being alone for the first time in two weeks is odd. it’s like missing a limb. not that i would know what that feels like. i could try sitting on my hand for a while and then flap it around uselessly until the blood came back, but that’s really not going to compare. now kim is buying plates and lamps without my creative input. which basically means that she doesn’t get me making absurd comments about patterns looking like germs under a microscope.
i realized some things on this trip across the country with kim. and one of the most important things i came to understand is that i can never, ever, ever live anywhere besides the west coast. california, oregon, and washington, you are all i have, if you will have me. some places were beautiful, or gorgeous even. some had nice people who would call me endearments, but no place was home.
driving back to my apartment yesterday i saw the spire of the church bell tower on my campus in the distance and almost cried with delight. i missed it. i actually missed a bell tower in a city i don’t even like to live in that much. i missed my mom’s house, i missed my cats, i missed my apartment, i even missed my neighborhood. i missed the smell, the weather, the competent merging traffic, the atmosphere.
people are different everywhere but you are always the same. i am a product of my upbringing and that stamps me as a californian down to every finger and toe. i belong in the bay area because it resides in me.
which is not to say that i didn’t take entirely too many pictures of all these exotic locales that we travelled thru. they can be found here and are broken into the various states. in particular i recommend the following pictures/movies. so if you look at nothing else, at least catch these.
kim and i at arches national park in utah.
swine barn at the missouri state fair.
kim on a trampoline in st. louis, missouri
kim and i emerging into sunlight after being on a tour of mammoth caves national park.
kim gaining KoL adventures by eating white castle fries and me doing the same
vidoe of me pretending to be a mountain lion on the blue ridge parkway. and kim laughing at me.
jolie and i on her bed in maryland
there’s also a video tour given by kim of her new apartment. but i’m having some troubles uploading it. i’ll let you know when it’s up though. and really i recommend a lot more pictures than just these too. there’s some real gems in there.
Wow, that was the most adorable cattle guard abuse I’ve ever seen.
Thank you michele. And yes, watching you beat up the cattle guard was hilarious once I realized what the cattle guard was. Why were you beating up the cattle guard? Did it trip you?
The other pictures are all fantastic. You eating white castle fries – I can see the adventures bursting like the sun. Wait, no, that’s the sun bursting like the sun.
And now I have a picture of Kim on a trampoline. And so does everyone else.
did you watch the mountain lion one? because i think that’s actually even better than the cattle guard.
cattle guards, fyi, are to keep cattle from milling around in the bend of a road so that cars don’t come flying around a corner and smash into them. i didn’t realize this at first and thought they were just to keep cattle on the owner’s land and it made no sense as to why there were not fences extending from where the cattle guard was. also it made even less sense as to why there were fake cattle guards where there would be a sign proclaiming the upcoming cattle guard and then just white lines painted on the road.
everyone i told about the fake ones has been all, “yeah but cows are stupid so they’ll think it’s a real one and not stand on it.” and i’ve said, “yeah but they’re so stupid they can’t read so why have a fucking sign?”
cattle guards, in conclusion, are beneficial to your fender, fake cattle guards though are still incredibly lame.
Ha! I’ve seen a cattle guard before up in Tilden, but there wasn’t anyone around to really explain it, so I was also confused as to why there wasn’t a fence around.
Fake cattle guards, though, are a riot. A laugh riot. Do they use fake cattle dogs to round up the steers? Maybe they could just put signs spaced evenly along the perimeter of their land with pictures of cattle dogs in menacing poses so that the cattle see the signs and say, “Oh, there’s a dog over there, I’d better stay on this side of that dog-sign, where it’s safe.”
curse my inability to download quicktimes on my work computer because i do not have advanced admin privileges!
i’ll look at home when we get inet on tues.
All of the Utah pictures are by far my favorites. So, so pretty.
yar, arches nat’l park does equal gorgeous. i’m really fond of a lot of the colorado pictures too though as i thought the mountains and clouds were pretty there. and the beauty of kentucky really doesn’t exist in the pictures i have in kentucky mostly which is sad. but there you have it. and don’t be fooled by the beautiful pictures of a sunset in salina, kansas, because there’s nothing beautiful about kansas. the sunset was an aberation.