what a long strange trip....

Well they put men and women together to see which one is smarter.
Some say men, but I say no,
Women got the men like a puppet show.

It ain't me, it's the people that say,
Men are leading the women astray.
But I say, the women today
Are smarter than the man in every way.

That's right the women are smarter.
That's right the women are smarter.
That's right the women are smarter.
The women are smarter that's right, that's right.

-Grateful Dead-

tulip time

i don't know if it's just that i haven't lived in libertyville during april/may for the past few years, or if i'm just feeling particularly nostalgic lately, but i'm noticing tulips everywhere. in the flower beds in chicago, at the mall, in people's yards... it's tulip season and i feel right at home. at the same time, it makes me miss holland. last year at this time we were picking the tulips in the middle of the night to spite the $50 fine. picking tulips just doesn't have the same appeal here...

Maroon 5

I've been the needle and the thread
Weaving figure eights and circles round your head
I try to laugh but cry instead
Patiently wait to hear the words you've never said

Fumbling through your dresser drawer forgot what I was looking for
Try to guide me in the right direction
Making use of all this time
Keeping everything inside
Close my eyes and listen to you cry

[Chorus:]
I'm lifting you up
I'm letting you down
I'm dancing til dawn
I'm fooling around
I'm not giving up
I'm making your love
This city's made us crazy and we must get out

This is not goodbye she said
It is just time for me to rest my head
She does not walk she runs instead
Down these jagged streets and into my bed

When I was
Fumbling through your dresser drawer forgot what I was looking for
Try to guide me in the right direction
Making use of all this time
Keeping everything inside
Close my eyes and listen to you cry

[Chorus]

There's only so much I can do for you
After all of the things you put me through

[Chorus x2]

I'm not giving up
I'm making your love
This city's made us crazy and we must get out

why do i do these things?

(x) been drunk
(x) kissed a member of the opposite sex
( ) kissed a member of the same sex
(x) crashed a friend's car (only if backing into a friend's car counts)
( ) been to Japan
(x) ridden in a taxi
(x) been in "love" (what's with the quotes? i haven't been in "love" but i've been in love)
(x) been dumped
( ) shoplifted
( ) been fired
( ) been in a fist fight
(x) snuck out of my parents' house
( ) ever had a crush on someone of the same sex
( ) ever dated someone of the same sex
(x) had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back
( ) been arrested
( ) made out with a stranger
(x) stole something from my job (oh adler pool... they owed me the extra sweatsuit. and pens. and copious amounts of conc food...)
( ) celebrated New Years in Time Square
( ) gone on a blind date
(x) had a crush on a teacher
( ) celebrated mardi-gras in new Orleans
(x) been to Europe
(x) skipped school
( ) slept with a co-worker
( ) cut myself on purpose
( ) been married
( ) gotten divorced
( ) had children
( ) seen someone die
( ) been to Africa
(x) had a crush on one of my livejournal friends
(x) Slapped someone I loved
( ) Driven over 400 miles to attend a show/festival
(x) Been to Canada
(x) Been to Mexico
(x) Been on a plane
( ) Seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show
( ) Thrown up in a bar
( ) Purposely set a part of myself on fire
( ) Eaten Sushi
( ) Been snowboarding
(X) Met someone in person from the internet
( ) Been moshing at a concerts
( ) had real feelings for someone you knew only online
( ) been in an abusive relationship
( ) been pregnant or got someone pregnant
( ) lost a child
(x) gone to college
(x) graduated college
( ) had sexual intercourse with someone of the opposite sex
( ) tried killing yourself
(x) taken painkillers
( ) intentionally burned oneself
(x) love someone or miss someone right now
(x) been to a prom (only senior. junior prom was quite the story...)
( ) bungee jumped
(x) been to a pop concert- don't judge me...
(x) dated someone for a year or more
( ) sold naked pictures of myself
(x) have been in a car accident
(x) have slept in the nude
(x) eaten cheesecake
( ) had jury duty
(x) hated someone without knowing them
( ) been to Maine
(x) shot a real gun
( ) had sex with someone within a week of meeting them
( ) made out with someone within 5 days of meeting them.
( ) done ecstasy
( ) gotten my ass kicked
( ) been caught smoking
( ) milked a cow
( ) got in a verbal fight with a teacher
( ) cheated on someone
( ) lied one time in this survey
( ) Threw a party at a friends house when they were gone
( ) Done something w/a friends bf/gf (just with their exes...)
( ) Done something w a bf/gf's sibling
(x) Committed a crime
(x) Dated someone older than you are
(x) Gotten in trouble w/ the cops
( ) Ever ran away
( ) Ever given someone a hicky
(x) Ever gotten a hicky
(x) Ever got super drunk
(X) Went skinny dipping
(x) Lied about where you're going
( ) Ever lied about your age
( ) Ever been pantsed
( ) Had mono
( ) Beer bonged
( ) Got into a physical fight w a parent
( ) parctipated in a fight on school ground
(x) been addicted to starbucks (oh high school...)
( ) been swimming with dolphins

wise words from daniel morrison

"You two are like peanut butter and jelly. PB works with honey, or pickles (for some people, not me), but jelly is the best fit."

poor stanley...

haha.

try this if you're bored :-)

http://www.crush007.com/love.cgi?id=1111158083tae

it's fun, i promise.

i heart stanley.

i've been anxiously awaiting the 100,000 mile mark. stanley the suburu, who is about 7 or 8 years old, is likely to hit it tomorrow. i'm been counting down the miles in my profile, watching the odometer carefully everytime i get in and out of the car. i've even been thinking about posting a picture of stanley up here (though the digital camera i ordered 6 months ago is still on its way, so i was afraid i couldn't get a picture in time for the monumentous occasion.) today, the impending celebration was a bit crushed. literally.

on the way home from class, driving through mundelein, approaching the intersection of 60 and 45 at about 50 miles per hour. the light was green. i was crusin to counting crows. then in a blur of a few seconds, some little black car going the other way decided to turn left in front of me, saw that he wouldn't make it fast enough, and SLOWED DOWN! (cause THAT'S gonna help.) i braked, he braked, we both swerved, and....

fortunately the cop agreed it wasn't my fault. i was going straight, i had the right of way. AND to top it off, the other car drove away after we hit. lucky for me, there was an off-duty cop behind her. haha. :) so she was caught and the police report is being written up. she's got one expensive bill coming her way.

stanley's front passenger side headlight shattered. i saw tiny bits of glass flying everywhere when we hit, and the intersection was quite sparkly in the streetlights. the frame around my license plate is broken, and the car is pretty smashed in around the headlight/tire/hood. it's sticking out about 4 or 5 inches on the side because it's so pushed in. and lovely streaks of black paint scraped across my white baby, since both cars were still moving when we hit.

i'm certainly grateful to be ok. it could have been a LOT worse, i'm sure. but my poor poor stanley just won't get to celebrate his big day in quite the same way. poor poor stanley.

(pictures of the damage will follow, but it may take me a week).

Today I am envying the glorious Mexicans,
who are not afraid to sit by the highway
in the late afternoons, sipping tequila
and napping beneath their wide sombreros
beside the unambitious cactus. Today
I am envying the sweet chaparita who waits
for her lover's banjo in the drunken moonllight
and practices her fingers against the soft tortilla.
Today I am envying the green whiskers of God...

-unknown-

my kind of town

one of my very favorite things about this city.... saxophonists playing the blues on michigan and wacker as you cross over the chicago river

i just ordered 3 duncan sheik cds for $20

I don't mind a few mysteries
they can stay that way it's fine by me
and you are another mystery i am missing

It takes so much out of me to pretend

'cause lately something here don't feel right
this is just a half-life,
without you I am breaking down

wake me, let me see the daylight
save me from this half-life
let's you and I escape
escape from time

come on lets fall in love.......

-duncan sheik-

p.s.

my vienna keychain broke last week.

nearly broke my heart.

values in transit

so i thought of about a million blog posts today. but i've been up and on the go for 15 hours now and i just don't have the energy to sift through all my ideas. instead, as i was putting books away in my room i pulled out my senior sem journal from vienna. a collection of quotes from that journal (i think they pretty much sum up ALL of the day's ideas anyway):

i don't want you to waste your precious lives on something that doesn't count -rev. karl reko-

God has already told you what to do... He gave you skills and intends for you to USE them. - rev. karl reko-

never think you're one of them... never forget who you are or where you're from. -rev. karl reko-

wash out this tired notion that the best is yet to come. -dave matthews band

Jesus did not ask how often people went to church, but what they DID. -rev. herz-

life is short, we must move very slowly... -naomi shihab nye-

whatever choices you make should come from your heart... try not to just go with the flow... i don't want to live with i-should-haves because i was too afraid to make choices, because i was too afraid to leave a comfortable life. -mickela moore-

when we become aware of our humanness, it makes a difference... be aware that you are not superman... live accordingly. - rev. wiberg-

what i love the most is meeting people. that to me is more valuable than sightseeing. -doc hemenway-

everytime you make a decision in favor of something, you decide against something else... you don't really know where you're going to end up, you can only make individual decisions along the way... but you'll find where you end up isn't such a surprise after all. -brian gibbs-

get comfortable with not knowing. -brian gibbs-

75 degrees :)

The highlight of this warm spring day (besides wearing wedge sandals) was lunch. I took a break from work to drive with my windows down and Counting Crows up to meet Molly at Picnic Basket. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Libertyville, it's the local deli downtown. I guess you call it a deli, but whatever it is they have the BEST sandwiches, pasta salads, etc. And of course, raspberry iced tea.

So Mol and I took our yummy yummy food, walked right next door to Cook Park, and sat in the sun and chatted. What a good good afternoon. I think I could actually handle working for a living if my lunch breaks were this lovely all the time. There's just nothing like a healthy outdoor lunch with a good old friend to put you in a good mood. :)

In case you didn't notice, I'm having a good day. :)

blitzed.

i remember it so clearly. sitting with karen at a round table in the kletz listening to 12th street harmony and tearing up paper. we spent most of the concert and the time shortly after preparing for the night ahead. morrison spent most of the time printing in the sac office. and after we had each accumulated a reasonably sized stack, we headed out into the dark, dark night. blitz night.

we met the dps at the brewery. most of them were well on their way. a few drinks later we left the steins in the car and headed toward campus in a noticably large crowd. we used myra's (the english dept secretary) key card to get into lubbers hall. we hid them in pull down maps, between books, under tables, on professors' doors, in rolls of toilet paper... poems.

after skillfully dodging the janitoral staff (and somehow managing to quiet a very loud, very intoxicated phil waalkes) we broke in the side door of depree art building. we called our hideout friend in dewitt student center. we hung poems on the president's office door, and a poetry blitz banner across from the student union desk. we tried to get on the roof. we renamed morrison the keymaster. we split up. we regathered. we blitzed.

i'll never forget walking across the pine grove that night. clotheslines strung from tree to tree filled with poems. surely the most beautiful sight in the world. we ducked under them to reach the chapel. phil volunteered to let us in. no one thought his head first dive through the chapel bathroom window would result in a concussion (but boy did we love explaining to cap'n jack why phil was late to class the next day!) we tried to get into the bell tower. we settled for the balcony, the stage. left poems on the drumset and between piano keys. we went outside and wallpapered the anchor in poetry. we blitzed lindsay's car. we sent a group to jack's house. we went to ihop at 3am on a wednesday to celebrate our successful night.

i can't believe a whole year has gone by. the poetry blitz somehow changed my life. marked the beginning of the dps on a much larger scale. it was the true bringing together of a group of people who would later stand on tables and one another's shoulder screaming poetry over the bar crowd. a group who would spend their last weeks of college clinging to one another. a group who would stay in touch in the months and years to come as they scattered about the wide wide world. when i look back on my time at hope, the poetry blitz 2004 stands out as one of my fondest and most vivid memories. and the last month of college spent with the poets somehow defines my entire hope college experience. and so i toast to another blitz night, another april fool's day, another national poetry month. toast to my poets, wherever they may be. until we meet again... (parrot's, anyone?) ;)