when i was downtown today going to the bank and stuff for work, i saw two reporter ladies walking down the street with a camera and stuff. i thought the blonde one was kate ellington from 10/11 who did a spot about the mad maxines (video to come later) that i was in, and so i smiled at her but it wasn't her. it was some other blonde lady and her and her partner asked to interview me for the news. i said yes, and they told me i was to give my opinion about steve pederson getting dismissed from doing something with unl football and tom osborne getting that job. and i'm all confused because i don't know who this guy is or what happened to him or what his job was, but they want me to say something really bad, and keep on simplifying the situation so i could make a comment. finally i'm like, "i'm sorry, i don't know who scott peterson is, i don't really know about football." and they laugh and say, "ok, you could just give your opinion on TOM OSBORNE then." but i don't have an opinion on tom osborne, and i tell them they should do a story about roller derby. i apologize to them, but say i would give a really bad interview, and say goodbye.
when i got back to work, i told everyone the story, wishing i would have just pulled something out of the air to say about football and the husker legacy and lessons and all sorts of things, when nolan told me the dude's name is steve pederson and not scott peterson. ha. and way back when, i didn't know who scott peterson is either.

favorite saying of our derby announcer...

"that's gonna hurt tomorrow!"

lizzy's bruise.
you don't know the half of it buddy.

warning: this is a serious quote, taken verbatim from a blog i looked at just now. i repeat, this is a serious quote with no hint of sarcasm.

"We shared our tattoo ideas, and his was the Chinese character for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few people I can talk openly with about love. We’re such hopeless romantics."

and it's a dude writing it.

the last few days have been real crappy.
and then, the least of all worries, the girl at the coffee shop has no idea what the word "steeping" means in regards to tea. huh?
conrad loaned me a book last night, rain of gold, before we went to that funny little amigos on 27th and capital parkway. i've never been there before, there's only outside seating and a GIANT billboard directly above you that you never noticed before and now is larger than life. we ate cheeseburgers and fries, and vowed to never eat cheeseburgers and fries again. i read my book and went to bed, thinking "tomorrow will be better, a new day and all that." nope.

check out my awesome new handlebars, conrad set me up over the weekend with a little bit o'this and o'that, making it ride like a whole different bike!

in case you didn't know, i spend about 80% of my day posing and lounging on my bike.

another thank you to mr. miguel, my personal work is up too now. click here!

this is from a shoot i did with a friend's little girl a few days ago. she is THE cutest thing, with white-blonde hair that flips up on the sides in a huge swoop. there are actual start-to-cry-cuz-she's-so-cute photos of her, but this ain't no anne geddes.

big news in tauraland, finally have my website up! one bizillion thanks go to miguel for his tireless work to get it up, all that pointing and clicking and cutting and pasting made my head spin. if you for some reason go to taurahorn.com, please keep in mind that it's just WEDDING photographs, and old ones at that. don't judge me.

quote

from the blog teen drama, where they were describing people at the roller rink:

For every half-dozen i-bankers with their ties tucked into their button downs, there's a dude in a mesh top making love to a giant lollipop.

today at work i was proofing a grant for someone, and i came across these letters:
"f"
"i"
"v"
"e"
lined up, and i said the word in my mind and the number came to me, and i almost moved on to the next word, but something didn't seem right. i looked back at the letters, and they didn't make sense, and i just kept staring at the letters put together and wondered what they meant. then i started telling myself that it's "5", but it just didn't look like it. and i had a hard time convincing myself that those letters equal "5". i tried to forget about it, and just kept on reading.

it reminds me of when i was little and would pick a word like "couch" and say it over and over until it was just a sound. then i'd keep saying it and try to remember what it meant, and when it came back to me, i'd marvel at how a strange sound could also be an object. how our representation of something could become so separated from not only it's meaning, but unattached to the object.

after my grandpa willard had a stroke, we visited him at the hospital in scottsbluff. he'd lay in bed and be half asleep and sometimes say something random. i was 15 or 16, looking for meaning in everything and would create tragically beautiful stories around his comments, springing from the well of his secret past where handwritten letters were like gold, bread was baked not bought, and things were classy and romantic - when grandpa was most likely talking about lunch time. "to be in his mind," i thought, "with all those secrets." the images in my mind were as disconnected from his life as the the word "shoe" and a shoe had become in his.

cass n' gina

got married!
cass wanted a robot cake with a flashing light on top.

ellie and i went to highschool with cass. he was a senior when we were sophmores, and so all those boys in his class we were friends with, called us "LGs" - for "little girls".


conrad and i matched, and it wasn't an accident. it is the result of meticulous shopping and color comparison. i hope you can tell that my belt and his tie are the exact same color of red, no other red would do. this is sort of my dream, boys, take note...

and here they go, off to munich!

congrats!

derby down the river...

a month ago or so, the ncdg all went up to valentine to camp and go tubing down the niobrara. it was so awesome, even despite the drama.

i wish i was there now, floating on down with good people, drinking beers and making fun of all the boys on the side of the river. they waited in droves, these teenage to young 20something boys, waiting for girls to float on by in their bikinis. and they'd whoop and holler and try to get them to pull over and party with them. the little floatilla i was in, me, my sister molly, silvia bullet and shiv, floated on by one group of dudes who must not of been having much luck, and about 4 or 5 of them were standing in the middle of the river. so when we get close, they start cheering and telling us how pretty we are and how much they want to know us, and we just laughed and said hi and no we don't want to get to know them, bye. and one guy got crazy and did a backflip onto our cooler in the middle of our floatilla,(a floatilla is a group of tubes attached together.) and he's kicking around and spilling beer and all his buddies are cheering him on and we push him off. then, all his dudes are like, "yeah! take that girls! haaaa!" and high fiving like someone made a good point, and we look and see that it's not only the 4 or so dudes in the water, there's a dozen more up on the banks standing in a row looking down at us. it's too funny not to say anything, so we say, "i'm not surprized it's just you dudes up there!" "yeah, where's all the girls? you're just a bunch of dudes hanging out together!" and then they get this confused look on their faces and start to look around them like they were gonna see a bunch of chicks with them. but there were no chicks, just 20 dudes drinking beer in their underwear together, having a great time. and they seemed so disappointed that they went from cool dudes partying on the niobrara to a slippery wet homo-fest in the blink of an eye, that we couldn't help but keep it going. "gonna have a little sword fight tonight?" "have fun with your circle jerk, boys!" "bye! sleep tight in your little tents!" and the boys started booing us as we floated away, with one who pulled his shorts down and shook his paperwhite ass at us, totally proving us wrong. i had the worrrrrst sun burn ever, but i'd do it again.





more photos can be seen here

this is from dwight nebraska, they like america and god.

went back to fortune palace with big c and he let me order anything i wanted-ladies, take note, even pop! and once again we saw this amazing poster which brought back memories. last time we were here, a little 7 or 8 year old black kid with an all white family had some valuable advice:
"if you ever go to china and see one of those guys walking around," he points to a poster on the wall "DON'T follow him!"
as we remembered this the second time, reliving details like the fat all white family, big c (he wants me to call him that) and i both remembered this, at the same time:

"DON'T follow him."

on a lighter note...
my parents are road tripping the summer away, and keep extending their vacation. in their old age they'll get a van and turn into hippies again and talk about how beautiful insects are. i can barely wait! you look at your parents and see how your life could be, those two people you're made from, and it can be both scary and inspiring. and you hope you have the same kind of positive qualities that they have, and hope to learn from the pitfalls that they've encountered. and it's awesome to see your parents grow and change and still manage to have fun, and i just kind of breathe a sigh of relief and know that life isn't a death sentence. profound! nolan has this really bad idea of growing old, he says old people are "smiling shadows of death" or something like that. and i'm all like, "nuh uh nolan, that's not going to be me when i get old! i'm going to have long white hair that i keep up in a bun, and i'll wear elegant tunics. i'll have a garden and lots of cats and art openings and either a husband or boyfriend at my side! i'll be all old and wise and drink tea and have my grandkids over all the time. it'll be great." nolan's going to write my eulogy, and he's going to call me a community treasure. i don't know if i'll have money or not, but i will have an old rv and travel around and take photos and write alot. maybe i'll start to paint and swim laps every morning. i'll live out in the country in an underground house, or a haybale house, and have a cockatiel that all the cats want to eat. what can get better than that? nada. the other day i was in iron brush visiting with tyson, and he got a wild hair and decided to draw a really mean picture of me in the future. i had a skull head and no teeth, with wild unkempt hair. he was saying that i'll be addicted to pills and smell like cat pee, and kept referring to the future taura as a "gummer". i didn't like that prediction at all, but could imagine growing up with a different set of circumstances in my life, i could end up there. so, uh, thanks mom and dad for raising me to not be an old drug addled gummer. who likes cats.
speaking of cats, guess who likes me now? bendi. yes, the fat cat my sister molly calls "the most beautiful cat in the whole wide world" and "gorgeous". the cat who my dad rescued when he found her as a stray kitten in the front yard with puncture wounds all over her body, who hisses at me when i walk by. i should say, USED to hiss at me when i walked by, cuz now i'm her best friend. do you know why? because bendi has figured out that i am god, the center of the universe, the giver of life, the bringer of...KITTY FOOOOOOOOD. it's a miraculous transformation, you can only imagine it if you didn't know what an awful cat she was previously. heck, i think i'll go pet her right now.

today is sunday.
tasha and i went to the funeral for mary and adam's baby. i know mary through tasha when they were best friends in highschool and played in g.i. jill together, she's a strong girl. i know they'll get through it together, and my heart goes out to them during this time.
not very many non-travel team skaters are showing up anymore to practice, which sucks cuz the mad maxines (the travel team) have room for alternates and some of the best girls who could be up for the spots, aren't shownig up. and the mad maxines want to skate as a team and work on their strategy against the "left overs", the girls in the league who did not make the travel team. REAL fun. lots of pile-ups and injuries, girls are dropping out like flies. not enough people for a good rotation, so you just play and play and play and only get to sit out once before you're back in. i'm all wobbly on my skates, i'm blaming it on the 2 month break we took where i didn't practice at all, so i'm an easy target for all the girls to take out. tasha hurt her knee today, she's the shortest one in the league right now. i'm not very tall either, and not especially bulky or muscular, when i skate low, my eye level is below some girls' ass level. that's tough. tasha and i were talking about how it would be to skate against girls who were at our ass level, how much nicer it would be to tower over skaters instead of seeing a brick wall of ass in front of you the whole time. but then you see girls who are kick ass jammers and blockers who are about as big as a pencil. so your size only means so much. ahhh... tonight i was jamming and had got through the pack and one of the girls came up behind me and grabbed my hips and threw me down. total major foul. she went to the penalty box, which sucks for her team, but then i'm on the ground and have to fight my way back through the pack again, making the longest two minutes of my life even longer. you'll never know how long 120 seconds are until you have to jam.
someone sent me a cd yesterday, with only one song on it. i've listened to it about 86 times. "i was told that you have a hole in your heart, but it's no longer shaped like me". when i drove home from today's awesome practice listening to that song, i just about lost it.
oh, i don't know, everything's fine. i don't know why i'm being all depressing. but when you get knocked down over and over and your sister hurts her knee and then you start thinking about a little baby who died, you can't help but want to cry.

there were periods of time in sf where i was really lonely.
like get on the bus and ride until night-time because there's no one. no one looking for you, no one calling for you, no one wondering where you are. even though i was going to school and had friends everywhere, it was like this secret i had to keep that i was so alone. i'd get on the first bus that came, and then ride it until it came back, or i could get on another bus, or it took me to a place that i liked. my favorite spot was sutro baths, at the end of geary st. i'd walk around for hours taking photos and eating m&m's or drinking sparks (...depended on what kind of day it was.) i could pretend i had a purpose for being there besides that i had no purpose. but it was so beautiful, and would take your breath away, and then pretending it wasn't pathetic. one day i decided to walk from sutro baths to the zoo, that was a long walk. i started walking, and it doesn't look very far on the map, but then you realize there's no place to stop to get a pop, and you keep walking. and then you're tired but there's no bus stops and no nothing, and it starts to get desperate and by the time you get to the zoo you're about ready to collapse. but you still have to find the trolley, and then wait, and then get off at the bus stop, and then wait, get on the bus, and then walk home and not get raped. by the time you get home you feel like you've been through alot, and get to sleep easier, and not sit up cyber stalking someone or worrying about the future.
it's strange to think about that feeling, pushing yourself and hoping to get lost. it's like you always wonder if you've come out the other side of the tunnel and don't want to feel like that anymore. you kind of hope so, that you don't want to keep on feeling like that for the rest of your life. but at the same time it's so sad and sweet that you can't imagine leaving. hoping to get lost so then you have a new chance at finding yourself.





is there really any question as to why i won the bad poetry contest? i didn't think so.

my parents are away on vacation-i'm not really sure where, they just drove off and said take care of the dog and cat please. maybe colorado. so i'm watching the dog and cat and making sure they have food and water, to help me do this job, my mom left the fridge full of food. do you like pickled beets? me too! they grew in the garden and my mom fixed them up good, there's more food from her garden than i can even start to eat. i have a huge bowl of cucumber salad that i made from cukes in the garden, it's a perfect summer food. cucumbers, tons of salt, tomatos, onions, dill, pepper and lots of sour cream. deeeelicious. they have the good liquor too, though i haven't drank any...yet. things have been all topsy turvy in my mind these last few weeks, stressed out and freaking out about everything. going nuts. i'm treating this like a retreat, this housesitting. my mom and dads house is nice and clean and full of food and everything just right. the bike path is right by here, so i have a nice little bike ride to work in the morning. i can sleep in a nice big bed and shower in a nice big shower, feed the cat who hates me while i'm going pee, put the tv on timer and fall asleep. mom has a sweet set up to scan negatives, tonight i'm just going to just sit here, eat pickled beets, listen to old time radio, and scan negatives until i'm tired. taking some time out for number one, you know? take a chill pill and sort things out.

this is a photo from last winter, one of the negatives i've scanned thus far. i was kind of broke when i got them developed, plus i had alot to process, so i sent them to a dirt cheap place in kansas. and aww geez, i think there was about 3oz of chemicals in their processor, their processor that has octagonal rollers and rocks. it never pays in the end to be thrifty on things like this.

yellow!

oh sweet jesus, thank you for letting my printer print yellow once again.
i have an epson 2200, old timey as far as printers go, that i use to print out my photos. it's good quality, it's mine, it works. well, most of the time. so last night i about had a freak out when the yellow nozzle was clogged and no matter what i did, it would not unclog. and i have 4 important things to be printing out right now, and then my printer poops out. today was steeped in eau d'bad attitude, mine. i was about to throw in the towel and lay in bed and mope and feel sorry for myself, but i kept messing with the printer and with some homestyle trickery, i fixed it! it now prints out a big beautiful bar of yellow whenever i want it to. i don't know what to say.
this is me as a simpson avatar, not very interesting. i tried to make my gold flats i'm into right now, but it was hard. i just had to make do with the choices i had. but it's still cool. you know those zwinky characters? i tried to do it once, but my computer was too slow. i'm almost scared to do it cuz what if i make a really cool character, and then i'm like, awww, why don't i really do things like that? it's like when the guidance counselor asks you what you'd do if you had a billion dollars and didn't have to work, and then that's what you should do for a job. even though my simpson's avatar has ho-hum hair, i am quite happy with mine right now. i got a perm about a month ago, and have been loving it. i love to make it big big big. i'd been talking about getting a perm again for the last year, a'la 4th through 9th grade taura, and then i finally did it. so that's why as a simpson i have curly hair, if you haven't seen me in a month.

ooo, and i'm yellow too!

yes, break time is over, and i'm back on skates once again. feels sooooo good! a bunch of people showed up to practice tonight, it was nice to see the girls skating and sweaty and not all cute like when i see them out and about at night. not that we're not cute when we practice, but you know. i like skating. we have some good new recruits, hope they stay with us. stay with us girls!
this is from when gang green went up to sioux falls and played against the sioux falls roller dollz.

happy 2nd birthday no coast!

ahhh, break time is over, now we're going to get our asses kicked as practice for the travel team has started up again. sat night was our b-day party at duffy's, lizzy made this awesome cake specially for the event. people brought good food and we got a bunch of drink tickets, and then we danced to the sweet tunes of the zebra team. i took a bite out of my rose and- oh the roses! we had this thing where there was a rose for every person including refs and when you drew a rose you had to say something nice about that person. i DID NOT want to do this, as i was afraid that i'd get someone and then blank on what they're good at. so later that night after a few drink tickets, i took a bite out of my rose, jackie peer pressured me to, and i hoped no one saw or else they'd think i can be convinced to put anything into my mouth. but it was beautiful, a perfect cross section of a rose in the shape of a bite. i tried to take a photo of it, but it didn't look as cool as it really was, and then it disappeared. i must do this again and get a good photo. i could get into stock photography with this kind of stuff. a rose with a bite out of it in a wine bottle, a rose with a bite out of it backlit, a rose with a bite out of it on glass, concrete, next to a regular rose. so poetic. but i like that kind of stuff, i'm a sensitive person and in my old age am able to appreciate things like picnics, inspirational sayings (only if i make them up tho), rainbows and baby animals. but, being sensitive, i feel all sorts of other things more than other people (i think...), things like dirty looks, unreturned phone calls, thoughtless words, someone's raging anger problems. i make a concious effort to turn those vibes away. and i do a pretty good job too. and the party was fun, i ate alot, i danced, and someone was proposed to and we all cried. cuz we're such sensitive derby girls.
my friend conrad has something about me on his blog, cars-r-coffins, it's all about bikes and riding your bike, taking a bike ride, looking at other people's bikes, thinking about your different bikes, fixing up a bike, cool bikes, awesome bikes, expensive bikes, bikes with character, the new bike, the old bike, when your bike breaks, bike parts, the things you see when you ride your bike, the things you do with your friends when you ride your bike, who he saw when he rides his bike, the roads you ride your bike on, what your bike looks like in different spots you hang out... i could go on, but he'll probably want to kill me for making a painfully accurate list. he likes his bikes, you know?