PEEPS, yo, peeps I want to SEE, because I haven't seen them in YEARS. And the whole point of this road trip is not to discover America, it's to discover old friends that I haven't seen in far too long that I want to love and hug and be merry with. Oh, and to eat my heart out.

I leave you with this, from Kurt Vonnegut:

“I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, "Are you still doing typing?" Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, "OK, I'll send you the pages."

Then I'm going down the steps, and my wife calls up, "Where are you going?" I say, "Well, I'm going to go buy an envelope." And she says, "You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet." And I say, "Hush." So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.”