This Weekend

Sweet jesus, what a ride.
What an awesome, fantastic ride. I wish all weekends were that much fun.

This week is gonna be mighty bleak by comparison. Except Wednesday. Wednesday will be awesome ( I hope).

PS: International Night is this Wednesday at the PAC at 7:30 (i believe) you should come watch me embarrass myself.

My Doppleganger

I found him. yeah, him, I know that sounds weird. but check out the hair on this dude:


plus, I love the drummer's enthusiasm.

Mountain to Bay

So I went to the mountain today to work Raven's Edge (our club race) and it was a good day. It was windy and rainy and fairly typical Baker weather, but the company was exceedingly excellent. I really enjoy my days on the mountain with the crew I roll with. Today was a lot of work, but that's to be expected. Lots of hauling stuff around and fixing and salting and measuring and so on. But the two people that I spend most of my time with on the mountain are easily some of the funniest and most fun people I've met. 

So given this lovely day I've had, I come back to Bellingham and attempt to eat dinner with some friends. I would like to tell them about my day and the wild shenanigans we get up to. However, I'm finding this more and more difficult. Not only do these friends not know those friends, but they don't seem to want to hear what I've been up to. Which is a little off-putting when I've had such a good day so far. Its not that they don't care, its just that they have no frame of reference to compare it to. And they are most likely very done hearing about the mountain given that I've been talking about it all winter. So sorry for spouting about it. I would really love for these two friend groups to overlap, but I don't really think that's very possible. If they did though, I think it would be magical (if you are reading this and get the joke, the magic might involve glitter glands--Poof!).

Last night I went to a friend's house to have a bit of fun. It was just supposed to be a chillax time, but as the evening progressed, it became a party. Interestingly enough, the two friend groups overlapped here. and i think  it worked okay. One of the friends is a party-kinda-guy and the other is definitely not, but I think it worked out given the smaller nature of said party. Very curious.

All in all, I'm just really glad I have the friends I do :)

Day of Silence 2010, and mah peeps

So today was Day of Silence, though you'd never know it. No banner, no giant table in Red Square filled with buttons, very few participants, terrible publicity. Last year this was huge. What happened?!

I talked to one of my best guys friends since elementary school that I've stayed in touch with from the valley days. It was fantastic. I usually talk to him once every couple months, and we were way overdue. It was lovely to share what's been happening in our lives. Just goes to show you that guys and girls can just be friends. Just friends. and really good ones at that. In high school we caused quite the stir, as he was one of the punk-rocker kids and I generally wore lots and lots of color. So us walking down the hall or riding the bus laughing our faces off was a little off-putting for some. My mother got calls from other concerned mothers about "the bad decisions" I was making. Bitch please, this is my best friend. My mother defended me to the other carnivorous mothers. Finally we decided it was just better to introduce our selves as brother and sister, and leave the new person guessing at who was adopted (we look nothing alike).

ah, trips down memory lane....

Now I'm off to go celebrate some new friends as well as old.
Cheers all, I love you!

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT 2010

Take Back the Night, for those who don't know, is a women-identified rally and march for women's rights, choice, and the right to feel safe in the streets of our community. It's an extremely powerful event and one that happens all across the world.
Last TBtN I did it by myself. I didn't know anyone and just went with the horde of yelling, cheering people.
This year was a whole different ball of wax. I marched with my best friend, and one of my best guy friends held a candle in the candle-light vigil that is held for men while the women are marching their parade route. I recognized
friends in the march, and recognized several of the speakers at the rally.  We even had police escort.

As we went through downtown Bellingham, people came out of bars, restaurant, and houses and cheered us on.

I love living in such a supportive community.

Fuck patriarchy. Fuck sexism, racism, anti-gay. You can't take our night away.

and now, I have no voice, but that's okay, because Day of Silence is tomorrow :)

Soliciting opinions.

So I need to make a decision about what to do about my hair. Its either getting chopped or its growing out. I can't decide. Help?  I need it to be really super low-maintenance, possibly not including brushing. Just wash and shake-like-a-dog. Currently its a shaggy shoulder-length thing.

This is what it was like long:

 and these are the options for whacking it off:

Option A: Not much shorter than it is right now, but edgy maybe?

Option B: I already part it on the side, so just adding aymmetric lines?

Option C: Pretty much the same asymmetric appeal as the one above it...

Option D: Unspiked. But I like the idea that I could if I wanted to.

Thoughts?

An Open Letter

Dear Person I'd Like To Date,

Look at me like that again with those big brown eyes of yours and I just might jump you.

Love b

smoking and badassery

Sometimes I think I'd like to take up smoking —  not cigarettes though. Those are gross. Sometimes when I walk across campus I get stuck behind someone smoking something that smells like cinnamon. That's what I want. Either that or some fatty cigar the belches blue smoke that I can carelessly blow over my shoulder like the wannabee-hippie/hipster I am. I know that hippie and hipster are two different things. But whatever. Actually I know I want the cinnamon  thing, whatever it is. Cinnamon can't be bad for me, right?

I've added a new phrase to the vocabulary. It has badassery written all over it.

 "Fuck that noise" 

It's a general disapproving of the current situation/discussion that needs an emphatic ending. You could be verbose, or you can cut to the quick with your surfer-dude, indie-kid vernacular and impose your all-encompassing knowledge on the weak-minded public. Your choice, grasshopper.

Discoveries

 I can not play my drum for a week and a half (left it home), pick it up, and not totally embarrass myself. Just a little, but that's normal.

• I need to stop going in search of approval of my music. I practice, I play, and this is what results. I'm working on it, but I need to not go searching for people to give credence to my music. It's my creation, and I get to do it however I want. I do however, enjoy constructive criticism. I don't enjoy being left out of the musical community though. It seems that it is the nature of the beast, that all drum players are sectioned off from the rest of the musical community as those "noise-making" ne'er-do-wells. Oh well, perhaps we are, but don't hold it against us. At the same time, I'd sort of like someone to be like "oh hey that's cool, what's that instrument called?

I need to eat more sustainably, but its so hard without a kitchen. I want to make food!

I enjoy dancing, but only when there's truth to it. If I can feel the piece of music, I can dance it. If I can feel the energy of the other dancers, I can dance it. I can't dance without passion.

 Life = Passion = Dance. 

I kind of wish I was a little more hippy/ indie than I am currently. I need a hippie-mother to take me under her wing and show me the ropes. 

Bathroom Walls

What is it about anonymity that makes people be mean?
and short-tempered?
and hateful?
Are these bathroom stalls indicative of human nature's meaner
molten iron core?
The stall today spoke of both
conservativism and liberalism
artists and political pundits
bashing gay marriage and the Religious Right in the same
square foot of space.
Add a skillfully crafted kiwi bird - who has time like that in a bathroom stall?-
and you've got it.
You've got it all.
All Love
All Hate
in a square foot of space
on a cold white wall
in a bathroom stall.
Discussing cheating on boyfriends
with married men and
lying.
Lying about where they've been and what they've done
Bragging to no one
on a cold white wall
in a bathroom stall.
What lack of self-respect and respect for others
spawns hate like this?
What overflowing love for others causes some to write
"smile, you are beautiful" in all caps
to drown out the
"bitch"
and the "fuck you"?
Is it adrenaline that rears it head
and gets hearts racing to write something anonymous
and flaming?
Is it a rush for you?
To insult things others hold in the silent holiness of the
space between heartbeats?
This cold white wall
of a bathroom stall
reveals the cold hearts and sterile minds
of the creator.
It speaks more of artist than
it does of the audience
who is there for a split second and
moves on.
On with their life, not clinging to hate like a
deadly life-line.
On with their day to go derive functions
and split atoms and
spit knowledge in the face
of ignorance
and love in the face of that toothed-beast
snarling creature of hate that
is found
on cold white walls
in bathroom stalls.