Dude.

movies based on graphic novels kick ass.

2 More Days!!!

cate, cat chow and cat

So after I droped off DeeDee in Crapids on Wednesday I got home around 3:30am and woke up around 11 because my phone was ringing. It was Cate asking me to come to Iowa City to see her. Sure, why not. We met at HOA and couldn't really decide what to do. I saw that there was a cool exhibit at the Cedar Rapids Art Museum and suggested we check it out. Cate obliged.

It was a Chicago-based artist and designer named Cat Chow. She designs (awesome) clothes and other things out of every-day found materials. Many times the pieces had a lot of meaning and were really thought out. It was so cool, I loved it. I stole a couple pictures from the Cat Chow website because my camera hates the dim museum lighting and I hate my camera's flash.

sandpaper and leather

japanese rice paper napkinswoven measuring tapes

this one was about how women feel the need to "measure up" to society. the design is inspired by a fifties housewife style shirt dress.

this one is called "the down coat" and is made out of quilted kleenexes.
yes, kleenexes.

she thought of "feeling down" so she chose kleenex. it's worn out in some areas which she thought was appropriate because of feeling broken down when you're sad.

you can kind of see the overlap of the individual kleenexes in this picture.

this one was wound up telephone wires

this is a skirt made out of a zipper
i want it

this is a dress made out of 1000 $1 bills that were all donated by individual "investors"
it was about, you know, "worth" and stuff

it was really neat up close
you could see all the faces

this one was our favorite
it's a wedding dress made out of one zipper 100 yards long (that's a football field people!)
cate wishes it was her wedding dress

that's the beginning
you have to unzip it all the way down to the hips to get in and out of it
that's pretty hot

after the pretty stuff we went to Mondo's to use up the rest of a gift certificate I had. we had a really awesome waiter and some very mushroomy (yum) pasta with gorgonzola (yum) and lots of bread and olive oil (again)

then I got to go see the farmhouse that Cate and Noel are living in out in the middle of (lone tree) nowhere with Jocko and Tony which means that I also got to see WARREN!
he only attacked me a couple times and I'm pretty sure it was just for old time's sake.

We didn't get to have DTICD (downtown iowa city day) because it wasn't cold enough yet but it was still really good to have Cate time. Cate and I are really good when it's just us. It's nice to just pick up where we left off and not have to explain how I'm feeling about things because she just knows. She also helped me decide how to re-arrange my room. She's also the best at that even though Jess thinks she is.

"What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That's totally different from the Word, the blood, the body, and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth."

- Stephen Colbert

vows

AngieUI: i promise to always have milk

aiksias: and..

AngieUI: bbq sauce

aiksias: wooohooo

aiksias: i'll bring the stew

to the rescue

Last week DeeDee asked if I could come pick her up from O'hare because she didn't have a ride. I said sure.

this is the sign i made to claim her at the airport

first order of business? frostys and fries.

what? vanilla frostys?!which one goes best with fries?!?

eli made us dinner!
he made a salad from a jewish cookbook and quite tasty. it had tomatoes, avacados, onions, oranges and almonds and a yummy dressing. it was so good.

we even got to use the goblets!

hooray! presents from a cruise ship!
i love love love these streamers so i swiped some and brought them home and gave some to jess and eli to celebrate...showing me their honeymoon pictures?

newlyweds in their honeymoon shirts

we left kind of late because deedee fell asleep on the couch and i got distracted.
deedee was sleepy.

so was i**i wore the alaska shirt i bought when i spilled so much coffee on my shirt that i had to buy a new one at the gift shop to wear for the rest of the day. i'm pretty sure this isn't the first time this has happened.

We got back to Iowa City around 11 and unloaded DeeDee's stuff at her new apartment and then we went on to Cedar Rapids so that she could get her car and load it up with more stuff to take back. It was fun to see her new apartment and remember how exciting it is to move into a new place. It was also fun because they moved in to an apartment at the same complex where Eli lived only this one was remodeled and had a whole new kitchen and new carpet and it was really nice. Not that Eli's apartment wasn't nice...it was just...a boy's apartment. So yeah. The End.

the story of my non-death

Okay. Alex wanted to know the story about my parents thinking we were dead. It's pretty funny if you know my mom at all. So when we were in Talkeetna we were supposed to take a "scenic train" to our next resort at Denali. Luke and I had stopped in "downtown" Talkeetna the first day we were there but my parents decided to wait and go in the morning before we left and that we would just meet up at the train station later in the morning. No problem, I'm 24 years old. I can figure that out how to step out of the front door onto a clearly marked bus and get out when the driver tells me to. So we get on the bus and about 5 minutes later the driver says, "Okay I just got a call and there's been a problem with the train tracks and it looks like you won't be able to take the train today." He went on to explain that a semi was hauling some equipment that didn't quite fit under the railroad bridge and it damaged the tracks. He said we would have to take a bus (which was fine with us because it was a 2 hour drive instead of a 5 hour train trip) but we wouldn't be able to leave yet because the drive was so much shorter and our new hotel wouldn't be ready yet. So we go back to our old hotel and wait. We assumed that our parents would be right behind us but they still weren't there when we were ready to leave so I asked someone at the front desk to leave a note for them saying that we'd meet them at Denali and that we were okay.

Meanwhile:
Our parents got on their shuttle to go to the train station. The cruise line people do a pretty good job of keeping track of where everyone is so they knew that it was our parents and where they were and they were the only ones on the shuttle so it was pretty foolproof. As they were pulling out of the parking lot some woman comes running in front of the bus waving frantically and gets on the bus and says, "Are you the Bensons? You need to come with me, there's been a problem." So my mom (who is already worried that something has gone horribly wrong and we probably forgot to wake up or took the wrong bus or were poisoned in our sleep or something) is instantly worried that something happened to us so she says, "Can you tell me if my kids are okay?" and the lady says, "I don't know," which could be the worst response to that question ever. Obviously she knows that there was a truck accident early in the morning and that no one was hurt but she decided not to share that information so my mom panics, starts crying and freaking out. She asks about 5 times for more information and all the lady says is, "There was an accident and I was told to stop and take you back to the hotel until we have more information for you." Still no word on whether or not her children are alive or have been mauled by a bear and are bleeding to death on a trail somewhere. Finally she asked about us specifically at the front desk when they finally got back to the hotel and the message I left turned into "Your children left and they're fine without you," which weren't exactly the words of comfort she was hoping for.

There were about 4 more complications about what bus to take, including being dropped off along the side of the road and being told "a bus will come pick you up in a minute." Which, surprisingly, was true. The 2 hour trip to Denali took my parents almost 7 hours and they walked in the door of the lodge just as we were getting ready to leave without them on the Natural History Tour at Denali that we weren't willing to miss just to wait for them (this was before we knew about their emotional journey to get there). So yeah. That's why my mom thought we were dead.

I'm going to bed with my windows wide open. It's not hot and icky upstairs for the first time in months. I'm laying here reading with Love Actually on in the background and missing Kate like crazy because I haven't seen her in almost a year and it will most likely be two more before I do. Contentment always somehow turns into loneliness these days.

This is it!

We got off the boat for good in Whittier and got on a train. We had to go under lots of mountains so there were a few tunnels. My mom got a little bit nervous, as you can see.
On the other side of the mountains it was a whole different ecosystem. It wasn't rainy and cold anymore!

You can't really see it in this picture but there are a bunch of dead trees out there. There was a big earthquake and it shifted the ground about a foot and it exposed all of the trees to salt water and it killed them.
The train took us to Talkeetna which is where everyone who wants to climb McKinley has to stop and register. We were there in the off season so there were about 50 people around.

McKinley!
We were lucky to see the peak.

This is the aerial shot from our helicopter. We thought it was interesting that they had painted the names of the mountains and glaciers on them. Whose job is that?
After Talkeetna we went to Denali National Park. It was cool...and big. This is a dried up river.
Our driver let us out to take pictures and make cocoa with the water faucet on the side of her bus. Weird, huh?
After Denali we headed up to Fairbanks. We went on a riverboat thing and got to see two rivers meet. The cloudy water is glacier water. Cool, huh?

There are probably more interesting stories to tell, including my mom thinking we were dead, and an old man and lady cussing eachother out at an italian restaurant, but I'm sick of posting about Alaska.

I wonder if they'll make one of my dog

This is what everyone is getting for Christmas this year. Please send me a picture of your profile and $150. If you'd rather have one of my face just send me the $150.

www.turnyourhead.com

Days 6 & 7: Glacier Bay & College Fjord

I don't know about you but this Alaska stuff is starting to bore me. We'll make this quick. After Skagway there were 2 days at sea. Glacier Bay and College Fjord are National Parks where about 90% of the visitors are on boats. They regulate how many boats can be in the area and in order to be there we had to have a park ranger on board and all other ship activities and services were closed for the day. This was by far the most breath-taking part of the whole trip. It was so amazing. It was pretty cold and windy on the top decks of the boat and my parents wimped out but I couldn't stop staring at the mountains and glaciers. There was some definite awe happening.

Pretty.

There are glaciers everywhere!
This was my first fjord.

This one is a hanging glacier because it's up in a mountain.

You can't really tell but there are TONS of seals on all of that ice.
From the boat you couldn't really tell how far we were away from things.
We had to use binoculars to see these seals but it looked like the ice was only a few feet from the ship. It was weird.

The black lines are from glaciers that have collided. The dirt builds up on the sides of the glacier and makes a stripe of dirty ice when the two sheets meet.

On the balcony on the way out of the fjord.

This was the day I realized that we were in a really cool place in the world. Seeing how God created and continues to create the earth that we live in is so amazing. It's just incredible to see how mountains and valleys and rivers are just carved out. I tend to think I'm the kind of person that would just get over stuff like water and mountains but I'm really glad that I have yet to become hardened to the beauty of creation. I mean seriously, if this were just something that the earth happened to be doing as some sort of happenstance, would the glaciers really be that blue? I don't think so.

Day 5: Skagway

Skagway was pretty boring. The only real entertainment option was this train trip thing and we weren't really interested in it. We decided to have a lazy day and just wander around.

This is the Arctic Brotherhood building.
It's the most photographed building in Alaska.
It's covered with pieces of driftwood.

We found this statue with something to read in front of it.
What you can't see in this picture is that my family is taking turns reading lines in funny voices. The other people waiting to read it were really excited that we were being obnoxious.

This is a V-shaped valley.
We'll discuss this later. Waiting for the shuttle.

We also ate at a saloon that was also a brothel. By "was" I mean a long time ago, not when we were there. We were totally the fun group of the cruise. Except when we were driving eachother crazy. Ok, Cate just called and now I have to go hang out in Iowa City before the summer is officially over.

Day 4: Juneau

Juneau was my favorite so this post is ridiculously long.
This was my first glimpse of Juneau from my balcony.
I was instantly impressed.

The first thing we did was go whale-watching.
Everyone had cool cameras. I was jealous.
Oh- please note my mom's face in this picture.
Was she yawning or something?

Sea lions! The difference between a seal and a sea lion is a flap of skin over the ear. Sea lions have it and seals don't, which confuses me because you'd think the flap would form a "seal" over the animal's ear. The naturalist lady called them "the sausages of the sea" which I thought was rather rude.

Here's your whale-watching lesson.
First you watch for the blow hole spray,then you watch for his back,

then if he's diving, you watch for his tail.
Now you know.

We saw lots and lots of humpbacks.
This smooth part of the water is caused by the water displacement from such a huge animal diving down really quickly. Pretty cool. Ooh, pretty.After the whales we went to see Mendenhall Glacier. We went for a little walk first to see if there were any salmon running in the stream. There were plenty of them. They turn bright red right before they spawn (then die) so they're easy to spot.
Can you find the bear in this tree?
You can only see his little foot hanging down.This is Mendenhall GlacierThis is Mendenhall up close through the telescope thing.

This is a picture taken in the 40's at the same spot as the picture above.

Mendenhall is going away pretty quickly.Bryan always had the binoculars.
We're not really sure what he was looking for in this picture.

After the glacier thing Bryan and I went up this tram thing.
This is a picture of our boat from the tram.
It's huge. It's 15 stories high.
It has everything - golf, basketball, giant chess, 4 pools, etc.

This is a sick eagle at an eagle rescue place.
She was sad because she can't fly anymore.

I hiked the rest of the way up Mount Roberts while we were up there.
The first 500 feet was a marked and maintained trail.
These were the trail markers.

I met those guys and we talked for a while next to that cross that some Jesuits put there.
They thought I was crazy because I was hiking in sandals (chacos) and told me that I wouldn't be able to do that when I was old like them. They were fun.Juneau

It was some good hiking
These rocks used to be horizontal.
This is also when I realized that I was at the alpine line.I don't really know what was up with these trees.
Probably an earthquake.
There are lots of earthquakes in Alaska.

It really is a rainforest.

We found this cool sun dial.
We didn't find any sun.

I really wanted this hat.
It got vetoed.

This is midnight in Juneau.
Check out how glassy the water is.