secret home activities

since i've been back home in nebraska, i've been doing all the secret activities you only do at your parents house.

THINGS TO DO AT HOME:
1)go to the mall with your mom and let her get you stuff because you're so raggedy
2)watch tv shows you've never seen before
3)wear flip flops outside
4)eat lots of bacon
5)read a 1998 copy of cigar afficionado magazine in the bathroom for 40 minutes
6)give yourself a pedicure
7)mow grandma's lawn
8)look in your sister tasha's room and see all the shit she has of yours
9)use a humidifier
10)take walks with the dog
11)tye-dye your black sabbath shirt that your mom got you at the mall
12)listen to your dad this time

home home

i miss my sister sooo much. i had to come back home, like in home home, like i'm sitting in my mom's bed watching the dog whisperer, eating snacks and getting fat, while tasha's in granada learning to salsa and avoiding chicharrones. so why does she have to call and say how i stole her guide book and how expensive everything is and how hot it is? hey, yeah i got walgreens, but you have an adventure.

so i made this collage of her, click it and see how cute she is:

what do you want to be when you grow up?

how about a beautiful french family that travels around the world together?



tasha is in the trenches, as in tutoring in the schools now. every day there are more stories about the kids than i can remember, but here´s a summary of a story that she read to a class the other day.

so there´s a french guy who comes to nicaragua and falls in love with this beautiful woman. they get married, and have a baby girl. he gets sick and goes to managua to go to the doctor, and then dies. the nica woman doesn´t know what happened to him, and ends up dying of a broken heart, leaving the baby in care of some guy. since the french guy was really rich, the baby girl got all the money. the guy who was taking care of her was in charge of the money, but guess what, he was a bad man. he wanted the money so bad that when she was 5 or so, he started telling her all these terrible stories about the house they lived in, ghost stories, to try to scare her to death. and it worked, she ended up dying of fright. she was buried on top of a hill by the villagers. the guy gets all the money and goes around spending it, and then the town starts getting suspicious about her death, and when they realize that he killed her, they lynch him and kill him. everyone loved the little girl and her grave turned into a shrine and becomes famous. not long later, a crocodile gets in the lake near the village, and everyone´s really scared of it. so this guy from the village goes to the girl´s grave and makes a pledge to kill the crocodile if she´ll help him, and he´ll give her the tail. he ends up getting the crocodile and is holding it´s head on a stake, and then the head looks at him and says, ¨i love the virgen mary¨nd the guy drops the head because he knows it was the dead girls spirit and the head swims away. so after that, everyone loved the girl´s grave even more.
the end.

tasha said the kids loved the story.

granada, nicaragua

hello everyone, as you may all know, i´m in granada, sweating my balls off. it´s great. you take a shower twice a day, you´re sticky, you´re tired all day, your clothes are contantly damp from sweat, and it´s barely bareable at night. there´s no ac anywhere, you don´t speak spanish well enough to do much, and 75% of the guys are sleazy. battle loosing your voice, having a cough, cracked heels, food poisening manifesting itself as the ´rhea or vomiting, and i´m sure there´s other stuff i just can´t remember. i´m a little cranky because of the heat, and now i find out that the cost to change my ticket home is the cost of a new ticket. just a little cranky. i want to go back to san pedro! oh well. bla bla bla. gonna go sweat somewhere else.

pepito, from panama

san pedro, i miss you sooooooooo much

hanging out on the ´buena vista´rock at lago de atitlan, our dayly ritual of swimming and sunning.


santa semana


night-time at FREEDOM! the bar to be at.


victims of freedom, with the ever present cuba libre


'tu hablas catitlan, no?'
'cathithlan?'


tasha thinking about whether or not she wants another drink of the calemocho--cheap wine and coca cola (a barcelonian 'specialty')


ALL NIGHT RAVE PARTY!!


after the all night rave party!

thumb up yo

semana santa weekend!

word, things are heating up for the semana santa weekend here in san pedro, the nightly drum circles are getting more frenzied, and hotels are filling up like mad and leaving sad tourists wandering about with nowhere to stay. we´re making new people here, and seeing old friends from a few countries back and generally having a good time. even hanging out with hippies!!! this is what i get for owning tie-dye shirts i guess. my spanish is slowly improving, though it only had one way to go. i have a new word, gracioso. yo creo el pelo de los hippies esta similar a que un buho vomitan.

more livingston.

lago atitlan, guatemala

tasha and i are in san pedro la laguna, on the shores of lago atitlan in guatemala. it's a beautiful little town with a nice climate and views of cloud forests and a volcano, and filled with mayans and hippies, though the hippies are slowly accumulating their own collection of authentic mayan gear. TRIBAL. there are so many hippies in this town, that one can be charmed on every corner by a talented band of street musicians. bongos, didgeridoos, clarninets and flutes can be heard when the sun starts to set. we saw one group of musicians sitting respectfully out of range of a store with a giant bongo painted on the wall, a giant red X through it. they must hate fine music there. we're staying with a family who rents out a room in their house by the lake and some stinky bony sorry looking ponies. yesterday the wife, nacha, dressed us up in traditional mayan clothes in hopes that we'd buy the skirts and stuff, or maybe it is a conspirancy to turn us into hippies like the rest of the town. on that note, i lost my favorite tie-dye t-shirt a few towns ago! wah! i only had two. i'll probably spot one of these folks here walking around with it on, with a thick coat of hippy juice on it, rendering it uninhabitable for all but hippies and gutter punks.
ciao!

who wants a broke camera today? 1,2,3...go!

livingston i presume...

tegucigalpa, honduras

hello ya´ll,

last night i had a dream that 1)i went on a date with george w. bush and 2)i said "ya´ll go fuck yourselfs" for some reason.

we´re in tegucigalpa honduras now, it´s a crowded polluted dangerous city, but i like it. there´s bars on all the storefronts and armed guards at every pharmacy, but it´s nice. i hear they have a bookstore here too! tasha and i downloaded a bunch of books on tape to our ipods before we left, including john grisham´s "the testament"-a book i´m sure we sold at the book market (my last job) and a book i would never want to read in a million years, but i ended up listening to it and loving it. i was hooked. it was 11 hours long, and the guy who read it was good. it was all just great until it ended, like, 2 hours before it should have. what i mean is that it was cut off right in the middle of the last trial! i need to know waht happened to rachel lane and nate and josh and the family! it´s terrible. we need to go to the bookstore and find the book and finish it. it´s pathetic. yesterday i just fished bill clinton´s "my life", which i enjoyed. it sounds like i´m in a cultural wasteland or something.

nicaragua was ok, now that it´s behind us. the name makes me think of nicotine, smoke and tobacco. we went from the south to the north, and i don´t think saw one leaf. it looked how australia looks in my mind, hot and dry, trees with no leaves in fields with dead brown grass and bony animals staggering around. volcanos too. everything was a misadventure, the kind of travel diary entries i get sick of. "today we walked 5 miles in the dirt with 100 degree sun and then the bus never came and a dog died in front of me." when i read people´s travel logs, most of it is taken up with stories about how bad the bus ride was. yes, i know it was bad. but you paid 37cents for it and you wanted to go to a country where you could get by on $17 a day. of course it´s going to be uncomfortable. you´re not going to get a unicorn paddling you down a river on a rose covered gondola for 37cents.

but, my tattoos are a hit. here, tattoos will stop traffic, and help you make friends with 18 year olds. it scares me how easily the security guards are distracted by boobs and tattoos while they´re holding a rifle.

wah! my digital camera went wonky on me not long ago, it still takes photos but they all have lines through them and are all pixely. i knew it was going to conk out on me on this trip! so no more pics on the road...

last week while we were in leon nicaragua, tasha and i found out that a friend back home, matt lux, died. it came as a shock, and i don´t think i´ve fully absorbed the news, as it seems so far removed from my reality right now. our hearts go out to the people he left behind, josh, jasmin, zorano, and his family, we´re really disheartened to hear about it and hope everyone who loved him is getting the support they need right now.

so please, hug your people tonight and tell them you love them.
taura

ps-i just want to say hi to some of the great people we´ve met so far, sula, matt the climber and valk! a big thanks to david in san jose who put us up for a night! also, ha ha thomas you doubter, our paths did cross again!

los fotos...

taura and tasha in boquete!! beautiful boquete...

tombs in boquete, all covered in bathroom tile

beautiful boquete

just walking along and there´s a rainbow

looking a the horse next door through the window at night.

our giant friend eduardo and tasha

everywhere leads to boquete... what is carlos trying to figure out?

the bones in bocas del toro!!!

tasha at carnival, sunburnt again.

panama

hello everyone, just thought i´d put out the word that tasha and i are doing well! we´re in boquete panama, it´s really pretty with rainbows and ponies and nice mountain views everywhere you look. there is susposed to be great hiking all around here, but so far we´ve suceeded in doing our laundry, grocery shopping, and befriending the panamanian teenager who stays at our hostel. he´s hecka tall and spends alot of time jumping around and inspecting all folded up pieces of paper he finds in hopes that some other stoner lost their stash. it´s nice here though, tasha is thinking about teaching here at a language center called "habla ya", so we might come back to this place after we travel around a bit more. we came here from bocas de toro, some islands at the northwest tip of panama, where we arrived just in the middle of their carnival. it was worth the whole trip into panama, my favorite part was the baby doll contest. the baby doll contest takes place on a stage set up like a children´s tv show, with a line of girls aged 5-9years old doing the tootsie roll, the butterfly, and what could be the rodeo. i took some video, because i don´t think you´ll understand unless you see it. walking home that night, i knew there was no point for me to ever step out on the dance floor again, knowing that there are children who can dance worlds better than i. the winner of the baby doll contest gets a juice box. the other highlights of bocas?
wizard beach and the hike to it
mondo taitu - the hostel we stayed at was awesome
the cemetary - there was a bunch of tombs sans bodies, like they had been taken somewhere else. one wasn´t broken into, it just had a fist sized chunk out of the top corner, big enough for me to stick my digital camera into. when we looked at the picture, there was a freaking body there, all bones. when we zoomed in, we could see the skull! there was this red shape too, which turned out to be a giant cockroach crawling on the bones. it was soooo scary.
the people we met, monique, thomas, henry, orney, david. glad we met you all!!
tomorrow morning tasha and i will leave boquete for san jose, where we´ll figure out where we´re going next.
ciao!

heeeey!
long time no talkie! get ready for some fun in the sun as i fly off to central america for a few months. these last 6 weeks have been effed up, no time to write anything, nothing good to write. but it's all gonna change soon! my sister tasha and i will be traveling around for a bit, i'll be working on my espanol. be sure to check back every so often and see what's up...

dreamweaver is for babies

whoever said dreamweaver was easy can kiss my ass. my room-mate ted said dreamweaver is for babies who can't write code, and i said hooooray! cuz i'm a baby! i don't like learning new computer programs. i know photoshop, final cut pro, and word, but trying to learn new stuff is a pain in the ass. there's always some very important thing that you don't know that would make whatever you're trying to do a piece of cake, but you don't know what it could be so you struggle and get frustrated and say things like "fuck indesign". so now i have all this time on my hands and have decided that i should take responsibility for my future and make a website and business cards and stuff. so i fired up dreamweaver ($5 in bangkok) and dusted off the "dreamweaver in 21 easy steps" book i have, and off i went. man, i just want to take a nap. i can't even make a proper template. so i called my mom, who teaches a class on this stuff, but she was watching "USA dancer contest" and eating dinner with the fam. she said "don't worry about templates, i have to go now because we're watching "USA dancer contest" and eating dinner". so i chucked the book and decided that i'd get through it with pure moxy, i'm clever enough to figure it out myself. just like i figured out the awesome painter program i have! ha. now i'm back with the book and wanting to take a nap. with all this free time on my hands, i should be able to take a nap. i'll call my mom later.

technology world

i work with virgil once a week, he's the best boss ever. "do you want to go see the new harry potter movie when we're finished up here?" waht more could an employee ask. don't worry, i'm not giving anything away about the movie, but this was a really nice scene.


i actually made this thing!!! i don't know what it does, but it's something for a motion capture suit.


the display is broken on taka's phone, and so he's lost all his numbers, and can't tell who's calling. solution? a tiny screwdriver. "baby, do you know how to fix your phone?" he thinks that just because he's japanese he knows how to fix electronics. he told me that he took apart his powerbook once.


and here's how much good he did...
now he has an analog phone just like he wanted all along.


can you see how fricking awesome this shirt is?


and since we're on the subject of birds, well they just do the darndest things!!
looooook! it's standing on leaves! cuz it's feet are cold!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Last week my mommy turned 55, I got canned from one of my jobs, my room underwent a transformation (it's clean now), and I got to keep kissing on my special guy. Whirlwind!! I just feel like putting up pictures and talking about them. we have that new couple smell. like the face only a mother could love, it's the odor which makes our friends gag and say "gross" and makes us say, "what, it's not cool to make out in compusa?" it's awesome.


the day before i got fired/laid off, me and a few of my roomies went to ikea and got a bunch of shit.
here's matt and cheese. he only eats cheese and candy.


i ate a hot dog because betty made them sound sooo good, but then when i got to the last bite i couldn't finish it. you can almost see the gristle bits.


after we got home, we had an ikea party and built our cheap ass shit together in the gallery area.
here's betty working hard on her table. and i swear, she bitched the whole time about how complicated it was. whatev.


besides pressed wood, ikea has another distinciton: , they'll make up some weirdo part to substitute old-world workmanship. like a screw that does 3 things and has a hole and a spring and a little man inside who holds it all together. after that part, they'll give you 30 wooden pegs. here's parts from my new bedside table:


"MATT! I CAN'T DO IT!"


"thank you mr matt"

no news is good news...

sort of.
just when i decide to abandon the dating thing and just be a passive hater, treat street becomes the most romantic place and i'm having my first kiss with the hot guitarist from the just-for-fun-band i'm in. i better get real good at drums quick, cuz dude knows every single hot lick ever. he has longer hair than me! but he just barely won, remember when i had that gnarly hair that went down to my butt crack? look at him rocking out with the hair:

ted and i volunteered for a hardware store run last weekend, which included 12 48"flourescent bulbs. i had a 50lb fart fan and some mouse traps in my bag, but it was teddy who turned heads as we rode our bikes home from discount builders supply. ted looks like an extreme sports dude in this picture.it was KILLER.

a little late, but here is what i saw from the doorway at work of the protest a few weeks ago where some teenagers were arrested and hurt by police for laying in the street and stuff. this line of police lasted for 10 minutes. i always get a little scared of police.

daters not haters limbo, and a mouse trap

This weekend was a dating bust, instead of a dating blitz. This shit is hard work! Almost as big a pain in the ass as real life dating! I’m trying to not be a hater. But it’s hard. Part of being a non-hater is keeping a positive attitude. And part of being a dater is going on dates. So I’m in daters not haters limbo.
Here is a pic from nature:

And because I don’t have an amazing dating story to tell you from over the weekend, I will thrill you with an amazing story from my past. Well, maybe it’s amazing. It’s usually a hit, though tonight at our house meeting when I told it while we were discussing how many “have a heart” mouse traps we should get (instead of the old fashioned neck breakers), my roomies were less than impressed. You be the judge.
So this is set in a a second hand trailer on top of a hill in the middle of the country, that my family stayed in on weekends. Bonfires and hiking and such. It was awesome. Since the land was in the middle of farmland, there were mice. During the winter, those little field mice thought our trailer was a great place to live and they moved on in. They were stoked, they found chips, oreos, pasta, everything a country mouse dreams of. By the time we discovered our mouse problem and put all that kind of stuff out of their gnawing abilities, they were established and weren’t going anywhere. My dad wanted to put out traps, but since we didn’t go out there very often in the winter, the old fashioned snappers would just be bad and putrid if it caught a mouse. A trip to the hardware store sparked the engineer in my dad, and he devised a special trap for us. First, he started with this kind of trap, pictured here:

it works like this… since mice like to run along the edges of the wall where it’s safe and crumbs fall, this box goes on the floor against the wall where the mouse is sure to encounter it. It has to go around the box, and on it’s way around the box, the mouse sees a tunnel to the other side…a short cut! And of course the mouse wants to take the short cut, so it goes through the little mouse sized tunnel. In the middle of the tunnel is a trigger that mice aren’t intelligent enough to know not to set off, which is how the trap gets the mice. When they set off this trigger, the mouse is flipped into this other compartment of the box, and the trap resets itself. And this is usually where the story ends, the mouse dies in the compartment or someone kills it. But again, we didn’t go out to the trailer enough to take care of a pile of dead mice which would surely stink up the trailer, and alert any other mice not to crawl through the tunnel. So another component was built into the trap to take care of this problem. In the top of the compartment where the mice get flipped into, was another mouse sized hole. Leading to a tube. Of course the mouse doesn’t want to be in a little aluminum cage, so it thinks, “well lookie here! An escape route!” and decides to climb up the tube. Up and up and up it goes, until it starts to curve down, and next thing the mouse knows, is that the tube has turned into a slide, and it slides down into a gallon jar with a hole in the top. This is the part where people start to not like me for telling this story, and I’ll tell you the truth, recounting the mouse’s journey through the trap has made me a little sad. But on we go. To the gruesome end. The gallon jar is filled with anti-freeze and the mouse dies. The mouse drowns in antifreeze and is preserved a little bloaty until we take it out, there’s no smell and do you know what? The mouse problem was taken care of that winter. Sometimes we’d find 6 mice in the jar, sometimes 1. At first I was mad at my dad for being a Hitler for mice, but he asked me if it was better to make them starve to death, or give them a quick death. After some deep thoughts and remembering how my gerbil Nibbles bit my nose all the time, I said “drown”.