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?

mil horas

this is the song i've been listening to, and now i'll never hear it the same after watching this video. amazing.
warning: it will stick with you.

look ellie!

tina! mini dog! itty bitty! god she's so cute i couldn't decide which photo to put up first.




she is like a little stuffed animal, a perverted little stuffed animal who goes straight to my laundry basket for the underpants. maybe she's a lesbipuppy.

good luck molly and jordan!

this morning my sister molly and her friend jordan left to europa for 5 weeks, i'm soooo jealous. they're going to go to greece too, take that and pump up the jealousy. for a long time, i dreamed about that crappy little island i was on, dreamed about my cave and the mountain from an bird's perspective...

last night i think i heard the best quote ever from this little boy sitting near us in the chinese restaurant.
"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!"
tasha has me hooked on that dumb song, "mil horas". she got hooked on it when she was down in uruguay, and so last night it's 3:30am and i'm dancing like crazy in front of the mirror figuring out the best moves for certain parts.
this is a pic i took a long time ago at golden gate fields, the horse track in east bay.

can't wait to start scanning these.

o'riggidys

at o'rourkes one night last month.

roses

remember me talking about the big bump in my finger where i got poked by a rose thorn? how it had gotten all big and swollen really quick and i thought it was bursitis(??) and i wanted pam to do surgery on it? well, it's getting better. one night i got a glass full of ice and a fresh scalpel blade out (real ones), and iced my finger and then put the blade in to see if anything would come out of the bump. i know, it's gross, but i had to do it. i went down into the lump, but nothing but blood came out. i put a band aid on it, and hoped it would go away or something. the next day at work i was messing with it, and ok, this may be gross, but i was messing with it and a bunch of blood came out, and then part of a rose thorn came out of the hole!! wow, that was pretty good. so now it's getting better. what i'm guessing is a fibrous mass is getting smaller, and it's not painful anymore. i would like to make this into an analogy for something in my life right now, but it's difficult without saying too much about the sitch, or turning the rose thorn story into something different.
tonight i saw "la vie en rose" with a friend, it was great. i recommend it.
how can i be such a lazy bastard about things like my website, and on the other hand an inpatient spazoid when it comes to more sublte and sensitive matters? lord. messing with that finger, slicing it up just to see what's inside. please stop me before i screw something up.

yay!!!

i just got about 20 rolls of 220 film back with prints, it's so exciting. now i have the delightful job of going through the negs, then scanning and working with the images. it just never stops. photos photos photos. i'll put up some photos of my old friends from sf, some landscapes from nebraska, and night photos that i've been working on. this is from menlo park, where my friend naomi is going to grad school.

ncdg at the races!!!

the no coast derby girls sponsored a race out at the track not long ago, it ruled. check out more pics here!

happy monday

ouch. this morning hurts.
but last weekend rocked!
it's a trade off.
air guitar contest!! at the chopper rally at the fairgrounds over the weekend. no coast derby girls did some promo there, so a bunch of girls went.
i got second place, and (drum roll) won guitar hero 2 and $28 from scratcher tickets.



and this was my competition: tough!!



this is me congratulating the first and third place winners, trying to be a good sport.

we were there to do a dunk booth, here's april being nice to people. i was not.


last night we had a derby-q for go go yesterday, so i started celebrating early. then we all went to 80's night where josh was djing, and he refused to play big butts because it was 90's. there, i got realllllly drunk and am lucky enough to have bits of the night preserved. gems like giving some dude the ultimatum "if you don't get on the dance floor, you can never hit on me again." (huh?) and talking to the miller girls from the chopper rally about the air guitar contest and hugging them, and doing a dance move OFF the stage that ended badly and now the left leg is paying for it. and i think i bought a pack of KOOLS on the ride home, i'm not sure though. ugh. why?

awww

shizzam, pam got drunk!
her mom and dad left a mudslide on the table, and little pammy got up on the table, put her nose in the glass, and drank until she was all wobbly. the three of us (adam, lizzy and i) were elsewheres when this occurred, and lizzy was feeling terrible in her new role as a bad mom. but i must say, it was pretty funny to watch the pam be stumblable, though she looked like shit. we tried to make her drink water, but baby will be hung over. i know how you feel pam.
last week at my grandma edna's, i was doing something in the garden for her, and jammed a rose thorn into my finger. it was all swollen and nar nar for a bit, but now it's just turned into a hard ball at the joint. what could it be? bursitis was my first very uncorrect guess, i better not get any more curious about it or else i'll let pam take my scalpel to it. just to see what's inside and say a dog did surgery on me. time to go to bed i guess.
ps-this is not a photo of us trying to sober pammy up, this is bath-time.

tonight's the night.

i know it, i just totally know it. after thinking about it my whole camping trip, it's gonna happen tonight. i'm going to put my computer to sleep, stop looking at dax flame videos, maybe turn on some soft music and lay in bed and do it. i'm going to finish that book if i have to stay up all night, the name of the rose. and monitor whatever i just put in the oven, garlic. good night.

back

to civilization, wireless, etc... last night i had a dream where i was talking to a bunch of people and i said, "and i haven't checked my myspace in NINE days!" i've been camping.
people were mad at my mom and i for not having our phones on, but there really wasn't any service where we were. so i didn't check my myspace, my email, or my voicmail for 11 days, and i'm not looking forward to it. but the trip was great, we took tons of photos that will keep me busy for a long time. now i have the post vacay blues. now i can worry about mail merge at work again.

adam and lizzy had a special visitor today, a vacuum cleaner salesman! guess how much that thing costs? almost three thousand dollars! and when they said they weren't going to get one, on ANY of payment plans he suggested, he had to call his boss. and he's talking with his boss on his cell phone going, "i know, i know, i guess i'll ask them! so you think $2650 is too much to pay for your HEALTH?" and "wouldn't you like to get rid of all the FILTH in your house?". dude would not leave. then adam's poker buddies started to come over, and adam and lizzy are like, "well thank you for the demonstration, but we have guests coming over now, so uh, sorry." and he goes, "no, no, that's fine, it's your house." and i almost expected him to say, "FULL OF FILTH." i can't imagine a more depressing job, maybe pulling silk out of a silk worm like all those orphaned children, or having to do that poop gland thing that dog groomers of little dogs have to do. ugh, those two jobs are nastily similar.
adam, after i took some glamour shots of him, now he's thinking about buying a $3000 vacuum. laughing.

taura taura, how does your garden grow?
my bean plants popping up.

my little pepper plants that i started from seed, with some unenthusiastic basil plants next to them. grow dangit.

protection for the plants from the animals. i miss yuri. bark yuri bark!

the purple plant i brought with me from sf, it had 3 little blossoms. it's doing great, just like me.

the peonies, which got hit by the frost and never bloomed.


my dad in the studio space that i'm getting downtown. it's the back corner one with the big windows facing north and east, a little out of the way, but it will do just fine. i can meet clients there, shoot, work on my stuff, chill, etc, it's gonna be AWESOME when things get rolling. can't wait.

my mom and dad had a garage sale last saturday, on friday night i sorted and priced things with my mom. by the end of the garage sale the next afternoon we were drinking beer, playing records, and pretending to know how to ballroom dance in the rain.

i'm going to be aunt taura!

in 2010. by some friends. they've marked it on their cell phone calendar to beep when may 31 2009 comes up. that's when they figure they'll have enough money to try to make a baby. i should be out of their basement by then, thank god they never read this blog. i should put something really embarrassing up about them to test out if they read it or not. i know my parents read it, and the fella that i like maybe reads it, and sometimes my grandma in scottsbluff reads it, but otherwise, it's all me.