Snohomish

it has been too long since i have written a blog...and i am blaming snohomish...

snohomish by definition:

snohomish county, wa
population: 16
1. middle of kansas, weird typhoon pouring rain and lightening bolt weather
2. antique shop and expresso stand capital of the world
3. the only location that has ever been built with a stop sign that has solar powered blinking red lights framing it

snohomish washing was the location of where i taught my first northwest dance company camp this past four days. in case you don't know where this lovely land mark is, it is about 30 minutes north of seattle.

this adventure could have probably taken up twelve blogs and had i been staying up to date those who read my blogs, which is probably just myself, would have been blessed with hearing about all of the nitty gritties behind the longest 96 hours of my life but i didn't, so this will be a brief recap.

the quality inn...this is where we rested our heads at night...this is also known as the comfort inn (according to our hotel reservations and mapquest directions) but they changed their name a month ago...so needless to say you can imagine our confusion after a four hour drive and not being able to locate our hotel...well we finally found it

...and for the duration of our stay, we were kept entertained by the front desk clerk who was really good at developing accents throughout a conversation (aka start off completely normal and by the end talk with such a heavy southern accent i really had no clue what was being said), mexican maids who would randomly rub josh's back making sure he had gotten all the continental breakfast he had wanted and confessing their desires of the day when we will no longer be bombarded with the news of paris hilton, and the infamous door issues that equated to the "back door" connecting to the main parking lot that was usable our first night but the second day was blocked off and we had to exit in and out of the "main door" in the back of the building, walk through an alley to the front parking lot to get to our car and by the third day was completely boarded up and a new door was made right next to it with a sign that read "permanently locked used door on back of building." our stay was nothing shy of quality that's for sure.

...and camp well lets just say...14 dancers who have never learned how to spot, enjoy answering their cell phones while standing in the middle of the court as we are teaching, and a coach that lets her dog run around they gym unleashed during class...

snohomish = where i want to live when i grow up...if hell doesn't work out for me.

Working...

as a pr intern one of the tasks i continually have is to stay on top of the "clips." if you don't know what that means...basically we have a clipping service that mails r-west newspaper clippings of client coverage, i photocopy them, input them into the excel spreadsheets, and file them in a binder...today we got seven clips for one of our clients - maryhill winery.

of those seven six of them (as they should) talked about maryhill...while one was titled "on the edge" and sent to us by the tri-city herald in kennewick, wa. it doesn't happen very often, but on occasion we are sent random clippings, for example an article that contains the word "hazelnut." two years ago r-west did the burgerville hazelnut milkshake campaign and the clipping service still finds it necessary to send us random clippings that talk about hazelnuts (even if it has nothing to do with burgerville or milkshakes, the word is just printed in the copy talking about gardens and trees or something)...anyway so today's random clip, supposedly relating to maryhill winery, had nothing to do with maryhill at all...

the subtitle reads: "illinois boy's discovery of blue-eyed cicada, a 'one-in-a-million' find"
i had never heard of a cicada before so i googled it. to my suprise it was an insect...(hella nasty btw...i put a picture of it below so i can share the images in my head) apparently these bugs (in their juvenile stages) live in the ground in burros for 17 years eating the roots of plants for food and then as they age they hatch and surface living above ground for only about 3-5 years....they are known to populate at ridiculous rates averaging 1.5 million insects per acre (yeah i know barf..)...at any rate most of them have red eyes, and the article described a six year old boy living in the suburbs of chicago who found a blue-eyed cicada caused by a genetic variation...

i'm not exactly sure what this has to do with maryhill but i do know that since i have started work here at r-west i have learned lots of new things and skills... and even the few repetitive jobs, like clips have now officially proved (props to the tri-city herald) to be educational and entertaining.

Purple Pride

as a newly graduated university of portland student i have come to see how truly sheltered the east side of the river really is...

purple pride...a phrase that every student on campus is familure with...there are only over three hundred students that belong to the facebook group, even more that wear the sacred shirts to every sporting event from soccer to basketball to t-rooming (not an official sport but at up it might as well be...and i wouldn't be suprised if it became a sport given the oh-so-logical decisions the athletic department has a track record of making--danceteam (with a cough under the breath)--) anyway...the point is...that for the past four years the logo

and the term purple pride has meant only one thing to me...friends, fun, school spirit, and hella beer...

this past weekend i learned that the west side of the river does purple pride a little bit different.

when kristina called me about a week and a half ago and asked if i wanted to be in a performance piece that michael was putting together with a few other people from detail i said "sure i would love to!" we were all set to perform and for some reason i missed the memo that our performance on a stage outside of redcap was actually the after party to the gay pride parade...needless to say purple pride downtown still means hella beer but rather than guys running around in purple t-shirts and jeans drinking alchol they ran around in purple eyeshadow and daisy duke jean shorts, skipping the shirt all together...
it was an experience.

and though the actual performance went great, the lessons to be learned include, always confirm before hand the event i will be dancing at so my poor conservative dad doesn't have to spend three hours of his father's day chillin at the gay pride (not that he's discriminatory...he totally gets it...i dance, my mom is an interior decorator...we're around it all the time, he just grew up on a farm, so hella sheltered...and he gets a little nervous...) --if i were to guess i would put my money on him choosing to spend purple pride on the east side with a beer, hot dog and a women's soccer game.

House Guest

meet charlie


he cares about three things in his life
1. insuring that he doesn't get locked in the bathroom
2. not letting anyone walk in front of our house without barking at them
3. eating every tassel off of the red blanket that is now hiding behind the couch

charlie is our house guest this weekend...well he has actually been here since wednesday...and he leaves tomorrow...but since stelly has been gone i've been having small dog withdrawls...so its been great having a little scruff running around the house again!
thankfully tula ...


...at the office (erin's dog) has helped with my addiction...however it was a very sad day wednesday when i had to say goodbye! she is moving to seattle with erin. tears.

so now that stella and tula are both gone...and charlie leaves tomorrow...it's official i need to get a dog of my own.

Recess Time

so im in this kickball league for work...we are "team r-west" and the league we play for is called "recess time."


now you might think this is just a casual "social" weekly event like i did...pre-funk a little...grab a bite to eat...show up kick a little ball...skip around some bases...but in actuality recess time might as well be a league for professional olympic kickballers as far as i'm concerned. i don't have any official pictures but here are some temp ones so you can get the basic idea of what r-west looks like...and the marine corp army teams we play against.
picture:


against:


and you can imagine what team i play for...now don't get me wrong i love everything about my team...peter in his boot cut adidas pants, red sweat band (with matching wrist bands), cleats, and crayola blue 8-track cassette player running off 8 "d" batteries playing ACDC; cassie who was moved from outfield to pitcher because she is still working on brushing up her "baby-crattle" ball catching techniques, kevin who has not quiet master his double toe-loop twirl kicking ambidexterity at the plate and likes to swish, kick, and a miss to psych everyone out...no it is not my team that i mind at all, in fact my teammates are what i love most about going to play kickball everyweek! it's the hard core mouth guard chewing, slide tackling, home-run kicking monsters we play against...seriously it's north portland people...what ever happened to social kickballing?

little do they know that if this were a movie...r-west would be winning the champtionship at the end of the season...so everyone should watch their backs it's the underdogs who lose games 0-19 that sneak attack when no one is looking.

..."Be Like Chance From Homeward Bound..."

last night was jessica's 22nd birthday celebration, so of course, we had a reservation for 12 at widmeir! amazing as usual! however, as the night progressed and we encouraged jessica to continue drinking she was ever so kind as to bring up her conviction to not reach the point of drunkin-ness where she was ordering vodka tonics from the taco bell drive thru window...(i'm sorry ok! it was my birthday and i had every right not to be in my right mind!--but i will admit ...a vodka tonic? i don't even think i have even had one of those before...i don't know what motivated me to ask for one at a drive thru..it's whatever though ha)

well once that was brought up...jordie reminded me and everyone else of how on the way home in the car they would yell something at me and i would try and act like it for a picture...for example...chance from homeward bound...well by the time the group ventured out of widmeir and up to mint, the slight intoxication by everyone justified why we thought it would be funny to do it again right?
not only were we chance from homeward bound

but we became the weather

asians

america's next top models, penguins, gansters...i can safely say our waitress was not impressed by us at all...but it was a successful birthday party...and though the success was not judged by the indulgence of taco bell...her ralphing at 7am proves it was a good night!

Take Two...

...so we're going to try this again...

last summer i started blogging but on xanga...i set it up to follow my wild adventures through europe...which were probably more eventful than what my adventures will be here in portland but i've decided it's totally about how you write it...you can make anything exciting and most of the time random things are always happening to me anway...so i'm sure i can find plenty to write about...i suppose what i should be most worried about is staying up to date! i get so busy that i forget! but we're going to make another attempt at this...and i'll do my best!

current mood: slightly bored.

location: my desk at work.

my morning consisted of: woke up really early probably like six...i didn't look at the clock but it was just starting to get light in my room...i was angry about it because i woke up to my stupid smoke detector beeping over my head every like 10 minutes. the first couple times i ignored it cause i was so tired but then i was like "this is hella annoying!" cause i started to anticipate the beeps...so i got up on my bed and pushed the buttons and it made a rediculous loud loooong scretch...and then it stopped so i layed back down and went back to sleep but then it beeped again...at like seven, just once though...and i couldn't go back to sleep so i got up and got ready...made some peanut butter toast and went to work...now i'm here watching you tube videos on paris hilton getting bashed by sarah silverman on mtv movie awards and setting up this blog site. be jealous of my job...some days its very strenuous...I usually have lots of important myspace messaging to do and that can get stressful.