Fela, our cat.

Fela is named after Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

Fela Kuti is remembered for his revolutionary political views and his role in the establishment of afrobeat music; Fela the cat is mostly known for loving olives and aggressively sniffing mouths. Also, Fela the cat is most likely homosexual, while Fela Kuti was quite famously heterosexual.

Here is a picture of me with Fela a couple of years ago in our old house in Galveston:

(Everything you see in the above picture, with the exception of myself, Fela, and the t-shirt I am wearing, is now covered with Ike mold and in a dump somewhere. Even the yellow walls have been ripped out of that house.)

We named Fela after Fela because we were listening to Beasts of No Nation and driving around Minneapolis the day that we officially started dating, eight years ago. Before we dated, when we were in college, we used to spend a lot of time driving around Minneapolis, listening to Fela Kuti and pretending we were just friends. I'm sure the romantic tension was intolerable to our friends. Anyway, Fela the kitten came into the picture a few months later, as my first Christmas present from Matt. Fela the cat is our BFF. He hates to ride in the car but is otherwise remarkably adaptable and has, more than once, stayed with friends for anywhere from a week to three months at a time while we traveled. He is always happy to come home to us, though. He's a good guy and he sleeps on my pillow with me.

We are watching you.

Hello!

Matt convinced me to create a blog while we sat in the laundromat tonight and observed a gentleman playing the pinball machine with a great deal of gusto and drama. We watch people, especially people who don't know we're watching them. We see a lot of incredibly hilarious, disgusting, and wonderful things this way.

Since we moved back to Austin last fall, we have been living a very happy life in a lovely, central apartment near downtown. In exchange for a great location, a beautiful neighborhood, and a very cool and funky little apartment in an old Victorian house, we sacrificed in-home laundry. We therefore spend one evening every week at the laundromat, where we have discovered people-watching of a higher, more entertaining caliber than we could have ever imagined.

I took a candid video of the pinball wizard, but unfortunately, the video was too large and I can't put it on here. I will try to make it up to you by making my blog awesome in the future.

Here is a picture of the sidewalk in front of my house last weekend. The wildflowers are raging in Austin right now. Our neighborhood is on a hill just to the west of downtown and is full of historical homes. I love it on this hill. I especially love the wildflowers and the roots of the giant Texas live oaks that destroy the sidewalks in front of the homes. I took this while I walked to our neighborhood coffeeshop to meet Matt...it's not the best picture...really, the greenery is more lush than my camera phone can do it justice:




And they smell amazing. I am especially excited about the wildflowers because my brother Ryan is coming to visit for a week on Wednesday, and I am trying to convince him to move to Austin. All of the streets in our neighborhood look like this right now. Just beyond where that sidewalk ends is a huge, grassy park.

Oh yes, we are Lindsay and Matt and our cat is Fela. I am an actor and singer (currently playing an executive assistant at a downtown Austin holding company) and Matt is a retired classical guitarist on a long-term sabbatical during which he is obtaining a doctorate in medicine. Fela is our 7-year-old Siamese cat that does nothing but love us and we love him back.

I have been meaning to blog for a long time, but I never seem to have the get-up-and-type to go through with it. So we'll see how this goes.