There's a lot of unnecessary shit in this world

Things that have been trying to get me down these weeks but fail:

1. The internet- I'm tired of resorting to my computer for entertainment, but after biking for an hour and a half, and unpacking all day, it's a convenient activity. However, the experience is dulled when I pop up Myspace, or anything, to see "Fat guy breaks chair" or a Yahoo news article for "Cat learns harmonica, makes millions". Flickr is getting to be kind of annoying as well. I can’t tell you how many people who comment, “omg, this is sooooo gr8”, or “u look so rady in this one!!!!” on my photos. I don’t know if that last one is rad or ready, actually. I feel bad deleting them, and I usually don’t, but something about poor spelling really makes me wince.
   
2. Dallas heat. Sheesh. One-hundred today, not kidding.
3. Carrying my heavy vintage Schwinn up the stairs: To my new apartment. It really sucks, but I’m not about to have it stolen, sorry.

Things I’ve been thankful for:

1. That the semester doesn’t start until August 25th.
2. Jon is coming out from L.A. to see me Labor Day weekend.
3. That Vienna is coming to Dallas for all of September before she leaves for Seattle.
   
4. The great gams I’ve been getting from riding my bike, everywhere. And carrying it up the stairs.
   
5. The wicked concert lineup I have planned for these upcoming months. Check this out, seriously. 8/28, Parachutes. 9/9, i'm seeing WHY? again, & Mount Eerie. On 9/11, i'm going to Houston to see Dr. Dog. 9/13, i'm seeing Jana Hunter again, and maybe the show i'm looking forward to the most- fucking Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. My best friends Charles and Hillary are accompanying me on a road trip to Denver in September to see him perform. I still can't believe I got tickets to see the guy I had a crush on as a gawky middle schooled thing. Also, El Paso Hot Button is coming back to Dallas in October. Can we say dance party? I saw this guy live last fall at a tiny little venue and Mike and I almost lost our eardrums. The kid's a one-man-band machine.

Soon my apartment will be full of amazing faces. I cannot wait.

Currently listening to: My Bulgarian neighbor, Imann, slamming her dishes around and laughing over "Jogging Song" by Mika Miko

Love,
A Very Tired Amanda

My new apartment

I haven't been ignoring my blog, i'm just super-busy moving into my new place in Dallas, and trying to see everyone at once! Thankfully, I got to see Mike before he left for New York. We had lots of pizza and Blazing Saddles and crashed. I promise to put up a cool post with lots of pictures soon, after I get this place cleaned up. Also- i'm going to be starting an Etsy shop very, very, soon. I need to clean out my closet and stop hoarding it all before I graduate next May. As I unpacked and unpacked about 5 suitcases full of clothes, I had to stop and realize that I don't need so many articles. I'm donating most things to charity, but the nicer, vintage items i'm putting up on Etsy! I hope you'll all check it out in a week or so.

Sorting my things in a new home feels like being hooked up to a brain-sucking machine.

Currently listening to: "That Angel Was Pretty Lame" by Boduf Songs

Love,
Amanda

People I Miss

Geeez. I just got the nicest message on my myspace since my phone is broken and MIA, and it made me miss this guy, a lot:

Probably the hottest guy I know- SORRY LADIEZ

That's my bestest bestest friend, Mike. He's also a lovely bedmate. We can sit around his apartment for hours talking, eating hummus, typing up poetry on his Remington, and twiddling our toes. Other times we make a mess painting all night listening to Talking Heads records. We both do the same karate-dance to "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", and we both write "MINE" on our to-go boxes. One time we watched a copy of Battle Royale he got from a friend back in Kansas, who failed to mention how to change the subtitles from Japanese to English. We have a good idea what's going on in the movie, but sometimes we have to ad-lib, which is funnier anyhow. Okay, i'll stop.

In the mean time, there is a strange bug , slightly bigger than a fly, that has gotten into my room and is playing the window-blind xylophone with its spastic flying, four feet from my bed. He needs to decide what he's going to do with his life soon or i'm going to whack him, in the most literal of terms. Stop running into my blinds, bugsy. The window is not open, and i'm not going to open it so more of your creepster friends can have a bug party in my room and screech all night. No.

I killed it. It was a baby roach. GROSS. I'm not a jainist, sorry.

Anyway.

Speaking of people I miss, I really miss Hillary & Andi.

With her is her boyfriend, Mike (so many Mikes), who in his spare time sings in a doowop band in Dallas.

The other is Andi, another very good friend of Hillary's, but she moved to Portland last March. She's so happy up there, but boy do I miss her. We both have the same birthday, and enjoy shots of whiskey on a loud karaoke night. It's love, really. Hillary's wild at heart, but sane enough to have hyperintelligent conversations with, something I really value lately. That, and she's a great person. She knows what she's talking about, and she sticks by it, and if you don't like it, she might punch you in the face.

Just kidding.
Well, I really don't know.

On another note- my Baggu bags came in the mail today! I couldn't be happier. They're so perfect. I'm keeping the bright yellow, bright green, and electric orange ones. I'm giving the rest away. I also went to a garage sale a couple blocks down today and found four silk pillowcases for $1.50 a piece. They'll fit the pillows on my futon/couch back in Dallas perfectly. I'm glad I found them, because that couch is pretty ugly. I got it at a yard sale, and it's this weird brown and olive green faux Aztec print. Makes me wonder how I put up with it for so long.

I also found this little guy. I dig vintage toys, and when you wind him up, he hops around.

I'm about to fall asleep on the keyboard. Man, that sounds pretty lame. What a ROUGH night i've had, blogging. I need to find a better nighttime around the house hobby, but it's either this or a glass of wine watching a Cary Grant movie.

Currently listening to: "Mysteries" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Temporarily Eternally Yours,
Amanda

Taos: the first Week

OK. I'm going to tell you guys a little about my trip to Taos. Taos is situated in the northernmost part of New Mexico, at the foothills of the Rockies. It was usually pretty hot during the day but at night it dropped down to the mid-50s, something I could really get used to. Needless to say, Taos was gorgeous. I was there for a month last summer, taking photography classes, but this summer I was in SMU's archaeology field school at the SMU-owned Fort Burgwin (I highly recommend), so I was living in a tent in the mountains for a month. Every morning at 6:30, i'd wake up and crawl out of my little tent and greet the sun to the east. Spectacular. This is my tent, which didn't take that long to set up-

-I even had some time to help someone else who had never gone camping before. Luckily, I went a lot growing up. You wouldn't believe it, but that little one-man tent was the most comfortable thing ever, especially for sleeping on top of hard desert dirt. It's a REI mountaineering tent, partially constructed out of recycled materials, and it was at a fair price. It got pretty cold at night, but it kept the heat it so well. Sometimes if I didn't wake up early enough in the mornings, i'd get up sweating. But this is the creek behind my tent.

We were really out there in the woods. It was a fifteen minute walk to get to breakfast in the mornings, but the nature trail was a nice wake-up exercise. The Arroyo Hondo ridge spreads out to the east of campus, and it's a good hike. I tried to go up to the top or halfway to meditate at least twice a week, after work. It was amazingly peaceful up there. The last two weeks we were at Fort Burgwin, these lovely little yellow flowers were everywhere in bloom along the path.

It still amazes me looking at these pictures from last month. Anyhow, SMU recently went all-green on this Taos campus they have, so all the energy and water is from environmentally-friendly companies in New Mexico, and we even used biodegradable cups, baggies, and sacks for our lunches we made every day. It made me really proud to be on a campus like that every day. I know the people of Taos appreciated it.

Another beautiful thing about Taos is the culture- not just the booming art culture (that started in the 1920s and is still in full swing today), but the hispanos and Pueblo people living there. One woman that we got to know really well was Guadalupita Tafoya (we called her Pita), a Pueblo-Spanish woman who has a great reputation in town. She's the mejor doma for the St. Francis of Assisi chapel in the main plaza (you know, the famous Paul Strand photograph of the adobe church corner?), and this is it, after the annual enjarre, where the community pitches in to replaster the church with traditional adobe (mud and straw) and we clean the inside, too; cleaning the ceremonial items, sanding the pews, dusting the vigas. I painted two doors and polished god knows how many brass crosses.

It's so beautiful on the inside, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. But there is a lot of hand-painted crucifixes and carved woodwork. All the pews were handmade, and there's like, sixty-six of them. Wow. Well, because of her status, everyone answers to Pita, and she worked us HARD when we volunteered to do the enjarre with the community, and everyone loved us for it. Here's the class getting dirty shaping adobe walls.

That's me on the far right with the scarf on. That white shirt? It got so messy I had to throw it out. Everyone's boots and sneakers were caked with mud.

It was a good experience, though. We tried to work with the community a lot when we were working at both dig sites, since they have huge historical relevance to the people of Taos, and most of the townsfolk don't leave the area for generations. And if they do, they always come back- which affirms my conclusion to live in Taos, NM for at least a year in the future. When my friend Kate and I drove down highway 68 for the last time out of New Mexico into Colorado, I almost cried. I had withdrawal for a week afterwards, it seemed. And I miss my tan, i'm not going to lie. I'm already reverting back to my undead look.

Currently listening to: "Modern Guilt" by Beck

Love,
Amanda