183) wiiild

like my belt.

182)

181) i'm a primate, apparently

180) I'm forever blowing bubbles

Does it look like I'm not wearing any pants? Well, your impression is false. There are in fact shorts being worn in this picture.

Bikebikebike.

179) Nom nom nom

So, the Meadowland Market. A dent-n'-bent grocery-type place in Hancock, MN.

Town of a few hundred tight-knit people.

Little tiny nowhere place.

Second hand groceries.

Where I go to stock up on my favorite vegan and organic delights, as well as high-end beauty products. For real.

Went the other day, spent $22.31.

Normal retail, by spoils would've rung up to ~$80.

Not including the Neutrogena moisturizer I found chilling out on the shelves, priced at $2.50. On Amazon, one might purchase this particular product for ~$70.



With this I am well pleased?

178) Thank-you for the music...

Bought a big ol' 128-disc carrying case yesterday. My 72-capacity one just wasn't cutting it. Today I sat down and dug out my entire music collection...only the originals, no burned copies or mixes. Alphabetized and put them away. 95-ish, from when I was 7 and got my first CD- "98 degrees" to now...most recently...Mark Berube and the Patriotic Few.

For some reason I have always enjoyed owning personal hard copies of the music I really like. I don't know why it is. It's important to me to have the opportunity to majorly freak my kids out some day with my huge old fashioned music-carrying discs.

177) Chameleon

Sometimes I drastically alter my normal appearance with the use of make-up. Although I *have* been very lazy this summer in that respect, it still makes me feel good to put some thought into "putting on my face".

I love that one, there. ^

176) Lily

I've had a lot of sleeping pictures lately.

175) Wow, 175 whole blogses!

To celebrate, here's an image of my head falling asleep at 10:45 pm: earlier than normal, so I could get up at 5:15 am for work.

It looks like I have a bald spot.

Cute.

174) Fizzling out

If I get home too late at night, I sleep on the couch in the family room so as not to wake anyone up.

Explored this fresh-from-your-nightmares church in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. It has a cemetery. And about 147 species of ghosts.

173) Free, used, recycled

Describing people, and my Keebler Elf t-shirt.

172) One man's junk...

Look into my bag. Crazy patterns and color, and a poof ball hanging out the side. This, my friends, are the spoils of a well-timed trip to the Salvation Army.

Two cheerful, sleek skirts; a vintage crocheted navy and white poncho; a long black knit vest; two wide waist belts; and a wild new scarf for my hair: $7.50.


I love Half Price Wednesdays.

171) Sponge Bess Square Face

Did you know that this is the 10th anniversary of Spongebob? Weird, because I vividly remember watching the first episode and thinking "Wow, this is the worst show I have ever seen."

Neat-o.

I did not take this picture in honor of the event. I took it because my friend's iPod is an adventure in awesomeness.

170) Post-Winnipeg, Still lazy

EVEN
if
I'm back from Winnipeg folk fest, that does not mean I'm feeling anymore connected to a shower or clean set of clothes.

In fact, I've been spending much time pajama-clad. I love summer so much.

On this particular day, I wore a t-shirt I tie-dyed myself and pajama shorts that I made.

They're fleecy light pink with bubbles and duckies all over them.

I got style.

169) Dunno

what this is from. But it's blurry and pale.

168) WORK! :D

I missed you!

167) Oww-i-chaaaa

Crime doesn't pay. I didn't wear my retainer for a long, long time...and when the ortho man adjusted it the other day he did evil things to it that make my teeny little eye teeth scream in pain for days.

I realize this picture is gross.

166) Back from New Wine...Dios mio I'm far behind

Being reunited with a computer after New Wine was magical. Current events are nice to keep up on.

Still rolling with a mostly dysfunctional camera. Which is why this picture is so dark.

I like my eyelashes, though!

Winnipeg

That's where I'm going for the next few days. Until Monday, more or less.

See you then?

165) Day Sixteen: Home happens

164) Day Fifteen: Glitter and Glam

Just kidding. There's nothing glamorous about this trip.

However...there IS makeover day. Where we girls turn all the men into women, and they turn us into men. Sometimes there's a boy that just wants to test his make-up skills, though. And thusly my cheeks were massively red and one eyelid was purple while the other was blue.

163) Day Fourteen: Sometimes things get lost

Things you bring along on New Wine generally must be the sort of things that you don't mind losing. For the first few days of the trip, you keep good track of your junk. As time passes, the lost and found slowly builds...and sometimes when you lose something, it DOESN'T turn up in the lost and found. Sometimes it just floats around in the fray for a week and then someone yells up from their luggage "Wait! This isn't mine!?"

My pictures got lost and mixed up and in the end, I realized I might not have ANY pictures from Day Fourteen. It was a dull day, anyway. Bleak.

Here's a friend and I keeping an eye on Russia.

162) Day Thirteen: So many miles

Three days left of the trip, and we were still over 2,000 miles from home. Oy vey.

This is an underground bookstore in Seattle. Literally, underground. Three levels below the main hum of Pike's Place Market. Picked up a couple of used books here...the guy behind the counter was SUPER knowledgeable and cool.

I was in bookworm heaven.

161) Day 12: Cool.

This is the coolest picture ever taken on a cool ferry ride in cool/frigid air with some cool people. Featuring my cool brother and his cool sunglasses.


Bonus points: Can you find Waldo?!?!

160) Day Eleven? Yibbah carumbah.

A photo of me drying out my sand-encrusted feet on a British Columbian highway after frolicking on the beach for an hour.

Not much to it.

159) Day Ten: Exhaustion

We had a 15 hour ferry ride one day. Meaning...NAP TIME!

It's a lot of time to kill, especially when you've grown accustomed to being herded place to place all the time. All of the sudden...bam. Free time.

The day previous, we went to a grocery store to stock up on provisions. I bought a 99 cent loaf of sour dough artisan bread, displayed here. It was tasty.


I look pretty flipping tired.

158) Day Nine: Sometimes the times aren't super

Occasionally there are tour days that are nothing to write home about. June 23rd was one of those days. Our schedule was all shot to hell from having to leave Ketchikan a day early, so LUCKILY we got to spend extra time at the rainy purgatory known as Prince Rupert. We toured an abandoned fishing village on the coast...?

That's all that happened.

Non-monumental such that I had nothing interesting to photograph, other than we stayed at a church attended by Edward Cullen.

If only, right? Oh well, that's the rumor I'm spreading.

157) Day Eight: Cancelations, Disasters, Changes-of-Plan

This day was supposed to bring volunteer trail-building in Alaska, but as fate would have it our ferry for later in the week broke down and we were forced to sail off the island early.

So...spent the day knocked out by Dramamine on Ferry #2. Upon arriving BACK in Prince Rupert (rainiest, most depressing place on Earth), we searched in vain for an open laundromat for 60 smelly people to wash their clothes until we convinced two to stay open for us.

As a reward for a little Asian man's good deed, we flooded the place.

Spent an hour sitting on a washing machine watching people sweep water out the door.

The man was very good-mooded about the whole thing!

I'm the legs in the reflection of the dryer.

156) Day Seven: The Bathroom Breaks

In a previous post, I believe I mentioned that a bathroom break for a group of 60 winers can take anywhere up to 30-40 minutes. This is at a rest stop with a dozen stalls for each gender.

At most churches we camped in, there was a single bathroom for women and a single bathroom for men. (Or, in Canada, a washroom.)

You know what's really awesome, though?

When you find a nice little public one-seater bathroom and no one else is around, waiting in line.

Time to wash up and just...be alone for a few minutes. Doesn't happen much on these trips. Sounds weird, I bet. But this was the best bathroom break I ever had.

155) Day Six: In and out

This was my second tour involving border-crossing and customs.

Day six, we took our first ferry to Ketchikan, AK, from Prince Rupert, BC. Long day, ending with cleaning up a local party spot (a beautiful rocky ocean beach) and having a big bonfire and cook-out.

Also, I broke my camera on this beach. Flew out of my hands and cracked the LCD screen. From here on out, everything is done with a view finder...no changing of settings or reviewing pictures to make sure I get the perfect shot.

So the rest of them are a crap shoot, in other words.

New camera within the next few weeks, hopefully.

154) Day Five: Oh the hilarity of it all

THIS was the day where we discovered the opal beds.

The reason the word "sketchy" was invented.

To sum up this experience for you, I'll share a bit of a journal entry from that day:

"We are in the boondocks of Northern Canada...in five fifteen-passenger vans...and we just asked a kid with blood-stained hands for directions so we can go hunt for opals."

We did 2 U-turns to reach the middle of nowhere. It was raining. The bloody-hands kid had the words "Beware of Cat" spray-painted on the door of his trailer.

Upon arriving in the mosquito-infested swampy forest, we found no opals. Had some tuna. Escaped.

Later, we toured a sawmill.

153) Day Four: We occasionally shower.

Hence to why my hair is clean in this picture. Rarely will happen for the rest of this little odyssey.

This picture indicates that I am almost as tall as a one-year-old moose.

152) Day Three: Itinerary happy

On this day we...

-Started in the plains
-Visited the Calgary Olympic Park
-Entered mountains
-Spent tourist time in Banff
-Banff National Park...lunch at a beautiful lake
-Rock scrambling!
-Different beautiful lake...photo op
-Climbed to a glacier...to our lungs' dismay
-Left the park driving under a double rainbow
-Got rained out of our planned cook-out...had late pizza at this place in Jasper that was not happy to see us
-Slept. Finally.

It was a LONG DAY.

EVERY day is a LONG day on New Wine.

Yes, that is snow in my hair.

151) Day 2: The rhythm of New Wine

We spend a lot of time on the road. Sometimes...no, OFTEN...we fall way behind schedule and end up skipping our planned activity for the day. Who knows how this happens?

Stuff happens when you travel in groups of 60. Potty breaks take 20-40 minutes. Etc.

On this particular day, we were supposed to go to a Dinosaur Park. :(

Instead we got an excessive amount of Canada-themed temporary tattoos and plastered ourselves with them for 495 miles.

150) Day One: "Everything in Canada is really boring except the old people, who have sweet cars."

My look of terror illustrates the fact that we had been on the road for half a day...and had already found a U-turn necessary. Fabulous!

Between Morris and Banff, Canada pretty much looks like Iowa. EXCITING.

Also, we discovered that Canada has more A&Ws than I have ever seen. 'Amburgers & Wootbeer!