recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day five: lincoln.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE (AND NOT BLURRY) PICTURES ARE MINE.

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BETWEEN DENVER, COLORADO AND LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

I didn’t really care to take too many photos in Lincoln because the place was pretty much a wash… so these are mostly Rose’s. Say hello to Nebraska! I’ll start off by saying that Rose was HORRIBLY excited for Nebraska, as it is the land of Saddle Creek and Conor Oberst. I could really care less about these things, but for her, it was quite exciting, and she did most of the driving through Nebraska, blasting a shit ton of SC bands – and waayyyyyyyyyyy too much Bright Eyes – along the way… I should also state that Nebraskans are super prideful of being Nebraskan, and Rose made fun of this sign a lot (it is an extremely plain state-welcoming sign compared to some of the other ones) but that making fun of fell among deaf ears, or at least, ears that did not agree… I think the response Michael, our CS host in Lincoln, gave was, “But it is the good life…”

Along the way, there wasn’t much interesting stuff to eat, and I wanted some real food, so rather than getting like, a salad or whatever for the same-ish price, I just went to town on this buffet in this random gas station. I think the restaurant was called Grandma’s or some shit, and definitely the buffet was the best vegetarian option around. Buffets are, for me – master binger – just the monetarily-sound way to go. I can eat a huge buffet meal and pack it away and then I don’t have to eat dinner, and frankly, I feel better that way most of the time…

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Salad bar featuring pepperonis"]

Rose’s food – less spectacular if I do say so myself…
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Grandma may not have veggie burgers but she's got smart balance" – apparently (I didn't hear it) lady was not stoked when Rose asked if they had veggie burgers...]

This is fucking grandma, dude, if you ever doubted her existence…

Funny picture for a burger challenge, which reads, “”Think climbing Mount Everest is a challenge Well, try this one on for size. Two pounds of ground beef on a large homemade bun topped with choice toppers. Four pounds total!!! Are you tough enough to try? If you can polish this baby off in less than an hour, we’ll give you a free shirt and hang your picture on the wall. Ya know what Andy Warhol said, “Everyone is famous for 15 minutes.” Well, here’s your chance.” YUMMMMMM! That reminds me of all the cow farms we passed on the way… I must say, though, there is a lot of grass-fed cow meat in Nebraska, or at least there is close to the highway, and it was actually getting slightly terrifying that I would be like, “MMMM! It smells good!” because the smell of grass would come wafting into the car, and then two seconds later we would pass a herd of cows, and I was just like, “Fuck!” It’s a little bit scary when cow shit apparently starts smelling really awesome…

Check out what’s considered “ethnic” food: Spaghetti & Meatballs and Nacho Supreme. Hahahahhahahahahahahah.

You can betchur buns these locals had the buffet! As I was finishing up my pretty healthy meal and getting a shit ton of brownies and ice cream for dessert, the guy behind us was like, “Ah, and here I was thinking she would be eating healthy!” He was a truck driver who was on his way back to Indiana after taking a trip to San Francisco. Guess dude does that every other week or something. He highly recommended the potato chowder, but I didn’t eat it because mmmmmehhhh. It probably had bacon in it. And I just wasn’t feeling it, in general. But nice to talk to you, dude!

Anyway… first round of foods and then the aftermath (see the brownie and ice cream action?!!!)…

Above: Love a good truck stop, dude; below: Rose taking a self-portrait because she was tired of my suck-at-posing-for-pictures ways.

Like I was saying…

I’m sure that is soooo what they want. Really, though, I don’t even think this offer is valid anymore. I think that shit be advertising for false.

Grandma’s parking lot capture which I really enjoy…

Being sad about balloons.

Oh, before we left, though… WE TOTALLY FOUND ANOTHER SINCLAIR DINOSAUR! Rose was hunting around for a person to take a photograph for us, and I wanted her to ask this dude who looked friendly and gave me a friendly smile; instead she found this dude simply because he had a nice car and he was the creepiest mofo. She was assuming her position on the dinosaur’s back, and he seriously said, “Yeah, tart it up, honey, tart it up.” UH-HUH. GOOD JOB.

I was trying to keep that broccoli stalk for a while because I’m gross. That’s about as dried out and interesting as it got. I actually really wanted to turn it into a sculptural work but it flew around the car and I forgot about it until way later on, when it changed shapes and stopped being uhhh something I really wanted to touch so much.

Anyway, there was a sign for this one place from far, far away, and like Little America, we just kept being excited to go to it. Finally, we made it… but it had closed the previous hour. FUCK. And unlike Little America, this place actually looked really fucking awesome… it was a museum of old shit that was “showing man’s progress” through the years. I mean, come on. How sick.

Anyway, along the way, we pulled down this random road to stop by a lake because the sun was coming down and Rose wanted to take some photos of some cows… On the way there, she pulled over and a truck with two dudes was coming from the opposite direction. She put on her hazards. They of course stopped to see if she needed any help. Of course she made it seem even more like we didn’t know what we were doing or where we were going by asking where the lake was though it was clearly the way we were headed. They eventually left after making small talk with her. We went to this lake that was in the middle of tons and tons of corn fields, but I got the grossest vibe from the place. Usually I don’t really get weirded out by being places, but the interaction, the isolation, the fact that we were two “ethnic” girls in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska (not even off a major freeway, but a farm thoroughfare freeway) just made me really paranoid and we only walked a little distance before I mentioned that we should just go. Snapped a couple shots (below) but mostly just ducked out of there. It just reminded me too much of when Lenny and I were in Montana and Native Americans almost ran us over with their truck.

Rose is kinda eternally hungry or at least needs to snack a lot more than I do, and we stopped by this AMAZING Mexican restaurant in po-dunk nowhere (Hastings, Nebraska). The restaurant chain is called El Puerto, and it was fucking delicious, and the service was top-notch… maybe even above-and-beyond x 10,000 with younger, fairly good-looking Mexican waiters… yeeeaaah, it was interesting. Guess they have restaurants in Kansas, too.

—

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

Finally arrived at our host’s house in Lincoln that evening, where they had been drinking ALL DAY. It was three dudes who lived together who had a really hilarious mega-gay dynamic (a big no-no in Lincoln), and they were nice, but I was sure that they were going to drink/party, and I was going to be whatevers about it all. And that turned out to be true, of course. This particular Saturday the Huskers football team had had a game, and especially in Lincoln, everyone is SUPER into football. I asked Michael about the people in town who didn’t like football, and he said that in Lincoln, “Even the people who don’t like football like football.” Which is funny. Apparently the Huskers’ season tickets have a waitlist of FORTY YEARS – longest season ticket sell-out ever — because people don’t give up their tickets if they already have them; you just keep having them through as many seasons as you want them. Fucking bizarre.

But we went to a dubstep show at The Bourbon Theatre, and I was really excited for the prospect, though less than excited that it was $15.00 – but I thought hey, why not? How bad could it really be! Turns out it can be really bad, and I should have known this from past experiences that going to random dubstep shows is not necessarily a good thing. What’s worse… asides from the CS host Michael himself, who very obviously liked dubstep and was into dancing, his girlfriend and his two roommates coughed up the dolla bills but were seriously not into it or dancing at all. So it was just kinda bad music and then all the more weird-vibed. The other two dudes left early and we hung out with gf and Michael for a little bit but eventually left soon thereafter. So… whatever.

Went to a bunch of bars. Had minimal conversation. There was one fun interaction in a pizza place where some guy from Austin saw me standing near the gumball machine, where I had just purchased a gumball, and asked me if I had change for $1.00; I said I did not, and he said I wasn’t allowed to stand by gumball machine if I didn’t have change! I suppose he maybe had a point, but I was just waiting for the bathroom, man!

Also went to this hella dance club crap with a buncha frat kids and got bought two drinks. Got a little drunk. It was whatevers, man. This picture would show an example of what the streets looked like, though. It was an early game so there were a lot of people out, but not nearly as many as there would have been had it been a late game; I guess the Huskers campus is a dry campus so people can’t actually drink on-campus so they hella wile out after the games are over.

Group pic later that evening. Blah, blah, who cares, blah, blah.

>>> i am being such a dramatic cunt. <<<

just played some basketball.
i am chewing on a cud.
man, i really miss basketball.
next to tennis, it’s probably the one sport i’ve played most.
which is funny.
my brain is totally rattling inside my head.
beating itself up.
idiotic.
quixotic.

i can’t decide whether i should start a new book this evening or not, since it’s probably going to drive me nuts that i won’t be able to finish it before i leave. the dumbest of first world problems, but it is one.

dude my eyeballs want to claw themselves out of my head, they are so itchy.

i don’t wanna be all serious, but i’m getting all serious. i think i’m really just tired. i need to learn to sleep but i suck ass at it lately. i also have work to do tonight but i’m so beat… fuckkkkkk.

clawing, and clawing, and clawing…
i really wish i had menomena’s latest record on me, but i don’t.
need to invest in an external hard drive.
this post is effectively worthless.
i just needed to write something, and i can’t write the book right now because it requires too much brain.

essentially i see the pattern now going like this.
everything i write with any kind of seriousness will equal the book will equal not written here.
this blog is probably going to turn into major brain fart shit as a result, with occasional copy and pasted passages maybe when i fucking feel like it.
horribleness incoming!

i am also essentially saying see ya to the internet, as much as i can help it, anyway, given the nature of my work, and later to phone communication. hate it all. blunders.

i hate when i feel as though i can’t even read…………………………….. hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it.

just so i don’t copy this exact same post again…

and nothing
sounds appealing.

how i feel, again.

i was kinda pissed…

… so i went for a jog. dude, fruitful. i haven’t gone for a jog for ages… well, probably like a month and a half, but before that, ages. and that was like, “i wanna get home faster!” this is the first deliberate jog i’ve gone on in… well, as long as i can remember. felt pretty good though my leg cramped up a little. might do it more, but only at late night intervals such as this. i should go snowboarding sometime soon… i haven’t been in ages… it’s like a foreign thing at this rate. i gotta go at least once this season…

anyway, i truly hope to have a longer actual post one of these days… when i’m not feeling like a complete and utter insane person. this week has been like, 10+ hour workdays, everyday. i’m certainly making money, but it’s rough. can’t wait til tomorrow’s over so i can rest slightly easy…

just created a new category for “fuck”. haha…

(oh right, and i was pissed because there’s this huge deadline tomorrow and the ladies i’m doing for sprung it on me and gave me two days to do all this shit and were really slow about communicating changes to me, and didn’t give them to me for forever, and then finally, after i was like, “okay, i’m leaving the coffee shop to go home for dinner!” they fucking sent me a bombload of changes, many of which i could have done much easier earlier on. fucking ridiculous.)

on top of that, i’m also working on this other website project which is also ridiculous because the dude doesn’t know what he wants at all, or what he’s doing, and it’s a bit of a fucking nightmare. fuck. time to dance in my room for a song or two and then get back at working.

1:00am.

(i also have this fucked up foot problem… where my feet are really fucking itchy and swollen during the wintertime. i don’t think it’s athlete’s foot. it fucking sucks. i have the weirdest health problems, when i have health problems, always. never get regularly sick but my body is always doing weird ass fucking shit. fuck.)

—

2:26am.
addendum.
i’m listening to… el boy die’s black hawk ladies & tambourins album, which rules… dude, there’s so much good music it’s fucking stupid.

anyway, i neglected to mention that when i came back, i felt really awake (the goal of the jog), and it was awesome. now i’m kinda in the work zone, which is excellent, considering it’s so late/early in the morning! that also allowed me time to calm down and not put together a totally bratty email cause whatever.

also when i came back, i laid down on the floor for a while, listening to emil & friends, and doing some exercises and just generally zoning the hell out to the music. uhhhhhh that run pretty much made me feel like i was hallucinating. natural high, i guess, but in this weird way… like being on a hallucinogen or something… i began to notice the strokes in which the painters painted popcorn on my ceiling, and how those strokes seemed to create a spiral around the light fixture in the center of the room, and how the light radiated outwards and cast shadows upon the paint strokes in a circular, hurricane-like way… it was as if i was hyper-focused and hyper-clear for a second, and i think it’s because of all the deep breaths i took on my jog. crispy deep breaths! when i was coming back and ran out of breath (i can’t jog worth shit), i just closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and focused on the music. when i came to, i: a) could jog again without problem; b) was surprised at where i was. it was like that hallucinogenic ceiling thing again, only i was outside…

that reminds me, though… this morning i woke up and laid in bed forever because i couldn’t get up, and my head was just spinning, spinning, spinning, and i felt barely able to pull myself into consciousness… hmm, that sounds kind of bad…

oh right, and today i started my first day of volunteering. what i am doing is basically going to low-income subsidized housing and participating in giving residents coffee and making conversation with them. i had a long conversation with this guy named sasa who was from tehran and had been in the states for ten years; he used to run his own company in iran but now is in the states, battling depression, and talking daily with his case worker. he says he wants to work but he cannot because his health is not good — health meaning mental health. he was formerly a political science professor at a university in tehran, he said, and had converted to christianity since coming to the united states. he talked about how everyone in the united states has so much CHOICE, basically, and can anything they want, unlike other countries. he says he gives thanks daily…

also had a brief conversation with this dude from new orleans about making gumbo, and how he makes awesome gumbo…

also had a really long conversation with this super albino hypoglycemic kid who loves to bbq but can’t cook and can’t really eat vegetables because they make him sick because he has a protein deficiency. he was suuuuuper pale. but anyway. he said he bbq’d 24 packages of baby back ribs for his family for his birthday this past year, and that he marinated the meat for like, five days straight. hardc0re. he told me that if he eats starchy vegetables, like potatoes, he has diarrhea for a week. such hardcore food problems… dang.

there was also a filipino guy who made everyone lumpia. and he was talking with such pride about making lumpia and adobo, but no one there would really eat it because no one ate meat. his talking about it and kind of feeling like we were crazy for not making meat made me think twice about the realities of being vegetarian. and i think i decided today that i don’t really care enough to actually make the stretch. not that i’m ever going to really BUY meat and cook it, BUT… it’s such a thing of privilege — which we have, yes — to decline meat when it is such a cultural necessity in so many other places. i don’t know. in any case, it’s whatever. i’ll probably continue eating as i do, but i think… it’s whatever. i don’t care. i’ll eat it.

—

2:39am.
hey, look at that… this is damn near a real entry!

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temporary distractions: check!

i feel kind of pretty often that i don’t come across very well in social situations. i’m very good at one-on-one and informal hangouts, but in group settings, i really just don’t talk that much, and i’m just quiet or seem boring or whatever. kinda makes me feel weird sometimes when everyone else is being super off-the-wall goofy or talkative and i’m just… normal. it’s like as i’m getting older, i start feeling more and more insecure about who i am as a person. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. feel weird. anyway, today was mostly good though. played 3v3 and then 5v5 basketball. which is pretty glorious. so that’s that. more basketball, please. also went to watch this star trek in the park thing (a theater thing) that wasn’t nearly as exciting as i thought it would be. blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

recap central: turkey, day three: gallipoli / canakkale.

saturday, april 25th, 2010.
Small breakfast because too fat!!! Bus ride to Gallipoli, where an ANZAC day holiday was happening. To summarize:

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. It now more broadly commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. Anzac Day is also observed in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.

The ANZAC Spirit is an important driving force behind ANZAC day, with a special mention of the Turkish, as well, because of the Gallipoli Campaign

Along the way, we are stopped by an officer because commercial drivers (such as our bus driver) have chips in their identifications or something which tell what speeds they’ve been driving for the past 24 hours and logs if they drive over 90 km/h.

Also along the way, we stopped by this little cool ma and paw rest stop. I enjoyed it a lot. Probably the most enjoyable rest stop of the trip. Possibly because it was like the first and had the novelty, but whatever it is…

Cutest mangey mutt dog.

Nescafe would be almost synonymous with coffee. Kahve would be coffee. Cay with the accent mark would be tea, pronounced “chai”. I was expecting chai at first, not just regular black tea — and while I figured it out, I heard some people talking later who had NOT figured it out. Kinda like how my mom went to a supermarket (the Kipa we met later on in this day), saw a package that said word in Turkish, and said, “Teriyaki-flavored????” even though the word looked nothing like teriyaki…

On the way to the site, we take a ferry. There’s a guy selling mussels with flavored rice in them on the ferry, and Auntie Ruby’s been talking the entire time about eating mussels, but then shies away from eating these. A bunch of us end up eating the mussels, and I think they’re quite tasty, anyway.

Sherry eating it. She doesn’t look happy here, but she wasn’t really unhappy!

We end up eating at a seafood restaurant near the water, and I just get a plate of vegetables instead. Here we learn of this dining method where you just order everything up front, like in a cafeteria, only you don’t pay until after you’re done eating. It’s a bit of an honor system; one could easily lie, because in the scenario like that where a whole shit ton of tour groups were eating, they probably can’t keep track of anything. But yeah. Everyone else ate fried fish, and it was pretty good, I must admit.

I got an okra plate with rice, and an ayran for the first time, which is like a sour yogurt drink mixed with wate’r and salt. Turks drink a LOT of it. I thought it was pretty delicious – at least the packaged kind. When I got it later on in restaurants and it was fresh, I liked it a bit less. It tastes a little bit different everywhere you go. But along the streets, on the highways, small roads, whatever, pretty much the prime foods you see advertised are gözleme and ayran, in that order, often with giant painted signs in caps. I could kinda eat gözleme all day though (along with börek — they’re both pastries).

Outside of the lunch place, I talk to the bus driver, Usjan? A little bit. He has been driving busses for 21 years – 5 of which were with Japanese tour groups, and 1 of which was with Chinese tour groups. He knows the words, “Ni hao,” and “Ma ma hu hu.” Haha. But it’s hard to talk to him because he doesn’t really speak English. Which starts the beginning of awkward hello’s with him where we can’t really say anything more than hello. Must be kinda boring to not be able to speak the language while seeing all these people everyday…
Al tells us some stories – amazing ones – of Australian and Turkish soldiers being very respectful to one another while in battle with one another in close quarters and close trenches. Both the Turkish and Australian soldiers have farmer backgrounds, I guess, so they relate on that level, and they’re all very honest people. There’s a story about Ottomans paying the British for ships for their naval battles but the Brits not returning the money or giving the ships. Instead, the Nazi empire and the Germans donate two ships to the Ottomans, and naturally, the Ottomans came to like the Germans and dislike the British for that. Another battle story of the British fighting in a narrow channel and underwater German mines blowing up the first row of ships, making the channel even narrower. Meh. Interesting, anyway.

First plaque. Nice word… and see the name? Atatürk? He RULES Turkey. The Turkish love Atatürk like they love lamb — they love him in a Communistic way, for sure. More elaboration on Atatürk later.

We stop by a waterfront while we’re there, and I found this bug really interesting, because the wind was pretty intense and the bug kept being blown backwards into the sand and stuff. Was funny. Coulda watched forever. And anyway, it looks like nothing I’ve seen. Its brown bag was pretty shiny.

The water was the Aegean Sea, and it was very quite warm and nice. I soaked my feet for quite a while.

The actual memorials dedicated to the soldiers were minimally interesting… the celebration ceremony had taken place earlier that morning. The Australian section was full of Aussie flags…

Our tour guide had to beg to let us into the Austalian section, where they were packing up from the celebration earlier in the day. His logic that he gave to he workers was, “I have guests coming from 2,000 miles away; how can I deny them?”

Australian memorial, again.

The Turkish area was SWARMING with Turks. We were one of few non-Turkish groups… which was really quite cool. Very few. I don’t think I saw any other foreigners, TBH. There were some trenches there, and a lot of open hills to explore a bit. The memorial was largely in celebration of Atatürk, including a statue of him. Al would tell us that 99.9% of sculptures in Turkey are of Atatürk, and in retrospect, it seems rather true indeed.
Anyway, we take a ferry to the mainland after going to the memorials and dad wants to by a cay (black tea) and he doesn’t have change and only has a large bill. They just give the tea to him instead of denying.

Trenches.

More Atatürk… granted, he did play a huge role in the battle. He was the military commander guy on the side of the Turks.

We take another ferry to leave the area… but it’s a different one than the one we took when we arrived.

Sherry’s parents are on CCTV! Nah.

We get to our hotel in Canakkale and it is a funny one. It has really weird mermaid decorations (with boobs showing!) above the desk of their reception, and their rooms – as Kathy of the Kathy and Ed couple – points out to us, have this funny painting:

We had a jolly good hoot about that painting. Haha. My parents and Sherry’s parents turned out to have the same photo, which is pretty hilarious. See video:

Discovered later on that they freaking block out cigarettes on Turkish television! With different things, but this fist example was with flowers:

But it gets worse. This is just the beginning of the blockage…

After dinner, we went to walk around the down a little, and it was a pretty fucking bustling area, with lots of cute little restaurants and such. Too bad we’d just stuffed ourselves with buffet….

The hotel was weird, and HUGE. It has soooooooo much space and had a conference center attached to it or something. We went down to the pool, and it was an Olympic-sized pool, I shit you not. It was nuts! They also had a really snazzy outdoor pool, but it was way too cold by that time. The hotel also had really long hallways and it took forever to actually get to your bedroom, which turned out to be fine, though. It was fun, and had fun musical hallways. Hehe. In retrospect: my favorite hotel of all!!! Although I must say that a downside was that they required swim caps for their swimming pools, so we had to buy one! For 5 lira!
Oh wait, I almost forgot. This hotel was across the street from this giant chain supermarket called Kipa. So, of course, we hit that shit up before dinner and bought a whole bunch of snacks!!

bs.

totally tired of the bullshit. man, people are kind of depressing.

on another note, lenny and i went snowboarding today for the first time this season and at first i was being a pussy cause my shins really, really hurt (something was digging into them and rendering horrific pain) but after going to the lodge, drinking some hot cocoa, and digging the button that was crushing my shin out and putting it outside of my boot, life was soooooooo much better. my new banana-traction board is pretty fucking legit. people kept commenting on it and basically drooling over it, lol. kinda funny. funny also because i fucking suck and probably don’t deserve the board, but really, it’s pretty good. i wish i could go more per season, though, because at this rate i average once a season or sometimes twice, and as a result, i never fucking get better. when i went like six times a season back in college i got shitloads better….

anyway. i hung out with aaron and gina for a while yesterday and dude! got to play with aaron’s tenori-on! ommmmmmmmmmmmmg. like, seriously, the thing is fucking G E N I U S. it blew my mind. i couldn’t really figure out how to use it in the ten minutes i was playing with it but seriously. genius.

demo video:

hot yoga, final fantasy, the josephine, what the fuck?

12:49am
I’m listening to… Liars. “The Garden Was Crowded And Outside” is like, my new favorite thing. SO. Good.

Interesting day. Was busy packing up belongings the first half of the day. I went to bed at like 1:00am last night, so abiding by my 6-7 hours of sleep rule, I woke up at like 7:45am and stumbled downstairs. Woo!

I was planning on doing that all day but then Rachel notified me of a 10 yoga class session for motherfucking $20, so I had to go. Although, I got there and just walked into the class and no one checked if I’d paid or anything, haha. It was Hatha Yoga, which I’ve never done before… Hatha Yoga being the hot yoga shit. I’ve heard some horrific stories about hot yoga, and how people feel like they can do all these amazing things, and then find out the next day they’ve really hurt themselves. As of the moment, I feel good. So hopefully that doesn’t happen, ha… haaaa… there were these stretching postures into Cobra (lying on your stomach and arching your front end off the ground) which I can usually do but REALLY hurt for some reason in this class… so hopefully that doesn’t hurt tomorrow?!!

After that, came home and took a speed shower, got some quick food and shit, and then ambled down to the bus stop with Lenny so we could go to the Final Fantasy Symphony thing at Benaroya Hall, cause I bought him tickets for it for his birthday. Posa and Linh didn’t think they’d make it because they were stuck in traffic, but they ended up making it, too, woo! It was OK for the first half for me but some parts made me fall asleep. The second half was a bit betters.

Went to see Jack‘s band, By Sunlight, play at the Josephine at like 11:00pm after going home and rushing and changing and blahdyblahing to Sherry. The Josephine is this house venue really a lot closer to my house than I thought, on 65th St. They have a perfect fucking location because it’s sandwiched in this area of town that is near all these bars and no one gives a shit about noise. It’s good shit. By Sunlight was actually really godamn good. I’ve heard their music before but it’s better live. And I’m always surprised when people I know are in really good bands. Haha. Such a cynic. It was a super white collar crowd, though… like… I don’t see that that often at the shows I go to so it was even a little weird hearing these people talk about how it was strange to be at a venue like this and how they were dressed and stuff was like they just got off work. Towards the end of the band’s set, it got so fucking painful on my ears I actually had to plug my eardrums… like when you can feel the sharpness in your ears is when you DEFINITELY should be having earplugs.

The latter half of this day was just crammed full of freaking rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off!! I need to go to bed soon, cause tomorrow’s gonna be like that, too. UGHHH! My leg kinda hurts a bit. SHIT!!!!! Hot yoga cometh to maim me????????

hockey! and a mini trip to langley!

On Friday evening, I went with Josh, Regina, and Josh’s cousin to a hockey game in Kent. I guess Kent built a new stadium, right down the street of where I used to work in Kent! Hadn’t been down there in FOREVER. Josh’s parents are fucking awesome and fed me yummy salmon with pineapple salsa on top. Then we went to the game, and hockey is a sport I’ve always liked, but MAN IS IT AWESOME. It is awesome. Fast-paced, exciting, awesome.

Saturday, Lenny and I went to Langley for their annual Murder Mystery Festival. Bought a bag full of books for $5. Very exciting. And also wandered around their other shops a lot, and submitted our answer. Got it wrong. Sadly. The next day, when I woke up, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that I for sure got the answer wrong, and that was not so pleasant. What came to mind briefly was another lady, and she turned out to be the one who committed the murder! Oh well, though. God damn the brain works in strange ways.

crampy chargers!

I’m crampy! I can’t find my freaking camera charger which I’ve only used once since buying my camera! Boo urns! boooooo urnnnnns!!!! And I’m going to Los Angeles tomorrow for a week but since I cannot find my charger this evening will be mighty unsettling! Boo urns!!!

Went snowboarding yesterday at Alpental and the first run of the day was a double black! Mind you, I’ve never been on a double black, and the snow was suppppper crappy and really icy and man! I got to the top of it and was like uhhhhh I don’t even know what to do with myself!! But Tre and Rachel had already started heading down so I had to force myself down and basically slid down on my ass half the time. A lot of people who went on that were kinda like WTF and standing around surveying the terribleness, but I was definitely the most WTF of all. Yeahhhhh, no double blacks for me for a while, no thanks.

Necesito… charger. :{

blargh.

Ugh, annoying. I used to update my poetry on an online Korean message board system, and this was the address: http://board3.cgiworld.net/index.cgi?id=veektory1.

Unfortunately, this shit fucking exploded, like I feared it would someday, and now all my poetry is gone, gone, gone. I backed up a SMALL amount of it not that long ago but all the recent stuff, like within the past two or three years, is gone. SUCK.

Anyway, Alex decided to tell Chris and I today (well, I guess he told Chris yesterday) that he is going to move out, to his mom’s house, to save money for when Karen moves up in July because they’re going to move in together and share an apartment. I think it is absolute insanity, but lol, it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. So I’m trying to see if Rachel or Nate want to move in, but I have to discuss it with Chris, of course. This will be interesting. Not quite sure honestly why he wants it to work out with Karen in particular so bad, but boy, does he want it to work. And this is all on the basis that she probably won’t have a job initially (although she will be looking for one, but let’s face it, the job market sucks), and also, they haven’t spent more than like two and a half weeks together in a relationship so far. It’s just sOoOo extreme. Guess we shall see what happens. I’ll be interested to see how often I will see Alex in the future, though, if they do live together, considering the bitch hates me. Lol. I guess no one wants to be alone, though, so why not take a chance? Who knoweth.

Anyway. I spent like ALL DAY yesterday trying to fix a stupid virus on my laptop, which my desktop has also, I think, but in a more minor form. Ridiculousness. The laptop got to a point where it wouldn’t even boot up anymore. Massive grossness. Luckily, with Lenny‘s help, I managed to get it largely fixed and got the drivers installed after a million fooking years. ~__~ Such a pain in the ass. No wonder people who don’t know shit about computers can’t really get everything hooked up by themselves right away. Ha.

I had Spanish class today. Twas okay.

I was supposed to go to Los Angeles this upcoming Thursday, but I am postponing it to next Tuesday so I can meet up with Lingo’s friend on Monday and get a web design job. Amongst other things, like yoga class, and Spanish lessons, and stuff. Trying to miss just one week, not two, in a row.

Super Bowl Sunday I went over to Pat [Campbell] and Brian [Bushc8mp]‘s because Pat and Lewis invited me. It was fairly entertaining, although we only half watched the Super Bowl. I got there when it was almost half-time. We basically switched the TV between: 1) Super Bowl, 2) Awesome Super Bowl commercials, 3) MMA, 4) Puppy Bowl.

So MMA is like Mixed Martial Arts, although the particular one we watched wasn’t called MMA, but it’s the same type of shit. Total dude crap. I don’t really understand the appeal, although one match was more entertaining than the others, but I was kind of cowering out of disgustedness the entire time :/

Puppy Bowl, however, needs a mention. Puppy Bowl is this: CLICK ME CLICK ME CLICK ME!

Puppies that are up for adoption pretend to be football players and get thrown onto a “field” full of doggie toys. They play with the toys and a ref makes game calls and play calls according to what the silly pups are doing. Silly, silliness. But cute, and entertaining.

Oh yes, prior to going to their place, I decided to park in a pay lot because they live in Capitol Hill and it’s hard to park there. It turned out to be $3 to park for 24 hours, so I put in 2 dollar bills and put in another dollar in quarters, but the coin reception was broken! So, I called up Lewis to see if he or anyone else had dollar bills I could use, but by the time they said that they did, the parking payment thing had reset itself and eaten my money!!!! So I ended up using credit card and paid $6 for what woulda been $3 parking, Ownt. T__T

Blahhhhhh I’m so lost.