I'm back.....I think

So I'm back from vacation. It was pretty fun, but now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Soon oh so soon I shall post pictures and the always-far-too-long descriptions about my every move. After all, this is my very own online journal, so take it.

I think I am severely suffering from PVTSS. Post vacation traumatic stress syndrome. Maybe spending copious amounts of money on film development will save me.

Guide to becoming a successful blogger; though not necessarily liked

Step 1:

Drop the name "Mark Driscoll" in your site as few or as many times as you like.

Step 2:

Sit back and watch the site meter count soar.

Step 3:

For added effect, add a bunch of swear words snug around "Mark Driscoll", so that they appear in the snippet offered by the google query.

Step 4:

Duck


And there you have it, you're now a well accomplished blogger with hundreds of hits a day. It brings people from Kent, Minnesota, Army bases, Kuwait, and College of the Redwoods.

I wonder if this works for "Brittany Spears".

F***, Brittany Spears

F***, Mark Driscoll


THIS IS A TEST. THIS IS ONLY A TEST. OF THE "CUSSING NEAR A CELEBRITY'S NAME TO INDUCE ADDED WEBSITE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG" COMMISSION.

Countdown to Eureka Cali:

1 crazy long day!!

Vacation at last! and 12 hours of driving...

To go see Joe (of featured blog "yo joe!") and his lovely wife Gigi Montgomery, and their little bun in the oven 'Rockefeller Montgomery" (as Matt and I have named said bun).

What mother F***ing kind of BullS***ing idiots are these guys?!

(Please see "Irony") (well, almost, except Grandma is a big fan of my blog...so..)

and, this post, complete with the 87 pages of invaluable comments!

Confessions of a Reformission Rev

for our good buddy Mark Driscoll!

This is completely and only for catharsis; beware

So, like I mentioned before, I cleaned the industrial size church kitchen. I am doing this in order to pass health inspection for the cafe. In a recently purchased Eagles Lodge from the 60's, you might imagine all the perma-nast that permeates every last nook and cranny of this enormous place. It has been a year long cleaning/demo/rebuilding effort by many various volunteers, with much blood sweat and tears poured into it. And today was my day.

With a couple of great friends of whom I will be forever indebted, a have put in thus far a total of about 15 hours of scrubbing in this gigantic kitchen. What keeps us going is the promise of what could be; a sparkly, awesome, community cafe. Sometimes the going gets tough when you're scrubbing 40 years of meat grease off the walls and ceilings. But hour 16 for me today was by far the worst.

I was alone today. My radio was trapped in the other meeting room of which I didn't want to disturb. It was late at night. The kitchen is old. Big. Dirty. And possibly haunted by the ghosts of drunken Bingo past.

All I was gonna do was soak the fridge grates in a little bleach and scrub them off. No big deal, until I realized the fridge grates were home to 40 years of bloody, fatty, dripping meat. Which in turn created a meaty orange casing of rust. With trusty rubber gloves, I carefully pull all 8 out of the giant, old, smelly, rotting fridge. As I pull the last one out, I look down to see what's really hiding under it; a 1/2 inch thick puddle of old blood. Too thick to crust, to old to pool. What was left was a meaty layer of fat and blood with something of an Elmers Glue consistency. And that is when, yes, I came closer to losing my lunch than during the last time I had the flu. I dropped the grate and unfortunately cupped my mouth with my dirty orange gloves to stop the flow. YUUUCCCKKK!

Though soon enough I recovered, squealing with my grates all the way back to the kitchen sink. I dropped them in a foot of bleach water, and again took a moment to recover as I watched little bits of fat melting off of them. But, brave as I am, I dug in, found a giant pumice grill stone, and began the hour of soaking and scrubbing.

As I finished, I marveled at how the rusty orange almost shone now as a dull peach. And then, being the dumbass that I am, I drained the sink. With all the pumice bits. Which, of course, clogged the drain, causing the emptying valve at the floor to overflow. A lot. With a lot of grease, and fat, and rust, and pumice. At this point I think a lot of cuss words came out of my mouth; though I cant be sure as I was busy doing more asinine things, like grabbing the nearest pristine white table cloth and throwing it into the mess to stop the tidal wave heading for the food area. Which of course didn't really work. So there I spent about another 40 minutes mopping, drying, squeezing, and washing out of the now ruined table cloth.

But never fear, I still had a bit of energy left yet. Good thing, because as I was washing out the table cloth with the sprayer near the dishwasher, my eye caught a little glimmer in the NOT working garbage disposal. Ok, maybe a big glimmer. Like 4 inches of rotting meat and...some other kinds of foods...piled up about a foot down into the disposal. Apparently, the wedding rehearsal dinner party that we lent the kitchen to on Friday forgot to heed my warning of "IF you use the kitchen, DO NOT put anything in the garbage disposal!!!! It will rot away forever!!!" At this I was met with "no worries, we wont even be in kitchen at all!"

Hm, methinks otherwise. As the scent of rot wafted up to me, so did my lunch. well, almost. Another close call. But no, I was strong, and dove in to get it! Reaching down in all 12 inches up to my uncovered arms, I began pulling out piles, lumps, and strings of rotting food. And then, it happened. I decided it would be a brilliant idea to use a rag to pull the stuff out. As I got a large handful, and dumped it into the trash, somehow the rag sort of snapped back, ricocheting all of the sludge back off the side of the garbage can and directly into my face; yes, all of it: hair, tshirt, eyes, and even my mouth. And that is when I began to cry.

There are all sorts of reasons I shouldn't feel sorry for myself, and shouldn't feel frustrated, or angry, or, whatever. And all of them very good reasons. But somehow, in that moment, none of those reasons mattered. I cried because of all the hard work I put into that place. And I cried because in one short weekend of miscommunication, or apathy, or whatever, my 15 hours of work had been reduced to a trashed kitchen, and the need to back way up and start again, to reclean, repolish, restart. And, I cried simply because I had just spend the last 2 hours bathing in rotting blood and guts. And now it was in my mouth. And I cried, and I took my gloves off and left.

Rudy Carrasco

Yesterday Rudy Carrasco preached at our church. He speaks for World Vision, is on the Bush committee to end poverty, and runs the Harambee house in Pasadena. His sermon was amazing. For anyone that missed it, you can check out the MP3 on the harambee site (link lower right--too lazy to link it here).

He spoke about justice, and God's command to be justice and mercy, especially with regards to poverty. I guess I am feeling too tired to really talk about it like I wanted to, so perhaps you should just listen. Plus, maybe my liturgy prayer of hope will be posted up there soon. Maybe not.


Getting back into blogging is a strange world. All day long I view things through the lens of "that would be a great thing to post about!" subconsciously. So I end up going around like a crazy lady talking to myself and writing things out in my head. And then I get to computer and completely forget what I was going to say. Fruitless; I just look crazy.

Off to finish cleaning industrial kitchen! I'm shooting for cafe grand opening of June 24. Did I finally just say that out loud?! Don't tell anyone!!!

Count down to vacation: 2 days!!!!! Sweet foggy, small, hippy smelling Eureka, here I come...

American Dreamzzz

Yesterday Matt and I discovered that finally we had a few hours in which we were both not working, and could spend together for once this week. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves. To the record store, we say!!

We headed down to Easy Street, a favorite of ours in Queen Anne. Big enough to carry the good stuff, hip enough to be messy and chaotic.

We both packed our long lists of financially unobtainable records, written up our arms like test answers, ink obscuring perfectly readable names like Belle & Sebastion into "Belle & what? Belle & and SLAYER? Who wrote that?! Well ok then..." due to the sweaty anxiousness of anticipation. It's been a long overdue album binge. itunes just doesn't have the same appeal of holding a freshly printed sleeve, with yes, all 20 songs, rather than that singular one you purchased but will never listen to because when you're in the mood for, say, Mr. Roboto, you really don't want to have to play it on repeat as you walk away to get ready for work.

The store was jammed up with about a million people, wrapped up around the corners of the store, all waiting in line to get something signed by some dull looking guy with bad bleachy hair and a tacky trucker hat. "Who's everyone waiting for?" "Dude from Grandaddy" "hmm. Performing?" "nah, signing." "hmm." (What's funny is I actually did just look them up to see which was sitting there; he really does have terrible bleachy hair (ok, maybe natural, but bad nonetheless) and a bad trucker hat in every photo; the J.L. himself)

My only complaint about Easy Street is the blaring volume of their music, which makes me feel 2 things; 1. Like I'm in that terrible movie Empire Records from the 90's with all the snobby employees who think is awesomely pretentious to blast their "hipper than you" record to prove it, and 2. That it is possible I am getting really old--"Turn it down! Turn it down! I can't hear myself trying to ponder who's sound is more authentic--Green Day or Angels and Airwaves, Green Day or...turn it down!! Too loud!" To which the male employee in tight women's jeans flippantly tosses his hair at.

Anyhow, Matt swiped the new Danielson album, and I skittishly raced around trying to find something Jamaican of which I am ashamed to publicly name. But it was too hard for me to think with all the clamor, and my anxiety level and public tolerance waxed and waned respectively. This ended up coming out something like "What the hell is up with 'Danielson'? First its the Danielson Family, Danielson Famile, or whatever, how the hell are you supposed to say it?, and then brother Danielson, and now just Danielson, what the hell is he trying to do? Does he want us to buy his CD's or what!" At this climax I practically threw the cd I was unsuccessfully trying to re-file into the overcrowded rack.

That's when Matt takes my hand, shush's me gently, and leads me out of the store and directly to a reclusive table at paggliacis. One or the other of us ends up having some sort of mental breakdown over our inability to deal with crowds and public spaces every time we go out. So its nice that at least one of us ends up maintaing sanity enough to address the issue before being arrested.

Oh ya, wasn't I going to talk about American Dreamz? That's where we headed after pizza. This movie came highly recommended to us by, save for a few torturous nights of He Man the movie starring Courtney Cox, and Evil Dead, a pretty reliable source.

definitely fun. We laughed a lot, which is good for us and the comedy genre, given kind of massed produced comedies from a few years ago that seem to clutter the Blockbuster shelves disappointing us every time, causing us to lose all hope in hollywood humor (was there much to begin with?).

Though it is pretty easy to make fun of Bush, America, Iraq, terrorists, American Idol, Bo Bice, Hugh Grant, and Hillary Duff--doing it at the same time is surely commendable. Nevertheless, though working with easy targets doesn't get my vote for a huge cinematic, comedic accomplishment, easy targets are always funny for really good stereotypical reasons, thus causing you to laugh everytime. And it's about damn time somebody made fun of this out of control American virus known only as American idol. Geez, about time. Stupid.

But, all in all, our highlight of the night was our parking attendant. As we pull up to pay (damn seattle), the guy opens the door to take our card and a giant cloud of pot smoke pours out into our car, causing us to think for a minute that we were in a black-lit basement listening to Led Zeppelin. "Good movie, man?" "Ya man, good, how about you?" "Oh ya, doing real good, real good."

Quote from our favorite Yul Brynner movie ever...

Stupid photo poster, my face is haunted (and those don't actually go together)

My reflection in a haunted mirror--I look like I have a haunted "Scream" mask on!

Because of the stupid photo posting program I use, the actual explanitory post is located 3 pics down. Stupid.

I lived next door to a haunted house

I live in a rich neighborhood. It's an older neighborhood with cookie cutter pre-fab houses that are all reaching roughly the 10 year age mark, but it still seems to carry around a reputation of being on the snobby side--mostly because of that that flashing neon "Bellevue" address tacked onto the end--though technically its pretty damn close to Renton (pronounce "Rent-uun" --its ok, I work there).

People usually get the wrong idea about my bank account when I mention where I live, so I always need to set the record straight by explaining that I rent a daylight basement with a roommate.

Everyday as I drive to work past the rows of "burnt beige", "charcoal beige", "tan beige" and "beige beige" houses, I always smile as the overpriced monotony is broken up by the one old house in the middle. Set amidst a big grassy field with apple trees is a big, uh...somewhat older house, with pretty trim, leafy garden trees, and to top it off--a tiny, furry, white pony snacking on fallen fenced in apples. Its so cute it makes me want to purchase a Mary Englebright magazine and go feed it to the pony (maybe along with some sugar cubes for good measure).

One day I noticed the pony was missing. I felt a brief rush of anxiety and discontent--but soon it was over as I gazed around with a sigh of content at the fat, wispy money trees firmly planted throughout the rest of my neighborhood (though, I don't have one of those in my yard, oddly enough).

But time wore on, and still no sign of said cutest pony. So one day I looked a little further (house is nestled behind tall trees) while passing and noticed the frilly white curtained windows had been boarded up. Shock and awe!

I promptly talked Matt into racing over. I grabbed my camera and off I persuaded him to go with me, investigating this mysterious house. I have an unhealthy infatuation with abandoned houses. And though weekly I am tormented by nightmares (could this be because the only band I listen to is Slayer??), I am nonetheless obsessed with finding one of these houses to be haunted, and am determined to capture it on film. Maybe I watch too many movies.

So we checked it out. Its quite creepy, really, as it looks like the previous residents were living in filth, and then suddenly moved out and left it all behind after some abrupt and traumatic event. Windows were kicked out, doors left swaying open on hinges, and trash, pieces of furniture, knick knacks and washers and dryers were left strewn about the place.

I ventured in as far as the living room, daring to stand still long enough to get lengthy exposures of the strangeness. But I took one look down the dark creaky stairs into the underground basement, and thought "I think we should go now", realizing that perhaps I don't reallllly want to happen upon a haunted house--or a 'Silence of the Lambs' scene. I peaked up the hallway to the top of the stairs, and heard some creaking noises just as I finished my long stair exposure. That's when we ran!





Here are the pics. The top one above this post is a broken mirror piece we found in the yard. I took a picture of our reflection in it, and somehow it completely came out looking like I have a creepy "Scream" mask on.....ooooooh.

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The house

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This is the front door, where I'm holding the camera sideways becuase I'm terrified someone is going jump out from behind the kicked in door at me

This is a terrible exposure, but I like it because it sort of looks like an old worn out dress print

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.I like the creepy green morgue glow...

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Looking up the stairs into the hallway. I was hoping to caputre a ghost on this 1 minute long exposure, but no such luck...unless maybe that hall light kinda looks like a ghost

In the creepy barn there's a...... Actually, there was some weird stuff in there. There was also an underground cellar to the left of this, but we were too scared to lift the doors open....and find dead bodies...

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flowers in the yard; haunted ones

From the deck, looking inside

ya, I'm pretty sure that's a ghost hanging out of the window

in the yard

There is a plane in the background

Does this count as posting?

Ah, sweet mega-church. Does this remind anyone of anything....local?

And for Matt...

Hot pocket....

This is for Kayla

plus, im supposed to be reading, not posting.....

Harambee Church? Isn't that a cult? Yes, and here it is (I hope you can see our spaceship in the background, cuz it's taking us to heaven soon..)

So, this was Easter service at church. These are some of the pictures I took to toss on the website (so you can see them all there at the link to your lower right).

Its my church!

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crazy with a tambourine

ooh, candles

So, do you think there is a slight resemblance to PJ?

Hey Topping, are you in the Hives?

Rockstar Matt Topping

kidz (plus aaron rockin out)

Hobbits

Pastor Mikey G preaching

rockstars

Mike and Donner

Tony

yay

Kayla and Alaska

I just like this one

Than and Rachel

Maddy and my skirt. This one makes me dizzy, which is why I like it.

THe Avers

Is Kate torturing Avery?

Single hotties

Mrs. K

Kayla and MAddy

MAV

This just never gets old

Top google searches that led to my site:

1. Pink hair
2. We toss 'em they're awesome
3. How to build props of animals

You know, I'm pretty sure I don't even know how that animal thing led to my site. Does anyone remember a post about me making animal props?

Crazy lady crazy lady

I'm wondering if this lady has read the new testament?

So, I've heard a couple of interviews with this woman. I am dying to see a good theologian that's taken a logic course dismantle her argument easily. She keeps getting all this press because everyone thinks that her own crazy lady voice will speak more volumes than a good argument. But everyone knows yelling at someone that they're stupid isn't the best way to dissuade someone from their idiocy.

But God Bless them for trying. Crazy lady.

What's new?!

Well, nothing really. I have been attempting to cut things out of my daily routine that seem to take up a lot of time, causing a vast number of other things to fall by the wayside. Like, say, doing my taxes, or actually paying my bills. So, blogging had to go. But I'm still trying to maintain a little. I think writing takes a little more concentration than photos. Plus, I guess I see everything pictorially in my life anyway, so it seems a more appropriate way to share about things. An though some people can take exciting things such as "Day 23: today we are getting a new septic tank installed" and still seem to wow their readership into submission, not all of us have that talent. I've got to find something more exciting to steal your time away with.

Also, I am recovering from an extreme case of the flu last week. And on the nicest week since last August. Too bad.

But hey, lets give it a try anyway and see how it goes:

May 9:

Woke up, late as usual, to the less than pleasant sounds of Adam Corolla.

Got ready, at cereal with bananas. Emailed.

Went down to the espresso stand to pick up my check from working last week. yes, this was the only time possible to get it. Listened to Jen go crazy for about a half hour about how tough bills are to pay, how restless she is, how she wants a man to come and pay her a lot of money to pursue her passions (to this I said, honey who doesn't), how she tried with her stalker for a while, but couldn't really stand the thought of sleeping with him, and then back to bills. I made a latte and drank it far to quickly. I drank a double tall sugar free white mocha. Who the hell isn't dying to know.

Went to work. Felt useless and unaccomplished. I generally skipped out on the free hip hop class we are hosting at Harambee every Tuesday. A lot of high school kids come, and Dennis teaches it. I went out to talk to one of the high school kids I was buddies with before when I was really involved, but when all he discussed was how he hates this bitch and that fat whore, I just walked away. I was making an attempt to mentor him for a while, or at least cut down of his cut downs, but then he disappeared. I guess today I thought the best response was a lack of attention to this behavior.

Before internship class, Dennis, Matt and Matt, and olivia and Caleb and I walked down for some Pho for dinner. I got my new favorite, Taro bubble tea with tapioca. yum yum.

We went off to internship group at the Gunn's. We like to call it the Young Gunn's. We listen to Mike talk about the book were going through, The Shape of Things To Come, a sort of thing on the emerging church. Nobody says much in this group, only me when I open my big mouth to run down all sorts of theological rabbit trails that nobody seems to understand anyway. I guess I am terrible at articulating my questions, may be the better way of looking at it. At least Matt gets me, and then I think how great of a best friend he is. And then I continue trying to get my point out for about 20 more minutes until someone just gets too frustrated with me and then I give up. But tonight went well. I had a lot of questions concerning denominations, their history, and their review processes as opposed to non-denominational churches. I felt quite satisfied with the discussion. The lovely Donna made yummy chocolate cookies.

I came home, made a chicken Fontana sausage, took a shower, and now I will dry my pink hair.

Wow, was that as interesting as the normal daily life of a blogger? Don't worry, this may be the last test I run in this area of diary blogging.

This is the lesser of all our evil Easter couples pictures. We spent the first half of the day at Matt's parents house. Then we went to my family's house. It was fun. Things and stuff are neat. I'm dying of the flu this week, and I dare say it might be one of my top 5 worst sicks (real word). That's why I haven't posted lately (yes, even less than usual). Because I'm dying. I can't sleep, so I post fluffy family albums. Enjoy.

My Gaupo Pop-o (that's dad to you)

My parents barn

Uncle Matt, and cousins Kenya and Race. Kenya's paintings are currently on display at Harambee.

My baby dog Annie--after she got into the food and stuffed herself

Dicie and Brian--my cuz and grandma

Mary's yard

Matt's fashion pose; The Easter Bonnet

Merick

Avery and Mackenna (the nieces)

Matt and his nephew Merick

Matt and his mum--can you tell?

Matt's gonna kill you

Matt and his mommy (and his lion's mane hair)

Kate the sun princess (if only she knew I really did post this...) MAtt's sister in law

Mikey V (Matt's little soccer star 16 year old brother)