here you have it

wah.

today was pretty awesome: busy at work, awesome dinner company, some awesome idea bouncing at the shamrock/paradise over beers.

but still,

i'd give my right thumb for a massage.

bilateral hamstrings to feet style.

maybe scalp.

oh yeah, totally scalp.

"home" again

with 2 solid weeks of vacation behind me, i am back home in madison.

week one: puerto vallarta, mexico
* group of nearly 60, consisting mostly of gay men
* constant party
* got to get to know toni
* learned some spanish
* ate fresh pineapple with breakfast every morning
* got a tan
* made some way awesome friends
* spent way too much money
* saw way too many male strippers
* got mistaken for a dude at least 6 times a day
* got carded 3 times. the drinking age in mexico is 18.

stay tuned for pictures. it's my project for this evening, but i'm not going to post the album until the whole thing is ready.

week two: henryville, indiana
* sans immediate family, drove to visit my maternal extended side
* my great grandmother and all of her siblings are still alive
* my great grandmother loves to make food for me, vegetarian style
* my great grandmother is amazing
* haven't seen them in almost 2 years, but we hang out like i live there
* visited the baptist church in winchester, kentucky which is located on a one way called "gay st"
* thanksgiving day was almost exactly what it always was, every year, growing up
* gained 4 pounds
* indiana road sign, "you have an expiration date. trust jesus."
* gave small cousin a 10 peso coin because he was sooo amazed
* willingly went to church on sunday
* bonded with family
* was stuck in traffic the entire way home. gawkers, construction, and tolls, oh my!

i feel like such a temporary presence, here in madison. the inspiring feeling i get when i travel is already hatching ideas for 2 more trips...

ps
does anyone know robert's email address? i've got some pictures on my computer that need to be returned to their creator.

vacation: the short story

thousands of miles from worry.

me = here

in almost exactly 4 hours, (yes, it will be 2:30 am) toni will come by my apartment and pick me up. we will be on our way to chicago o'hare to hop a flight to puerto vallarta, mexico.

here's where i'll be spending the next week of my life.

here's what weather.com has to say about it.

i can't believe i'm doing this.

i should pack.

edited to add:

upon checking my visitor stats, i realized that not only did my blog get over 100 hits today (!) but someone in the uk googled "lucy the fly for a litte system for a birthday" and the first hit they got was a post that i made in july 2004, saying, "1 hotel room, 8 queers, and 4 bottles of liquor later..."

yay for google :)

in retrospect, reading that post, i can't believe i had forgotten about the woman that approached me at the bar that night and said, "if you ever want a piece of something that isn't madison drama, give me a call."

yowzah!

happy 200th post, greenambition!

it all started on march 7, 2004, with my very first post. i was single, and had been living alone all winter in the upper midwest in a 400 square foot, cement, "one bedroom" apartment on the west side of campus. i had a brand new computer, and a full length wool coat. the computer won most of those battles, and i started getting addicted to websites like television without pity, the sneeze, and dooce. after some IMing with molly about her new blog, something connected in my head: i want one of those.

i wasn't really sure what i was going to write about at first. i knew that my friends and i were finding and sharing links to fun websites via email or IM. i knew that there were ideas that i wanted to share. i knew that i liked to write and be written to. greenambition: here you have it was born.

people ask me what greenambition means. i say, whatever meaning you can find in it is the truth. it's one of those words that came out of me putting a whole bunch of ideas together in my head and squeezing them all together until a few common words come out. the subtitle, here you have it, comes more out of my attitude of, 'well, here it is. it's here if you want it. you asked me what i was thinking about today, and here it is. read it if you want. or not.'

i enjoy sharing stories and photos, ideas and questions, and sometimes the stuff that spatters out of my brain when i've got keyboard or pen in hand. i enjoy getting feedback. i sometimes enjoy getting googled. i really enjoy getting comments or emails from people i don't know who say that they like what i've done with this place.

so, in honor of my 200th post, i thought i'd put together a (pretty unthoroughly researched) best list, of sorts....

the greatest goings of greenambition

greatest graphic - the recycling poster, houston...

greatest photo - 200 year old church buildings reflected in the glass of a boston skyscraper, vacation 2004

greatest link - thoroughly unresearched, you're a superstar, at the gay bar

greatest google - people have searched google images for phrases like "bri hot" and "abby hot" for months now, and get this picture, hot Hot HOT

the greatest post and the greatest comment turned out to be the same post - a day for bloggers

so, there you have it.

ta taa for now, blog fans. i'm afraid i will be away from internet access for one whole week, thanks to a little field trip that i'm taking to puerto vallarta, mexico. va.ca.tion. miss_taken was not mistaking, "it'll be good to get out of dodge for a while."

i'm off to write, draw, drink, eat, nap, take long walks by myself, and learn tai chi... on the beach.

for me

i squeezed out every last drop of hope i had. stuff that, lately, i've been holding very very carefully close to my own chest, for fear of losing what little of it there seemed to have been left. rationing it like it's the last half a cup of fresh water while i'm surrounded by endless ocean. and, after that conversation, i was finally allowed to do the comforting. funny how that happens at the moment just after i'd looked around myself and realized that i had NOTHING left to give. but just before the last of the bricks had settled into their places, i reached through and opened my palm, letting those drops trickle into her ear, hoping that there was enough to amount to something.

so it's my fault, again, for putting that vital stuff into places i know i'll never see again.

"who am i, that i should be vying for your touch?"

funny seeing you here

do you ever feel so scattered and lost that you feel like in order to get back on track you're going to need some outside force to come along, grab you by your collar and just shake you until you come to? 

the last time i felt like that, i got knocked out by an overthrown softball.  i wasn't even playing.  the next morning, things started making sense.  i realized that i wasn't crazy, after all.

molly posted something one day about strange things happening.  coincidences.  like when you're thinking of something or someone, and then that thing or person shows up in your life somehow.  it tends to happen to me a lot.  just when i'm feeling lost or afraid or overwhelmed, something happens and i get an idea that's like a ladder out of a hole.

like that time last summer, when i was driving "up north" to spend a few days with my family at their cabin.  i was going along just fine, almost 7 hours into my trip, when the rain clouds in the distance suddenly became not so distant.  in the brief moments when it was actually downpouring, i remember coming to the abrupt realization that i had no idea where i was.  on the map, sure, but what if something happened and i needed help?  it had been almost an hour since my cell phone got anything that resembled call-able signal.  what would i do?!?  just drive.  seriously, you big baby.  you know how to fix a flat, and you've driven in WAY worse weather than this.  it will pass.  stop freaking out and drive.  i calmed myself down, and as the rain passed, i started realizing that not only did i not really know where i was, but that i was somewhere 4 hours north of minneapolis, in ford country, where people fly american flags over bush/cheeny 2004 stickers and gun racks, driving with out of state plates, sporting rainbow and UN flag stickers on my foreign car, and probably the only queer for MILES.  i was just beginning freak out mode, oh my god! they'll never find my body!  why the hell do i have to be SO gender queer?! and picturing my next gas station stop ending up 'boys don't cry' style, when the clouds broke.  the rain had been stopped for a little while, but the road was still wet, and so were the mid-june corn and soy bean fields.  the evening sun came out from behind the line of storm clouds and made the fields the most brilliant color green i've ever seen.  just when my mind had forgotten about freaking out in awe of the color green, i came to a stop sign.  and when i looked to my right, the most beautiful rainbow i've *ever* seen just *appeared*, right there before my eyes.  there were no other cars anywhere, so i put it in park and took some pictures.  as you may know, pictures of rainbows usually really suck.  especially amateur ones, taken from inside the car while parked at an intersection.  but i felt like i needed to remember that rainbow because i felt like the universe was comforting me somehow.  telling me to stop freaking out, that i should stop focusing on what's out of my control, because almost everything is out of my control, and out of control doesn't have to mean bad. see, look at this rainbow.  isn't it the most beautiful, out of control thing you've ever seen?  i mean, think of all of the things that have to happen for you to be able to see a rainbow.  and not just any rainbow, *this* *beautiful* rainbow that you watched come into being right up out of this brilliant green field.  take what you will from it.  and watch it go.

if i were at home, at my own computer right now, i would *so* post that picture.  stay tuned for that.

back to my little string... do you know what i mean, though? does it ever happen to you that you're listening to the radio, or have your stereo or playlist on random because you don't know what you want to listen to, and then somehow it plays all the right songs?  the songs that speak to the fuzzy mood that you're in?  songs that so perfectly scratch that nagging itch that you've got on that hard to reach place between your heart and your mind?  it actually happens to me a lot.  even more so now that i'm working at a place that has satellite radio.  it's great.  no commercials, just music.  all the time.  so this week i've been listening to different stations, trying to find one that's chill enough for a coffee shop, and exciting enough to not make me want to change the channel every time an "i can't live without you" song comes on.  i settled for the electronic station called "chill" which is described as "easy electronic."  i listened for a while, liked it a lot, closed up shop, and started cleaning.  i've been feeling particularly emotionally unsettled this week, so i took a moment to say to the radio, out loud, "ok radio, speak to me.  tell me something i don't know." and do you know what happened?  i'm gonna fucking tell you: the VERY NEXT SONG, which came on no more than a minute later, had only one line of lyrics in the whole song (it being of the electronic genre, and all).  the exact words were, i swear to all that's holy, "i know what you're thinking."  yup, that's what it said.

put *that* in your pipe and smoke it.

i wish the universe knew how to write.  i think i need a map.

i wanna live somewhere where i can ride my motorcycle and wear these boots ALL YEAR

extra special thanks to molly, i am totally in love. with material things.

seriously though, i've been stressing out lately over my lack of proper boots (RIP, doc martens. you faithfully kept my feet protected through all terrain and in all seasons. *every day* for almost 6 years. even when your soles were splitting, even when you came apart at the seams.) because i can't get myself to buy leather ones. can't do it. doc marten doesn't make vegan boots any more. winter is coming, what am i going to do?!?

start a christmas list, apparently:

thanks to molly, check out these bad ass vegetarian mutha fuckahs.

steel toe, i love you.

edited to add:

OMG, i want this, too! damn.