i can see it in your crystal dancing in like a storm

my cousin serena's 10 day visit came to an end this morning and i think we really packed in a lot of stuff for 10 days. the following will be some picture highlights with small descriptions. you dig?



we took at tour of the albany capitol building, one of only 9 capitol buildings in teh us that does not have a dome. the picture above is of the famed 'million dollar staircase' which cost....a million dollars. at the time (1850 something) that was really a lot of money.



the faces are of governors and also local people and are all carved by hand. it was such an impressive tour full of so many facts and it was free! can't beat that. i never even knew of this incredibly impressive building in my backyard!



remember the truck i wanted? well its gone. someone bought it. now i want this. its even more money! $9,000 dollars! basically someone needs to buy this for me. i know one of you wants to. i went to see that movie julie & julia last night and now i magically think i have hundreds of secret readers of my blog. go with it.



my blue crew and i went to the altamont fair last thursday. despite being really way more expensive than you would think something whos main demographic is people who can smoke without using their hands would be, it was so so fun and we even shelled out the 6 dollars for 5 tickets to ride one ride and loved it. i happily spent my $5 dollars on funnel cake and watched a video of a calf being born: the miracle of birth!

















obviously the best part is when the entire midway sparkles in the night. we were all filled with some kind of child's glee as soon as the sun set and the rides started shooting fiery sparkle dust into the black sky. we rode the orbiter and it was the best $6 thirty seconds of my life. we cherried our sundae night with stewarts ice cream. cotton candy and fireworks. i almost got chocolate espresso trifecta. next time!

friday i made my first drive into new york. triumph! i saw some apartments that i cant afford and teased my poor heart. now i listlessly search craigslist sublets knowing my poor sweet furniture won't follow me. knowing i'll have to walk in some hallway. knowing it will never feel like mine. such is life. it all works out in the end, no? i belive this. i do believe this. i must believe this but really, i do believe this.



saturday we woke up bright and early (crack of dawn, seriously folkz) team up with kiki and hawk our wears to the greater fort greene region. we made $1,000 dollars! really, i would love to do that more often. it was fun! i loved seeing the direct faces of the people who will wear things that i hand picked at thrift stores that dot the whole of the nation. someone finally bought the purple plaid pantsuit onesie! it looked so adorable on her!




saturday night we decided to bolt from the city while we had the light on our side and head to hillsdale to rob's purple themed birthday bash. we also had the plan to find some waterfalls the next day and do some swimming. the party was better than we could have ever expected. all of the food and drinks were purple or purple inspired. there was even homemade fresh beet pasta! it was really incredible!

since we arrived in the dark we couldn't see anything about the property and had to have a tour of the food tables by flashlight. when i asked rob about nearby waterfalls to swim in the next day, he sort of looked at me funny and pointed to the right and said "there's a waterfall right there"



we did a night time swim, so i knew it was refreshing, but i could have never fully imagined how incredibly beautiful this place was. we slept in a tent in the yard and woke up at 8am baking in the purple sunshine and decided right away that it was time for a swim.



little by little the stragglers woke up and jumped in one by one. did i mention there was ledges for jumping in and a rope swing?



did i mention the water was crystal clear and awoke you from your innermost core?




paradise!


we drove the 40 minutes back up here and had a lovely sunday dinner at staats.
last night we went to see julie and julia and then had a small feast afterwards at new world bistro bar, the only "nice" restaurant in albany that i actually like. it was delicious! we had strawberry basil bruschetta with chevre and a balsamic reduction. yum!

now i am going to go back to craigslist and nursing these allergies/potential actual sickness. i hope this entry will tide you all (my plentiful and overflowing readers) until i find the time/do anything fun enough to do this again.

much love from this hot humid heart of august!

i wanna live where its always this way

gosh i wish i could find the energy somewhere inside me to write a proper post. do you know i've slacked THREE times on bowl crawl posts? i am ashamed! so ashamed!

i spent a super excellent and sexy baby weekend with 5 other ladies across the river at the staats summer party. we laughed, we cried, we danced all night! we met santa (he drives a limo) and his hippie elf michael who made our night complete. if i could make you feel the extreme joy we all poured out that night i would use any amount of words possible to do this, but i really think, unfortunately, you just had to be there, walk dancing on a dock over the hudson river to disco tune after disco tune.

after this things get messy. after this its down to business. after this my tiredness sets in. after this i go to bed.

perky pictures:






















more sorta soon! xoxo!

The world "wild" applies to the words "you" and "me"

THE ULTIMATE ERASER

in spite of all the damage

petit rant:

hey hi hello all you nurses, nurses assistants, etc out there. i want to clue you in to something: some people are actually like REALLY afraid of shots. some people cry when they even think about shots. some people need to curl in the fetal position to escape fainting when anyone talks about having blood drawn or maybe even if they SEE a red cross blood donation poster. okay. you understand? that is part one. part two: when you find out about part one, it does not, repeat, DOES NOT, help when you say "oh but we just use a tiny butterfly needle, not one of those elephant needles." oh no. please what the fuck is a fucking butterfly needle and why did you put that word into my poor poor needle tormented mind. my palms are sweating just typing this. once at a consultation to have my wisdom teeth removed (my dad talked me into this situation, i would have been happy never knowing what is to follow) and after i started crying about being under anesthesia the nurse or whatever she was says "oh but we dont use a needle, its just a catheter that goes straight into your vein and gives you three kinds of medicine" WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY AREEEEEE YOUUUUUUUUUU TALKINNNNNNNG TTTTTO MEEEEEEEEEEEEE. my friend sarah, just this past month, during a conversation about having blood drawn kept trying to put awful tidbits into my mind. I TRIED TO STOP HER! but nooooooooooooo i had to hear "if they can't find a vein in your arm, have them use your hand"


this is too much. i cannot finish this. my hands are wet and numb. the end. please world recognize and respect my fear and SHUT THE HELL UP. my brain can't take anymore evil imagery.












okay totally necessary to erase the evil. replace the evil. adios evil!

hang on to your hat

one of the main reasons i went to minneapolis was to attend the jack hanson memorial retrospective at intermedia arts. it was incredibly moving to see all of jack's work in the gallery setting and there were so many people there to show their support and see some incredible art. it alone was worth the drive.









there was a lot of beaching and even some mud in my minneapolis time. the mud was so excellent and i took more videos of walking in it, which you can find on my flickr. i now boast an excellent base tan, and if the weather ever starts actually acting like summer i will be supremely brown in no time.

















denise and i spent a neverending saturday together which involved but was not limited to: missing 3 busses, downtown minneapolis, talking to a stripper with a prison telephone system, getting lost on a 1 mile island, bonfire, friends who jumped off the bridge into the mississippi, vanilla vodka, bike riding in the sunshine, laundromats, and falling asleep in our pancakes. wow. it was intense! we went to bed at 9:30am! its been a very long time since that has happened and will probably be a very long time until it happens again.

i left minneapolis on monday afternoon and took a long but beautiful drive through northern wisconsin on mostly local highways.





crossed the michigan border into the UPPER PENINSULA and also entered the eastern time zone. it was no matter though because it still stayed light until past 10pm. i wish i could still be up there (get it?)





stayed at the hiawatha motel in escanaba where i slept in another king size bed and woke up early to buy some hand knit slippers that were being sold in the office (they were $3 each! i should have got more!) took a leisurely walk on the tip of the escanaba point and then had a big breakfast at the swedish pantry in downtown escanaba. did a bit of shopping at the SVdP and shoved off for my long (and majestic - crying multiple times from beauty and joy majestic) drive to ann arbor. i stopped at a lighthouse, i stopped to get a pastie (pronounced pass-tee - look it up) and stopped to buy a boomerang near the mackinac bridge, and before i knew it my eta went from 7pm to almost 9pm! here are some choice shots from the best drive of my trip.
























spent the night with my friend robyn, his wife summer and their two dogs pepper and iggy in their huge house in saline, mi, just outside of ann arbor, or A2 as its known there. had a few beers with robyn and talked about domestic life and then slept like a rock in their lovely guest room. this morning robyn and i went thrifting at value world (i bought 15 pairs of shoes!) and then had a quick driving tour of A2, which reminded me a lot of eugene, oregon. i told robyn and he said he felt the same way. funny!









the drive today, snaking through the blue collar towns of toledo, cleveland, and erie, was shorter than the past two days, but felt longer and i even felt like i may have been falling asleep towards the end of it.



now i am back in amherst, ny at denise's house. it is comfy and familiar and we played apples to apples and then i watched hannah montana with andie while she listened to taylor swift on her tiny laptop. now i am falling asleep making this blog thing and attempting to stay up to see macca on letterman. tomorrow i cannot shop. i have spent all my money and then some. i want to sleep in. i want to have a cute breakfast here with denise and lisa and andie, and then have a quick zoom across new york state to my house and bed and i hope my plants are alive. oh i really hope my plants are aliveeee.

well i hope you are all satisfied. are you?


my. eyelids. are. droopy.

adios amigos! xoxo!