i wear shirts for causes i believe in. i support the cause of goofy puns in rock music, thus my "rock hen roll" shirt. (this also happens to support online journaling by way of diaryland, but hey.) i support cursing at assholes who drive drunk, thus my "see dick drink, see dick drive, see dick die--don't be a dick" t-shirt, courtesy of a $2 price tag at value village. but the cause i support perhaps most vehemently is my love of life in the northwest, as illustrated by my "living in washington is just ducky" shirt. it features the comically ironic drawing of a rather grumpy-looking duck on a boat, aptly named the puddle jumper ii, sitting directly under a fluffy rain cloud. while we northwesterners may grumble about the weather from time to time, we live through it, and i think we're better people for it. screw the sun, we say, and forget the snow! we'll take nine months of gray and drizzle over defined seasons any day!

and the funny thing is, it's true.

value village off sleater-kinney is excellent. i could never find anything i wanted at the old harrison location, but i just blew $8.x on stuff on half-off day. i even got a working blender for $3!

i was there with lee, the coolest woman i know, and we found this set of four teacup plates that were puzzlingly attractive. each bears a phrase circling the edge in two different fonts--a larger, narrow serif text and a much smaller script--three times about an amount of vegetables: "spears of asparagus," "cloves of garlic," "bunches of radishes," and "bushels of eggplant." what teacup plates have to do with these fine vegetables, we did not understand, nor were there any matching teacups to accompany them. they were, however, too attractive and cheap to pass up, so lee bought all four. she said we must get together sometime and eat something off them. i offered to bring the asparagus.

"emily, if you could be anyone on tv, have your own show, who would you be?"
*oblivious silence*
"tom licus? i knew it. i'd be howard stern."

when i told a bunch of people in #n00n that i was "underwhelmed" by the gorillaz cd, i may have spoken too soon. well, no, i definitely *was* underwhelmed--not disappointed; underwhelmed--after "clint eastwood" was such a neat single. anyway, it's growing on me. and "rock the house" is definitely growing on me. but i still like the del the funky homosapien album i got at the same time better. so nyeh.

i wrote letters to two of my japanese students this morning. i found it a little difficult to say anything much, because their english is not fantastic. they wrote letters to my family awhile ago to introduce themselves, so i tried to address a couple things they mentioned in there. i told yumi i wanted to see her do kendo; i told asa we could listen to music and that i'd like to hear what she likes. i told them both we'd practice english and maybe they could teach me some japanese. (i took 4.5 years of spanish and know not a lick of japanese..i used to be able to count to ten, that's all.)

i'm having very strong cravings for chicken teriyaki from nasai. is it better to crave reasonably healthy full meals or junk food with no redeeming qualities besides taste? or do i just obsess over food too much? methinks i do.

goal for today: read more, eat less, be punkrock. television (besides part ii of the "homefront" episode of ds9 tonight)? fuck it. that large vat of tillamook brown cow ice cream in the freezer? don't need it. no, really, mom. don't encourage me. the chocolate is strong and i am weak.

WARNING TO ALL HUNGRY PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ABOUT TO EAT A FULFILLING MEAL ANYTIME SOON: do not read this.

i'm going to talk about cooking. ah, cooking. i do enjoy it, especially when i make something genuinely good and not merely edible.

last night i made mexicanish food, my specialty. i use the "-ish" suffix because it's by no means particularly "authentic," and i take a lot of liberties. but it is fresh and it is good and i do make most of it from scratch when i'm not being lazy. it involves chopping many vegetables.

first i tried my hand at from-scratch spanish rice. i took a can of tomato chunks with green chiles and liquified them in the blender, then added it to a pan of three-day-old cooked white basmati rice. to that i added a few leaves of fresh, chopped oregano and a little salt and fresh-ground pepper. i let it stew there until further notice. to complement that, i later heated a can of whole black beans. this is what i call burrito heaven-style beans and rice. most places serve mushy, refried beans and drier spanish rice that, while grains stick together, they can easily be distinguished. burrito heaven is the opposite: really mushy rice with whole beans. i think either way is good, especially if it involves black beans in any capacity.

then i threw two chicken breasts in a frypan to cook, intending to later cut them into smaller strips and stir-fry with some garlic, red chile slices, and lime juice.

next came the fun part: pico de gallo salsa. i chopped the following ingredients and threw them into a bowl to be mixed: half an onion, two tomatoes, two tomatillos, a red chile, two cloves of garlic, several sprigs of cilantro, and the juice of at least half a lime. then i proceeded to start the guacamole. i love making guacamole because ripe avocados are so much fun to squish. i sliced up two avocados and smushed them together in a small bowl. i then added a red chile, cilantro, lime juice, and a little salt and pepper. normally i would also include some tomatillo, but the one i had left over from the pico turned out to be bad. oh well.

the meal was finished off with some grated/crumbled jack/cotija cheese (fuck cheddar), some shredded cabbage, a little plain yogurt (sour cream substitute), and some pretty-colored tortillas. nummy.

yeah yeah, pride's a sin, blah blah blah. i think i need to go have leftovers for brunch now.

a minute ago, i was standing by the window here in my old bedroom, now the office. my mom asked me what i was doing, and i said i was just looking out the window. it's the same view i had out the window for four years of high school and whenever i came home my first year of college. there are some trees, some shrubbery, the front lawn, and the big brick house across the street. in my new room, i have no view, only darkness until i turn on a light. i don't think my room in the apartment will have much of a view, either; it's in the deep inner sanctum and probably only a slit of a window over my bed. i'll probably see a slice of walkway, lawn, and another apartment building. it's sad, because, while normal dorm living sucked with its cramped space and lack of privacy and proper kitchen facilities, i really loved that view. some nights, my roommate and i would just sit at the window and watch clouds blow across a full moon. we'd discuss the beauty of our perfect panoramic view; observe traffic on the university bridge; try to explain strange lights in the distance; and note nice days with the phrase, "the mountain is out."

there are travel plans in the works for me and my kin. yay! this weekend, we're heaving to vancouver, canada (because who the fuck would visit vancouver, washington--we have lots of friends and family in portland and its suburbs, anyway) to have a look around. two weekends from then, the whole gang's piling in the ol' odyssey, along with two female japanese students, yumi and asami, for a stangland family (my mom's side) reunion in bend, oregon in honor of the grandparents' 50th anniversary. it'll nice to see my cousins again, and it should be quite the cultural exchange for the japanese girls. (heh!) though i happen to go to school in the same city as two of my cousins, i never see them.

after that, it's all me and no family trips. labor day weekend, i'm gonna go hang with jana and whomever else i can in seattle for bumbershoot, which will rawk my sawks. the weekend after that, i'm going back to tempe to visit n00ners like michael. the following weekend, it's to portland for my niece's first birthday and seeing some friends, then chris and i are probably going to ashland to catch some shakespeare midweek. WHEW. and to think it's only a week or so after that that i'll be moving to seattle and going back to school! much busy-ness will occur. it should be fun.

[reza] fine. everyone should blog about why are they blogging today.

i'm blogging because i need somewhere to spam stuff, because people seem to like it when i spam stuff they are allowed to read, and because diaryland was known and read by some people i didn't want to read it and then i'd get bothered. ok, just one person. and fuck him. i guess he could find this sometime, but if he does, i don't care. anyway.

writing iz kewl, d00d.

taking a walk with my dad this evening, we actually had a nice, long conversation, just the two of us, which i don't think we've had in...awhile. i'm much closer to my mom; probably just because they're such different personalities and i'm the eldest daughter. my sister is closer to dad, i think..funny, since they're the ones with may birthdays, while my mom and i are a day apart in december. maybe it was in the stars, but more likely it's that my sister and my mom just don't get along. :)

i love the feeling of coming down from a walk. the bottoms of my feet feel dry and sore, so i massage them with my thumbs. my calves stop feeling angry from use; my skin stops itching from miniscule amounts of sweat and bug bites. and i sit here with a kiwi strawberry soda and balance bar, watching whatever my brother flips to--presently, mash and whose line is it anyway?.

i spent much of my yesterday intrigued by information on this site. more than you ever wanted to know about, well, sexual records. sadly, it was my 13-year-old brother who informed me of it.

in other life events, watching old episodes of law and order on a&e until 3am sounds like a good idea until you realize they're all about teenage rape and never end right and make you all unhappy about the state of justice and injustice and things. and then you have another revelation: it's TELEVISION. see? i should never watch television.

in honor of my sister's trip to japan that began early this morning, i think i'll go watch yojimbo now.

is dairy queen phasing out frozen yogurt, or what? my sister and i went to the dairy queen in lacey this afternoon--i was fiending after some kind of coffee breeze--and after waiting in line for about twenty minutes and learning they were out of chocolate soft-serve, i was informed that they don't serve yogurt no more (cashier's wording). that's the second one in the past couple weeks that hasn't had any trace of yogurt. i won't eat there if i can't get something lower-fat; i eat enough fattening junk as it is. damn you, dq!

weird al disturbs me. concert footage disturbs me. i should never watch television.

some mornings, i awake late, but it's always dark in the basement, and i have only my trusty clock radio to inform me. i do miss the lazy mornings when sunlight drifts in my window and i can awaken slowly, taking my time with a book until it becomes more convenient to actually get up. i have more of these mornings visiting friends than i do at home. at home, reading becomes foreign, except on a computer screen or 100% recyclable media. there's just no morning sunlight through the blinds, and television in every room that i'm not afraid will disturb.

this morning, i woke up on my back and promptly folded to my right. in the dark, i imagined the side of my bed as a grassy knoll, just overlooking a peaceful brook or idyllic pond. my hand lowered to feel the water, reaching instead only the cold, hard metal of the bedframe. i realized that i have been in places like this before, but never were they so idyllic that i would lie down and touch water. the grass was spotty, well-trodden, and frequently home to irritating species of insect, arachnid, and other pest, while the water still, brown, and completely unromantic. still i spent many hours walking to and around these bodies of water in my childhood, hoping to see evidence of a great beaver or finding frog eggs or picking wild blackberries in season. all these i found, much to my delight, but all good things must come to an end.

my eyes are getting that ol' tired feeling again, so i should probably spit out some text and go to sleep.

my brother has been getting songs stuck in my head all goddamn day. first it was the blue danube, then it was men without hats, now it's the boston pops' version of mario bros. game music. gaahhhh! at least it's eclectic, i suppose.

why is it that my writing for a semi-public forum ends up being completely different from the shit i write and assume no one will ever read? that stuff is more interesting... but then, i don't want my name immediately attached to it, either. whee.