A New Year for 25 Things

Hello!

Like my dearest friends, I’m starting off the new year with a new list of personal goals and tasks to accomplish.  Some are small, some just for fun, and some (I hope) will be very challenging.  Since I have almost an entire year until my next birthday, I reserve the right to change it as I go.  Several items on my previous (and incomplete) list that I didn’t get to will transfer over to my new one, though I did accomplish a few: I am now a regular cyclist, friends and I ate at “My Sweet Lord Cafe,” I tried Spam (SICK it was SO GROSS), and I volunteered at NARAL from August to November.  Yay!

Here is the beginning of my new list, 25 things (in no particular order) I would like to do before I’m 25:

1. Find a new-to-me director and watch 3 of her/his films.
2. Make a batch of vegan cookies AND create my own cookie recipe.
3. Do yoga twice a week and go to the gym twice a week. (this one, I think, will be tough)
4. Organize and create art projects with my travel photos.
5. Go to one (or more!) city hall meetings.
6. Perform karaoke at a bar. DONE!
7. Learn how to play my ukulele (thanks, Grandma!)
8. Write a letter or email to someone I rarely see once a month.
9. Find a new place to volunteer
10. Apply to graduate school (oh, won’t that be a cinch!)
11. Read two of Edward Said’s texts
12. Actualize at least five of Yoko Ono’s instructions from Grapefruit
13. Take my bike for a total tune-up
14. Visit two new-to-me art galleries
15. Organize the Frank Family Christmas Ornament Collection
16. Read a science fiction book that my dad recommends (just not f’ing “Starship Troopers”!  I’m sorry, but I couldn’t get through it!)
17. Ride my bike from Seattle to Edmonds (necessitates summer weather, new tires, and lots of practice!  and maybe a friend…?)

I am happy with this list so far!  I need time to think about the last eight items, but I have some local travel/more reading/more art themes in mind.  Item #6 was completed last friday here with beer and friends; the gals and I sang an old favorite, a classic of the nineties, if you will.  That video reminds me of Beetlegeuse.  Anyway, it took FOREVER for the karaoke host to call our names (it was almost 1am!  we were tired.)  Next time, we’ve decided, we’ll rent a karaoke box so we won’t have to share the stage with strangers. 

So for now, my lovelies, I’ll leave you with this:

MAP PIECE: Draw a map to get lost.

Cute/Disgusting 2010!

It is high time we reinstated our traditional game of cute/disgusting.  I’ll start off the new year right…by jumping back in time about 100 years:

For a while, I’ve been interested in this artist, Aubrey Beardsley, who was a sickly aesthete who ran around with Oscar Wilde.  I wouldn’t describe any of his work as “cute”, really, more so gross or disturbing.  anyway, here is the one i like the most, an illustration for Wilde’s Salome:

To get back on track…this one I find disgusting, this one gross but silly.

This one is disturbing and I like it.

All right, so if you need a little refreshing pick-me-up, this is so cute that I squealed and cried and laughed all at once.  I WANT IT!  I WANT TO PET IT AND LOVE IT!

happy new year!  you’re welcome!

New and more new

New.  It sounds like mew, which makes me think of a wee kitten pawing at my ankles for affection or treats, which is a happy image and one i wish to take with me as a make my way to bed.  It’s been a loooong day and I’m tired so shush.

This is the kitten I imagined!! Mew mew!

Okay, well it has been two weeks since the car accident and a lot has improved!  The back pain has subsided though the muscles twitch and pull throughout the day which does hurt, and usually wake up very stiff.  BUT physical therapy is fun and is kind of like having a trainer but one who is just focused on healing a part of you slowly and carefully, not making you incessantly jog or lunge around a track.  I lay on a foam cylinder and do arm exercises with weights and man, does the tingling pain feel good!  But really, i could just go to sleep during the portion where my (physical) therapist just prods and pushes along my spine (my other therapist sticks with the head and the heart).

Second big improvement is that I have a new car!  Yippeeee.  It is quite the upgrade from my good ol’ 98–we stuck with the brand of car that basically saved my life–and we got a great deal on it, too.  And it’s silver, which seems to look nicer for longer than black paint.  Anyway, I’ll post a picture soon.

Coming home after five months of travel has been tough for many many reasons.  I was so ready to come home, but I wanted to somehow be transported to my life in Seattle that was familiar, predicatble, comfortable…my life before I left.  On the surface, it seems like I didn’t learn the value of change, uncertainty, and loneliness and understanding how you personally react, process, and accept each of those things.  But i know that isn’t so–I don’t think having a different, somehow more “prepared” state of mind could have helped me deal with the continuing changes and new events and new paths I’ve been exploring while at home.  Maybe I just felt too much in a rut before leaving and didn’t realize how much I still have to discover about my life at home.

A new job, new place to live, new friends, new car (and new bodily concerns), loss of some community…all the new things I’m experiencing and the flooding emotions that come with them pile right on top of my efforts at processing my lonely travel.  I’ve hardly talked about it because I’m not exactly sure how…I’d love to share pictures and anecdotes and feel I’ve done that so little that the travel is starting to feel unreal.  I don’t want it to go away!  I just would like a clue or two as to what it means and how it’s affecting my new life now.

If only I had the money for a new tattoo…

The Destruction

Here you can see how ridiculously violent the destruction was!  My poor little VW…

Goodbye Jetta!

Eat my shorts, Escalade!

So a Jetta and an Escalade stoll into an intersection…

I wish the rest of the story were a funny joke!  But alas, my car got totaled yesterday thanks to an Escalade.  My poor, cute, reliable ol’ Jetta that I’ve had since I was 17 went out in terrifying glory yesterday at an intersection in Ballard.  All this after a really fun Block Party weekend!

I was planning on going straight through an intersection and had a green light.  Green means go.  The escalade wanted to turn left in front of me but for him, green means YIELD.  Yield he didn’t and there was absolutely nothing I could do–i couldn’t even hit the brakes because by the time I realized what was happening, it was already happening.  He smashed right into the front left corner of my car and believe me, I know it could have been a whole lot worse; had he hit my door, I might not be able to be writing about this right now, or walk for that matter!

I think I had just closed my eyes as it happened and was just dumbstruck when I opened them.  I grabbed my glasses (which had flown off, not broken into my face as I thought they would when an airbag goes off), looked up through the smashed windshield, and realized I should get out of the car once I heard the alarm sound it was making.  I didn’t feel scared or understand how serious it was until I stepped out and saw my mutilated car steaming and bleeding and completely smushed.  Thank you, car, for taking the brunt of the impact for me!

This hurts a lot.

So though I am sad about my car, confused, in pain, and inconvenienced and in dire need of a bus pass now, I am so thankful that I could get up and walk away from this accident.  A really nice man saw the accident and helped me out a lot, letting me use his phone and sit in his car and trying to make me feel better, he emphasized that “they make many VWs but only one of you.”  Aww, thanks man.  The only other redeeming point in this awful experience is that not only was this guy driving a goddam escalade and probably felt all proud of himself for being able to finance a $60,000 car in this economy, but he drove it off the lot earlier that day!  Then immediately hits a small girl in small car!  Nice work, buddy–you could have killed someone, AKA me.

Surprisingly, I’m not that angry, I suppose because there is little point in it.  He is at fault and I am relatively okay–I’ll take bruised and shaken over the alternatives.

Prom in your 20s…

Prom in your twenties is a bit different than prom in your teens: you can drink, the music is 1,000 times better (my dancing is still the same), and the prom dresses are far, far less slutty.

No no, some really sad–i mean really lucky?–18-year-old boy did not ask me to a high school prom; my friend Andy—the emcee–and I went to Crocodile “Sweet Dreams” Prom and danced the night away!  Though I didn’t wear real formal wear, mainly because the dresses I have at the ready have a no-bra policy, which is conducive neither to my happiness or to dancing.  Anyway, Andy is friends with the bands, which included Tennis Pro, M. Bison, and We Wrote the Book on Connectors.  I don’t understand why school dances weren’t this fun.

24-24-24 things to go-o-o!

Hmm, that title was supposed to be to the tune of “I Want to be Sedated.”

So thanks to my inspirational and creative bffes, I too have started making my birthday list, my “24 things to do before i turn 24″ list.

holy shit, i’m going to be 24 some day!  in less than six months!  how did that happen???

Such a fun and open-ended list helps subdue any panic or ill-will towards turning another year older and for me, another year further into the murky “tweendom” realm in which i feel motivated to do adult-type activities (like, begin building a career path/paying off my tiny credit card/graduate college) yet feel no more like an adult than i did when i hit eighteen.   But aside from that little happy result, this list is also a fantastic way to try new things and do things you’ve always meant to do.  So tally-ho!

Well, i’m sort of tallying-ho.  Or sallying-forth.  Since I have a good six months before my next birthday, i want to put a lot of effort into coming up with some of these tasks AND some of them can take a good amount of time.  So far I have 17 solid agenda items:

1. Get a bicycle; one with brakes i trust
2. Go to “My Sweet Lord Cafe” (Kendra and I TRIED to do this one together, but they are only open in the evenings)
3. Find a new-to-me director and watch 3 of her/his films
4. Make a batch of vegan cookies AND create my own cookie recipe
5. Do yoga nearly everyday (everyone could use more Chaz in their lives)
6. Organize travel photos and complete art project with them (they’re organized already, yay!)
7. Go to one (or more!) city hall meetings
8. Design friendship tattoo
9. Drive the speed limit for an entire day (this might be the most difficult item on the list thus far!)
10. Try spam!
11. Perform karaoke at a bar (I will probably sing an Elton song, just warning you now)
12. Attend a beer tasting/learn more about local beers (entails drinking lots of beer.  anyone care to join me?)
13. Train trip to Portland!
14. Visit a “small town” I’ve never been to.
15. Volunteer hard core (happily, this one is coming to fruition already!)
16. Invest in one adult piece of clothing (no, you sickos; not some sort of strap-on or leather vest–a BLAZER or perfectly-fitting jeans or something else that real adults really wear)
17. Learn how to correctly throw a punch.

Well, I’d love your thoughts and suggestions!  Hooray!

Helloooo!

So I decided to move on to a new blog, though my old one on blogger will still be up…because meh–why not? Anyway, this one is still about wandering and wondering as I plod along, but I’m excited to take it in a new direction, one that isn’t specifically dominated by travel anecdotes. So if you care to join me, that’s awesome!