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Thursday, September 30th, 2004 link - comments(0) Zippity Doo Dah Ready for the debate tonight? Print out a BINGO card I hope Kerry proves me wrong. I hope he is a light in the darkness. But just in case, I'm buying some vodka to drown my sorrows as I watch the world begin to crumble before my eyes.
Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 link - comments(0) Take a kitten break. Three more days until Open Studios. Are you coming? Please come! I am doing some sort of art thing nearly every month. August, October, November, and December. Who wants me for January? I bought a bunch of canvases last night at Mendell's on Haight. Big 25% sale. They have great prices on canvases already. I got 3 11x17 and 3 24x36 plus two brushes and gloss medium for $56! Go look at Anita Brey's artwork. I like her bad baby series, go figure. Just got a very nice comment from somsone on a LiveJournal community. Then I found this site she works on: ArtHeap.com It's an online artist community.
Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Wow! I just sold another painting! I sold the painting of the boy by the stove. I call it "Turn in your handles!". It's hanging at the SomArts gallery so that means I get to proudly display a red dot for the opening events on Thursday and Friday. Red dots always make people want to buy more of your stuff so maybe I'll get extra visitors at Open Studios from it. I sold it to the same people who bought the baby with fork painting. Overheard today at City College: Yo, my math class is hella easy, dude. I'll all over that shit.Sorta cute, who knew academia was so fly. I gave a stranger advice on buying a guitar for her 12 year old son and she sent me this very nice email: I just wanted to thank you so much for your time and effort in sending me all that information. My husband bought my son a guitar which he is thrilled with. I am pleased to think that my son will soon dwell amongst musicians such as you who still have the forgotten talent of connecting with others for the simple pleasure of helping.Don't tell her I'm not a musician! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monday, September 27th, 2004 link - comments(0) Come see my art. Come to my open studios this weekend. 2014 Oakdale Ave (1 mi south of Bayshore) 11am - 7pm Saturday and Sunday. View Map. Last week I started noticing that I think about painting just about 24/7. I seem to be able to relate painting to just about every aspect of my life. I often lie in bed at night thinking about painting techniques or new ideas of subject matter. I wish I had more time to actually paint. Today I drop off my painting for the ArtSpan opening at SomArts. I got a basket for my new scooter rack and was able to carry it in the basket. That's two times already that I have gotten to use my scooter instead of the car.
Sunday, September 26th, 2004 link - comments(0) We went through the closet a bit today and threw out some unwanted clothes. I tried on my favorite pair of "work" pants and they fit again! I really felt for the first time that I'm getting back to normal. I've been afraid to try on old clothes for fear that they still won't fit. But I am finding they do, lots of them. I lost the 5 vacation pounds this week too. I worked on some canvases today. I'm trying an imprematura coat on the canvases before I start the painting. It gives the painting a nice texture to start on and it's nicer to paint on top of paint instead of gesso. The paint fills in some of the canvas pattern too so you get a smoother surface.
Saturday, September 25th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Mendell's art store is have a 25% off sale. I think I'll get some canvases and maybe some fabric to make myself a deer skirt like this one I saw in New Zealand.
Friday, September 24th, 2004 link - comments(0) I think Bush is going to win. I'm looking forward to the debate next week. At this point, I just don't think Kerry is a strong enough opponent. I think this country is going to hell in a hand basket. It makes me sick. Still I think I'd rather be in San Francisco than anywhere else in the world (unless I win the lottery). Maybe someday northern california will seceed from the union. I think there are a couple more generations of ick to get through before the country turns around. Am I supporting the ick by staying in the US? Maybe, or maybe there needs to be more peeople like me to turn the tides and get this country going in a good direction. I wish it could have been Dean up there. Although he probably wouldn't have won, he would have stirred the pot and I would have been proud to vote for him. We need a passionate leader with REAL strong moral values and their priorities in the right place. I think Dean could have been that leader. Now I have to vote for someone I don't have much faith in. Very disheartening. I'm by no means a politicl expert, I can only speak from my own intuition. When I listen to Bush and I see what his administration is doing to this country, my evil meter goes off big time. I want to listen to a leader and be inspired by his words. I want this to be a great country. In New Zealand they took a poll among kiwis, who should be the next president of the US? 60% said Kerry but 27% said Bush. Not a big enough margin in views of the US for such a seemingly liberal, neutral country. Maybe they know Kerry doesn't mean the war goes away. Maybe they just like being arguentative. Maybe they want us to blow ourselves up. A little of the subject but on the point of kiwis being argumentative for the hell of it. There was a blurb in the paper about a reader wanting to ban joggers on the wharf in Wellinton. He said the joggers were dangerous and annoying and he was tired of being surprized by them unexpectedly and had been sprayed with sweat once or tiwce and that they fowl up the view. Those damn healthy people and their excersize! Is that crazy or what? Next he'll want to ban baby carriages because they squeak.
Thursday, September 23th, 2004 link - comments(0) This website has Pirate Bandaids
Wednesday, September 22th, 2004 link - comments(0) Website full of broken things. Some are excellent, most are boring. The interweb is full of valuable information, it is a rich and powerful resource towards knowledge and enlightenment I gained 5 pounds on my trip to New Zealand. I guess it could be worse. Now I am on a health food kick. I only want to eat grains, beans, fruits and vegetables. I threw away my fat pants today. I keep wearing them and they are ridiculous. They are falling apart. I pulled out an old pair of pants from my pre fat days and they fit! Yay. 5 pounds to get rid of then onward to less me. A website encouraging single women to vote. Pro Kerry.
Tuesday, September 21th, 2004 link - comments(0) While doing my art history homework, I accidentally came across this website of modern day gladiators. The photos from my new zealand trip are here. I don't know when I'll finish with them so have at it.
Monday, September 20th, 2004 link - comments(0) Last night we vegged a little. Ate soup at Citrus Club and were thankful to be back in San Francisco. I got a lot of the photos done and started typing up about our adventures but they aren't done yet. I may just release them without full comments. Anyway... I'm back at work after sleeping in really hard this morning. No early morning pork store for me, it's a reverse jet lag and it's painful! I have to get my ass to class tomorrow morning somehow.
Sunday, September 19th, 2004 link - comments(0) I'm back! Even with a 2 hour delay, we still landed before we took off due to crossing the international date line. I'm tired and working on photos. Check back later.
Saturday, September 18th, 2004 link - comments(0)
After sailing we had a couple of nice pints of Murphy's at the Irish pub on the wharf. Then we went to a Japanese restaurant as our goodbye dinner. This was a day for new experiences. I know a lot about Japanese food but I'd never been to a fancy place like this. The menu confused me a bit. We finally decided to try the suki yaki hot pot. They bring out an electric skillet and you cook up all the food yourself. Our kimono clam waitress started us off by seasoning the pan with pork and onion, then pouring the suki yaki sweet sauce in the pan and cooking us some nice vegetables and beef. It looked like an enormous amount of food but we ate the whole damn platter. It was super yummy and quite an experience. Stayed: Ponsonby Uenuku Lodge Backpackers
Friday, September 17th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Bath time was followed by a nice sandwich and then we hit the road again. Outside of Rotorua we found a place called the Agrodome. I thought it might be my heaven on earth. Turns out it wasn't but it did offer me a very nice slice of heaven in the way of an adorable baby cow. I petted the hell out of him, even scratched his back and made him curl up his tail.
After the park we high-tailed it to Auckland and made it to the Uenuku Lodge Backpackerrs on Ponsonby. We had giant burgers for dinner at Burger Wisconsin and had Turkish beers at the Turkish Cafe down the road. Stayed: Ponsonby Uenuku Lodge Backpackers
Thursday, September 16th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Stayed: Opotiki Beach Backpackers
Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Stayed: Opotiki Beach Backpackers
Tuesday, September 14th, 2004 link - comments(0)
Stayed: Napier YHA
Monday, September 13th, 2004 link - comments(0) Rain rain rain rain rain. We went to the Te Papa Museum today. We tried our first whole day in Wellington but I was tired and cranky. Today was perfect because it was raining. I spent a long time looking at the colonial art. They had a nice bug exhibit too and some art nuveau and art decco pieces in a big room. We spent a very long time in a special exhibit they had about Ant-Arctic exploration. It was so fascinating. It documented the several tries at getting to the south pole. They had film footage taken during shackletons voyage where their boat got slowly crushed with ice and he had to travel in a lifeboat to the South Georgia for help. Stayed: Wellington YHA
Sunday, September 12th, 2004 link - comments(0) Stayed: Wellington YHA
Saturday, September 11th, 2004 link - comments(0) Tonight we went to the Welch pub around the corner. It's a great little pub. I could stand having this pub as my local. We played pool. They had weird karaoke where everyone played along with spoons and rubber ducks and stuff. Stayed: Wellington YHA
Friday, September 10th, 2004 link - comments(0) Today we wandered around wellington. We went up to the Botanical Gardens and poked around. It was so beautiful and no one was in the gardens. It was a little drizzly but mostly nice weather. We walked down to the rose garden and had a pot of tea at the cafe. There are little birds that fly into the cafe and eat crumbs off the floor and tables. I snuck some crumbs on the floor from my cheese scone. We ate at Monsoon Poon for dinner. It's an asian restaurant right around the corner from our hostel. The food was great. They have vietnamese, indian, chinese, thai, all meshed up into one menu. The exciting part is you get naan with your food no matter what genre you pick. Stayed: Wellington YHA
Thursday, September 9th, 2004 link - comments(0) We went to finish buying our train tickets. We found out you have to book the day before to get the special rate so the guy was basically yanking our chains. We could have called that night but he made it sound like there'd be no problem booking through him. We are discovering this town is very strange. There's a sort of family feud going on between restaurants, ski rental places, hotels and shuttle services. Very annoying. There is absolutely nothing to do in National Park if you don't either have plans on skiing/snowboarding or have a car. I mean, you can't even get coffee until 11am. We wandered the 5 main roads in town, up and down, waiting for it to be 11, then hung out at the train station cafe. Then walked around, went back to our hostel, stared at bad tv, walked around some more, and at 2:30 got on that train and got the hell outta dodge, not a minute too soon. Stayed: Wellington YHA
Wednesday, September 8th, 2004 link - comments(0) We snowboarded today. Well at least Tom snowboarded. I attempted and failed. The mountain was not my friend. Their runs aren't marked at all so you'll be cruising along all happy and next thing you know, you are leaping unexpectedly off a cliff. So I I had to be over cautious since this was my first day back after breaking my food. I had a really lousy time, truth be told. So I gave up after a very close call and hung out in the snow trying to make perfectly round snowballs. After snowboarding we headed down to the train station to buy our train tickets for the next day. Turns out you can't buy train tickets at the train station there, you have to walk down the street to the Ski Haus hostel. So we decided to have a beer at the station first. We got the the hostel at 7:07 and found out they only book tickets between 9am - 7pm. We gave up and had a lovely pizza across the road. The guy said he could book us in the morning. I asked him if it was the half off deal and he made some vague gesture that yeah, we'd get that price if it was still available. Stayed: National Park Plateau Lodge Backpackers
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 link - comments(0) We got up and hopped on the train today. It was about a 5 hour train ride to National Park and the scenery was so nice it was like watching a really good five hour movie. I tried to get photos but I bet they are mostly annoying. We were picked up at the train station by a dude that works at the Plateau Lodge where we stayed. We got set up and spent many hours down the street at Eivin's drinking too much and eating yummy sweet potatoes with aeoli sauce. Stayed: National Park Plateau Lodge Backpackers
Monday, September 6th, 2004 link - comments(0) Today we got our travel arrangements in order for snowboarding on Mt Whakapapa. We booked a train ticket and found a hostel in National Park that said it could arrange shuttle to the mountain. We spent the rest of the day in art museums and galleries and avoiding the brief rain showers. Stayed: Auckland International YHA
Sunday, September 5th, 2004 link - comments(0) Hello future! We have landed in Auckland. Tom was sick a good part of the flight. We got pretty much not a wink of sleep and we felt so crumby we paid for a taxi to our hostel. We had a little trouble communicating with the driver. I kept telling him the address and yet it was like I was speaking a foreign language. We got to the hostel after some map pointing and it was still technically yesterday since it was so early in the morning. We were so tired I was willing to pay an extra night just to get 4 hours sleep. I was basically trying to check in a day early and I tried to explain this to the guy at the hostel. He just couldn't understand that even though we booked for the 5th, it wasn't really the 5th yet since people were still sleeping from the night before. He gave us keys anyway and we discovered someone was in our room still. So I tried to explain to him again but it was no good, we just told him we'd hang out in the lounge and everything was going to be ok. The whole incident really stressed the poor guy out. Apart from our being greeted with a lovely rainbow, Sunday isn't all that great of a day to land in a foreign country. There's not much going on Sundays so we did lots of walking. We drank coffee and poked around at the harbor. That night I had a yummy Katsu Don and Tom had mediocre Sushi on High Street. We drank many beers at many pubs and a good time was had by all. Stayed: Auckland International YHA
Saturday, September 4th, 2004 link - comments(0) I'm in a plane right now to New Zealand. This day actually doesn't exist for me since we are crossing over the international date line. So I'm skipping ahead into the future. If you want to say hi, send me an email to angrypirate@gmail.com.
Friday, September 3rd, 2004 link - comments(0) Goodbye Jelly You put pet fish to sleep by emersing them in very, very, icey, cold water. The shock stops their heart and brain immediately. We didn't have enough ice in our house so I had to go to the store and buy a bag of ice. Felt wrong and sad to be buying a bag of party ice to put my pet to sleep with. I dug a little grave in the backyard for her. Felt strange to be shovelling a hole for a creature who isn't even dead yet. I felt so wrong. I've been so busy, putting her to sleep felt like another action item on my to do list that I needed to check off before we leave. I put a little arrangement of flowers in a little brown bag for her coffin. As I scooped her into the net, I realized the last meal I had fed her was just floating in her mouth and she wasn't even able to swallow anymore. I plunged her in the ice water. She didn't budge a bit so I think she went instantly. I put her in the bag and buried her in her little hole. It's right next to where we buried the salamander we found floating in the pool about a year ago. His special flower is still growing there. Maybe Jelly will grow her own special flower too. I'm sorry Jelly, You had a hard but long life for a goldfish. I will miss you and I love you. OK, I'm getting on a plane for New Zealand. See you in a couple weeks. If you want to say hi, send me an email to angrypirate@gmail.com. Go read some Sam and Fuzzy while I'm gone.
Thursday, September 2nd, 2004 link - comments(0) My fish is really sick, I think she's suffering. To make matters much worse, my tank is leaking all over my dresser. Not good. It makes me so sad. One more day. I'm kind of freaking out. Well, it's late now and I'm feeling more calm. After tomorrow afternoon, there's not a damn thing I can do about anything here for two weeks, and that feels very freeing. So I just have to remain calm for less than 24 hours. I can do that.
Wednesday, September 1st, 2004 link - comments(0) Hello, welcome to September! I am working hard, getting ready to leave. This journal is going to be so damn boring in the month of september, it's gonna kill you. My birthday is only 15 days away. That seems crazy. I won't update this journal while I'm gone but maybe I'll email myself some entries so I can upload them quick when I get back. Here's my birthday list. Maybe I will think of more later. I don't really want anything. I have too much shit already. Id' like it if you'd come over to my house and get rid of some crap for me. rack for my scooter If anyone wants a gmail account, I've got some invites. email me
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Previous Entries
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I went to a slumber party with my girlfriends last night. It was a lot of fun. We went hot tubbing, drank wine, played with babies and talked. It felt nice to belong to a tribe. This morning we had a nice breakfast and played with babies more. I have the nicest friends ever.
We sailed today! It was my first experience sailing and I got to do it on the NZ team's America's Cup boat. It's 78 feet long and we got it up to a little over 13 nauts (sp?) I was scared out of my mind. My legs shook for the first hour but after that I calmed down. I turned the turney things in the middle that make the sales move and I even got to steer for a while. It was freaky and scarey. It just does not seem normal for a boat to tip that far over while going super fast. One thing I didn't know is that those boats are made for calmer waters. I was expecting we were going to leave the harbor and we'd all die. But no, we stayed in the nice calm waters although it was windy as hell in a couple places. I'm very glad that was my first experience sailing though because you just can't get better than that for a first time.
Tom thought he saw another sign for a wildlife park so we backtracked and drove 9km off the main road to a wildlife park complete with lions. We got there just in time for the lion feeding. They have an entire pride living together in a fenced off area of the park. They were very beautiful and I got a few nice photos of them. The rest of the park had lots of animals to pet and feed. We saw a goat, sheep, pigs, chicken, Rhea (parrot-lke birds), deer, gigantic trout brought over years ago from the Russian river. II fed baby ducks. Baby ducks crawled on me and ran in and out of my hands. They were so damn cute and soft. Their tiny little webbed feet pitter pattered around me until I couldn't stand it anymore. There was an underwater viewing hole to see all the trout underwater. There was a sacred pool that supposedly the Maori used to drink out of to make them strong and healthy and we drank out of it. Outside the park I got to take some nice pictures of baby lambs.
I just put my goldfish to sleep. She was really sick and wouldn't have lasted the trip. She has been growing a large tumor on her back for a long time now. It has gotten increasingly larger and uglier since her boyfriend 
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