many pictures of me

so, if any are interested in a slideshow of basically my entire life, check out my myspace.

http://www.myspace.com/lizatraveler

And there is nice music, and an obligatory bathtub shot thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy yourselves.

things haven't changed all that much

Your #1 Match: ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends.You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules.Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives.You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller! You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

Your #2 Match: INFP

The Idealist You are creative with a great imagination, living in your own inner world.Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships.It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close.But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist.

Your #3 Match: ENFJ

The Giver You strive to maintain harmony in relationships, and usually succeed.Articulate and enthusiastic, you are good at making personal connections.Sometimes you idealize relationships too much - and end up being let down.You find the most energy and comfort in social situations ... where you shine. You would make a good writer, human resources director, or psychologist.

Your #4 Match: ENTP

The Visionary You are charming, outgoing, friendly. You make a good first impression.You possess good negotiating skills and can convince anyone of anything.Happy to be the center of attention, you love to tell stories and show off.You're very clever, but not disciplined enough to do well in structured environments. You would make a great entrpreneur, marketing executive, or actor.

Your #5 Match: ESFP

The Performer You are a natural performer and happiest when you're entertaining others.A great friend, you are generous, fun-loving and optimistic.You love to laugh - and you like almost all people equally.You accept life as it is, and you do your best to make each day fantastic. You would make a good actor, designer, or counselor.

What's Your Personality Type?

bikes and spears! bikes and spears!

Hopefully someone like Jonny or Paco will read this and find my title for this post funny. The amazing thing is that it is relevant.

I've been swimming lately; today back in the pool around lunchtime and up over 1k yards- about 5 times that much, and I'll be back in shape. Heh. Fortunately I have a few months. There was a moment today though, around 8oo or so, where I hit my stride. Chop, chop, chop, breath, hips twisting along behind me, knees moving and feet pushing against the lovely cool water. It felt good for a few moments. I even did a little sprinting, but caught a bad turn on my last 50 and just about bottomed out. I'd forgotten how much those take the wind out of your sails. Oh well. I remember now.

So afterwards, I came back and said hello to my grandmother before heading home with my chlorinated suit. She mentioned that she wanted to go see "The End Of The Spear," a story about Jim Elliot and his buddies, and wouldn't mind going tonight. Ok, sounds fine, and we ended up going, after I once again forayed into the kitchen and emerged semi victorious with a beef/broccoli concoction. Eunice and I caught the 7pm show at the new megaplex theatre about 10 minutes from here. Now, don't get me wrong, I won't be nominating the production for any Oscars or even Golden Globes anytime soon (since I'm doing the nominating this year), but nonetheless, it was good, and rather impressive for a Christian project. Whether it was intentional or not, most of the Americans came off rather like idiots, which I found pleasing in some odd way. The main actor was just a little hammy from time to time, and all of the indigenous actors were (duh) the best of the entire cast, and the really standout portions of the film were when there wasn't any whitey around.

What I guess I'm saying is, if you have the eight bucks, go see it. There are some really nice moments, and a lot of mediocre ones. Heartstrings get pulled, so don't say I didn't warn you. Just don't have high expectations, and you'll be pleasantly pleased. With pleasing.

And then when I got home, there was an eggplant colored Specialized Stumpjumper in my garage. Jeff must have come while Eunice and I were at the film. Smashing, I must say- perhaps I'll do a little bit of smashing myself tomorrow, when I break my face on Gamble's Run over at Washington Twp. Park.

Hope you are all well, my little ducklings.

events of a lifetime

my dad and I were talking yesterday, you know, just idle chit chat, and he asked me what the most defining moment or couple of moments were in my lifetime.

1. Sept. 11th, 2001
2. The Asian Tsunami, Dec. 2004


other things that are interesting:
after you move away, people write things that you believe completely, and say things like they mean them. funny how perspective works.

ps- I have a job, and a transmission for my truck. things are looking up.

Gimme some of that tea...

Apparently, these people have nothing on the mate kids. I wanna go to church here.

I'm sure I could connect with God if I was high, too.

Court Allows Church's Use of Hallucinogenic Tea

down by the winding wabash river

On the drive out yesterday, sitting sideways on the bench of my uncle David's extended cab F-150, I noticed we passed over the Wabash in the dusk. It made me think of Huntington, and what they might possibly be doing with their "College Song," where we talk about HC, and hail to thee, our dear old college, and say college a lot. Huntington is no longer a college. For reasons that seem fairly arbitrary and perhaps somewhat vain, they have turned into a university. I wonder if one night on the stroke of midnight they will turn into a pumpkin.

So I'm home, safe and sound, ish. I am fine, but it looks like the Troops is really out. So, I'm going to borrow my mom's totally rad Buick Century to drive over to Plainfield, and hopefully get a job at the Barnes & Noble there. And then back by the Chiropractor's office. I need to work about 80 hours a week, I think. Otherwise, school this fall is starting to look pretty dicey. And I'm gonna get some great legs under me soon- Emily is loaning me her bike until she gets home in a few months from the war, and I'm hoping to do a lot of my commuting on that. I just wish my parents didn't live 20 miles from the city, and that it wasn't February. Oh well.

So friends, I am a hoosier again. Oh, the joy.

tripping

Well, I'm on my way to Indianapolis, friends. I currently find myself in Overland Park, Kansas, which is really just a western suburb of Kansas City, over the border from Missouri. My mom has a cousin that lives here, and I'm staying with her and her family, in a visit that was just intended to be overnight last night.

However, the Troops started having some trouble about 30 miles or so west of Topeka. She wasn't able to shift very easily, and suddenly the "check trans" light came on. I nursed the old girl here just after midnight, determined not to get stuck in Dark, Kansas with nothing to help me out. So sleeping in this morning and going out to try again proved to be fruitless, now the Troops either doesn't go into gear at all, or it doesn't go out of first. Which means if the tranny is gone, so is the Troops.

I was going to wait until the morning (it being a Sunday today so nobody is mechanicing) to check it out at some sort of shop and make sure that was the dilly-o, but my mom called about an hour ago and apparently she and my uncle David are making the 7 hour drive out this afternoon/evening with his pickup and car-hauling trailer to give me a tow. Seriously, people, I felt like the world was lifted up off my shoulders. So, we'll get it there, and be able to deal with it later. My folks have a spare car I can use for a while if the old girl is really down for the count, and it's a 1974 volkswagen beetle, so not everything is bad news. And I am in a warm place, with food and family, and the promise of an actually kind of fun day tomorrow when I can hang out with my mom and uncle and road trip.

So that's the story, my little glories. Hope all is well with you.

valemtimes

my sophomore year in college, Jess Abbott (now Landrigan) and I made Valentines day cards together. They weren't addressed to anybody, and they were retarded. I mean, really really dumb- made with magic marker on white paper, about taking rides on combines and crap. We did a lot of stuff that now doesn't make any sense to me. but at the time, I remember laughing so hard that I felt like my ribs were going to crack and my bowels were going to slide to the floor in her Hardy basement dorm room.

Now Jess is married. And tonight Brian brought me home flowers, and told me he wanted me to be his Valentine.

No boy has ever brought me flowers before, or asked me for anything that even had to do with Valentines. Now all I need is a ride on that combine, and a magic marker, and Hardy Hall.

Coldplay is still humming in the background, and more things are the same than not.

Tension Is A Passing Note

lyrics by sixpence none the richer

do I murder
when I forget you from afar
too drunk on the poison of endless roads
and the countless smokey bars

but tension is to be loved
when it is like a passing note
to a beautiful, beautiful chord

do I murder us
putting pavement in my veins
shooting in special heroin
for the seeking and displaced

but tension is to be loved
when it is like a passing note
to a beautiful, beautiful chord

but tension is to be loved
when it is like a passing note
to a beautiful, beautiful

tension is to be loved
when it is like a passing note
to a beautiful, beautiful chord

how long till my soul gets it right?

While I've been sick, I've been looking around online. I've gotten excited about things that were a part of my past, that have kind of been chucked by the wayside. Things like music. Well, certain types of music.

Like a capella college groups. That sing Coldplay or Indigo Girls covers. And DCI competitions that will be held in Indianapolis this summer.

On a slightly different note, why is it that less than a half an hour after I make a rare statement concerning my own virtue, I get pulled up short on the same issue? I jump in the first available opportunity, and prove myself not a paragon of anything less than low-browed, hateful, ignorant remarks. All because I feel like I'm infringed upon, so certainly that gives me the right to cheapen the dignity of another.

how long?

in sickness and mormons

So it's (hopefully) my last week in the Rockies. I don't say that because I am glad; more just because I'm ready to be done with this schooling of mine. I'm tying up loose ends here, and one of the last things I have to do is finish my internship at Pike's Peak Hospice.

I have a cold.

Funny thing about hospices, hospeece, is that they don't let you in when you have some sickness or disease going on in your body. So, I'm not going right now, which sort of puts me even further behind. Farther behind. Does anyone know which one it is? So, I'm just sitting around Brian's, sniffle snuffle-ing, coughing a little and couching a lot. Sometimes I have a peanut, sometimes I have a hummus. That part is nice. And cable. And speedy speederoo internet.

Then yesterday, when I was going out to the store to get some pita bread, there were mormons across the street and two doors down. Mormons! I rubbed my hands together with glee, and actually cackled when I came back from the store and saw them still there. I love mormons! I couldn't wait for them to ring my bell, ring my bell so that I could go out and talk to them whilst eating hummus and wearing my stocking hat with the little blue ducks on it. Mormons, why did you forsake me? I waited for you, hour after hour, until it was dusk, and I was sure you were miles away on your bicycles. And all I did was couch, and cough.

burrito dreams

So I totally had this weird dream last night, and I only remembered it this morning when I was talking to McDavid and I went downstairs and saw the huge wooden bowl in the kitchen.

In it, my family lived in an old victorian type house, on the corner of some street, maybe in Capitol Hill in Denver, or on Jefferson St. downtown in Old Ft. Wayne, or maybe Broadripple or something. And it was big and nice inside, slightly reminiscent of my apt. in Manitou. And it was dark outside, and I knew it was Halloween, and we were having a Halloween party. My family was inside cooking up junk in the big kitchen. Charlie Sheen was sitting at a card table in the hallway, eating a little. I was outside for a while then, and as I came back towards my house, Michael Jackson was out there, on the front lawn, kind of walking around distractedly and talking on a cell phone. Then he hung up and told the person I was there, and I understood this, this was normal, because we were friends. And I took him inside, and introduced him to my aunt, but he already knew my brother, because he waved over my aunt's head and said, "Hey, Dan." And Dan smiled back, and slid sideways between a couple of people back into the living room.

I was excited to introduce Michael to Charlie Sheen, so I grabbed his hand and went into the hallway, but the card table was empty.

And somewhere in there, there was a wooden bowl, that I found on the counter this morning.

satellites and hurricanes

sometimes there are moments in my life when I look around and realize how lucky I am.

when holding a hand in the dark is simply holding a hand in the dark.

and the stars, are the stars, are the stars.

and I am underneath them in the night, scooting along by mountains and over wheels, hearing the sounds that fill my head and my chest and my shoes.

and colorado, I hope you are always here, waiting for me with soft, velvety, black arms, like a midnight mother in the warm soft bed of my six year old youth.

I'll be here for you.

sounds, sounds, sounds

ugh. I wish my butt was a little bigger/fatter. There's almost nothing to it, and it goes to sleep constantly. Then I have to shift around all over the place all the time, and I look like I have restless leg syndrome, or maybe tourette's.

I no longer live in Denver proper, friends. I'm in Littleton, home of the Columbine shootings, living in my friend Brian's house and cooking dinner for him, and also cleaning his bathroom. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever own my own house and have guest bedrooms and guest bathrooms and guests. I don't think so.

And I have been listening to nice, nice sounds, sounds like Sixpence None The Richer, and Jimmy Eat World, and choral music that I don't know much about, and some indie acoustic folks from down under. I want you all to know that I take extreme pleasure from the palindrome area in the last sentence. And other things that are nice are my friend Brian. I wish he loved Jesus. Or had any desire to know about anything spiritual. But he doesn't, and that is the end of that, and we will be friends anyway. And right now even he just said, in an endearing tone of voice, "I'm so glad you came to stay with me. I'm sorry you have to go so soon." Which is really two weeks, and plennnnnnty of time, and then I will be a hoosier again, but to him it is too short. And good grief, that is nice to hear. I don't even hear that from people who love Jesus. Maybe it's nice because he isn't obligated. Sometimes I think about the witch from Into The Woods singing, "You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice."

And I really hope she isn't singing about me. I know a lot of people that she is singing about. And I don't want to be a nice person- or perhaps merely a nice person. I would rather have nice be an accessory, like a purse or a slap bracelet. Like that pink, sparkly one Tai Mauney gave me in college, when she told me I was a real woman.

Tai, I still have that. It was one of the best gifts I ever got.