I really wanted to update my blog on what I did this past weekend, but as it required me to wake up at 6:30am after 3 hours of sleep, I proceeded to forget to bring my digital camera, so all I have are film photos which have yet to be developed. So this update shall come at another time. I am almost done with photos from Sweden and Norway as well.
Remember how I said I couldn’t mention my trip earlier than I did? The reason behind that was that someone was stalking me. But while I was being stalked, I was doing the same to someone else! I was participating in Street Wars, an annual water gun assassination tournament. You like like an assassin (since you receive your target’s full name, home and work address and phone number, along with two photos and an email address), but if you end up getting shot yourself, it’s only with water.
This is the second year I’ve played, and what I think is fun about it is that Street Wars’ tagline, Live In Fear, is completely true. You become completely paranoid and overly cautious. You have no idea who is coming after you, whether it’s one person or a team, male or female. That guy smoking across the street who glances at you? Could be an assassin. The girl walking down the street with her hand in her purse? Could be an assassin about to pull out her gun. The guy delivering your mail? Could be an assassin!
Last year I worked as part of a team, but unfortunately my partner got shot early on, which meant I was out of the game as well. This year I decided I would play solo, and I met my personal goal – to kill at least one person. Once you kill someone you must submit a Kill Story to the Street Wars mainframe. Read below to see my Kill Story…
Hello everyone. Long time no write, and there is a pretty good reason for that. But that shall be revealed to you in a later post, because in a few hours I leave for Sweden and Norway! Or Sweway, as my roommate and I have been calling our trip.
Yes, it’s hard to contain my excitement. I am not even sure why I hadn’t posted about this when I first booked the flight a couple of months ago. I think I wanted to get all of my last vacation’s photos up before I spoke about going on another one! I usually don’t take two big trips in a year, but the flight deal we got to Norway was amazing! If you like to travel, make sure that you sign up for Travelzoo emails!
Even though my roommate and I leave today, we are still unsure of what exactly to do in these cities.
While planning the drives from major point to major point on our vacation, we knew there would have to be some corny yet amusing roadside attractions, a la South of the Border. I thought we were going to come across a lot more without having to re-direct our route, but sadly that wasn’t the case. Luckily we had the sense to drive out of our way to see the Cabazon Dinosaurs, which may look familiar to you as they were in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure:
What’s interesting about these dinosaurs now is that the people who most recently bought them are creationists, and they have books and stickers and free DVDs about creationism in the gift shop (which is inside Dinny, the brontosaurus). Inside of the T-rex was “information” on why dinosaurs didn’t exist… and you could also climb up into its mouth. We took one of the free DVDs to watch for later though we haven’t yet gotten around to actually watching it yet. My favorite part has to be their slogan, “By design, not by chance.” You can read much more about the dinosaurs here!
And then we made our way to Joshua Tree! I didn’t know much about it or what there was to do (though the Entourage episode where they go there was pretty great), but we ended up having a lot of fun and I camped for the first time! Though unfortunately it was so windy that our tent kept blowing so far over it was almost touching us! But other than that it was a lot of fun and I would definitely recommend a trip there. We climbed a mountain and saw the moon rise (it was almost full and it was SO bright out at night!) and went to a cacti field and almost got lost in the desert mountains and walked some trails and saw lizards! I wish we could have had more time there!
Follow the link for more photos of the dinosaurs and from Joshua Tree!
I’ve finally finished going through and scanning all of my photos from my desert vacation! I will be posting them in a few increments here, since there are a LOT of photos! I’ll have an entry for each major destination, since I think that we went to so many different and widely varied places that the photos might contrast each other if put all together.
Let’s go in chronological order: First we went to Bombay Beach that is part of the Salton Sea in CA. It was previously flooded and abandoned and pretty much left to rot. I love old abandoned things, so it made for some great photos. I was really hoping we could have visited around sun down, but our schedule didn’t allow for that. Regardless, it was still great to see during the day. I wish we could have gone swimming in the sea! My favorite part was this abandoned chair in the water:
I know I just posted about summer, but I am so backed up on going through my photos that I just got around to looking at some of my film photos from the fall! Last October I went to Vermont for a weekend to visit my Aunt in Vergennes. Even though she’s lived in VT for almost a decade, I’ve only visited her in the summer or winter, so this was my first time seeing some prime Vermont autumn foliage.
I created a Flickr set for these photos, but I thought I’d post some of my favorites here. Click any photo to see it bigger!
I’m starting to become really excited for this summer, even though this random hot then cold New York weather has made me forget that June is only one week away! I’ve got big plans for summer activities, big plans! The following is only a short list of events I’m looking forward to doing this summer that should make for some good times.
Crowd at Warped Tour, 2004
✦ Free summer concerts
New York can’t be beat in the summer, especially with all of the free events that happen all over every borough. There’s so many good free outdoor concerts I look forward to every year, such as Siren Festival, the Williamsburg Waterfront “Pool Parties,” shows at Pier 54 and South Street Seaport, Celebrate Brooklyn, shows at The Yard in Gowanus (usually not free, but I love that lil’ outdoor venue), etc! And I just read that the Virgin Mobile Festival is going to be free again this year, which means driving down to Maryland! I went last year and saw some big names like Weezer, Blink 182 (throwback!), Franz Ferdinand and Girl Talk, so I’m excited to see who plays this year.
Last week, Peelander-Z played in Brooklyn again at the always fun Brooklyn Bowl (for those not from NY, it’s a bowling alley that doubles as a concert venue. You can bowl and watch the bands at the same time!). I hope by now you’re all familiar with this band, as I wrote about them the first time I ever saw them (which was ridiculous fun!), and when I saw them at SXSW last year. I brought my friend Krystalynne with me and it was the first time she’d seen them, or even heard of them, but I knew after the show she’d become a fan. I strongly urge everyone to see this band if they tour near you, because you don’t need to know any of their music to have a good time. Plus, they’re from Japan, so how can they not be fun? I also ended up playing bass onstage with them, again!
This is my space to write about my antics & adventures in New York, along with updates about my other interests such as photography, travel, karaoke, dodgeball, & more!
