mobile self-absorption

getting used to internet whoring

2007-02-09T12:30:00.000-06:00

so when i have days off from work there are a few things i like to do that i usually always do when i have days off in a row. one of those things is spend one if not two of those days entirely in my jammies. i love jammies. if i could work, live, and play in jammies - i would, no questions. unfortunately i live in a society where if you're a single girl who might be interested in attracting some single guys - jammies just won't cut it. actually - if you're a functioning human being in american society, jammies just won't cut it. although people rock it, they really probably should not be rocking jammies at all hours of the day - it's called real clothes and a shower. but either/or i can rock it on a day off which is exactly what i did yesterday. it was glorious. i love vacationing in the southeast on days off! (that's what i call not going downtown or anywhere near my place of employment - vacationing)

so first book finished in 2007: my life - lyn hejinian. second book looks like it'll be mainlines, blood feasts, and bad taste. i'm going to hold off on writing about my life for probably an entry in itself - but this new lester bangs reader is a gem. it's writing as entertainment - he's so good and sarcastic and cut-throat, i fucking love his style. i feel 21 again reading pyschotic reactions and careburator dung all over again! minus all the lou reed/lester bangs face-offs, unfortunately. i still enjoy my rock cricticism and i am enjoying it even more this time around considering i am more familiar with the shit he's actually writing about. he wrote a pretty bad review (but very thorough) about bob dylan's desire that actually made a lot of sense. he researches the facts behind "hurricane" and "crazy joey" and actually proves bob dylan's lyrics to be incorrect. and finally he ends the article with "i have just one question for you bob: why?" as in why lie to us about the content of your lyrics? what's the point? that's interesting to me because "hurricane" was a song that actually moved me to start listening to more dylan. so then i re-evaluated my love of dylan and decided that i loved that song based on the content no matter the fact that he wrote it less than 15 years into his career, after he had already wrote the major protest-songs of his time. so at the time i was listening to it i was unaware that he could have perhaps been trying to hold onto an aspect of his past via new songs that maybe had already passed a while ago. so i'm justified in still thinking that song is good. well whatever - just cause lester bangs makes some good points doesn't mean i'm going to change my p.o.v. i like desire and i loooooved "isis" - but i'd like bob dylan to be honest with me, too.

well looks like it didn't take long for me to feel blog comfy again considering i go right back to writing about bob dylan. things change, but not too significantly it seems. at least when it comes for my love of bob. that love maintains, my friends - never waivers. solid.

out.

its hard without computer

2007-02-07T17:28:00.000-06:00

hello world.
it's hard to update your blog when you don't have a computer. increasingly difficult. there are many reasons for this - number one being that inspiration to write long, snarky entries doesn't exactly happen at the belmont library sitting next to smelly mcsmellerton under the blinding flourescent lights. not my perfect idea of a funtime writing environment. (no offense to the freaks who do enjoy that sort of thing)

so anyways who exactly still reads this anyways? everyone has switched to myspace to do their blogging. i don't agree. i like blogspot. it's the classier, adult-version of diaryland - i've always thought this - and i intend to use it for my blog-needs regardless of myspace blog popularity.

well this is going to be short because i am in my unfun writing enviro. lame.

newyear bloggity blog blog

2007-01-10T14:57:00.000-06:00

i will return with a totally super-long, ravishing entry about all the goings-on via portland when i don't have 4 minutes left to use the internet at the library.

FOR REAL.

portland/holiday mood indigo

2006-11-24T20:43:00.000-06:00

i don't like spending holidays away from home. thanksgiving was kind of a bummer in that respect. i mean yeah i celebrated with peeps and had a good time and ate a lot, but no fam and no friends and no going home to milwaukee and getting people together and going out and then hitting the pizza shuttle afterwards - and no hangovers for thanksgiving day, and no crazy football, and no uncle carl drunk on miller lite, and no weedkends with karlie. yeah listing all the things i miss is really improving my overall mood towards holidays.

all this derived holiday sadness got me thinking - what am i really doing in portland? yeah, i am not so sure anymore. yes, i love this west coast mentality - and i love living in a city, and i love easy access, and oregon is beautiful - but are all these self-serving loves really worth being so far away from the people who know you and love you the most? i'm not so sure anymore. or well i am not so sure today. i might have been naive in the fact that i thought moving somewhere else would be a similar experience like going up to denali was - but it's not, really. i came here with big plans to use what i've learned for some sort of meaningful employment and/or other venture, but that is totally not working out the way i wanted it to and now i'm wondering what's next?

indecisive, indecisive, indecisive!

short/sweet

2006-11-18T23:09:00.000-06:00

last night i went to a show. and at this show were a few things i seriously enjoy - jams, dancing to jams, ganj, and ... hippies! it. was. maaaaarvelous! i've been kind of wondering where the fuck they've all been hiding? not everyone was into the love though - some dude yelled out the window of his car "i hate hippies!" when we were aimlessly crossing the street during a green light. other people were crossing so we just went with it!

i want to write more but the coffeeshop i am currently hoarding computer usage at is playing some seriously intense european techno and my ipod's battery is out of juice.so yeah, out.

saturday afternoon quickwrite

2006-11-04T16:37:00.000-06:00

last night me and allison went on a walgreens mini-shopping spree. i bought these festive halloween lights for 83 cents a box. thats cheap. what can you buy thats worthwhile for 83 cents? not much - anyways so river gets this great idea that him and allison go back to walgreens after we get back and totally clean the store of these boxes of halloween lights for 83 cents in hopes that for some halloween to create a costume that would be "light man" or "light woman" - and the way river would create this costume is buy some sort of papery overall suit that painters wear and then poke all these halloween lights through the costume and then walk around carrying a battery pack. michele, jake, allison, and i were all thoroughly impressed. what a great costume idea right? then i came up with an add-on. what if everyone of us dressed up in these costumes and went somewhere that remained pretty dark for a good chunk of time (ie country, somewhere with no light pollution) dabbled with some pyschedelics of choice and then watched eachother move around. and then allison took it a step further and suggested that we all wear masks. i think it would be fun to watch everyone make trails of lights, or just WEAR lights! HELLO!

portland is pretty much the jam. i like it enough to stay for awhile. i need to get a bike - it's getting ridiculous how shorter things are when you are on a bike and pedaling to get to them rather than walking with your shorty mcshortyston legs. i already know this! okay i need to get back to computer business. my time is limited due to computer in storage in dad's basement in wisconsin.

live from marino's

2006-10-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

so i am in my new favorite coffeehouse marino's - owned by a lively bunch of italians and drinking black coffee - which is my new caffienated beverage of choice. i like sugar-free hazelnut syrup in a black coffee even more, but they don't have sugar-free and i'm trying to watch the figure here so i'll go with no syrup. i'm doing a pretty good job at that since i moved to portland, but i think it mostly has to do with a recent loss of appetite due to worries that accumulate after FUCKING JOB SEARCH!

i'm not sure how this whole living situation is going to work out. sometimes its hard to figure out who will be live-able and who won't. sometimes its better to be friends with people, but not to live with them if you know what i mean. she's not a bad roommate and she's pretty considerate but the real truth is i'd love to get a place by myself. i am tired of roommates - i'd love to have the ability to decorate and do whatever i want with the space i am given without any approval or arguments from other people. that is a luxury that i have daydreamed about my friends. first i need to get a job before i can even think about living in this city solo - but i am going to say that is definitely the next living situation i am going to take. i like portland - i am liking living here. its unlike any other place i've lived, but i haven't lived in too many places. its a different city than milwaukee and minneapolis - different in a good way that the transportation system here fucking absolutely ROCKS. everything seems closer and easy to navigate as opposed to cities like mpls and milw where there are HUGE suburbs that you'd have to manuever yourself around to get to places. portland is more compact it seems. i bought a map at the multanhoma (sp) falls gift shop and totally have been using it to get around the area. its fun to explore a new place. also i almost went ot see dark star orchestra last night because i COULD because it was at a theater only like 10 minutes away from where i live. a whole new world of shows has opened in front of me being in such close proximity of theaters.

okay i better get off the computer.

live from the land of ports

2006-10-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

so tomorrow i will have been in portland for a week. its kind of hard to move to a new place. its kind of intimidating - this city-livin' life. i'm not going to lie but i am intimidated by its vastness. it's been a long time since i've lived in a moderately sized city. i guess the last time would be when i lived in madison in 2001/2002. what a great experience that was - this is already turning out to be good. my quality of life has definitely gone up a few notches since i switched from central minnesota to northern oregon - lots more access to lots more neat and interesting places/things. i went to two thrift stores today that fucking blew anything i've seen out of the water - the whole time i thought about karlie. i wanted to call her! lame international calling rates! i saw a tshirt that a friend could buy for me, but that i could never buy for myself that said "support the arts - sleep with a musician" ha. ha. right? i thought so.

so i turned 26 and sue and justin came up to celebrate. that was fun. sue is the jam. we ate thai at this place called thai thai a few blocks away and totally csi: portland happened right outside the window. these two dudes got in a fight and one dude popped the other dude and then kicked him in the face and left him on the sidewalk unconsious. immediately our server called 911 and the cops showed up, cleaned up the scene, took the dude on a stretcher and xnayed. happy birthday, nicole! it was pretty crazy but the highlight was the server was cute in an english-major nerdy way. of course he commented on my accent. i wonder if anytime i open my mouth people are just laughing in their head the whole time. in alaska it was novelty, but here in the real world it's annoying. i don't want to stand out because i sound like a character from "fargo" anymore. there is absolutely no way around it though - i am just going to have to do what i've always done and that's work it for my advantage. "ohhhhh you betcha' don'tcha know" people love that shit.

the scientologists harassed the fuck out of me at the saturday market downtown. this guy asked me if i wanted a free stress test and although i didn't want to he kind of lead me to sit down and told me "think of someone right now" and as i thought of the someone he immediately was all "oh wow who are you thinking about? that person is really stressing you out, tell me about it." well i wasn't prepared for therapy session with this dude so i was all "i don't really feel like talking about it." its funny how even though i was trying hard to think of someone else just so i could have an appropriate response to some of these quetions - i totally stuck with the stress anyways. so then he goes into this big talk about how if i don't deal with my problems now they will ail me forever and only i can help me and blah blah so then he hands me the dienetics book and i'm all "you know what - i really want to go shopping and find my friends. i'm not really interested in this right now." he looked so heart-breakingly, genuinely concerned on the matter that i just totally was NOT dealing with my problems. then i started to think well fuck maybe i'm not maybe he's right, only a split-second i went into that - because that is what they WANT you to believe. i finally convinced him to stop talking to me and let me leave after about 15 minutes and even though i'm sure my facial expressions were screaming skepticism he wrote down his email on a notecard. i left the whole experience pretty flushed - i was pissed because who is this guy to make me feel bad for not dealing with the things that stress me out. can i fucking deal them the way i want to? i can for sure guarantee that scientology is not going to help me help me, fucker!

yesterday me, sue, and justin went to a waterfall outside of portland and then went to the full sail brewery in hood river. the ride is next to the columbia river gorge - its fucking beautiful. oregon has proved so far to be very asethetically pleasing. the hike up to this waterfall that we went to was definitely a little strenous but so beautiful. the greenery around here is insane - its all mossy on the trees and SO green oh and in portland there are rose bushes ALL over the place. i sniffed from three bushes on my walk back from fred meyers today. so nice - i am looking forward to exploring the outdoorsy part of oregon - also looking forward to southern oregon/northern cali vineyards. that is next on the agenda. so yeah good times and great oldies in the northwest, even though i miss everyone and everything.

okay done.

ohhhh minnesotaaah!!

2006-09-28T16:39:00.000-05:00

i am sad to leave minnesota, but mostly i am sad to leave my friends. my friends over on this end are the jam and its sad to be far away from people who you kind of think are the jam. it's all part of the grand scheme of things, but i am still sad about it. i should be used to it by now, but i don't think i can ever get used to the kind of sadness that derives from parting. i mean yeah keeping in contact is key, but i probably won't get to spend this much time with these people at one time ever again. that is the part that is the saddest about transitioning. well i am definitely grateful for the time i've spent here and i'm looking forward to celebrating liz and shay's wedding next time i am in the area. fuck yes that wedding is going to be where it's at. finally a wedding and marriage i can thoroughly celebrate.

so tuesday i'm moving to portland. river and allison are picking me up at the airport around noon-thirty and then its straight to target. my supplies in matter of house are very, very limited as in pretty much non-exsistent. me and allison have been planning this since denali. i'm sure they're going to want to take me all around - river is quite the tour guide (literally!) i need to check out the library for internet access. ours apparently isn't set up yet, i'm going to see what i can do about that once i get into town. i need to find a job asap. i am starting to get the i'm going crazy/i need to work syndrome. working is not only going to provide mind stimulation (fucking hopefully!) but i'm going to use it as a means to meet some peeps. brady wants to hook me up with two of his friends from south dakota that just moved out there. i figure i might as well start increasing the circle in order to have some variety in who i want to hang out with. i also looked up live jams on myspace. there is a ton - i am going to fucking love the music scene over there i think. i already listened to a few that i was into so i am totally pysched about that.

i took a pretty long bike ride today. the colors are fucking nice right now and the weather isn't too bad - the best bike-riding weather is when it's a little nippy out. you don't want to go when its scorching and/or when it's too cold - fall is prime i think. i rode to the end of the beaver trail and back which is this trail that runs along the mississippi river and islands in the middle of it. it's pretty foresty and nice down there. there are clearings on the path but then a lot of it is a canope of trees and shady so when you do see the clearings you're all "ouuuu there is the lighted path." i stopped half-way and hiked a little along the river and watched ducks hanging out. the river is pretty nice - there are some appealing factors to st. cloud. i used to ride that trail a lot more when wendy was around - it's so nice. it's a good work-out too - my legs and ass are ehh a little sore. they'll probably be a lotta sore tomorrow morning. i so enjoy bike riding. everytime i get back on a bike i am instantly transfixed to remembering how much i used to love bike riding. i want to get a bike in portland. it's on the list.

this house has been lots-o-dylan lately. we've been rocking seven of his studio cds, robbie and shay have been playing a lot of "meet me in the morning" on their geeetars, and robbie and i discussed the chronicles vol. 1 cause he's reading it right now. i wouldn't expect anything less than being surrounded in an atmosphere of dylan while vacationing in minnesota. especially with these jam-loving peeps of mine!

you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

2006-09-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

i am really into this new joni mitchell cd i just bought. it's so good. i think my favorite track on it this week is "cactus tree" - song for a seagull is my next cd purchase. i love her lyrics - i think its the lyrics that attract me the strongest to a song. especially folk. one of my favorite session-sharers and good buddy - andrew was telling me once about how they were playing all this good music on public radio while he was driving the riley creek loop "yeah they were playing the band ... and uhhh ... who's the best female folk artist ?? .. " in which i replied "joni mitchell!" and he was all "yeah, joni mitchell!" we referenced that conversation in future conversations on how funny we thought that was. i miss my denali friends. it's so hard not to want to go back there 90% because of the people. so my favorite part in "cactus tree" is the chorus "and she's so busy being free" but i'm wondering what each stanza is about. her different interactions with different relationships? i'm not sure. one stanza represents some other relationship? i like a lot of the songs off of song for a seagull. i like the dreamy way her voice and the guitar - mostly just her on guitar - sound, all hollow and sleepy fog on the bay-like. so nice. i also like "cold blue steel and sweet fire" off of this new cd. i love how she refers to people as inanimate and sometimes animate objects, like cold blue steel, coyotes, the color blue, people as cases of beer that she could drink and still be on her feet ... that's fucking right.

so i've lately been interested in learning more about visual art. i think that i have, for the most part, good and semi-eccentric (in a good way) taste, but i wouldn't mind having some reference and history on the matter in order to do some comparisons. it's just something i wouldn't mind getting more into. i'm planning on checking out the scene in portland. i am excited to move to portland - it's coming up pretty soon. 2 weeks tomorrow, actually! it's kind of sad though. i mean who knows when i'll see my peeps over on this end after i leave... they'll just have to come visit me is what i am deciding on these factors lately.

i am not sure what i want to do about a job. i just don't want to do something that i hate anymore and i'm willing to sacrafice some shit in order to do it, i guess. i mean i'd rather be doing something i like and making no money, than doing something i hate and making more because i really only get one life as me so i might as well be happy living it and plus i just can't hang with these no-challenge, lame-ass jobs anymore. unfortunately for those jobs, i'm not an idiot. i am a slacker, though. well if i have the opportunity to slack i will take that opportunity. i'm just not sure which direction i want to go. i've been thinking about it, maybe not as much as i should be - but definitely checking out the options in my field via craigslist (i LOVE craigslist) and some look interesting. i have been thinking about something new lately though. that new thing is way far future plans, but definitely something feasible i think. especially after more research.... i've been thinking about it since alaska. we'll see what happens.

so the music scene is kind of sucking ass in st. cloud these days. i am pretty lucky that i was around the area when shit was really fucking good and i thought there was no where cooler to be for jams than st. cloud, minnesota. i can see that it's been a long time since i've felt that way, but seriously wtf? i hate all the lame abercrombie college shit they have playing live at the bars downtown. what happened? i'm not sure. maybe i'm just not down with whats good and whats not but i haven't been excited about anything i've seen live around town yet. i was pretty lucky to have such good jams in denali all summer long. like really fucking lucky, actually. i probably couldn't get that good of a scene for jams in a lot of places.

i am up to my ears in bob dylan jams, thanks to robbie. "meet me in the morning" - bob dylan jam of the week/month ... we'll see how it goes. okay i am so out for sleep.

central minn. vacate

2006-09-15T15:33:00.000-05:00

i am having a lovely time vacationing in st. cloud, minnesota. i've been doing all my favorite things, hanging with all of my favorite people, listening to most of my favorite jams, enjoying my favorite hang-outs, and/or savoring jamaican wings any chance i get. i love them. they are so flavorful. i like the word flavorful. its a mouthful. so yeah good times in cloudtown.

i wrote a list of stuff i wanted to get accomplished while here. i've crossed a few out, but not nearly enough. i need to do some serious stuff like go visit sue. i love hanging out in riverview. it reminds me of stressful, but rewarding times. i like hanging with sue. even though i wasn't the best iec workstudy towards the end of my college career, we were still cool. i want to do some other stuff. i probably won't be able to do it all. i don't care i'm moving to portland where i can do stuff i've never done before because i've never lived there before.

i've been listening to a lot of talking heads lately. its so danceable. and its good jams i am way into it. i've been making everyone around here listen to it too. i am interested in whats going on in denali right now. i am missing my alaskan life! i miss my peeps the most but last night was closing of the spike. i'm sure it was a ripper, i was at the closing last summer ... i am sad though. wish i could have been there this summer where it would be more meaningful.

i've been smoking more cigarettes lately. when in rome, do as the romans do ... that old saying is totally true. everyone and their mom smokes around here so i do, too. its taking quite the toll - i've cut my smoking significantly. i love being around people who have a similar accent to me. i know it's not completely the same since i rock the southeastern 'scaaaansin accent as well but at least its close enough where people ignore it. i fucking love it! back amongst the accent-familiar!

okay i'm done.

small central minnesota update

2006-09-15T01:35:00.000-05:00

i really wish i could be snarkier than i have been, but my passion for my previous snarkiness just isn't there like it used to be. but i still have some fuel for fire left for being snarky. thats my new favorite word - snarky.

so st. cloud.... having a good time so far. so far i've been back 3 days and so far i've eaten at the green mill 3 days. i just can't get enough jamaican wings. they are just so fucking fantastically flavorful. god. so good.

okay i'll write more later.

later 'scansin

2006-09-10T23:00:00.000-05:00

so tonite is my last night in waukesha. tomorrow i'm headed on the midnight train to st. cloud, minnesota. it actually does arrive around midnight-ish. funny, huh? i thought so. its fun to tell people "i'll be in on the midnight train..."
so my dad got married on friday to long-term girlfriend, janet. i was excited for the wedding because i knew it was going to be a good party. and ... it was. i wasn't too keen on my hair, it felt weird to wear gobs of make-up and i almost went through a semi-serious identiy crisis when janet got us all manicures/pedicures like four days before the wedding and the color she picked for our nails was this burgandy maroon. i haven't painted my nails since i was 15 years old and that was only because i was altnera-girl and wanted sparkly nailpolish to go along with my cute sparkley baby barettes- anyways everytime i looked down at my hands i cringed. everything i did with my hands suddenly became weird and i had to somehow hide the color for normalcy to occur. the color matched really nice with the dresses so i rocked it for the majority of the evening and finally when i got more drunker and more bolder i went back to the room, went to my room, went in the bathroom and fucking scrubbed the shit off with nailpolish remover. all was well once i saw flesh-colored fingernails again. sigh of relief. i've decided that i just have no interest in being a bridesmaid to these crazy wedding people like angela and janet. i love angela, but she's a crazy wedding person and so is janet and its just no fun for me. i hated wearing that lame nailpolish. i hated looking like a prissy girl with my super high eye makeup. the dresses were kind of pretty though - nice and flowey. the nailpolish sucked. what was great about the whole nailpolish experience was me and my sisters took comfort in agreeing that we all hated it. they totally were on my side. there was definitely more to the wedding than my nailpolish identity crisis but man yeah that felt good to get out. so i was pretty pysched to be back in the real world if you can't tell from my previous entry. wedding plans and stuff like that was like very freaking apparent in the household. stress - i hate it. and you know i just came from alaska which can be a stressful environment but for the most part is pretty fucking cha-hillll. so not excited about stress. the resort is pretty nice. its really nice, actually and the room that we stayed in was fucking huge. anyways the wedding was nice. it had to be indoors instead of outdoors because of the weather but it was still nice - what was even nicer was standing on an air-conditioning vent during the ceremony. it was sweet. me and the maitron of honor - dina - were pysched about it. allie and rachel are almost as tall as me and so freaking cute. i can't believe how grown up they look. they are so cute - i am nervous. they're cute, but they're smart so i think it'll all work out - but it was odd to take pictures with them and practically be the same height. at the end of the ceremony, the three of us linked arms and danced down the aisle to "celebration" - that was per janet. after that - i was desperate to hit the one-hour all you can drink cocktail bar. being inthe wedding party has its advantage to getting to the front of a very long line for free drinks. that was pretty much everyones thoughts. the bar was packed the whole time. yeah so then we had dinner and the rest of the night was drunken madness. not madness - but good times. everyone, including janet got throughly tanked. it was the first time i ever got super wasted with my cousin jamie which was interesting. me, my cousin jamie, lisa, christy, allie, and rachel were all singing and dancing to possibly the entire grease soundtrack. if my sisters weren't around i was going to mention to my cousins "do you know he says 'she's a real pussy-wagon' ?" but they were so i didn't. my sister rachel is actually a good little dancer - i was impressed. it was good times. i was all "wow i can't believe me and my sisters are boogying down on the dance floor" its just still so weird. they were little like not that long ago it feels like. speaking of little the flower girl was sooo cute. i never got to be a flower girl but i did get to be a "minature bride" in my godmother's wedding. i got grass stains on that dress chasing the ring-bearer (who i thought was cute) around her house. so yeah i drank and drank and drank and then my dad and janet had the after-reception party in their huge suite and had pizza hut waiting which was awesome. i haven't had pizza hut breadsticks in forever. that shit saved me a hangover that i totally knew was going to happen. i was second to pass out - rachel was first. i was done and when i'm done i am done and don't try to even make me undone. thats how i roll. i woke up the next morning and the first thing i said to my dad and janet was "that was a good party last night" it totally was. i had a great time. my dad sang "L.O.V.E." by nat king cole to janet. i wanted to throw up but it was pretty rare - my dad doesn't sing, he whistles. so the fact tht he sang that in front of a bunch of people i think means he's probably pretty happy to be marrying janet. plus i think his confidence was boosted due to booze.

so the next morning i wake up, take a shower, and within minutes of that rex calls me from the front desk! rex is my good buddy from alaska that lives on the southern tip of the up and totally has an accent to match. him, osting, me, and sue were shot-gun beers after work buddies for the first few weeks in alaska. me and rex went on the first beer run of the season actually. when you're up there you make good friends, friends, acquaintances - have i mentioned htis already? anyways rex was a good friend. and we had been planning this big hoo-hah about meeting in milwaukee geting drunk, rocking the pizza shuttle - the usual per milwaukee - but turned out that rachel couldn't make it to the wedding and she was going to be my way back to milwaukee so i told rex the situation and he was down for meeting at the osthoff. i was pretty pysched. i love my family but it is a serious brady-bunch minus 2 and that is intense for me. like all the time that is intense. anyways so rex totally saved the day becuase i was like "yesssssss... somebody to RELATE to!" and even better was the last time we'd seen eachother was in alaska. we had the best time ever. i wasn't hesitant to ditch all family activities so me and rex could hang and thats totally what i did - even though we did hang with the fam quite a bit too, but it was the jam. rex is such a fucking genuine dude - he's one of the best for sure. and it was fun cause we were just you know - hanging at the resort, drinking, swimming in the three pools - hanging in the sauna... going on the boat ride, roasting marshmallows at the bonfire - we hung out at the end of the dock and watched fireworks and i got him all ripped. muwhaha. good times. i love that kid ... awwww. its sad when you think people are the jam and you can't hang out all the time because all those people you want to hang out with live in a million different places. he's trying for the bartender at the spike position next summer. i'd almost want to go back just because of that. so i was stressed about familytime over-load and rex totally saved the day. he's a ripper.

so yeah tomorrow... st. cloud. i'm excited to see my friends. i want to hear about their summers and then i want to tell them about mine. and oh i want to eat jamaican wings everyday. and i want to hang with liz and shay's kitties. i have the option of owning a kitty of my own in portland. wendy and i had a serious discussion about it on the courtesy bus when she came to visit me in alaska and she told me that she thought that maybe it was time for me to take on a pet. caring for a plant has been a rewarding experience - i'm assuming that caring for a pet would be an even more rewarding experience. if i get a cat though, it might be a step towards settling me down a bit. i don't want to take on the responsibility if i'm going to be travelgirl. so i haven't decided for sure if i'm going to get one but if i want to, we're totally allowed to. allison wants to get a dog and we decided that my cat and her dog are going to be friends. i'm not sure what i'd name the cat if i got it. maybe stevens. get it - cat stevens. i guess i'd just have to look at it and then name it. what if i had an unfriendly cat though? wendy told me that even if i did i'd love it anyways - she was trying to explain the love you feel for a pet. i am new to this. the only significant pet in my lifetime was my goldfish - goldie - that i won at st. francis days and somehow managed to survive through super-murky waters for three years before it died. and living with shay and liz's cats opened me up to a liking to them. yeah so thats whats on my mind these days.

i'm tired. late in the evening is my new favorite song. i love the music and of course, i love the lyrics. whenever i'd take the bus back from an adventure out in the park i'd always rock paul simon as a tradition and stare out the window and think "how can i make a mark like paul simon has made a mark on art?" i'm not sure. i was looking through my books to decide which ones to take to portland and which ones to keep here til i make trip 2 back here for holidays and i picked up the aesthetics of rock and started reading it tonite. i'm going to give it another try on the train ride tomorrow. i started getting into it actually. i think i just need to read it a bit more slowly than the pace i'm usually used to in order to fully get his tone and i caught a glimmer and i'm into it. i'm also reading this alaskan romance story about a young school teacher in the eary 1900's during the goldrush called "tisha" - its a guilty pleasure - romance-novel reading. i shouldn't read that shit though - it fucks with your overall perception of romance i think sometimes.

yeah okay i'm done.

back to being civiliiiiized, yo!

2006-09-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

so right now i am in waukesha in a house with a very beautiful backyard that totally SINGS the last remnants of midwest summer (i just listened for awhile on the cushy little porch swing) eating some delicious merkt's swiss almond cheese that my dad put in the cart this afternoon because "you always ask if i have that 'good cheese, dad!'" and only seconds away from the lovely bathroom. i. love. civilization. also i love month-long vacates. this is the beginning of mine - the lull between transitions - so i'm prety pysched to not be working as a coffee cart girl at the wac anymore. i am actually pretty fucking pysched about that. FUCK YES NO MORE COFFEE CART!!!

so i'm back from alaska and finally able to sit somewhere that doesn't smell or have slow as fuck computers and spend some serious, oh-so serious time with my previous love called public journal-writing. i missed it in alaska. i could have done it and i did do some, but there is very very little alone time. i had virtually none this summer. this is how a typical day in nicoleland via alaska would go - wake up an hour and a half before work if i'm lucky because i was at the spike/bake/peeps rooms too late the previous night - smoke, eat lunch, shower if need be - take the riley creek to work - work 7ish hours or so then come back from that and do it it all over again. sometimes the mix-up would be 4:45 am shifts and/or days off into denali, various bluegrass festivals, talkeetna, kantishna, wonder lake camps, ect. , ect. - but for the working part of this summer that would be a typical day. there was no time for me to get serious in my journal here about how i was feeling about my adventures and how i was feeling about people i've met along the way, and of course how i was feeling about people back home and if there was time for that i wrote it down in my little alaska summer 2006 composition notebook. i didn't fill it this summer like i did last summer. i had a very productive summer, what can i say? there are so many highlights. i rated this summer a 9 on a scale of 1-10 in the fun factor, but a 2 in the dude factor. i know there's more than just fun and dudes, but i figured the people i was telling those ratings to would be interested in those two categories the most. i really got my ass into the park a LOT this summer. i took advantage of it for sure. and it was all fuuuurrrreeeee! well i mean it was free as in i didn't have to pay money, but i think i paid emotionally with total over-stress due to the stupidity of fucking TOURISTS! i hate them. I HATE TOURISTS!!! they fucking SUCK the soul out of any seasonal worker. its so sad. i hate those fuckers. just fucking get smart, you know? READ A SIGN. people suck. i think i might feel differently after a few weeks. i might go back to liking them again. i doubt it though, i really am not liking people after this summer's coffee cart/barista experience. i like what people can create ... not fucking servicing those bitches. besides that denali remains one of the most beautiful places i've ever had the pleasure to spend 8 months around. and the crew of people i ran around the area with fucking rocked. it was almost impossible to not have a good time at any given time while up in denali. thats why i gave it a 9!

so i'm pretty excited to hang out for a month. my plans include - being in my dad's wedding, drinking with ryan before he heads to london for grad school, drinking with rex, eating green mill EVERYDAY oh god. i can't wait to eat jamaican wings, lunchtime safety meetings with shay and then later-on safety meetings with shay AND liz, schmoozing with the bean crew, dugout happy hours with deirdre, camping in two harbors with wendy, and uhmmm i'm not sure what else. whatever's going on is where i'll be because it is VACATE TIME FOR NICOLE. ohhhh yeah. people come to alaska to vacate? i come HOME to vacate.

so i should talk about jams. what i've been listening to, what other people have inspired me to listen to, what live stuff i listened to this summer, and also how i spread the words "jam" and "ripper" to several states across the united states by using them extensively this summer around inhabitants of these states. before i left i made them promise "take ripper and jam home with you, promise me!" it was another summer of the beatles. mostly because susan - one of the other baristas of the coffee cart - came up with this brilliant idea to bring her ipod plus battery operated travel speakers and very softly play jams for the entirity of her shift - and it fucking worked. so i decided i'd bring MY ipod and laura's fucking AWESOME travel speakers to work and bust those jams super loud - espeically in the am when i'm wishing the most that i wasn't there - jams totally helped. i tried to keep it tame since i was playing them for an audience (tourists, fellow WAC employees, other people ... whatever) and in the morning i'd always just let it play all my beatles. i have a lot of beatles on my ipod so that shit would go for hours and people liked it. customers would sing along, employees would sing along, i'd sing a long and just everyone was happy and goodtimes and yay beatles. so lots of beatles, lots of laura's band music from the big pink cd, lots of tenacious d, recently live talking heads. just like in the real world (which is what we refer to everything NOT denali) i had people trying to turn me onto jams. some of my favorite memories include a drunken spike crowd dancing off ass to stevie wonder "i was made to love her" what. a. ripper. the live jams this summer fucking rocked. the music scene at the bake is pretty fucking stellar considering the location of where we are. the top shows this summer were the motet, the whipsaws, new monsoon, gangly moose at girdwood forest fair, sportin' woodies at trapper creek bluegrass festival - and then zilla was awesome, but that night was sweet cause of northern lights. the motet fucking rocked. those guys are so fucking good. i'd love to see them outside at a festival or something more openish. and oh man gangly moose fucking ROCKED too. then there were so many open mic nights with the remaining members of the screen doors. the local, local scene was fucking stellar as well. this summer definitely was not short at ALL in the live music department. i like that aspect of it for sure.

so i'm tired, but i am excited to write more regularly and to read other people's blogs more regularly. i missed that shit, too. i am totally pysched about recording my vacate. the lull between transitions. that is what this time is.

end of another chapter

2006-08-23T04:02:00.000-05:00

so ... my summer in alaska is coming to a very, very quick end. i'm only here about a week and a half longer and than its back to the real world. booooooo. i am bummed. i've had the best time ever up here this summer. i've worked it out in my head and it has either been one of the, if not the best summer of my life thus far.

highlights of this summer include:

denali. national. park. - the most beautiful place still that i've ever been and i haven't been to too many beautiful places, but enough to have some sort of comparison. this summer i had a chance to backcountry in the park on serveral occasions - and that is where its at. what you see from the bus is nice and beautiful, but what you see from the backcountry is fucking right in your face right there. thats the park, the real deal. its so great out there - and i think i've had an opportunity to improve my camping skills by going out there as many times as i did. i am so interested in getting more into backpacking. i like the idea of problem-solving and risk-taking - all for the opportunity to revel in aesthetic goodness (ie ... pretty mountains). i plan on doing more backpacking in oregon. i've managed to acquire some more gear this summer like my pretty, green, sierra designs clipper flashlight tent. i love it. oh its so great.

the people that i met. all of them are a little highlight in their own. especially the close ones - whats different about this summer in comparison to last summer was i was friends with a lot of dudes last summer - sure there were a few girls, but mostly the guys i worked with and i hung out a lot since we all worked similar shifts. this summer - definitely hung out with a lot more girls, which was kind of a nice difference. i am pretty pysched about the friendships made this summer. its so sad that i'll never get to hang with this group (exact group) ever again. this is the shitty part about this whole experience. saying goodbye to all the fucking awesome people you've met. sadddddd. the good thing is a lot of my friends are headed to the west and northwest coast as well. horray!!

there are more highlights but i think i'll keep it for writing material once it has all digested. i'm excited to see my family once i get back to the lowr 48 - my dad's wedding is totally going to be the jam because him and janet know how to party. infact my whole dad's side of the fam are down with the good times. and my sisters ... awww! i wasn't going to buy anyone soveniers this summer becuase i did last summer, but if i had to buy my sisters stuff or they'd be all "what the heck nikki!??!?!" so i bought them and austin and mckenna alaskan-themed books. i was pretty pleased with my choice of gifts. i didn't buy anyone anything, but let me tell you i bought a SHITLOAD of stuff for myself.

so friends - i'll be in wisconsin beginning of september, minnesota for the mid and end, and then its off to portland beginning of october. #1 thing i am excited about about moving to portland: GIANT FARMER's MARKET!!! ohhhhhh yeah thats going to be soooo sweet. fresh northwest veggies. oh also another cool thing - six hours away from vancouver. i can't freaking wait to explore the northwest. horray!

okay i am tired. next time i update i'll be back in civilization. lameeee. :(

quick update from the bake (rhyme!)

2006-07-21T04:28:00.000-05:00

i wish i could write more than i do. the internet here sucks - i am having way too much fun to even be too concerned except for the blog writing factor, myspace factor, keeping in contact factor, and over all stoney enjoyment post bowl factor.

anyways i am at the bake right now - the whipsaws are playing downstairs and the most effective use of internet i've used so far was the other night helping andy find the lyrics to "easy" AND "maggie's farm" was here at the bake. these computers are fast.

anyways i am moving to portland as of october 1st. that is my newest news. with two girls i met here who are the super funnest - SUPER fun. and funny. one similarity this year along with last year is that i am meeting a shitload of hilarious people. there are so many people here that crack me up. the people here are awesome - its a good crew this summer. parkside is the jam. i am having one of, if not the best summers of my life thus far. denali is where. it's. at.

okay i need to go. this internet is temporary.

updatage

2006-06-04T13:26:00.000-05:00

i love alaska. everyday this love is reconfirmed on my morning walk to work - which is a mile or so on the taiga trail in the park from parkside to the wac. last wednesday i had to dodge a moose. i really don't mind dodging a moose when its not 5am but considering that i was having a hard time making a decision on what to do as to avoid a possible charge/trample. see what happened is i decided to take the road to work instead of the trail - i could see up the road a yearling eating some shrubbery on the side of the road so i decided to take the trail and as soon as i passed the spot parallel to the road where i thought the moose was i booked it like a mofo. i was out. of. there. because here's the deal with moose vs. bear. with a bear you need to be all cautious and not run away or the bear will chase you and it can run faster than you so that will result in a definite mauling of some kind. with a moose you have to run your ass away from it, through the trees and any sort of obstacles as to avoid a trample because moose will kill you if they trample you. i'm not the most cautious walker to work because i jam out on my ipod when i should be more alert about my surroundings. but the walk to work is so beautiful. denali is so fucking beautiful. i bought a tent yesterday - i am slowly reaching my goal in gear for backcountry.

so i am having the best time ever. i am going to be so sad when i have to leave. i don't want to leave!! all the people i've met are so the jam. that is the saddest part about this whole experience - is having to leave the people that you've formed these 4 month long friendships with ad then its like "see ya! we'll never be in this environment again!" laura has already been talking about how she's sad to leave. laura is having a good time - like i totally knew she would. i am sometimes more exicted about her good time than mine. ouuuuu that is growth as far as the self-absorption goes.

so i met a dude that i really dig. wow how long has it been since i've shared a mutual likeness for someone that wasn't so wrong or bad or fucked up or a shitload of other lame stuff? super long that is for sure. its so nice. he's so nice. i love nice dudes. fuck fuckers who suck ass - from now on its nice dudes or no dudes.

okay enough bogarding the internet!

alaska snipit

2006-05-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

i have a lot to write about, but not too much of the desire to sit down here and record it all. let's just say i am having the best time ever - i kind of had a clue that i'd have a good time, but i wasn't exactly sure of how totally met those expectations of this summer were. the weather is getting nicer and i've planned the first backcountry expedition for june 2nd and 3rd. i can't wait to get out there - it's dangling in front of me right now because there is still snow in the park and you know - not the prettiest time to go camping, but i think in a few weeks things will be different.
i am still meeting new people and everyone i meet is the jam. i like the travel mentality - i've always talked about how cool it is to be surrounded with people who have the same mind wavelength as you as far as traveling and seeing the world and not doing the normal humdrum thing. instead of people thinking what you're doing is kind of unrealistic - people here actually encourage you when you discuss future travel plans. i love it.
its been boy crazy central since i got here, too. this same thing happened last year where i was interested in a ton of dudes and then finally narrowed it down to one to be interested in. yeah i've kind of narrowed it down to one right about now. yeaaaaaaahhhhh. i like boys.
okay time for lunch.

more from the ak

2006-05-10T12:39:00.000-05:00

so i am having a fucking excellent time in denali. everyday is more fun than the rest is the kind of mentality that has been going on as of lately. last night i experienced my first ever parkside truck party. i cannot divulge the activites that went down in the truck party but all i can say is .... scandalous! a lot more than i had bargained for thats for sure. other parties in the making include lionel richie dance parties in my room and uh yeah thats it so far.

i hate my job. i haven't started coffee cart yet because the wac is being rennovated so i've been checking id's in the edr and somehow checking id's of course comes back around to me mopping. i hate fucking mopping. i hate mopping ANYTHING. one day when i'm settled and have my own house/business whatnot i am going to make anyone but me fucking do ALL the mopping. i know its none of their fault that i am constantly getting jobs that involve some form of mop of some kind but i don't care because i'm never doing it again. i think i am never going to do it again after this job. now there is some serious motivation.

so i am meeting a lot of fucking cool new people and reacquainting myself with the old ones too. me and my new buddy sue from texas (bartender at the spike) wrote out our first dollar bill to hang behind the bar last night. this is what it says "buy shots for the two hotties girls of denali (nicole and sue)" we scored some shots of canadian lemonade last night because my declaration was "uh who doesn't want to give shots to the two cutest girls in denali?" so we rocked that saying for the rest of the night. i love the spike - and its so fantastic living so close to it that whenever i feel like bailing i can walk a tiny little way to my room and pass out. i'm excited for laura to get here! 9 more days!

okay i am out.

welcome back, alaska

2006-05-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

hi so i am in alaska right now. in denali - the actual park since i reside at parkside this summer. so far, so good. the drive up here took us a little under 7 days and that included numerous stops to fucking awesome places - and meeting a shitload of interesting folks along the way...

i. love. travel.

i don't start working until may 12th so they have me checking ids in the edr for a few days to gain some hours - i love it here. so much better than the chalets, but i am sad cause a lot of my buddies from last year are still over there and i've been here 3 days and haven't had a chance to hang with them yet. when i first got here it was kind of surreal. everything looks exactly like i remembered it. everyone looks exactly like i remembered them. a lot of the feelings involved with those matters are kind of exactly how i remember it and thats where i'll leave this entry for today.

new top 5 rippers-o-week

2006-04-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

top 5 rippers-o-week:

1. "you are the sun, you are the rain" - lionel richie
2. "everyday i write the book" - elvis costello
3. "don't do me like that" - tom petty and the hearrrrtbreakers
4. "porch song (live)" - widespread panic
5. "corrina" - taj mahal

springfever dave

2006-04-18T10:51:00.000-05:00

i kind of wish i was hitting an outdoor dave show this summer. i was disappointed with the target center show this november, but i'd be willing to give an outdoor alpine valley show another whirl. i wish i would have held onto my warehouse membership. if i would have i'd be getting within the first 10 rows everytime because i'd be considered a second-year member. nick's brother is a first-year member and always gets good seats. i need to be surrounded by warehouse members because the vibe in that area is way better than around regular ticketmaster customers. me and dierdre listened to live at red rocks on sunday at the bean and got all nostalgic about our seperate dave adventures. i always get all dave matthews band high in the springtime. two essential discs for springtime: under the table and dreaming AND live at redrocks (that one initiates pre-hype for an upcoming dave show) heidi is going to her first ever dave show at alpine this summer with harry. i am excited for her because alpine is one of the best venues to see them at - and even they agree! except last time during nancies they were all "could i have been lost somewhere in chicaaaaago??" wisconsinites were. pissed. i was! what the fuck alpine is CLEARLY in wisconsin. yes chicago is about an hour away - but still that is an hour away. he was drunk i am thinking. hoping, anyways. that was an awesome show - they did this crazy shit in between so much to say and too much and dave all went crazy-dancing and jumping around on the stage and oh yeah good show. that is the one karlie almost missed because she was "sick" yeah i talked her out of that one! but yeah live at redrocks. what a sweet show that would have been to have been in attendence for. ohhhhhhh so early, so raw - so new that dave hadn't even written the lyrics to "drive in drive out" but performed it anyways with a lotta "rrarrrrs dds drrriiiviee innn drrriiii vee ouuu tttt rrrrra" and "two-step" was considered a new song they just finished. so good. two-step is definitely up there in top 5 favorite all-time dave songs. i am not sure of the order the only thing i know for sure is that "lover lay down" is 1. and then gems like 41 and two-step would be on the list.

i need to get out and enjoy the day.

randomarama

2006-04-14T14:53:00.000-05:00

my room is looking very bare. my goal to rid myself of all this youthful/college-age junk (another person's treasure) its going to feel verrrry elated-like i am thinking.

so me and shay were talking about the phantom of the opera. some or many of you know that i love that story. and i love the score from the andrew lloyd weber version. not just love, know every word by heart to. and no i am not just talking only songs. no i probably can't remember it now, but let's just say there was a time when i did. anyways when i was 13 i read the book. ohhhhhhhh the book. ouuuuuuuu. so good. the love between the phantom and christine - so intricate so forbidden drama suspense sadness - all of it and in such a good story! i also read the adaptation of the andrew lloyd weber play. there was this book at the library and i'd check it out every two weeks or so with the script/play printed in the back and all these photos original cast - michael crawford and sarah brightman. oh man - first concert i ever went to was sarah brightman does andrew lloyd weber. i used to keep that one on the d/l - once high school and stuff started - but now i am not embarassed to say that it was the jam. she came out singing "think of me" it was an exciting moment for me. she did all the ones i wanted to hear and even sung "memory" in italian. it was pretty fantastic actually. i bought this really ugly hat that said andrew lloyd weber something on it in gold and wore it in the limo for 8th grade graduation. 8th grade graduation could have been so much better if me and brooke and katie hadn't been fighting. thank god for angela -

who just told me two days ago that she's pregnant. that's right - angela's lifelong dream of being pregnant and having a baby has finally come TRUE! i am excited for her actually and i am excited to see how cute the baby will be. i think that her and larry are attractive people and thus will produce an attractive baby. i hope for angela that it's a girl. i mean we already talked about it if it's not a girl it's going to be kind of sad. but if it's a girl angela is going to make sure that it has the CUTEST dress at every appropriate holiday. and no not just a nice dress, an okay dress - THE CUTEST DRESS ! i wonder if i ever had a baby and it was a girl what kind of dress i would get her for holidays and stuff. that is weird to think about.

awww wendy comes up tomorrow. yay!

too much porch song

2006-04-13T10:13:00.000-05:00

i am bummed about not going to festivals this summer. i mean yeah bluegrass festivals - anderson, girdwood, kantishna for sure i am going to go to again - but i mean this is nothing compared to a 10,000 lakes. i want to go so bad. me + festival + music + goodtimes = one happy peep! that is an environment i enjoy rocking. sadddddd. i don't feel that you're ever too old for any sort of music festival so i figure i'll hit them in future summers, but still..... sad! jason and michelle remind me everytime i see them that trey will be at 10,000 lakes and then i have to remind them that i'll be in alaska for the summer and then they always say "well that's way better." i like those guys.

2 weeks today i am not even in the state anymore.

drunk post

2006-04-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

i am kind of drunk. it's been awhile since a drunk post. anyways it was because i met dierdre for lunch at 3 - late lunch happy hour at the mill - and we ended up drinking the rest of the night at mc's. pitchers and shots and alicia came in and we had a little bonding experience - anyways good times. i like dierdre for the fact that she is a friend that invokes my girly side. i like that i can get girly with her and she totally knows what i'm talking about. she is definitely a keeper. we talked about a lot of stuff. good times. i am glad i am having so many good times before i leave .... awwww sad. but ...

i am excited to go back up to alaska for so many reasons. i downloaded the version of the motet's "freedom jazz dance" the other day and oh its soooo mmmmmtastey! the night the motet played the bake was one of few nights i closed the place down. the intentions for bake shows was to always go down there with my peeps (brady, orem, marc, bryan, jess -whoever) but what would end up happening is i would find ryan and we'd spend the rest of the night in some corner kissing. one of my favorite things about the whole bake experience was being able to kiss ryan wherever my little heart desired. not being afraid of who would see us or having any sort of a SPEC of care or worry in my mind was THE BEST part of that whole experience. not having to hide the way you feel about someone is always, always, always the best route. sidenote - but the motet whatta show. those guys fucking jammed. me, brady, and orem danced our asses off for the first set. i love watching brady and orem dance. when i went to visit and me and brady and orem were dancing at the gelatinous groove show in tempe and i saw brady's little hand-signal dance - i was feeling very ohhhhhhh!!!! i miss those guys. thats what sucks about seasonal jobs - you get four months with these cool people and thats it. so savor it. awwwwwwww!!! i can't wait to see everyone from last year. i am excited for this year. i want to leave right now!!! i am so ready with my spicy ramen!!!

okay time to pass out!!!!!!

scolding via IM for taking 2 (a week?) to read ryan's paper:

2006-04-11T21:58:00.000-05:00

ryan: you reading the paper?
ryan: I find you and smoke you out hippie!
ryan: hippie!
ryan: YOU!
ryan: PUT DOWN THE BOWL!
ryan: SEE THE BOWL!
ryan: YES, PUT IT DOWN!
ryan: goddamn hippies

....

2006-04-10T22:13:00.000-05:00

family guy is good shit. the writing on that show - gem after gem after gem after gem. i wish i had 1/16th that talent in writing something like satire. yeah not sure why i went with 16th as the fraction ... so yeah it's just funny shit. the conversations between stewie and brian are just fucking hilarious and/or most things they make reference to. it cracks me up.

so i talked to jen today. pretty much we spent 24 minutes revving eachother up for a long, long trip ahead of us via the alaskan highway. i am pysched to camp! yay!! we're hoping to camp in alaska for a few nights. i am almost thinking about having her leave me at one of the campsites that me and karlie and timmi stayed at south of anchorage and possibly hitchhiking to denali. i am not sure, but i could make it work since i could have jen take all my shit with her to denali and i could travel light. i'm not sure though. i'm not sure if i'm ready to be so fearless so soon - it would be a good way to get back into the swing of things and by that i mean travel mentality. that is so what i should do since i will be literally glued to denali for a whiiiiiile at least i think. i'm not sure what is on the travel agenda this summer. i am most definitely sure we are going to prudhoe bay to swim in .... the arctic ocean. it only takes 14 hours to get up there from denali thats how fucking big alaska is and denali is in the MIDDLE! its so huge. i didn't even think about it when i first went up there and then i saw how far we traveled from denali to homer and how it took almost 10 hours and how on the map it barely covers ANY area. its huge. i want to see more of it this summer - but i also want to see more park. me and the park - we are going to develop this very nice relationship this summer.

i convinced wendy to come up on saturday for green mill. possibly our last time at st. cloud green mill ever. i love playing this "but i'm going to ALASKA!!!!" card on everyone. it. is. glorious.

me and laura watched brokeback mountain last night. most depressing movie i've seen in a long while i'll have to be honest. i sympthasized with jake's character (oh god jake is so hot .... oh man, so hot. i dig that cowboy look oh yeah) because he's all "what the FUCK dude!" to heath's character because seriously what the fuck. it was just kind of a fucked up story between two people who i don't think were very smart. why didn't they just leave and move to california or something where the shit they were feeling was acceptable and everyone was loving eachother no matter how you felt? that is what i was thinking the whole time anyways. i just - whatever you know. i really don't even want to write about it. it just wasn't that great of a movie i thought. more hype than actuality is how i feel. it makes me want to go to wyoming though.

okay i need to go read ryan's thingy! i promised tonite!

silent in the morning

2006-04-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

i am sick. well i am feeling better than i did on friday and even yesterday even, but i still have the remnants of stuffiness and chapped upper lip from wiping/blowing nose so frequently. not fun - but i feel like it was my time considering i hadn't gotten sick all winter or fall even. i am going to take this opportunity to quit smoking. being sick and not smoking is always a good time to try and quit i think. i probably won't quit, but seriously cutting my intake is at least a step.

so my last foy show in cloud before i leave was on thursday at the carpet. i've realized that the music at a foy show isn't the focus point anymore - mostly it's more about hanging with the peeps. there was a time when it only used to be about the music. there was a time when i'd go to a show - bowl prior - and for the first set i wouldn't let anyone talk to me or talk to anyone i would only 100% be paying attention/focused on the jams. that was a long time ago. yeah i shook my ass and had a good, drunken time on thursday but it felt like i had to wait through 4 or 5 songs before they'd finally play a good one. i like the new songs - especially the way you looked at me last night (i'm not sure if that's the title - but it's a ripper. i like the lyrics.) - but whatever it's not the same. it's a good time to leave the scene is how i am figuring it. i kind of don't even know why they're doing the alaska tour again - i mean if you really want to tour and get found out you should go somewhere else rather than the least-populated state in the US? i heard their new album too - it's okay. i guess overall i am disappointed in the direction of foy. i'm sure many members disagree - but many fans actually do agree. last summer i was so pysched that they were coming to alaska and i could hear the jams and goodtimes and whatnot. this summer i am more excited that dierdre is coming up than seeing a show. i hope that foy makes it - and they get everything they want accomplished - all i am saying is i remember a time when the music was significantly better than it is now.

if one more of my old professors comes into the store and asks me what i am still doing in st. cloud and if i need help applying for grad school i am really going to lose it. what is wrong with wanting to take time off from school, work, ect. - and travel? i'm sorry but if i could do it all over again i would have taken all this time off right after i graduated from high school and then started college - but no i did it the way that you're supposed to do it and now i wish i wouldn't have. anyways i tell these profs that i want to travel and then see what happens down the road for grad school and they're all "hmmmmm yeah....." i understand that grad school, good jobs, your mark in the academic world - (haha) all that is important to accomplish but yeah i have about a million years still to get that shit done. how about i enjoy the world and what it has to offer me while i'm young rather than when i am 70 and retired and having difficulties climbing that huge mountain over there? i am just tired of explaining myself to everyone. it's the midwest mentality - go to college, get a job, settle down, meet a dude, get married, have some kids, go on a vacation once a year, ho-hum, ho-hum, ect., ect. - i want to do something different with my life. i mean thats fine for some people - but that is not fine for me so i wish people would just leave me alone! i'll get to grad school when i get to it! god!

anyways i am leaving in 2 and a half weeks. i have a lot of shit to get done beforehand. we're having a yard sale next weekend and then i am going home to milwaukee the weekend after that and then i am coming back here for two days of partytime and then it's off on the open road enroute to alaska. i am excited to see some peeps from last summer up there again. i won't get into detail about how excited, but pretty excited is about as far as i'll go. just rolling into denali is going to be a trip in itself. before i left i was about 60% sure that i was going to come back next summer and give it another whirl - but that 40% of never seeing it again was strong you know. now i know i'm going back - it's going to be crazy seeing what was familiar to me up there at that time again. i wish my good buddies were coming back - like brady or anyone from the store. saddddddd.

okay time for breakfast. i like writing in the morning.

listening to west 42nd street at 10AM

2006-04-05T09:51:00.000-05:00

so my intuition was right. person in email was trying to be funny. i guess i didn't spend a summer getting to know someone just to not know when that person is trying to be funny or not - i should have just gone with that first before getting all upset about the lack of "normalcy" in the email. i shouldn't even be putting much thought into it in the first place. not good, nicole. not good. (third person scolding!)

so i am excited to go back to alaska, but i am sad to leave my friends. but at the same time whatever i've spent a lot of time with them - its time to go spend some time with people i've never met before. it's time to meet a whole slew of new ones to add to the list of "Friends I've Shared Good Times With" list that i will one day compile and add to the gigantic scrap book that i plan on making for my future kids. anyways i'll be there soon - less than a month. i am so pysched to live at parkside this year - in the park. like actually in denali national park is where my address will be. "hey nicole what are you doing this summer?" "oh well i'm just going to live in a GIGANTIC NATIONAL PARK for the summer ... how about you?" it's so nice there. i know because i spent a medium amount of time in the vicinity last summer. if i couldn't live at parkside i wouldn't even be going back to denali - i'd go somewhere else. but i want to do denali one more summer. this year is about me and the park. i'm planning on spending at least 3 out of 4 weekends a month in the park, exploring the park, hiking in the park, backcountry camping in the park - everything in the park! we'll see how effective that goal is, but still that is the plan. i need more gear. its so expensive! but i feel its a good investment especially for travel in europe. last summer one of my secret goals was to meet some people who wanted to go to europe with me because it's hard enough to get my friends to fucking go out with me - muchless travel europe with me, so i need to find other people with the same mindset or i just go by myself. i'd rather have buddies, but if i have to i'll go by myself. i need to just fucking get over there already this is ridiculous. thats what ryan, karlie, and jolene being over in europe next year are for - motivation! thanks, guys!

okay yeah breakfast.

normal?

2006-04-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

okay i don't understand why people can't just be normal? i emailed someone (lets not get technical with names here - i'm not sure who all reads this) like a while ago to ask them about their plans for alaska and how are things going and ect., ect. - a really normal, run-of-the mill email that could get real normal answers back to and what do i get as a response? a completely incoherent response like ten days later. i mean this, of course, just reconfirms so many - just way too many countless minutes agonizing - but anyways. this was always my problem on the matter "why can't people just be normal?" the thing is this person - the email could be possibly reflecting his/her sense of humor which i'll say about 30% of i got and thought was mildly amusing. the other 70% completely not funny at all. the thing was i think, no i know that i liked this person the best when this person wasn't trying to be funny and was just being themself. when this person was theirself is when i totally liked them the most. i wanted to learn more about that. but first of all i'd like a normal response to a normal email. come onnnn people, goddddddd. now i'll have to wait another three months for a response. lame. this is all so lame. why? why nicole? why? i love scolding myself in the third person.

so on saturday we went over to luke and tree's and the deal was to play poker but me and liz ended up getting drunk together instead. tree got pretty wasted, too. we made a pact that i will buy her a sweatshirt from the salty dog in homer, ak this summer and she will buy me a tshirt from 10,000 lakes PLUS $20 worth of cheap goods (ie smokes, or whatever i want) in a care package and will send it to me in alaska. we shook on it and she even put a reminder in her phone. i am down because i am for sure hitting homer again this year - jen is all about it. i want to camp on the spit again - that was the most beautiful fucking awakening EVER. i woke up got out of the tent and what was outside? the fucking BEAUTIFUL ocean and mountains and volcanoes and huge waves crashing against the shore and sun. see we didn't get to see homer when we first arrived in all it's splendor because it was dark out by the time we got our shit together - so waking up to that. i thought specifically "this is the best campsite ever." at least the best i've been to so far in my lifetime. that is sad - i should have more and more to top the last beautiful campsite. that is a goal that i am going to work on specifically in the next year. i can't wait to camp on the alaskan highway. anyways later at luke and tree's - tree put the last waltz cd in. it was the jam. me and liz came up with an order of which songs we wanted to listen to and i think my third choice on one cd was "coyote" by joni mitchell. i fucking love that song. i love watching her play. its good, its so good - but tree wanted to change it to dee-lite (tree actually owns a dee-lite or however its spelled greatest hits cd) so she stops coyote and me and liz and luke's mom are all up in arms about it "nnnnnnooooooo joni mitchell. she's goood. we love her. ohhhh joni mitchell....." so much that she put it back on and we got to listen to it. it's just such a good one. i love the lyrics. i know some people who match the description in those lyrics. oh yes, i know.

yeah okay i'm tired.

lalalalalalalaaaa

2006-03-30T22:59:00.000-06:00

i am a fucking myspace addict. like it's getting worse. i spent a huge chunk of my day trying to find the perfect song to accompany my profile and i found a BUNCH that i'm going to use in the future. like "april come she will" !!!! not til april though. and i found more friends and more bands to add. right now my song is an "eyes of the world" cover by trey. it's the jam. i wish instead of playing just one song on the page you could push a "next" button and sift through a bunch of tracks - like your own personal radio station to accompany your myspace profile. i love being a geek about stuff like myspace.

so me and laura were walking back from the bar the other night and who happens to be walking across the street calling us "dudessssss....." - andy. and the funny thing was that me and holley were talking about how it had been forever since any of us had seen andy earlier that night. he's so cute and so nice. and he is down for talking music - he was over at our apartment for an afterbar last spring and we were looking through my cd collection and we come across beck "odelay" and all he says "devil's haircut" i was like "DUDE. YES." i'd ONLY play that song from that album for a long time. you know how you warm up to an album and at first you only play that good one all the time - but the thing is i still think that is the best track on that album. anyways he's nice. maybe too nice, but i've decided that from now on i am not going to totally and completely rule out nice dudes anymore. anyways if i wasn't leaving minnesota for alaska i'd be all "hi andy. you're cute." but in a non-aggressive way. i am definitely making progress here, people!

it's my sister allie's birthday today! she is 13 years old. my little sister is a fucking teenager. my sister is 13 YEARS OLD. FUCKING 13. ALLIE. 13. it blows my mind. i called on my break and as soon as i called rachel picked up and said "OH NIKKI!" i was feeling like "awww she's all excited to hear from me!" but it was because thirty seconds earlier allie was all "when is nikki going to call????" yeah so apparently me and my fam are in tune. anyways i can't believe she is 13. i remember when she was born. or when she was 2. when she was 1 she decided she'd have claim on my favorite stuffed animal - werdna - a stuffed purple bunny that i named werdna because it spelled "andrew" backwards and i had a huge crush on a dude named andrew back then. she totally stole it and would CRY if i tried to take it away. and now she thinks shes so smug because she still has it. everytime i come home i go in her room and attempt to take it back and she wails and cries "noooooooooooooo! that's MY werdna!" mostly we just do it for memory's sake - but she used to seriously get upset when i'd take try to take it back. she was so cute when she was little. so cute. oh man she was so cute! it was so great when she was little she was my own personal doll. i used to take her around in the red wagon just because i always thought that if i was a little kid i'd LOVE it if my sister took me around in a red wagon! when she started kindergarten i'd be all "allie how was school today?" and she'd say "i'm not going to tell you." and then my dad would ask and she'd be all chatterbox. awwww i miss my sisters.

okay i am going over to nick's to represent - wisconsin style.

2006-03-27T23:20:00.000-06:00

i love this new joni mitchell song i've been listening to on repeat called "conversation". i believe there is a joni mitchell song to serve as the chapter title in different times of my life. i love how honest her lyrics are. if the talent fairy came to my door and said "i grant you with talent of being able to create whatever music you wanted" the musicfan's dream - to be a musican come true i would definitely play folk. i like the lyrics as story aspect of folk music. i just love joni mitchell's lyrics - they are so unforgiving as far as the agony of being a woman with emotions is concerned. and she writes about all kinds of different levels of emotions. but the sometime she goes all fairytale route - like "the dawntreader" and a little on "urge for going" - i love her - i'm pretty sure she's stopped touring forever, but if she ever did i would be all over that. if she ever did anything public i'd be all over it.

i bought some coconut incense. it smells super good - like a smokey version of tropical beach. i was telling angie how i'm headed south for the winter and she told me if i'm doing coffee and i don't contact her about doing coffee she's going to punch me directly in the face. she's thinking about doing something like that after she graduates next year. i really want to go somewhere warm this winter. i mean i don't know what's going to happen after round 2 of summer in alaska but i am thinking that going waaaay south is going to outweigh any other lucrative options. i wish i didn't have so many freaking responsibilites to be places. it fucking pisses me off. i no longer have any responsibilites to ANY weddings starting september 7th. if anyone asks me to be in their wedding i'm straight out going to say no - so take note people. there is one future wedding that might happen that i'm thinking i won't miss... but that's it! but yeah south - beaches. i want to see what its like to have the beach be the "hangout" - you know. like "hey guys see you at the beach!" or "hey guys let's have a few at the beach tonite!" or "hey let's smoke on that log over by the beach!" or "wow let's watch the sunset over the ocean tonite. how does that sound?" pretty good, huh?

yeah okay time for bed.

top 5 rippers -o- week 2

2006-03-27T15:41:00.001-06:00

1. "conversation" - joni mitchell
2. "big river" - grateful dead
3. "wildwood flowers" - the stanley brothers
4. "one" - three dog night
5. "deal" - grateful dead

pick 5 stupidgirl

2006-03-25T19:54:00.000-06:00

i read the top 5 cd picks of the week in this week's up next and the immaculate collection was one of them. and her explanation was something like "everyone has their favorite cheesey artist like madonna or the police." okay first of all, the police are considered cheesey by this girl's version of "everyone" - fuck doesn't she know anything about anything? the police were influential not fucking cheesy. i just shook my head after i read it. just don't even bother submitting a top 5 if you don't know what you're talking about. the st. cloud times has been increasingly disappointing as a newspaper and i try not to read the star trib because it just depresses the hell out of me that i'm living in st. cloud - not a very big city at all - and not in minneapolis - a HUGE city chock-full of fun activities, so i'd just rather not know. but the staff is good. fucking lame st. cloud times. in the central life section every saturday they have a little "meet the pastor" type of article. everyone is so fucking religious around here, how did i not notice this when i was in college? i think i probably should have since our apartment was surrounded (literally) by churches. i miss my old apartment. i think of that bnl song "old apartment" i miss the porch. fuck, the porch was the jam. so many good times on that porch.

yeah okay its saturday night. time to go out.

alaskan highway heave-high ho!

2006-03-22T11:02:00.000-06:00

so i've made a very important decision regarding travel, life experience, material for stories for portfolio for future mfa applications, self-discovery, ect. , ect. i'm riding up to alaska with jen end of april. this is about equal to as good as taking the ferry i think and i am so ready to leave. the fact that we're leaving a week and a half earlier than planned is fucking choice. i'm sure jen and i will get ornary with eachother considering it's such a long haul. but that is a discomfort i am willing to take in the name of driving the alaskan highway! yay!!!! i wish we were leaving tomorrow!

nostalgia circa 1998

2006-03-17T00:19:00.000-06:00

so i am just sitting here thinking about when writing notes was cool - my first year of high school i discovered my love for oasis. i fucking loved oasis. they were it - they were the jams of all jams at that point in my career as oh you know professional music listener. everyone knew it too - i was infamous for that shit. anyways i'd always sign my notes "gonna live forever, nicole" because i loved that song - "live forever" i still love that song, actually - but i used to be pretty good friends with this girl named julie back then and she wrote me this note once but it was typed on her typewriter on this really nice paper and the last part about it said something like "hey nicole don't live forever, it gets sad when all your buddies start dying." oh man i thought that was funny. anyways that prompted me to search for her on myspace and of course she totally has a profile. yeah wow that was a long time ago. i forgot that julie was a participant in some of my more favorite earlier memories of high school. not so much the later ones - sorry julie. like maybe say the library incident. she totally polluted a place that i have so many happy later childhood memories from and adam's place of employment. and angela's grandma ...

yeah so take a guess at what i've been doing tonite?

so oh yeah tomorrow i drink green beer. oh yeah, oh yeah green beer green beer. three cheers for green beer. that is a lot of ee's! i think one st. patty's day i am going to go to ireland and see what it's like. i hear that its kind of a holy day around that area. i think it would just be nice to go to ireland and see green hills and oceans and cliffs. thats what i think about when i think about ireland - green hills, thick foggy cities where you can only see the next building three feet in front of you, and big cliffs with rolling ocean waves crashing the rocks below - and then maybe if you're lucky rainbows in the sky - huge gigantic rainbows. and tiny little leprachons (sp) skitting about!

so i've been reading jolene's blog over the past year. i think england is rubbing off on her slang and writing and whatnot. it's kind of cute! i think its so funny that jolene lives in england. me, melse, and angela would have died to go to england the last year we all got to hang out together. all we did was pretend that we were from england all the time. i bought melse a british flag for christmas one year - and she totally got me these kickass british-flag socks. and oh she used to have the coolest british flag purse. anyways we were always talking to eachother with british accents. and sometimes we'd purposely drive on the wrong side of the road and then we'd all say to eachother in british accents "what the hell? why is everyone driving on the wrong side of the road??" we are such nerds now that i look back on it - but that is the kind of shit we used to get a kick out of. anyways it always feels like jolene was around when we'd do crazy pretend-we're-british stuff like that - but that she was never screaming in her british accent. once angela talked to a dude from england on the phone (andy's friend) in her british accent and asked him if he thought she sounded british and he said she did. oh man we thought that was the coolest shit ever.

yeah okay i'm done.

you savvy ipod owner fuckers

2006-03-16T12:49:00.000-06:00

i'm really fucking pissed about all the fuckers that have the new color-videoesque ipods. fuck that. that shit got released ONE MONTH AFTER i bought my fucking ipod and i am pissed about it! now mine is all uncool. whatever i think its still the jam. i'm going to totally live out this ipod's life and then get a new cool one when you can keep 4 lifetimes worth of music in the palm of your hand and never have to worry about living a life without music for the rest of your life, as well as your children's lives. i think by the time my ipod runs out of juice is about the time when an invention like that exsists.

top 5 rippers -o- week:

1. "baby i love you" - aretha franklin
2. "under african skies" - paul simon
3. "these dreams of you" - van morrison (a pre-st. patty's day tribute to the irish)
4. "catfish john" - jerry garcia/david grisman
5. "cassidy" - grateful dead (2 weeks RUNNING, bitches!)

mini

2006-03-15T00:55:00.000-06:00

i'm going to write a poem - a long poem even - just about emotion derived from the way jerry sings the word "cadillac" in "cassidy" so mellow, sooo smooth - and i think i'll title it "shivers and quivers" - i have been feeling inspired. i am also going to write a poem about coco mint green tea. if it didn't have caffiene i'd drink some right now. it's so tastey and good and delicious and healthy. i can't believe i'm leaving a classy coffeehouse for a coffee cart at the WAC. i know for sure they won't have good tea like coco mint green tea.

"cassidy" on repeat + effort into colorizing my new gift in this weekend's secret exchange =

2006-03-14T10:36:00.000-06:00

i've written about michael jackson before - but well here goes again. okay what exactly happened here? what happened that michael jackson used to be the jam and now he's a total wacko who can't pay his bills at neverland ranch being multiply accused of molesting kids? what happened, here mike? how could a dude who created rippers like "rock with you", "wanna be startin' something" "billy jean" - fuck the list is endless, you get the picture - how could he go from that to what he is now? i'm starting to wonder - how much creative control did michael jackson really have with his music - did he write it all and write the lyrics or was he just mr. robot doing whatever the entourage told him to do? i don't know all i know is i have an untainted appreciation for his music. because thriller was my mom's favorite album of 1984 is how i even ever got exposed to michael jackson in the first place. when i was 7 i made my first radio-request into the radio station outside of albert lea and all i wanted to hear was "man in the mirror" - but at the time "dirty diana" was the hot single off that album so radio stations had pretty much stopped playing "man in the mirror" all together. i called all weekend - three days of my little kid voice "please play man in the mirror!" and fucking finally on sunday the dj played it. it just bums me out about what he's doing now. talking about how women have given him children as "gifts"????? he's fucked up - i feel bad for him and his poor excuse of a childhood.

i finished into the wild. who i've read from my comments, my wisconsinite buddy kyle from alaska was also reading .... here comes a shout-out to KYLE! HI KYLE! let's hang when i come home to milwaukee!!! so yeah into the wild - i think the guy who wrote it is a good writer. the guy who did the stuff that he did - i'm not sure what to think about him. he doesn't seem any different than the normal trust-fund travelin' hippie. it's a bummer that he died though - i don't think he was stupid for going out in the bush with hardly any gear at all anymore though. before i finished it i thought that, but now i think he was pretty intelligent enough to last as long as he did. anyways i don't want to give it away in case peeps want to read it. it was cool though cause they talk about shit that i recognize - where he was found was 15-20 miles north of where i lived this summer. anyways so now i just started sailor song by ken kesey. it's a pretty big book but bixby recommended it after i told him about how fucking fantastic i thought one flew over the cuckoo's nest was. this is going to be the last book i read before i leave i think. that is ample time to finish it - which means i really took advantage of liz's library. sailor song is the sixth book i've read from her library since i've been back from alaska.

i wish i had some smokes. i'm trying to hold off. mostly i am trying to decrease my intake. one vice at a time, nicole - one vice at a time.

only nerds spend friday nights on myspace

2006-03-10T23:51:00.000-06:00

so harry came into the bean tonite and because it was so slow the last hour and a half - we hung out on the comfy couches and talked for awhile - while heidi cleaned up the place. we haven't really sat down and had a conversation in a really, really long time. definitely not since i've been back from alaska - definitely not in alaska, probably before i left is the last time we had a real, valid conversation. it was nice - it kind of made me sad. we used to be pretty good friends. we mostly talked about what we always used to talk about - music. awwww. wait, i think ... here it comes ....

snarffle.

ouuu oh yeah okay. so today was a fucking fantastic day. i called my dad because it's been awhile since i've connected with the fam and we talked for awhile and finally i asked him about storing some stuff there while i embark on my travels. i came up with a very convincing reason as to why i should be allowed to keep my shit there rather than somewhere else and it worked. do you know what that means? it definitely decreases my stress level for travel and increases the freedom of going wherever my little heart desires! i love my dad! letting him keep my shit at the house is very un-dad like because he's usually all "this isn't dad's hotel. this isn't dad's storage unit." i am pysched. i'm coming back on cinco and i'm bringing rachel - attention milwaukeeans if you want to hang with me i'll be at samanos on may 5th from oh about 7pm - close. i'll be the one at the table chock-full of margarita pitchers and empty salsa containers.

sooo myspace myspace myspace!!! my friend count is up to 25! i need more. if you're not on myspace stop fucking around and get on it already. god!

"who'll be my role model now that my role model is gone gone?"

2006-03-09T11:06:00.000-06:00

every song on graceland is good. fuck paul simon is a master at the multi-talent. this isn't new news, but you know graceland is reconfirming that all over again. i wonder - how does he do it? how does he come up with all the music, lyrics, crazy world music background - how does he know that putting that all together will work and work sooooo nicely? can you imagine the satisfaction after listening to the final product? i'd imagine it be like oh say - having a book published, but a really super fucking good book published.

oh my god i think i see a small sliver of sunshine peeking out of the sky. that can't be right. there is no sunshine in arctic st. cloud minnesnowta!

"she said don't i know you from the cinematographer's party? i said who am i to blow against the wind?"

2006-03-08T21:27:00.000-06:00

top 5 songs this week: (i stole this from karlie)

1. "i know what i know" - paul simon
2. "cassidy" - grateful dead
3. "rescue me" - aretha, baby
4. "treat her like a lady" - cornelius brothers (what. a. ripper.)
5. "police and thieves" - the clash (shocked, karlie?)

so i'm addicted to myspace. karlie was all "you need to get this thing called myspace" and chad was all "oh nicole i can forsee you being queen of myspace" and i held off, held off - i figured i'd go the adult route on blogspot but i got sucked in. it's because i found a bunch of people from denali and i was all awwwww i need to get in on that and keep up the connections you know. that was my main motivation for the recent sign-up. it's sweet, my page is pink for spring. yay! so far i have 18 friends - i'm working on having more. through surfing on myspace i found out a lot of people from denali are coming back next year. i am excited for some screen doors at the spike heck yes bitches!

guess what, haters? i am losing weight. awwwwwww yeah, gettin' in shape for climbing some mountains. woot! when i was home for christmas i did some research on what is the best way to train to hike up mountains - and i found that the best way to train for it is just to hike up mountains. that isn't really feasible in flatland, minnesota - but me and nick talked about it on the ride home and he told me i should go down to riverside park and walk up and down that big hill on the disc golf course. it's a good idea. that hill was a bitch when we went sledding to climb back up. its not even close to walking up a rock mountain or anything, but i figure it's at least a tiny bit of an edge.

so yeah pretty much i've been thinking about alaska a lot lately. i am excited for two upcoming holidays - marijuanikkah (sp) and st. patty's day. i wish i was ryan living in new york city for st. patty's day lucky bitch. that would be a fun time. every year for st. patty's day i break out my super neon-green, polyester grandma slacks-type pants because they are so very green. this year won't be any different. it's my one chance to sport them so i totally take advantage of it. i love drinking green beer - the whole novelty of st. patty's day appeals to me. even though its just another excuse to get shiiitttttty.

also i've been thinking about what i want to do after alaska. i keep thinking about how i really am not going to live somewhere that is winter or has anything close to winter. the idea of a ski resort job already in place is nice but i'm thinking maybe head waaaaay south - virgin islands, vacate for a bit and maybe find a job. that would be ideal. i want to see what its like to live on a beach or near a beach in december while a lot of people i know are suffering through gray sky-ed, cold as fuck, blizzardy winters. i'm going to try to refrain from really planning what happens after alaska because who knows what could happen. i do have a set of plans, but i am not opposed to a more appealing opportunity to present itself. thats the difference between this year and last year. i think i might be crazy if i considered coming back to minnesota for another round of -40 windchills.

6. "it never entered my mind" - miles davis

top 5 dylan songs for the week

2006-03-05T13:43:00.000-06:00

1. buckets of rain
2. she belongs to me - specifically the live 1966 version
3. leopard-skin pillbox hat - bootleg series, vol. 2
4. oxford town
5. highway 51 blues

"like sundown in the valley or the stars alone at night"

2006-03-03T14:56:00.000-06:00

last night's trampled by turtles show was - well, it was really fucking good. those guys are fucking good. they're going to make it. i think their days of pioneer place and smaller venues will soon be numbered and everyone will be all "remember when they used to play there? oh yeah, that was the jam." the sound between them is just so tight and soooo very dance-able. people who were not dancing i was pitying because how could you let the jams infuse and not want to move your body? everyone who i knew was dancing anyways so it didn't make much difference for the saps who sat down throughout the show. they ended with "codeine" it was a ripper - EVERYONE was dancing thats probably one of their faster ones. i love "at your window" - i think thats my own personal favorite. it's so sweet. they did a cover of "shelter from the storm" i loooooove that song.

so it's been a three-day party extravaganza. jen has been in town since tuesday night so laura, jen and i have gone out three nights in a row. the second night was supposed to be low-key, but thats not how it ended. it ended with a sleepover at laura's with me, jen, and zac talking about phish. i like people who like phish. it sounds really corny and nerdy and space-casey, but when you can share something like phish with other people - it's a nice thing. i fell asleep in laura's room to her winamp live phish radio station. the last time i fell asleep listening to live phish was in alaska with ryan. that, plus a question i had about housing at parkside - prompted a quasi drunk dial on the walk from pioneer place to laura's last night. it's good to talk to someone who is excited about going back - rather than lecturing me on the horrids of dorm-style living, remote isolation, the toils and tribulations of aramark's shadiness - the isolation is actually one of the more appealing reasons why i even want to go back in the first place. its a unique feeling to be in denali and feel so far away from everything. i mean i didn't even watch/read the news the whole time i was up there. its so nice. i am so pysched to go back. it's going to be a fun summer. i'm going to climb some mountains. that is my goal. climbing a mountain is hard, but i love how the thought-process works when you're climbing a mountain. completely focused on the next step in front of you. nothing clouds you from the past, from the future - it is 100% in the present. you can't let your mind wander to other shit you just need to focus on the best crevice for the next step up the peak. i like that kind of mentality. plus, its a good workout.

robin sent me a new yarn bracelet with colors that i picked out before i left utah. she wrote a little note that said "spring is just around the corner, yea!" she's right - it is! yay!!

yeah okay i'm done.

blast from the past dreambook!

2006-02-28T01:03:00.000-06:00

look what i found!

favorite entry:

who are you?:	Melse
email addy:	nikkisgay@gaynicole.com
tell me stories...:	nicole- i just thought u should know that u r not my friend anymore...ur too mean to me to be my friend...and i give u a ride every freakin day well FRUIT U!! u can walk with my bro until u both learn ur lessons...maybe a week of walking will burn off all ur gay ions and ull be a normal person...well not completely since nothin will cure ur dwarfism

Friday, April 23rd 1999 - 07:31:16 AM

i want to go home kind of

2006-02-26T19:32:00.000-06:00

i kind of want to go home to milwaukee. i want to see my family - i want to see my sisters. i am missing out on their growth. i mean we keep in touch, but i wish i could see them more than i do. allie is a teenager. last time i talked to angela she asked me how old allie was and i told her she's almost 13 and she freeeaked out "WHAT!" i want to see my friends, too. i should be better at keeping in touch, but i just am not. i am too much of someone immersed in her own present environment sometimes but i make an effort. i try - sometimes i try. i think that is kind of the reason behind blogs. its a good way to keep in touch without actually having to go through the whole process of a conversation. is that bad though? shouldn't people just take the time out to have the conversation? probably, yes. realistically though - no.

so yeah, milwaukee ... i would love to go there in the summer. the summer is the best time because its fucking nice by the lake and the lake is beautiful. i haven't been there in nice weather in it feels so long. i haven't been ANYWHERE in nice weather in fucking forever it feels. and where am i headed this summer? alaska where it rains about 3/4ths of the time. its like fucking weird if there is a nice day out in alaska thats how rare it is. no i'm excited. two more months. i wish it was next week - but i'll go with two months. i'm flying out of chicago this time so i can hang out in milwaukee for a few days beforehand. i'll have to hit samanos. oh god i wish i could have samanos. anytime me and karlie chat she'll mention something about samanos and i'm all "dude, you are so lucky that you could just get in your car and drive there and eat chips and salsa and chicken avacado salad" and she's always "yeah i suppose i can. ha." yeah i am so eating there before i leave. maybe get drunk with karlie and adam and drink some of those really good drinks at that place in bayview .... oh yeah. limey.

so we're just sitting around waiting for "flava of love" to start. heck yes, bitches. reality tv on its strongest hold. it sucks you right in - without forgiveness until your shamefully counting down the minutes until you can finally find out what happens!!!! i have a few guilty pleasures - this is one of them. ouuu family guy in 8 minutes.

i want more conversations between stewie and brian.

hotel rwanda

2006-02-25T11:30:00.000-06:00

so i just got done watching hotel rwanda. uh yeah - good, happy morning, nicole! not a good way to start a day. i'm not really sure what i think or how i feel. mad, upset, disgusted, ashamed? even more ashamed that it takes a hollywood movie to enlighten me on the subject - just a bunch of not really good stuff it makes me feel. that is really scary to think about. i lead such a privleged life. i should never complain about anything ever again. at least i don't have to worry about the possible chance of being murdured on my way to work because of the tribe that i belong to when in reality that tribe is also you - they're all the same. i wonder why nobody really did anything about it - i hear that the united states has the best if not one of the best? (i'm not hip to army knowledge) armies in the world couldn't we have done something? i guess that is the part that i don't understand about the situation. it doesn't make much sense to me how hatred like that is even brewed in the first place.

i watch oprah too, bitches.

2006-02-23T14:08:00.000-06:00

you know what is gross?

wives who love their cheating husbands. it makes me so very disgusted. almost to the point of physical illness. i think that is the sort of mentality that is associated with the unintelligent. because what sort of intelligent being would love a man who fucking cheated on her? thats why women who stay with their cheating husbands blow. my. mind. i've read that things can sometimes be worked out - once the couple sees the error of their ways, but i am a firm believer in the saying "once a cheater, always a cheater" - sorry but that is just the way the cliche goes. its true!

whats even worse is husbands who cheat on their wives, and even worse - for an extended period of time. husbands who cheat on their wives may say that they love their wives, but its my understanding that if you love someone the way someone should be loved - you don't cheat on them. i think cheating and/or affiars, love triangles, ect. is all a big fucking mess and waste of time on all parties involved - except the married couple who would really need to do some serious re-evaluation.

me and my dad and janet were having a talk about reasons behind why married people who probably shouldn't be married stay together. first i mentioned kids. are having kids a good enough reason to stay together despite something like oh-say cheating? i said no, because kids aren't stupid. they are just small - but they know whats up, really. both my dad and janet said no they didn't think that was a good enough reason and janet concluded that "kids don't necessarily need their parents to be together - they just need to know that both parents love them." and then we brought up the subject of assets. and janet said she knew several couples that were together only because of the investments and assets that a couple puts in together. that makes me even more sick than wives who love their cheating husbands. fucking gross. staying together because of fucking MATERIAL OBJECTS? thats not my language. and when i asked them if they thought that was right they both replied no. their prospective - considering their own situations - was insightful.

and then there is the whole mistress. what kind of woman would put herself in that position? probably the type of woman who didn't have any idea of what she was getting herself into. definitely someone very naive to the nature of scandal and easily swayed into believing stupid lies that the cheater would literally unload onto her. let's be honest - like most women are, she's probably insecure.

that's just my rant of the day. it's so refreshing to be able to write whatever my little heart desires - including random rants on infidelity. ahhhhh, sweet internet.

"when you find yourself in the thick of it help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl"

2006-02-22T18:32:00.000-06:00

i've decided after budget calculation that i am only allowed to go out once a week from now until i leave for alaska. unless of course there are special occasions - like next week when foy and tbt play on seperate nights so that means i have to go out twice. and i went out last night so i've reached my quota for this week. i figure this will help me save money, misery from hang-overs, ect. - the benefits are numerous.

speaking of saving money, i bidded on a really sweet phish tshirt on ebay. i totally forgot about ebay! anyways the tshirt is green and it has the john deere logo except instead of a deer its an antelope and instead of john deere it says "high geere" and then on the back it says "set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul" HOW SWEET IS THAT!? first of all - run like an antelope is my all-time favorite ever phish jam and second of all that is my favorite lyric in it - even though the lyrics are seriously minimal its one of the highlights of the song for me. that song is so good because they jam for soooo long and the end is when they sing - its a huge build-up. i love that song. the design of the tshirt reminds me of my suzy greenberg tshirt so i'm wondering if its the same dude that i bought the shirt from so many moons ago? anyways i hope i get it. i also bidded on some computer speakers, and a used copy of high fidelity. so far i am winning all of them! that changes so fast though, i need to make sure i'm around for that phish tshirt.

i tried the sudoku puzzle in the paper today. it was a level 3. i worked on it from 2-5 at work and the first time i had to re-do i was pretty good about it. the second time i almost started crying. its very frustrating to put that much effort into something that keeps fucking not working!! i thought i was so close - i was soaring on the victory high as all the little pieces of the puzzle were working and then i found my first error. i managed to fix a few, but once you find two or three then its fucking impossible to trace it back or at least my level of patience is fucking impossible. after that second time of not getting it, i threw it away. i just decided to be defeated. stupid sudoku!

i have to open tomorrow. opening the coffeeshop is the least stressful early situation i've ever had to deal with in the entirity of my work history. i make five pots of java, test the espresso, turn the register on - and then retire to my favorite table with my book and usually half a mug of some red hawaiian tea while i wait for the first customer. and then the first customer comes in and orders a grande daily brew to go and that takes all of 30 seconds to produce - and its back to book and tea.

beatles song of the week: "martha my dear"

"stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song"

2006-02-20T20:44:00.000-06:00

i like nickel creek. they remind me of nicole, aka #2 - my roomie in alaska. i love "the house of tom bombadil" because its such a nice little diddy that goes along with such a nice title. i took 100 level literature course last year that was geared specifically for tolkien - except it was a 100 level freshman intro to literature class where we had to learn terms about being able to read literature critically that i mastered the semester before in senior seminar (okay, well not mastered - but at least worked extensively with) so anyways i never went because i felt like it was a waste of time. i was just taking it to boost my overall major gpa - which it didn't, even. so i had to read lord of the rings - in the first one after the hobbit and tom bombadil is a cool dude that they bunk with for a little bit on their adventure. when i saw the title i thought it was so neat that they wrote a song called the house of tom bombadil. at least i know my degree is good for picking up literary references in songs and really thats all i ask for - really.

i finished fear and loathing today and now i'm half-way done with into the wild. fear and loathing was fucking good - but its not like i was really surprised -i love how emotional he gets when describing the 60's - i copied a long passage out of the end of one of the chapters where he describes the movement in san francisco as a huge beautiful wave that if you look out west you can see the high-water mark where the water broke. that's a summary but he's got some really beautiful poetic stuff. i like it and i think the movie is a pretty decent representation of the book - as good as any movie can be at trying to make a book come alive on film. my issues with that continue. so now i'm reading into the wild and i'm not sure how i feel about this dude. i'm not sure if i feel bad for him going out north of healy without the proper gear and expecting to survive. getting to know him as a character is interesting, but at the same time - that's just not very smart - you're not henry david thoreau. and even throeau didn't go to alaska - the tundra of alaska even - and try to make it with virtually no gear. and i guess i really don't know much about gear for survival, but i know enough to know that what he was thinking wasn't very realistic.

an old TA for the iec came into the bean today who i haven't seen since i graduated. he's a cool dude - totally committed to teaching and being a good teacher. i actually helped with a cash handling at a store/customer/worker presentation in his class once. and then of course after that all the students would come into the store and be all "hi nicole!" we did some really, really shitty iec paper filing one spring. that fucking sucked - what a long project that took, but anyways so we were chatting about what we're doing and whatnot. and turns out he is leaving friday enroute to south korea to teach english for 2 possibly 3 years. i told him about how i really want to apply through jet to do it for next summer and he was all about it. i figure that, well i already know, that doing resort jobs where there is absolutely few - to zero intellectual skill involved will get old after awhile and teaching english would definitely be a more meaningful thing to be doing. although resort jobs are a fucking fun time - and after a quadrillion years of school (plus the year off, yeah yeah i know) having fun is on my priority right now. sorry, but it is. no i'm not sorry.

i was reading rob's entry about trampled by turtles. i'm glad to see that they're going somewhere - those guys are fucking good shit. the first time i ever heard them was at a bar in the cities called mayslacks - it was a foy/trampled/40 watt show. foy played first and i remember being especially pysched about 40 watt so when trampled came on i was all "who'sssss theessssse guysss?" but then they started playing. i really don't remember that night very well actually but i remember thinking that they were good. they are good. we were talking about how tight the sound is between them at happy hour today - they're playing at pioneer place next thursday - i'm excited for a show!!! the only thing that sucks about that venue is you can't dance - but the thing that rocks is that it has a wine bar. ohhh yeah.

i'm boreddddddddd. i think im going to go to the iec tomorrow and visit sue. she has some knitting needles for me and a pattern for mittens that i'm going to use my sweater yarn with. i have a shitload of yarn and its sooo beautiful but there is no way that i am ever going to finish this sweater. and i have a lot of free time - i might as well be doing something creative with it. i want to try and get a little more knit savvy so i can buy some yarn and pass some of the time knitting in alaska. because i don't think any of you understand sometimes there isn't anything to do but look at your wall. i want to try and stay productive this summer. i'm already trying to make all these plans - i should really just go with the flow. thats what i did when i got up there. that is one of the most exhilirating parts of the whole experience - you can't really plan what's going to happen. i had no plans cause i didn't even know what to plan for. i'd imagine laura is going through something similar to that.

blogs as therapy, people. blogs as therapy.

sunday night

2006-02-19T22:33:00.000-06:00

i really want to see brokeback mountain. i've wanted to see it for a long time, though and liz and shay can totally vouche for that. we were thinking about going to a movie one sunday afternoon and they wanted to go see some scary movie thriller - i hate those kinds of movies. it's not that i hate them it's just that i'd rather not. so then i suggested brokeback mountain! and they were both not for it at all. "you just want to see it because of the hype" and i insisted "no! it's human emotion, dudes let's go see it!" we didn't see it. angie was telling me about it - about how it's just a really, really sad story. now there is this huge brokeback mountain craze! talkshows with cowboys with wives talking about how they are really in love with their cowboy guy friend instead and willie nelson singing a song about sometimes cowboys love cowboys. i wonder what the super right-wing, ULTRA-conservative varied members of several chapters of the god squard are thinking about this movie? i want to see it. before i talk about it anymore i just want to go see it.

i am pretty pysched about karlie going to germany. because she came up to alaska this past summer i am for sure going to germany to see her. that is exciting - especially if erik is there, too. the joerres' in germany - the jam.

i added some more jams to the coborns muzak playlist. slow dancing by johnny rivers which breaks my little, sappy heart. its just such a sweet song. everytime i hear it at coborns i get all "ohhhh" its good shit. i fucking love that am gold stuff and i have my mom to blame. she always had the station switched to lovesongs fm so these songs were embedded into my memory as lovey dovey from a young age. and most of these jams were probably pretty hip in the early-mid 80's when i was a kid. when i was a little older than that me and brooke would have sleep-overs and spend the whole night listening to 97.3 lovesongs from ohhh maybe 7-11. the novelty of the station was you could call in and request a song and then the dj makes a personal shout-out beforehand so me and brooke would brainstorm which song would be the most efficient in expressing how we felt about the boys we were into at that time. we both had crushes on members of the cast of d2: the mighty ducks. she loved charlie, the underdog and i loved adam banks, the golden boy of the hockey team with that really sweet moment with the coach when he fucked up his hand ... awww. anyways so we would request songs and then the dj would say "this goes out to adam ... from sonya" adam was adam banks even though that wasn't his real name - his real name was vincent larusso. and the sonya was actually a synonym because after we had seen d2, i had this great idea that i would write the script for d3 and incorporate twin girl hockey players based on some, but not all similarites of me and brooke. and in that version the one who ended up totally winning the heart of adam banks - her name was sonya. so i can't even remember the song - i think it was "stand by me" and we stayed up all the way until close to 11 to hear the request because anytime we'd call (and i'm sure he knew that we were kids) he'd be "well i might get to it and i might not and if i do it won't be til the waaaaay end" he was kind of not cool, but he had a really cool soft voice on air. so yeah lovesongs - i've been exposed thoroughly. i also put "you are the woman" by firewall on there. i've never heard of firewall. i'm getting a kick out of researching these songs and finding out what their actual names and artists are because the way i've found out the names of a lot of these songs is by googling a lyric that i remember and then the info pops up. i am going to have the ultimate coborns muzak playlist before i leave - oh man. anywhere in the world i can think "hmmm i would like to transport myself back to the jams of coborns muzak" click on the ipod. i fucking LOVE my ipod. if you love music and you don't have one, you are missing out on - definitely one of the better - conveniences that technology has to offer!

#1 worst chatter 2006 (and previous years): wendy shafer. i hope you read this, wendy. you probably will since i know you only scan my entries for your name and then read it!

good night!

mid-february cold as fuck outside blues

2006-02-17T10:06:00.000-06:00

so i just checked the weather. its -13 C, but it feels like -41. I FUCKING HATE THE WEATHER IN MINNESOTA!!!! WHAT THE FUCK! yeah i know, so why don't i leave? OH I AM FUCKING LEAVING and then when i get the little pang to return the "oh but don't you miss your friends? (although by the time i leave i think most of my friends will have x-nayed) oh don't you miss that friendly minnesota nice charm?" yes i probably will but then... i'll remember the cold and anything else that i miss associated it will fucking fade into the oblivion. i'm serious, i'm not coming back here for a long, long, long time to come if ever. i love duluth - that is an area i wouldn't mind ending up but as far as minnesota and the midwest is concerned - done. fuck this FEELS LIKE -41 BULLSHIT!!!!! i will miss being in a place where everyone has the same accent as me, though. i almost forgot how torturing that was until i went to go visit brady in arizona and i got a dose of it all over again. rachel couldn't handle it "you guys have accents!" its no use to even argue, my northern accent is way too thick to put up any sort of defense. i'll just have to come to terms with it throughout my travels to other areas of america.

onto other news, maureen is coming up tonite to hang out with me and laura. we're doing girls night - jammies, movies, popcorn, and homemade speical brownies. mmmmmmm brownies. girls nights are usually intended to spend quality time with the girls, but it always ends up that we spend half or more than half of the night agonizing over dudes. i'd rather spend the time celebrating the fact that we're women rather than embellishing our faults (dudes) - in denali i participated in this women's circle with sondra and some girls from parkside. pretty much we sat around in a circle and talked about - well i can't tell you what we talked about because we made a pact not to talk about what we talked about - but it was interesting. it was the first time i participated in that and although i was interested in the conversation i was itching to start drinking at the spike so i bailed out early. i am so pysched about living near the spike this summer. i can stay til the end and not have to worry about walking three miles back to my room.

my new jam of the week is "sweet surrender" by john denver. i like the lyrics. they are good - except the animal references "like a fisssssh in the waterrr! like a birrrrrd in the air!" i just very recently have started listening to john denver. brady had a john denver cd in his collection that occasionally he'd rock in the deli and i put the definitive all time greatest hits cd on my ipod courtesy of chad, but i'd usually always skip to the next jam unless it was country roads which i can tolerate. i remember brady said once "it's so weird that old people will listen to john denver and think 'oh he's such a good musician' but the majority of his lyrics are about his illicit drug use" that is by no means a direct quote here but it was something along those lines. anyways i like him and i like that song. its the jam.

so far this morning has been interesting - me and bobby are having a semi-functioning conversation about marriage over aim. bobby is the last guy i had an actual relationship with - my two favorite things about bobby are: he's canadian AND he's funny. although i spent the majority of our relationship trying to convince him how totally unfunny i thought he was. he's getting married in may and now he's being all preachy about "well marriage is meeting halfway - it's not so "me, me, me, me" (insinuating that i am "me, me, me, me") and being very "oh the wise one" on my ass right now. all i said was i am very far, not anywhere near that sort of mentality right now at this point in my life and how i wouldn't want to disrupt my plans to accomodate anything even close to that right now, either. i did say that i wouldn't be opposed to having my plans swayed, though. its very rare that me and bobby have a conversation, muchless an interesting one.

i tried to do the level 4 difficulty sudoku puzzle in yesterday's times but its way fucking beyond my skill in the game. i worked on it a total of five hours and after ereasing and starting over three times i've decided that i think i need to work up to that level. i wasn't going to let it kick my ass, but fuck that after five hours.

its cold out, bitches!!!

i might win!

2006-02-15T19:23:00.000-06:00

i bought a powerball ticket after work today. i usually only buy one when the jackpot reaches an exceedingly high number and i always only buy one because i figure it only takes one to win you know? this whole ordeal happens about 3 or 4 times a year for me because i just really don't pay much attention to lottery and whatnot. anyways the jackpot is 300 million. since i don't buy these that often i only allow myself 3 or 4 times a year to fantasize about being the oh-so-lucky winner of the whatever amount jackpot it is. that is a pretty healthy amount i think. so the fantasy usually starts with me figuring out how much i'd give and to who. how much for the fam? how much for my buddies? usually i try to make deals with the people around me in case they win. and then... where would i live? ouuuu.... and what would i do? ouuuuuu even more fun to think about. i try not to let it get out of control, but the only job i had today was to make root beer floats so yeah lots of time to sit around and think about it. i picked my numbers - last time i picked i had the same number as the powerball. that was pretty exciting. the worst is when you don't even have anything close to any of the numbers on it.

last night me and dave played two really good games of scrabble. the first game i whooped ass, the second - he kicked mine. we talked about the fact that the reason the two of us were even there was because we're the only two single people in the staff so we changed the barista board to "happy single awareness day! your baristas are: single!" all in black. we got a kick pretty big kick out of it. dave is hot - he has such a nice smile. i love guys with nice smiles - it gets me everytime. i'm really starting to get into scrabble more lately. i wish you could make more ellaborate words though - i wonder if they have scrabble advanced?

i think i'm going to re-watch sideways. i don't think i gave it a fair chance the first time 'round.

just another cheery day in february !

2006-02-14T15:22:00.000-06:00

i'm getting my ass kicked by camel filters right now.

so yeah i'm pretty much ignoring the fact that its valentines day today. valentines day? valentines day who? don't know, wrong number. lalalalalala. skippity skip!

single people unite at the bar tonite for 1.95 long islands. no couples or halves of couples ALLOWED, bitches.

barista or dj?

2006-02-13T11:17:00.000-06:00

when i first started at the bean i would bring a packet full of cds in all the time and rock anything i wanted from my own collection just because i couldn't believe how much freedom we had to listen to whatever we wanted. i mean i was basing this on things liz played at the shop and it was mostly new-rock, emo stuff that was loud so i figured if she can bring that shit in, i can bring pretty much whatever i want since my stuff is probably a tad mellower, coffeeshopesque anyways. anyways i got tired of bringing my cds all the time so now i just stick to a few cds that i play over and over again. they are paul simon - rhythm of the saints, soul shakedown party (a mix karlie made that she gave me that i burned for heidi), the band - a tribute, john coltrane - blue train, and recently eric clapton - unplugged. somebody took soul shakedown party and the band cds a long time ago so i am sad about not being able to play those. supposidly we're getting all the cds put on one big mix that we can continually play, but i like being able to play a song or songs over and over again. i did that with the band. accadian driftwood i would play like five times before i'd let it go to the next track. i love that jam. i love that cd. i think thats why they took the cds and aren't in a hurry to bring them back because i would play them over and over and over and the whole time i'd be waiting for accadian driftwood to come on and then when it did i would be all "ohhh, i love this jam" and then play it again and again and again. i wonder what the customers thought. i got a few compliments on my music selection during that cd actually - one lady told me she had been listening to the exact cd before she came down there. and soul shakedown party is the ultimate ripper of all soul mix cds ever. that cd has been around. its just so chock-full of quality goods! i can't even tell you who's on it because i never got a tracklist but by memory i would say stevie wonder, al green, the temptations, barry white, curtis mayfield, chaka kahn - just a lot of good shit. i think that me and heidi were the only ones that played that cd but still people totally dug that one, too. once i had it on and angie was all "what hippie music is this?" i couldn't believe she didn't have any love for stevie wonder. i was like "dude, its stevie wonder. you know 'i was made to love her'?" i want those cds back.

i was reading the climbing history for mt. mckinley on the dnp website. it was pretty interesting. in 2004 the oldest male reached the summit at 71. i can't even believe that. i can't believe the youngest was an 11 year old girl. that is insane to think that actual real live people fucking summit that. if you summit it on a clear day i bet you can see half of alaska. the size of that mountain just blows my mind.

"good morning, starshine - the earth says hello!"

2006-02-12T12:38:00.000-06:00

oh hello, day off!

i haven't had a day off in a long time. since last friday i think. that was too long and miserable, i get depressed when i work too much too consistently. it's my soul full of sunshine, i can't control it. so i plan on doing absolutely nothing except finishing family guy season 2. i wonder what my roomies are doing in boston right now? they are gone for one, long, fabulous week and they picked the best week to leave! valentine's stupid lame day week! thank you liz and shay.

i am feeling particularly vibrant this morning despite a long night of drinking last night. two good things about last night include: a super sweet rendition of the stones "i miss you" it was long and good and extra jammy and extra disco and i realized why rob was such a hippies fanatic. and then later on they played "stayin' alive" i love disco. i don't care what anyone says i'll fucking defend it and so will my parents. they're on my side with disco. i don't know all i know is everyone was dance fever 2006 last night, it was a good time.

okay time for stewie!

morning jams switch-up

2006-02-09T11:09:00.000-06:00

i woke up this morning and i was thinking that i wanted to listen to something that wasn't something that had to deal with feelings and emotions and all that waaaah-girly stuff. i have a limited access to music right now that being that i don't have any computer speakers (they broke in alaska) and my cdplayer is at the point where it can't even read burned cds anymore and since a big part of my overall cd collection is mix cds - that's rough. it reads regular cds so i've been listening to a lot of my old, old shit. so i decided on the violent femmes. this cd isn't mine, i'm pretty sure its angela's. actually i think it's a combination of andi and angela's - no wait that was the gufs and seven mary three. i had the gufs for a long time, i wonder what happened to that? i don't know who's femmes cd this is but i'm almost positive its not mine. its good shit. a good choice to the anti-waaaaaah-waaaaah girly mushy stuff that i've been polluting my ears with for - well pretty much since i got back from alaska. my favorite femmes song back in the day was "add it up" the meaning of that song really changes as you grow older and understand more about that sort of thing. i think i used to like it just because of the way it sounded, now i can appreciate it a little better. i don't know how you can like music and not like the femmes. that is just crazy to me. thats why i think some people who are into music take it seriously and then some just act like they take it seriously, but they really don't because if you did then you'd like the femmes or you'd have appreciation for the femmes you know? you don't have to like everything to have an appreciation for what it represents and means - take punk. i am not really that big into punk, but fuck i can appreciate punk for what it represents at that point in time and in that respect i could listen to it for a little bit. one of my favorite femmes show was waukesha county fair 1997. heck yes, what a fucking good show that was. i think it was me, melse, josh, andi, angela (she drove), and maybe someone else i can't remember but i do remember that "fruit you, motherfruiter!" was the slang of the clique at that time. the femmes played in this huge open field right next to the hot balloon launch and just fucking rocked it into the nighttime and i remember us getting pretty close doing our little alterna-dances. my first femmes show was on the fouth of july 1996, but it was at summerfest and we could only stay until one of our parents wanted to come pick us up which was probably around midnight - all i know is we missed a big chunk of the ending, and we stayed the whole time at that waukesha show. i've seen a lot of shows - thats just what kids do in the city, i think. or at least the kids i knew.

okay no more femmes. time for yem. god i love page on yem.

scrabble-icious

2006-02-07T12:31:00.000-06:00

last night at the bean, of course nobody except nat came in for the entire four hours that we were there so we decided to play a round of scrabble. that's what we do when it's super dead. anyways i won, of course - and we were talking shit the whole game so it was pretty sweet at the end when i was all "oh yeah who's the best scrabble player ever? yeah, that's me" apparently i only won because i got the extra 50 points at the end for spelling "in" twice - but doesn't matter how i won, the point is i won and it was sweet victory considering last time we played angie kicked my ass twice. so angie starts spelling "HOW" and i immediately started shouting "that's not how you spell hoe!" and she's like "it's not hoe, it's how!" i seriously thought i had her. angie is so funny. there are only a small handful of people who can seriously crack me up - where i just do more laughing rather than contributing and angie has now been intitiated into that club. other members include melse, brady, and rachel.

muzak attack!

2006-02-06T16:31:00.000-06:00

the coborn's compilation increases with these newest jams:

"come see about me" - supremes
"take it easy" - eagles
"true blue" - madonna
"lay down sally" - eric clapton

these are all taken directly from muzak, and then written down on the backside of a raincheck as they filter through the muffled speakers. and they really are muffled, they need to do something about that.

last foy show on a monday night ever tonite! sad, but unavoidable. deirdre says "what am i supposed to do on monday nights now?"

plans: future and present tense

2006-02-05T12:05:00.000-06:00

while i was writing my post last night, i messaged ryan on aim and asked him about his thoughts on phish. he says he still listens to them occasionally, but you know - not much interest in a reunion. we ended up having a nice little saturday night chat - that's what so nice about the internet, keeping in contact with the peeps via messaging systems - and talked about some of our plans for the present and near-future. ryan's going to grad school in london in october which means three of my buddies from back home will be in europe: karlie, ryan, AND jolene. then i told him my plans, which i've written about in my textfile journal "baby, let me follow you down" (always after dylan songs - at least two of the past three), but never in the public forum - and they include:

now thru early may - suffer three more months of living in central minnesota, the high point of that is i get to experience a little bit of spring, which will be nice considering i'll be time-warped back to the beginning of spring when i spend

may thru early sept. - summer 2006 in alaska, living at parkside and being a barista at the WAC and plus hanging with jen and laura. it's going to be like us being roomies all over again, except in a gigantic national park. horray! i can't wait to get back up there.

early sept. - go home to wisconsin for my dad's wedding in which i am a bridesmaid in. if the wedding wasn't in early sept, i'd probably be staying in alaska until the beginning of october. alas, this is not the case.

sept - spend time getting application materials together and letters of reference from the profs in order to complete my application for the JET program 2007.

mid-sept - october - possibly finish off lake powell's season and get access to rent a houseboat for free, wooo!

late oct. - phish halloween reunion ?? (tentative, highly tentative.)

nov. to april 2007 - winter resort job, whether it be at a ski resort or possibly some sort of carribbean deal. i would love to spend six months in a place that is like summer even when it's not summer because this whole alaska thing is making me miss out on two years of summers. and hopefully in this time confirm my acceptance for JET (because i think i have a good chance of getting into the program)

april - june 2007 - europe. see karlie, ryan, jolene - use gear acquired from alaska to camp in switzerland - see montreux - go to italy to satisfy my grandma and learn a little about my heritage, find out more about myself through travel - you know all that good stuff wrapped up in a self-discovery package.

june 2007- july 2007 - prepare for departure to japan.

july 2007 - at least a year, but possibly two or three - teach english as a second language in japan.

and then considering where i am, who i am, what i've learned, where i've learned, who i've met, how i'm learning - i'll reapply to grad school at the completion of this. i'd really like to do naropa's summer writing program, but i figure it would be put to better use after i'd get back from japan. anyways it was nice to discuss presents and present-futures with ryan. he's a chum.

its cold out. lame.

saturday night cynic

2006-02-04T21:59:00.000-06:00

i can't believe it. my ipod just played three rippers in a row. "the flight tonite" - joni mitchell, "the weight" - phish, "david bowie" - phish. i think tonite me and my ipod are connecting. me, matt, and rob were talking about phish last monday at the bar. i was like "dudessssss i heard there might be a reunion! venues are already boooooked!" and matt's like "no way they wouldn't do that to you, and by you i mean coventry-goer" and rob said "there's more than just phish to listen to" but rob is an old, old fan so that's like me to a semi-newbie dave fan. i was trying to get them pumped, but no-go. i was trying to get brady all pumped about it too, but all he said was "if you buy me a ticket to halloween, i'll go." i guess i am just an optomistic semi-new phish fan still. i might have only been around for the end, but at least i was there for that is my way of figuring it. i've been listening to junta disc 1 on repeat lately. everytime i hear yem it makes me think of an icq conversation between me and ryan - it went something like this i'm sure:

me - i've been listening to phish lately (and by that i meant i downloaded the song "free" from napster)
ryan - YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING TO YOU ENJOY MYSELF!
me - it's too jammy
ryan - YOU ENJOY MYSELF GODDAMNIT! NOW! NOW!
me - i think i'll go listen to my newly downloaded "life is a highway" and relive 7th grade in my head instead
ryan - YOU ENJOY MYSELF! YOU ENJOY MYSELF! AHHH eireoiopairejlsdal;k!

this conversation happened in late 2000/early 2001 - before i moved to madison and started the journey that i now call my fandom for phish. but i did download it, and i did listen to it. but i wasn't ready for it at that point in time. i think ryan would be like "big deal" if phish got back together. that is what i think is funny - ryan and karlie both were pushing me into listening to phish and now they could care less about it. karlie moreso than ryan - i think ryan might actually have some emotion in the matter. anyways i am enjoying yem a lot lately. i wonder if they'll do a reunion or not. that would be kind of shitty for the conventry goers. i mean i hiked five miles through the vermont countryside SANS beer, liqueor, food for that show! five miles! and most of that was uphill. oh yeah and i got my tennis shoes stuck in mud, too. no not stuck - i SANK in the mud with my tennis shoes on. oh yeah and we drove 27 hours straight through! and then finally when we got to the carline, we woke up to mike gordon on the radio saying "uhhhmmm yeah, we're not letting anymore cars in" i almost lost it. i did lose it, actually. i was like "fuck that i'm walking i see the ferris wheel they can't stop me fuck that fuck that i'm going in i have a ticket!"

i'm listening to "will you love me tomorrow?" by carole king. its sweet. carole and james doing a little duet. what a perfect little folky couple they were, huh? james taylor was hot. especially on the sweet baby james album cover. heck yes with those nice blue eyes. speaking of couples and cuteness, valentines day is a mere 10 days away. it doesn't even phase me anymore - it's so lame that i SWEAR i'll never, ever celebrate it. i think its stupid. and i'm pretty sure its not because i am single. no i'm not single, i am MINUS single. if there was a negative in single status - like a checking account can reach a negative status - that would be me right now. regardless of that tragedy, i wouldn't promote or celebrate it anyways. its just an excuse to engage people in materialistic object celebration. "oh! what did you get from your boyfriend (oh i mean husband or fiance since thats what all the girls have now-a-days)?!" "well my (husband/fiance) bought me a dozen roses! isn't he sooooo sweet?" oh yeah how fucking original - a dozen roses. if my husband/fiance bought me a dozen roses you know what i would say "do you even know me at all? apparently not." and then i would proceed to tell him that "i don't celebrate valentine's day. i don't celebrate a day that celebrates the giving of materialistic objects as a sign of affection" its just fucking lame. i hate valentines day. last year i went out and wore all black as a sign of mourning all the lame people in relationships - i realize now that that what a bit much, but my feelings on the subject haven't changed. valentines day is stupid. i wonder if i'll ever feel differently. i hope that i never become the sort of person that does care about fucking valentines day. wow, pleasant aren't i?

even more pleasantries, i was walking home from work today thinking about a few years ago and how i used to be so enthused about every new year because wow, what will i learn this year!? for awhile i was going through some super-enlightenment period where i was learning all sorts of new feelings, emotions, views, prospectives on all sorts of aspects of life, society, love, relationships, friendships, sex, ect., ect. - i don't feel like that anymore. i feel like anything i've learned lately isn't going to help me out - but rather have a reverse effect and end up taking me back a few steps. im not learning anything about anything good thats for sure. well i guess i am learning. i'm learning about what is NOT good. that will definitely provide useful in the future.

thats all i have to write about today. i know - that's all, really? yes really. that's all.

"i feel the sky tumbling down, a tumbling down, a tummmmbling dooowwwwnnn"

2006-02-03T13:12:00.000-06:00

i've never done solo karaoke. i think if i got drunk enough i could probably swing it. i've done it twice otherwise, once when i was 9 and my cousin jamie was 8 in wisconsin dells we did one of those video tapes where you pretend that you're playing an insturment and then they computerize the background so it looks like a music video. me and jamie did "escapade" by janet jackson. she was lead, i was on the drums. thats all we had in the video was her standing up at the mic singing and me in the back playing the pretend drum kit and singing too. we were nervous because we were in this tiny little glass box and just anyone who wanted to drop in on the session could come watch us in action. so my mom and dad were standing on the side of the place sticking their tounges out at us and doing anything they could to get us to laugh and loosen up. there's a part in the middle of the song where i lose it - stop singing and stop playing because i'm laughing so hard at them. its been awhile - but every once in awhile my dad will bring that tape out at a family get together and me and jamie roll our eyes and suffer through it. the other time was with rachel in myrtle beach a few years ago. we did mustang sally and i almost peed my pants on stage because rachel was making me laugh so hard. that was another time where i couldn't keep my shit together. i don't think i could ever do that for real. that has got to be hard. if i was drunk enough to pull off a solo karaoke night i think i'd do "i feel the earth move" by carole king. what a ripper to bring the house down with!

laura and i went shopping last night for some alaska materials, well she went shopping - i accompanied. she bought a sleeping bag, travel speakers, a discman, cdrs, first aid kit, and this knife, fork, spoon set. she's pretty pysched about going. i am pretty pysched about her going. i am pretty pysched about her AND jen going. i think it's going to be a fun summer. i'm going to try and focus this summer being about having a good time with them and less about guy drama. what will happen though is that i'll be thinking that mentality and then laura will meet someone and jen will meet someone and i'll still be all "oh yeah, this summer is about the sisters!" but i'm the only one still on that same level. that shit always happens. it's going to be different for me even this summer just because i'm not doing the same job or living at the same property. i'm excited to go back. it's so nice there. don't you all wish you could see it? yeah you can - come visit me this summer!

so tonite i'm going to the benton to support my roomie in his local cover band. i hate the benton. it brings out the towniest of the townies. it makes me think "why do i even live here?" but its rare that they play so i'll make an exception. i think the last time i was there was for the same reason. if the right people are around, then its a good time. its always like that. dave says "turns out not where, but who you're with that really matters" he is a wise, wise man.

the first of many about bob

2006-02-01T21:56:00.000-06:00

i have a new interpretation of bob dylan ever since i read the chronicles volume 1. i thought about what kind of person he is/was-earlier a LOT before that, but now i feel like whatever i thought about him and the music and the lyrics is just different. i'm glad i know some things about what kind of person he is though. i always believed that he is a writer before he is a musician, but as far as the book says - it is the total opposite way around. i just think that he's such a great writer. i mean its hard to capture something gigantic into the size of a ohhh, a handful of stanzas? i wonder how he did it. what he was thinking? i mean you know what he's thinking, but where was he when he wrote it? what was going on around him when he wrote it? how did he come up with such a good way of putting it? and i mean the book was good, too. the writing in the book - the way he describes.. just fucking good shit. i love good lyrics. i am a lyriclover. ouuu thats a good name. lyriclover. say it 3 times fast. oh yeah, lots of l's.

i've decided to go to the carpet.

"they call my home the land of snow"

2006-01-31T23:41:00.000-06:00

its snowing like a bitch outside right now. the most effective thing about snow is that it can make even the ugliest part of any town beautiful when it first falls. right now outside it looks like a little christmas postcard with "i'm dreaming of a white christmas" stenciled across it and i don't think that i live in the prettiest area by any means so basically that says a lot for snow. i only like snow when it first falls - i especially love walking through snow that nobody has walked through yet. that was almost my entire walk home from the bean tonite. it was pretty exciting because it's like "oh yeah i was the first one to walk through this snow." i'm pretty fortunate that little things like walking through freshly fallen snow still get me excited.

i'm reading fear and loathing in las vegas right now. i'm half done. what an easy read. i was reading it at the bean the other day and this dude came up to me and said "oh wow, you're reading fear and loathing in las vegas? is it as crazy as the movie?" and i said "uh yeah, i guess. i just started it." and then i gave him the leave-me-alone-can't-you-see-i'm-reading? vibe which he didn't pick up on because then he goes "wow, how could they make that movie into a book?" in which i responded "uhhhhhmmmm i think it was a book before it was a movie." seriously? that is what is wrong with people. everyone watches a shitload of movies, but does anyone read any books? what the fuck! how could he NOT know that fear and loathing in las vegas was a book first? am i just being a snob about it? i don't think i have the resources to be a taken-seriously snob, but fuck come on, man! its a book! i like the dedication in the beginning of the book - first dude some bob guy, second goes like this "to bob dylan, for mr. tambourine man" that was great.

i think that's all i've got for today. tomorrow i battle with should i or shouldn't i go out to see foy at the carpet? stay tuned.

feminism reborn: one song lyric at a time

2006-01-30T13:49:00.000-06:00

i see some sexist connotations in the song "its too late to turn back now" by the cornielus bros. well not the music, but the lyrics. here is what they say:

my mama told me, she said
"son, please beware. there's this thing
called love and it's everywhere."
she told me,
"it can break your heart and put
you in misery"
since i met this little woman,
i feel it's happened to me

and i'm tellin' ya ... it's too late to turn back now
i believe, i believe, i believe i'm falling in love

why would a mom be warning her son against another woman? you'd think the mom would have some sympathy in the subject considering she is a woman. she's probably a passive woman. i'm not a big fan of the passive woman. what she should be doing is warning her daughters about all the super evil dudes out there who are only interested in exploiting the woman's natural instict to care. who cares about the son? i guess it goes both ways, unfortunately from my experience i've only seen it one way.

"starlight, starbright, first star i see tonight "

2006-01-29T22:14:00.000-06:00

first book finished in 2006:

high fidelity - nick hornby

it was good. except i'm not sure about british money so i never really knew how much anything cost in the book and believe it or not he uses references to how much shit costs a lot. rob, the main character - the dude that cusack played in the movie - was kind of an asshole, straight up. sorry but he finds out his exgirlfriend isn't sleeping with the new guy that she's seeing and what does he do? goes out to the bar and sleeps with the new recording artist musician girl. i don't get that shit. it sucks because even though he does that you can't help but root for him throughout the book anyways. maybe because he's so misguided. i don't know but i am tired of reading books and having nobody to talk about them with to! i'm trying to organize a book club. the sort of club that reads some good, interesting shit and then meets at the bistro's happy hour for half-off bottles of riesling and then discuss what we thought about chapters 3-5. if i could get people interested in that i would be so pysched. but i probably won't. its the same thing when i tried to get "writer's circle" going and the only people that showed up were me, jill, on rare occassion mike, and once - sweet baby james ryan. i miss my english major friends.

so yeah i love the internet. here is why - it allows me to update my ipod. i'm going to have that sucker completely full-o-songs by alaska time. heck yes, bitches. i added some rippers tonite including a few tracks for my newest playlist called "coborns jams" inspired by all the 70's grocery store jams that coborn's muzak station played throughout my more favorite years of college. so far i have "crazy love" - poco, "it's too late to turn back now" - cornelius bros., and of course, "operator" by jim croce. no gorcery store jams compilation would be complete without "operator".

i have a lot to write about. i went to utah and arizona to go visit the peeps. it was kind of weird. im not sure if it was weird because we were all in functioning society, rather in a desolate area outside a gigantic national park or because i felt like i had to worry about rachel's good time too. i knew that was going to happen, too. it's no use though because i'm always trying to mix people with people, friends with friends because i just always want everyone to hang out all the time. sometimes peeps don't like peeps, i guess. the roadtrip from phoenix to salt lake city was fucking. long. and we drove on the way there throughout the night mostly so i couldn't see shit. that sucked. and the dude that brady brought with, however useful he turned out to be - was kind of not a cool dude at all. first of all he was a music nazi. my more favorite memories of alaska include me, brady (possibly river or whoever else would be around), ganj, music, and discussion about music. so mostly one thing i was really looking forward to was mixing all of those together again - reunited! (minus river because he lives on the opposite side of the country) and i was hoping that over the course of the roadtrip we could all do that, but no - that wasn't how it happened. i was bummed. the thing is - you would have problems with anybody on a 12 hour roadtrip anywhere. jen, heidi, and i had some pretty tough times on our 27 hour trek to coventry. fuck, that was a loooooooooong drive. anyways highlights of the southwest trip included: citrus aplenty in tempe neighborhoods, gelataneous groove (sp) show - the only night we all got collectively wasted, orem's mom making breakfast for us in orem, skiing at alta, and zion national park on the way back from salt lake. utah is so beautiful. wow. i am amazed. it is inhabited by mormons. its unavoidable, i watched the mormon sunday morning tv at marc's. orem was explaining to us that intrest is frowned upon as far as the religion goes - like intrest on loans. wtf?! robin made me and rachel these really sweet yarn bracelets and marc gave us nalgenes. overall, it was fucking great to see all the people i had such good times with in alaska. everyone gave me shit for wanting to go back up. fuck that, i can't wait to go back up.

last night was battle of the bands at the bean. me, tyler, and angie worked. basically it was a night jam-packed with all the local high-schoolers. yeah it really put my age into prospective especially when the second band played. they played oasis "wonderwall". when that song came out, i was a teenager. they don't even know about when that song came out because they were like oh, 5 when it came out! i am old. its so funny to me that all these kids hang out at the coffeeshop. thats what we did in high school. once when we were all at the comet on the east side of downtown milwaukee some hipster said super loud "i thought this place was immune to high school kids" we were genuinely hurt. so anytime we drove past that place, jolene would scream out the window "THE COMET HAS COCKROACHES!!!!!!" and then i find out last year or something that karlie tried applying for a job there. i'm pretty sure karlie came with us on a few marshmallowing trips past the comet. karlie is moving to germany! ahhhh! we're doing weedkend 30 in amsterdam.

oh man, that "crazy love" song is the jam. its so cheesy its good. i love those simplistic 70's lovesongs i can't help myself!