so im in a place only accessible by boat or plane, everywhere outside of our lodgings all I see is wilderness, and there is wireless here. weird. I am at a cannery on Kodiak island. It isnt in operation aymore-it used to have hundreds of people living and working here in the summers processing salmon. Now it is owned by a couple, Robert and Anita, theyve had it for like 6 years and live here alone...its pretty cool. they are awesome. We're hangin out here working on our fishing nets until the salmon season opens. 

man, you guys would love it here. the wildlife is insane, ive always taken it for granted but its so fucking amazing. There are sea otters everywhere, river otters, whales, there are two gray foxes who hang out around the cabin a lot, bald eagles all over the place, seals, rabbits, puffins...I absolutely love being this close to nature, constantly reminded that humans aren't the only animals around.

Weve been eating fresh halibut and cod, and native ferns, and the water comes from a spring right here, its really cool. 

its cold though. I wear 2 pairs of socks, leggings and jeans/sweats, underarmor and a sweatshirt and heavy fleece. im sadly watching my meager tan fade. my fingers are really fucking cold right now so ima go. 

ill let you know when i see grizzlies!

Canvassing

I start work tomorrow in Portland. Because I decided to take public transit everyday instead of wasting money on the costliness of upkeeping my Volvo, I will be relying on the one family car and my mom (the only other driver in the family) to help get me to the train station in a way that fits with her job as a kindergarten teacher... which means that my life will be one big, confusing loop. My gnarly schedule the foreseeable future:
6:00am, wake up
6:45, leave with Mom for work
11:00, walk from Mom's work to train station
11:45, train arrives at correct stop. Cross street and board bus
12:10, arrive at work
12:30 work starts
10:00pm work ends (take bus/train back to home)
11:30pm, get picked up by Mom at train station
12:00am, sleep?
REPEAT..... ugh

I can has Tejas?

Wow, roaming back in the south. I feel like there have been debates about Texas being the south. I think I always thought it was the west, and I have been told NO. You know, westerns, cowboys, longhorns? I think I'm justified.

Texas is hot. Texas is big. Texas has giant webs of high rises and interstates and people don't use their blinkers when they change lanes.

Seeing my family is great. I've got a nonnie, a grandfather, two aunts, and a cousin here. Not to mention a mom, a dad, and a bro. It's great to be here. But man I never want to live in a city that is this big. But spanish is everywhere and it's good practice. Can't believe I fly back to OR again tomorrow- quick trip.

Anyone seen American Beauty? I started watching it on tv yesterday and it was super weird but I really wanted to finish it.

My father is retiring. I guess that sounds pretty straightforward, but it's not really. I think all of my memories of him are somehow related to the church. And not once has he ever worn one of those stupid high collared black shirts with the little white squares from all the charactures. Never has he asked me whether I'm a Christian, and not once have we had a discussion about heaven.

But he would go on for hours about the most insignificant story of somebody's funeral he was doing, or the couple he was marrying who met on the internet, or the elderly people who would tell him jokes on their deathbed.

I'm probably going to have to say something at the service. This is going to be difficult, because when he wasn't writing his sermons, he would fix things in the house to keep his hands busy. He likes fixing things.

squatch etc.

Well this morning Stina left and I took Brou to the airport. Jus' me 'n Dan now. Brou (my high school bestie) came to visit the PNW for the first time and to go to Sasquatch. She basically loved it and we had such a good time. She got to hang out with Stina and Dan and we watched the entire Will Ferrel SNL dvd.

Brou, Dan and I left friday morning to go to PDX to pick up our rented tent from REI. We discovered a small park by REI and had a picnic and watched the hundreds of babies play in the water spouts. We then drove all the way to Yakima WA where we camped at the Yakmia Sportsmans Park. It was not nearly as sketchy as I expected; in fact it was really nice with lots of families. We cooked spaghetti and went to bed.

Saturday we woke up early and drove the rest of the way to SASQUATCH woot! The weather was b-e-a-utiful, but so freaking hot. The festival grounds is on the edge of the gorge and has the most breathtaking view. We saw a lot of bands such as: mos def, passion pit, DENT MAY, ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, the decemberists, yeah x3, AA Bondy, bon iver (who was surprisingly good), etc.

The weather has been amazing for about a week now. I'm talking blue sky mid 70s... aka NOT salem. Again, I am surprised. Perhaps this is just Salem's summer, hidden from us students during the year.

Anywho, I miss Stina but it was such an awesome weekend. It was basically a vacation.

Dan's makin trouble in the music dept.
Madeline

yo yo its nat again. im in kodiak alaska..its 50 degrees and sideways raining. WOOOT

On to NY

So tomorrow I leave for my brother's graduation from West Point NY. My parents left a few days ago because WP makes a huge deal out of graduation and there's a week's worth of activities. How have I been taking advantage of their absence? Not all that well really. No raging parties etc. Although the other day I took my dog Chester for a beautiful hike. Only problem was that the trail was really snowy still. Like really snowy. Definitely should have had snow shoes since I was sinking up to my crotch with every step in places. Needless to say, that got tiring, so I decided to climb this snow free mountain of the side of trail. Turned out to be a much bigger mountain than it looked like from the bottom. It was really steep and treacherous, so coming down I decided to go down this avalanche chute right next to it. Usually it works pretty well to run down those, but this turned out to be way to steep for that. So I followed Chester's lead and sat on my ass and slid down the whole thing. It was rather exciting and terrifying at times. At one point the snow bank ended and I kept going down the grassy/rocky hillside --not so fun. The good old elbow arrest trick worked well and definitely kept me from killing myself. By the end of the day my poor dog was so tired I had to coax him down the trail. Anyway, so that was fun, it was great to get into the beautiful Colorado mountains.

It's summer, and I'm sitting in the Mark O. Hatfield Library??

Has the world gone mad? Isn't Willamette supposed to shut down and disappear during the summer? Well, apparently not, the library is hoppin' as is the Mill Stream Market. Dan and I spent our first night at Katie's house ("The Shire," apparently) after squatting for days in Lausanne 111 for lack of a bed. We live in the basement area which was kinda dirty etc. but has a nice view of the mill stream meandering by the back yard. Today we saw some "baby" canadian geese today. Man are those things oogly! They look prehistoric, like they'll grow up into raptors. But cute at the same time.

Last Thursday the Motz team tried to record but Andrew Smith's recorder kept stopping randomly and we couldn't make it through a single take. So we spent two days ebaying and craig'slisting it up to try to find a new tape recorder. We finally found one in PDX and drove there on Saturday. We picked it up from a house in North East pdx from a woman who gave us blessings and told us to look up her band on myspace. I think it was called Spider and... something. Then, of course, Brian ( and Evan) really wanted to check out John's Marketplace which has the largest beer selection in the world! (slash Oregon). Dan and I roasted in the car while they spent HOURS looking at beer. JK JK, no really.

Turns out we didn't get to be in Sam's movie because he didn't have time to film us. Darn. But our music will still be played for a scene or something. Yesterday Motz recorded all afternoon and Brian's mom treated us to a tasty dinner at Word of Mouth. yummm.

Stina has been rowing multiple times a day. I hope she's wearing sunscreen.

The End.
Love yall,
Madzz

LOST

I am utterly pathetic. It is the nicest weather ever outside and I am staring at it through my mom's bedroom window where I hijacked her bed to watch LOST. Meghan and Evan, I will never forgive you, haha.

I'm at Ari's house in Troutdale. We spent the day hiking, thrifting, sushi-ing, bad movie-ing, and powells books-ing. 

She has two cats named Dora and Maggie. Ive been making Dora fat by feeding her my cereal milk and leftover mac and cheese. 

Ari's house has a phenomenal view of Mount Hood. 

Homeward Bound

I drove from Salem to Eugene.

~Evan

Salem-Denver --the long drive and adventures

So as you all know, I left about 11:30 on Sunday to drive home to Denver. I picked up this guy Mike at a Fred Meyer's in Portland. He needed a ride to Pendelton (about 4 hours away) because his car had broken down there a few weeks ago while he was giving someone from craigslist a ride to Salt Lake. He was pretty cool and we talked pretty much all the way to Pendelton. He's 28, originally from Salt Lake City, 1/2 el salvadorian and not Mormon. Anyway, I made him drive for about 2 hours and he gave me gas money and and ipod trip thing that didn't work in his car, and I couldn't figure it out either, but it was a nice gesture.

The whole drive to Boise was beautiful and I felt like a total nerd looking at all the geology and geographic features.
So then I got to Boise at about 9:30 and stayed with Krigsby's parents. Her sister looks just like her, and omg her high school senior pics are so pretty. She's all dressed up and clean. Its crazy.

I then left Boise at 8:00 the next morning and drove 12 hrs to Carbondale CO. Round about the CO border I started getting a little loopy. I met up with my blues dancing friends Justin and Cassandra and we danced in a gazebo in this park for a while before deciding to go get some food round about 10:30. However, nothing was open, so this other guy Mike invited us back to his place to make some food. As we were going through the park again there were these 4 Mexican guys grilling a ton of chicken. We stopped and talked to them and they offered us some chicken and wouldn't take no for an answer, so I figured what the hell, I should try eating meat. Bad idea.

Pretty much as soon as we got to Mike's house I started feeling really nauseous. Justin locked his keys in the car and had to call AAA. I lay down while they all made food, then really had to puke but someone was in the bathroom so I ran outside and puked in the bushes and then took a dump on the side of the house. God I felt so terrible. They were all really nice about it though. I pretty much kept doing that the rest of the night (the bathroom was open then). Justin, Cassandra and I had planned on camping, but decided not to, and this girl Laura invited us to stay at her place about 5 min drive away. On the way we had to pull over so I could puke some more and this cop pulled over to make sure I was ok. Got to love small town cops. (The last time I was in Carbondale one showed up at park where we were having a blues dance to crash it and just told us to turn the music down instead). Anyway, I felt a lot better the next morning and Cassandra and I went on a hike before I drove the 4 hrs back to Denver.

So that's my long and rambling road trip story.

going home

Lat night, Natalia let me borrow her car so I could get to the airport. Ming came with me and drove the car back. On Sunday night we got confirmation from a guy Luiz that he wanted Ming and me as roommates. Very exciting. I'll be moving in right when I get back to Portland on the 22nd which is nice (I don't have to couch surf). Ming is moving in on the 30th. I dropped a ton of stuff off in an extra room at Luiz's house last night. Luiz was very witty and very welcoming. He's 32, works for a nonprofit and likes to cook. We got a tour of the house. Apparently it's 125 years old. The kitchen is really big and well lit. We're about a half mile down the road from where we're working and two miles from downtown. As Ming and I were bringing our stuff into the room, we met the other roommates. They're both musicians and they had been out jamming. One is moving out June 1st and Ming and I will take his room. The other roommate's name is Prospero. He has been there about a year and he works somewhere in SE. He's from Oaxaca. He speaks English almost perfectly. I'll probably be playing a lot of music with him this summer.

After leaving the house, we went to the airport and Ming dropped me off. It was about 12:30am and there weren't very many people around. When I was going to the bathroom, this four and a half foot high woman who was vacuuming asked me if I was a boy. I didn't understand her question at first but when she heard me ask "WHAT?!", she figured it out I think. Sleeping in the airport wasn't fun. I woke up at 5am and the lines were hella long already. I tried to get a veggie breakfast sandwich but they wouldn't substitute anything for the meat...grrr. Typical. I'm now waiting for about another hour before my flight takes off. Flying Portland to Portland via Newark. It's going to be a long day.

da summer's almost here blues/reds = purple summer

There once was a girl named Ar'anna
who had a paper to write -- she d'dnt wanna
so she looked out the winnow
and screamed in her pillow
yellin "gimme my goddam summa!"
She'd miss all her friendz
but they'll be together againz
so im gonna contribute to dis blog
yada yada yada rhyme HEDGEHOG


el fin

one love

this blog sucks

Just checking on dat dem der picture uploadin thingy der. Mmm, I should study some spanish der.

let's ride

scooterz.