Lots of Changes

Hey, everyone! My voice just changed and I'm growing fur where there was no fur before...what's up with that? Haha, really I just moved into my new apartment this weekend and I just started school today. The last couple of weeks have been both exciting and relaxing- it's just been hard to blog about it all without a stable internet connection; and the weather's been too nice to sit in the library all day staring at a computer screen.

I've got a place far out on the east-side of Madison, real close to school (the Truax campus of MATC) and only two miles from the glorious interstate. It's going to be weird living this far from downtown. For all the time I lived in Madison (a looooong time), I was always downtown, close to everything. Now I'm surrounded by the cultural wastelands of East Towne Mall and its relatives, all of the big-box stores. Well, anyways, good thing is, I'm only two blocks from the O.C.B. (Old Country Buffet)! Oh yeah, I also have the Battery (pronounced: "battree") Store practically in my backyard. I'm sure I'll be there all the time! And now that I think of it, I'm real close by to the nearest Pedro's (Mexican-STYLE) Restaurant. Every Tuesday and Thursday night they offer half-price margaritas and a chip bar, and a crowd of people who like to get drunk at big corporate bars. Ole!

Right now, I'm in between classes, hanging out in the cafeteria with my laptop plugged in. I already had one class (Architectural Graphics I) where everyone wrote their names, goals, what makes us proud, and our HIGH SCHOOLS on index cards. Our teacher then read each card out loud to get to know us all better. He asked me if I knew of a certain family in Beaver Dam. I thought, gee-whiz, I haven't lived there for over fifteen years, and then I told him nope. I guess people in the architecture field are real people orientated. If you were in the military or play baseball, you'll go far---this is what I understood from today's class.


PS: In the short amount of time that I've been typing up this entry here in the cafeteria, I've seen FOUR students logging into their myspace accounts on their laptops. You all better sign up, or be left in the dust! Whooosh!~

Husky Rescue

Two Thursdays ago on the third, I drove into Madison to catch Husky Rescue's show at the Cafe Montmartre (Moremoney, as I call it). Pretty good show! Two opening bands, the New Kentucky Quarter and the Elanors opened up before them, I might check them out sometime on the web. Husky Rescue is a cool new band that I started following last year. It's best to describe them as a Finnish country prog-lounge group fronted by early 70's Olivia Newton-John. Does that give you a good idea? Well, check out their last album, "Country Falls" before their next one comes out. Good stuff.

Something I Hate

When you're in the bathroom and you wash your hands, sometimes you kinda lean into the sink and get a fricking wet spot on the crotch of your pants, all because some idiots don't know how to keep water IN the sink. Then everyone looks at you thinking you just pissed your goddamn pants!

Bull Roar Birthday Greetings!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAMA G!!!!

What's New?

Just a quick update, I don't want to spend all day inside when it's SUMMER out.

This is what I've been upto lately:

Friday the 4th ---attended my friend Tony's "The Marijuana-logues" at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee with Pam, Paula, and Paula's friend Becky. Tommy Chong and Doug Benson were also in the show.

Saturday the 5th ---my dad lent me his bike and I rode around the countryside for hours happily snapping pics of windmills, bridges and dams and such.

Sunday the 6th---drove up to Fond du Lac and helped friends paint a mural of Italian scenery in a gelatto shop that's about to open in some mall.

Monday and Tuesday---nearly died hauling, moving, and installing furniture at Marian College in Fond du Lac. Yikes, I didn't know I could hurt so much. I'm getting money for it, so I'll survive.


I'll update with pics and such some other time, gonna go and enjoy some summer weather. So seeya later, grumpy librarian woman!

The Ghostly Rural Cat-Smacker

A couple nights ago my friend Bambi met me at my dad's and we walked up the road to the local tavern, the Shamrock II and had a few drinks. Afterward we sat on a picnic table in my dad's front yard and watched the stars as we talked over good times. All of a sudden we heard a bunch of cats screeching. Bambi wondered what was going on. Probably some cats having cat-sex I told her. She was justly bewildered when I explained the mechanics of how cats have sex and how mean it is. The boy kitties have barbed pee-pees and when they pull out they rip the girl-kitties' yoo-hoos making them scream out. It's the only way to get the girl kitties pregnant. Yikes! Bambi didn't want to believe how violently cats make love so I had to come up with another explanation for these nocturnal cat-calls.

Then I came up with the idea of the Ghostly Rural Cat-Smacker. There's this ghost of some guy who had certain unresolved issues against farmcats and so his spirit continues to endlessly wander the countryside searching for cats to give a good smack at. So whenever at night you hear a cat screeching loudly in the distance the Ghostly Rural Cat-Smacker has just mischieviously vented his wrath upon yet another poor farm-kitty.

*SMACK!*

*MRRRREEOOOWWWW!*

Hints for a Successful Job Interview

Don't eat broccoli and oreos beforehand.

Why Am I Back In Wisconsin?

Here's why:

Because I intend on getting my masters degree to become an architect. I've spent many years not using my art degree working crappy little jobs and now I want to do something else with my life. I'm hoping to create a positive legacy by designing environmentally "green" buildings that not only are good for the earth, but are also respectful of those people who they are built for. I want to make buildings that people 200 years from now will defend and want to keep around. There are so many buildings erected nowadays that are built without the future in mind. I think it's reckless and disrespectful to create something with such short-sighted vision when that something may be around years after we are gone.

I'm also going back to school because, honestly, I see the position my parents are job-wise and it makes me sick. They have spent much of their lives working for big companies that treat them like shit and I often wonder how they can take it and stay loyal. My mom has been working at evil Wal-Mart for almost 20 years and they treat her horribly. They make her work nights and weekends, they have taken away some benefits, and they won't hire enough help and therefore, work her like a dog. Yuck. My dad works as a maintainence man at a Kraft plant and he's found out that his job may be outsourced to some national maintainence company. If this company were to come into the plant and he wanted to keep his job, he'd have to reapply for his position, interview for it and such, and hopefully get the job. But if he does even get re-hired, he will lose all his seniority and benefits. WTF!

So I've been thinking about my position in life for awhile and now I've finally grabbed the BULL by the horns and applied to MATC's Architectural Technician program. There I will earn credits that I can apply and transfer to graduate school program somewhere else. I'm doing the trade school thing now because:
1. It's far more affordable. My Uncle Kenny recently died and he set up an education trust-fund that will pay for any of my grandparents descendants' college expenses, but it's in probate for awhile. So I've decided to pay $1300 a semester instead of ten or twenty thousand for now.
2. I'll be able to work on an architectural portfolio.
3. I'll be able to build a collection of references I need to get into grad school; and
4. I'll have a useful degree to apply if I ever have to get a job.

This last year in NYC taught me to go and work for what I want. NYC, as much fun as I had there, was a city where you had to be successful in what you did in order to live comfortably, and I was directionless. So I'm rectifying the situation and sending myself back to school. Yay for me!

Recent Activities

I've been in Wisconsin a little over a week now. I've been keeping busy searching for a job and a place to live, visiting friends and family, and wandering around in my truck. It's been a bit a culture shock for me, after living in NYC having the world at my hands, I'm temporarily at my dad's where there is no access to cable tv, internet, or phone service, so I have to drive through the woods and cornfields to either Columbus, a small town close by or to good ol' Madison in order to stay in touch with anybody.

Besides hitting up free hot-spots (most usually the public libraries) I've been doing other things.

The other day I met my college-friend Bambi at Crystal Lake Beach to escape the heat in its waters. This is where my sister and I used to have swim lessons and attended day-camp. The lessons didn't really work because I was scared of the water and the crayfish and snapping turtles that were in the water back then. Some of the kids were really mean to me,especially Jim and Jill Oestreicher. Those little fuckers cornered me one time at bus-stop at my old school while we waited for our ride there and snapped a towel in my eye. When the fucking bus-driver came and picked us up I was crying because my eyeball was BLEEDING and I was the one who got yelled at! Haha, memories! Even when I was a little kid I thought those two were having incest. Anyways this week's trip there was a lot less traumatic. The beach was filled with a bunch of rowdy kids and only three other adults, I counted! When we waded into the water, I made sure we were out of any in-the-water peeing children. The overhead P.A. system was pumping classic rock like Foghat, Def Leppard, and Heart. I wondered whose choice the music was since all the lifeguards were like 16 year-old girls.

Yesterday, I was my friend Cindy's escort into Madison where she had a job interview. She needed someone along who could help her with directions. It was with the Board of Trustees on Regent St. The office was housed in one of those new cardboard-box looking office buildings. Inside was an art display going on and on that the building was built in a Gothic Revival Style. Yeah, whatever. It's a box. With a little coppery trim someone stole off some other building. It's about as gothic as a parking lot at Target. Anyways, no matter the style, or lack of style, of the building I hope Cindy gets the job.

I, too, have been on the job-hunt. I'm hoping my temp-agency comes up with a few more assignments for me. Next week I'm going to be a big manly-man and move furniture for a couple days. Then something else, I hope. But, just in case, I picked up some applications to places (like coffeshops and bookstores) that will work around my school schedule and be close by to my new apartment. Yes, I signed a lease and I will moving in sometime in the last week of this month. It's in a four-unit 1950's apartment building three blocks from school. Yay! It's going to be weird though. I'm used to living in the heart of downtown Madison which is over-run by students and yuppies. Now I'm going to be close to the edge of east-side by the mall and and sprawl. There's a sports bar called Tailgaitors (notice the spelling) beyond my back-yard fence. I'm sure I'll be there all the time!

My apartment (a 2 bedroom, all hardwood floors) is the one on the upper right. When I get moved in, I'll let you all know when the housewarming party will be!

Remembering My Drive to Wisconsin

For my move back to Wisconsin I rented a MINI-VAN, a vehicle small enough for me to drive, yet large enough to carry whatever belongings I obtained during my stint in NYC. Carol went along with me to pick it up at the JFK airport for what was my last subway ride...sigh! The subway doesn't run all the way there so we thought we'd transfer to a free shuttle bus, but... those have been replaced by the Airtrain or whatever the hell it's called. It cost money. Boo!

Once I had the vehicle all packed up and said my goodbyes I made my way out of Brooklyn, westward-bound toward the setting sun on a thousand-mile trek. I didn't screw up my directions too bad out of the city. I did take a wrong turn onto the Manhattan Bridge. Instead of taking the low-road I took the high-road and ended up in a different part of Manhattan where I wasn't supposed to be. Oh well, I backtracked here and there and finally made my way to the Holland Tunnel. Taxi-cab drivers honked angrily at me for blocking intersections and stuff but I didn't give a rat's ass. Cab drivers are always laying on their horns anyway, so who cares?

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. 500 miles of rainy darkness across Pennsylvania and Ohio- nothing to see. I got a little tired, but I was driving straight through. I had to get my vehicle back within 24 hours and I didn't want to waste too much time, but I did nap a little at designated rest-stops. After a nap in Indiana the sun rose to a wonderful non-rainy summer day. I was amazed how green everything was. All the cities and towns, even Chicago all looked like cow-towns to me. Mooo! Haha, well I wasn't laughing once I got to the backroads of Wisconsin. I had gotten off the interstate system and was doing a dot and dash drive through little towns and countryside not really going fast at all. I now had plenty of time to get to my dad's, drop my stuff off there, then drive to Madison to return the vehicle so I was kinda driving slow. Even as slow as I was driving I got behind some grandpa going even slower than me. So I thought I'd kindly pass him so I wouldn't be tail-gating him. He had another idea. That fucking old bastard decided to step on the gas as I was next to him in the other lane. He wasn't going to let me pass! And then another car came around the bend in my lane and I had to hit the brakes and swerve immediately back behind him. What a nut-chugger! Then he flipped me off! Whatever! I wasn't sure what would cause him to react that way, until I remembered that my rental car had a MARYLAND license plate. He discriminated against me and almost caused me to die in a firey auto-wreck because of my out-of-state plates. Gee whiz!

R.I.P. State St. Arcade

A couple weeks ago my friend Shelli passed along the news to me that one of my former (albeit, brief) jobs was shutting down. During a time of desperation I applied to the State St. Arcade, a naughty bookstore, as a cashier and I got the job. Supposedly, even though I was there for about four months my manager Jim said I was one of the best workers there...EVER! So it was with sadness that I walked along State St. the other night to find it completely shut down and a for rent sign hanging up where the notice of adults only used to hang. Sigh....thanks a lot stupid over-priced, and architecturally pompous and inferior Madison Arts Overture Center for pricing out a good "family" (cough) run porn store. Boo to you!

Here's the Arcade in better times:

Everyone in the view-range of my camera jumped out of sight before I snapped this.

A Crystal Weekend

I'm cheating a bit with this entry. Some of it is copied from an email I sent off earlier this week to my friend Jeremy. I hope you, my Bull Roar! fans, don't mind!

This last weekend I drove up with my mom to the untamed shacktowns of Northern Michigan to visit my sister and her family. It's a trip that I won't forget (even though I left my battery charger back in Wisconsin and my camera ran out of power THREE pictures into the trip! grrrr!) - I had a lot of fun. My sister and I took my mom to see this old country singer named Crystal Gayle ("Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue") whose latest stop was an Indian casino up there and seemingly her only fans are all collecting and gambling away their social security checks. At one point an elderly couple cornered my sister and I asked us what on earth we were doing at a Crystal Gayle concert. We were like, our mom likes her and we kinda do too. They kept asking us questions. Stuff like: "What was her greatest hit?" (the song I listed above) and "Who's her famous sister? (Loretta Lynn). After they were done interregating us I felt like asking them a question myself, "What's the name of your nursing home?" SNAP!!! But, I didn't, though. They were just being nice and making awkward conversation with some out-of-place youngsters!
Crystal was great! She put on a great show even though the casino's concert hall was out-of-order and she played in a makeshift tent. The tent itself was impressive. It had a real wooden door at its entrance. That's probably something the house that Crystal Gayle (originally Brenda Lee Webb) was born in didn't even have! Anyways, she played a lot of her greatest hits, I don't think she really wanted to challenge her elderly audience with songs they didn't recognize. She sang, "Why Have You Left The One You Left Me For," "I'll Get Over You," "I'll Do It All Over Again," "Wrong Road Again," "Somebody Loves You," You Never Miss A Real Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye)," and for the obvious encore, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue." Yay!
After she was done my mom had to use the bathroom, and since there were none in the tent we had to take her into the casino. Uh-oh! My mom never gambled before, but she all of a sudden wanted to give it a try. She lost two dollars on the nickel slots. Nice try, mom! Haha, after Crystal played some country dude named Lee (Something) did his thing. He was some old country singer with a moustache. We didn't really want to stay and watch him all the way through, though we were surprised when Crystal came back out to sing a couple duets with him. He kept making goofy-eyes at her like she was hot-stuff and that she was really interested in him. As if! Haha!

Here's some blurry digi-pics of Crystal that I promised:


In this one, you can see that Crystal still has her long hair:

I assumed that most people attending the show were just there to see whether she had cut her hair or not.

When we got back home, my sis and I logged onto the internet in search of some Crystal Gayle trivia. We were wondering if she was a grandma and stuff. This was the best thing we found:

She considers Gallagher, comedian and inventor of the Sledge-o-Matic, one of her old friends. Maybe next time I go up to see my sister, he'll have a show in a tent at the casino we can attend!

Ahhh...Summer Rain!

One of my favorite things is driving on a hot, humid day through the countryside and it starts to sprinkle and you can smell the summer rain in the air. Ahhhhh!

I had some travelling to do today. In Beaver Dam I stopped by my temp agent in order for her to give me instructions on my first temp assignment back in Wisconsin. Looks like I'll be moving furniture in Fond du Lac for a couple days next week. After that I stopped by my mom at her job (ladies-wear and soft-lines at Wal-Mart). As usual, when she saw me, she wanted to put me to work. She's such a slave-driver! She was marking down socks and sweat-bands down to a DOLLAR! If any of you are interested, now's your chance to jump on the savings bandwagon. I told my mom it all looked like junk to me. She and I have our disagreements about the nature of Wal-Mart. I have the opinion that they are an evil, greedy corporation raping everything in it's path. Although she seems to hate everyone there -management, workers, and customers, she still defends them. I guess I would too, if it was my only source of income. Oh well!
I escaped before she had me pricing socks and stuff I headed toward Columbus, taking the backroads. I could have taken the expressway 151 South, but now that I'm in Wisconsin and not really on any time-schedule, I like to meander around and explore the countryside in my little truck. I drive like one of those old-men I used to whiz past in my younger days. Now I just like to "la-di-da" my way along. Now that I think of it, it's maybe a reaction to all the deer roaming about in the countryside here. Just today on a seven mile span I had three different deer run into the road in front of me while I was driving. Damn deer!

Promised Photos!

Here's a group shot of my friends who gathered to bid farewell to me. After hanging out at the bar and patio of the Cherry Tree, we all ended up at Todd's.

Kind of a late night...

Then the next day, my room-mates and I right before I drove off into the sunset.

Yeah, I'm wearing the same shirt from the day before. Everything was packed, okay? (That's my excuse, and I'm going with it!)

Louiso was sad to see me leave. I made him tons of knee-slapping mix CDs of golden oldies and AM favorites. I might make him some more and mail them to him soon.


This Puerto Rican flag flew in front of the building I lived in. I often thought of hanging a Wisconsin flag next to it.

The mini-van I rented for my move is parked out on the street in the background. It drove smoothly.

A close-up.