Friday, August 31, 2007

All alaska pics now online

Current mood: accomplished

Hey guys,
thanks for waiting, we now have all alaska pics online and in our very fancy iWeb.
There's lots of great stuff. Click on the link below, and then click on "Alaska" for
lots of enjoyment and pretty scenery.
Let us know if you liked em!
Thanks!!

-melissa & damon


http://web.mac.com/damon.becker/iWeb/

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Croc of shit

Current mood: aggravated

Crocs.
You've seen em. Everybody and their grandmother are wearing these ridiculous shoes.
They're ugly and rubber and make you look like a moron.
If you wear these, you are a moron. These are women's geriatric gardening shoes. Some asshat stole their grandma's gardening shoes and thought, "damn, ugly but comfortable" I bet asshats across America would pay money to wear this shit.
If you aren't over 70 years old and you are wearing these shoes
you need to be slapped.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

This one time, I was in New York City and ended up at a gay club

Current mood: dirty

Oh yeah, that was today! We (me, Joe and her friend Nicole) started out the night searching for this place that supposedly had free drinks. That did not pan out, the place we found was some club with a velvet rope, a man at the door and a woman with a list. Not our kind of place. So, then we met up with other people's friends Becky and Katie and went to this other club, that was sort of a cave really, and smelled of marijuana and lots of money. It cost me seven dollars just to get a Corona and the cocktail drinks were more.
We ended up moving on from there, and parted with Becky and Katie and met up with this girl Sara, and her roommate Dave. From here, we go to Sara's place and get a headstart on some drinking - because drinking in a club is expensive!
This is apparerntly how nights go in NYC, you pre-drink then go from place, to place to place. From Sara's apartment around 52nd street we then go to this club called "The Ritz" and I don't even know where it is. We go in and I'm looking around and I come to the obvious conclusion that it is a gay club. New for me, but no big deal, pretty men, and it's crowded. I'm always up for anything once. The drinks are tiny and $8 but it's okay - I don't need any because I'm already pretty buzzed from the apartment pit-stop. After a while standing upstairs, my brother drags me and Nicole downstairs, come on!
I see this drag queen dancing in the back on some stairs and in this basement room it is PACKED. It is a total sausage fest, so we just jump in and start dancing. They're playing "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse and the room is just fucking hopping. It's crowded and dirty and dark and loud and god damn fun. I got dudes pointing at me and singing along and shaking their stuff. and I'm thinking, fuck yeah, I'm in!
So we just get into it, me, Joe & Nicole - all shaking our stuff and wiggling and dancing. It gets hotter and sweatier and the music gets louder and it gets later - all the while we are dancing and grooving and drinking and moving. It is actually - seriously - the best time I have ever had in a club. I'm usually not much of a club girl. I have dudes rubbing on me from all sides and you know what? Mostly because it's crowded. I'm not creeped out at all. I'm having a fucking blast. Because you know why? They aren't trying to bang their junk on me like dudes do at straight clubs. In straight clubs you have to wonder, why are they banging on you? What do they want? Is this creepy? Do they want this to go somewhere? What is the agenda here? The gay guys are just looking to jiggle a bit, flirt with some dudes and have fun. I actually realized that in this packed dance floor - Nicole and I are the only girls, but it really doesn't seem to matter all that much, everybody is being very friendly. Sure, it's a little bit weird seeing dudes rub on other dudes and here and there make out with other dudes, but it's all in good fun so I don't worry about that. Mostly just enjoy the company of all the queens and the sweaty dirty dancing of it all.
I must admit it was a tad uncomfortable going to the bathroom, because there isn't exactly a "ladies room" in a gay mens club - so I go in there and there's one stall (occupied) and a trough. I'm waiting for the stall and meanwhile there's guys walking in - going to the trough and I'm finding something else to look at... the ceiling in the opposite direction... look up and over somewhere else... new experience being in a bathroom while dudes are stepping up to the trough. Oh well, all for the sake of new experiences, right? I'm a bit more deaf than I was earlier today because the music was loud but I really had a fucking fantastic time. We didn't leave til well after 3am, and that's really late for me.
At one point, I even had a guy walk up to me, pet my head and say very tenderly, "I love your hair" and then he walked away.
There's something nice about getting a compliment like that. Even if he was drunk.
I got beer or something spilled on my feet a few times and ended up with dirt marks head to toe- not exactly sure how, but overall definitely a fan of the gay clubs. And you know what? In general, gay dudes smell better than straight dudes do. I don't know if they have to try harder, or if they're just a little metrosexual but that sweaty room smelled tasty. I like me some guilt free dirrty dirrty sweaty gay dancing. So it's 5am now and I should sleep. But I just had to share. Enjoy.

PS. If you're a straight dude looking to rub on some chicks, go to a gay club. You'll have to thwart the advances from men, but the chicks will be all over you. You can't be too forward, or they'll know you're not gay.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Hot in the City

On Thursday I wake up before the ass-crack of dawn for Joe to pick me up and then head to the rental place. Today he's moving to NYC. (I'm tired so my tense is going to be off. Get used to it.)
We show up to pick up the pre-requested minivan to take all Joe's things, and they say no. They have a ford freestyle, which is a station wagon, only stupider.
Um, no that really is not going to work, so tool-boy says he can give us a Yukon. So I say, what the hell is a Yukon? Oh. That thing. Damn. That thing is huge. So, we take the Yukon. I've got to drive this back to Joe's house and it's terrifying. I. do. not. drive. big. vehicles. I own a Jetta people. This is a GMC Yukon XL. I can park my car in it. I get in this big bitch and the driver's area is like a cockpit. I don't know how to turn off the A/C. I can't adjust the mirror. I hit a button and the seat begins to move forward by itself and does not stop. I hit the button again and the seat stops. I decide to stop pressing buttons and just drive away.
We get to the parents house and miracle of all miracles - everything he wanted to bring does fit. Joe and I seem to be the only ones loading everything. Most everybody else is standing in the way. I yell at my sister a few times and grumble that there's an awful lot of people standing around in the way but not an awful lot of people helping out.. Anyway, we load it all in.We can't see out the back window but it fits. Now is the time for the horrid goodbye which I had not anticipated. Mom is just bawling, and of course my sister is crying and I guess her husband is crying too and then Joe starts crying and then my dad starts crying, so I'm standing with five people, all who are crying, so I start crying. My mom goes to hug me and I say I'm fine. It's just human reaction. You are all crying so I cry. You yawn, I yawn. You cry, I cry. Stop crying so I can stop! I'm fine! I'm happy for him! Egad!
So we get out and leave. About an hour into the journey we hear this squeee squeak noise. We hear it again. And again. We start guessing. Is there something with batteries that is dying? Did you bring a mouse? What is in your shit that is squeaking? I timed it. It is every 28 seconds. We stop to investigage and as it turns out it's the rear wiper. Morons. We just couldn't see the back window that it was on. Duh.
So we get back in and decide to determine what the remaining buttons are. We figure out how to work the mirrors and the air and the radio. But there's several buttons left. One with a shoe and two arrows, one with a car and an "I", one with a check mark. Turns out we can move the pedals, get info on everything this crazy car does, including mileage used, fuel used, fuel remaining, miles remaining based on current fuel levels, estimated range, miles per gallon, and I'm pretty sure that if I tried hard enough I'd find a button to make it do my laundry. I think it has wi-fi too. I just can't find the button.
My mom calls us after 2 hours to check how we're doing. I answer Joe's phone and tell her we're still in Ohio. She's crying again "I just miss him so much!"
Thanks mom, yep, thanks a lot.
They call his phone again and again. We're in Pennsylvania. Still in Pennsylvania.
Still in Pennsylvania.
We make it to Manhattan in the Mega-Yukon earth destroyer. Scary is defined as riding as a passenger while your brother drives in Manhattan. Eek.
We even parallel park the bitch. Score one point for me on this one. I got out to help navigate. Go go go, turn turn stop. Okay!
We get the items moved in, have a beer and call it a day. Step 1, get mailbox. Step 2, find Joe a place to live. Step 3, profit.
Joe's phone rings all day. I walk around with him while he's on the phone.
We get some things accomplished on Friday and go back to his friends apartment to watch Closer, which happens to be a fantastic movie if you haven't seen it. Just outstanding. All the dialogue is so perfect and deliberate. It's beautiful.
Today I get up and it is Vietnam swamp-ass hot. Seventeen buckets filled with nasty. Uck. I stumble around the city while Joe takes more phone calls.
We check out potential room for rent in Weehawken and that seems to be the one to go for. He's going to keep working on getting that secured. Then we got tickets to 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee and it was cute. Met some of the cast afterward - a couple of them were UM students. Some dinner and some ice cream and some air-conditioning and I'd say this day was pretty good!
We walked all over the city, and saw lots of people. Some of the people look like they could be famous and what I wonder is, do ordinary people sometimes look famous, or is it that famous people just look ordinary?
Time to wash this city off. I smell like burnt hot dogs and broken dreams.
Good night and see you soon.

Alaska finale

So, I left off in Anchorage. (I had forgotten to mention that on our flight to Fairbanks we sat next to a man who looked like he ate babies, and when he talked as it turned out his voice sounded like a guy that would eat babies. Damn big dude. And Norwegian, so he definitely eats babies.)
Anyway, we arrived and stayed at the Historic Anchorage Hilton. We got in at about 8pm so the next day we hung out with David & his kids, Blaine & Talilah. Not much exciting things this day, we wandered around downtown and the mall and that was about it. Then the next day we were going to go to the zoo, which would have been nice. I actually don't like zoos but I was willing to give it a shot. The day turned out to be really rainy and nasty and I talked everyone into seeing Ratatouille. The movie turned out to be surprisingly good - well written, and the animation was great, overall just really cute. Had some dinner at Davids and then back to the hotel. On Thursday we got up early and rented a car and drove to Seward. Of course with any rental company they never have what you want so we got stuck with a fucking minivan. I hate minivans. Anyway. Seward.
We show up early and call our friend Eric (who we know from EMU) he's my myspace friend "Eric the Red" and his photos are great and you should look at them. Anyway, he's happy to see us and I can tell we're gonna have a great time. We go on a day cruise of the Kenai Fjords National park and right up to the Aialik Glacier. Most of the day is rainy, and cold and drizzly but we're in a temperate rainforest so that's what we get. We saw puffins and sea lions and little penguin like birds and then.. a pod of orca whales passes directly in front of our boat. It was amazing. I even got lucky and snapped a photo of one of them breaching. Damn! We saw a ton of stuff.
The boat had about 100 people and we were next to this stupid family that had about 8 kids with them. I think it was a group of stupid families. Anyway there's this kid that I think is a little girl for about 4 hours and then I realize it's actually a little boy, but the kid whistled non-stop for 8 hours. And not a song or anything. Just whistling noise and it was horribly annoying. Oh wait. He did stop whistling for a while. When his mom put the portable DVD player on the table and turned it on. They fed these kids crap all day - cookies, candy, pop and then plopped them in front of a DVD player.
Seriously!? You pay how much money to take a sightseeing day cruise of kenai fjords national park and your stupid children watch dvd's all day?? You are a moron.
So after that we hang out and wait for Eric and his girlfriend Katie (who is a firecracker - she's fun) and have dinner and then back to their place. They work in Alaska in the summer and then somewhere in the winter. This winter it might be Hawaii. With that kind of moving going on they don't own anything. The living room is a beanbag chair and a small tv on a couple milk crates. It's awesome. Sometimes I really miss owning nothing.
Next day we get up early and we drive down to Lowell Point for our kayaking trip. Turns out we are the only 2 people who have signed up so we have our own private 8-hour kayak trip today. We get in our boats and go out and start paddling. I forget how stiff and horrid things feel when you make the same motions hundreds of times. I had some pretty stiff wrists and some pretty awful knots in my shoulders. We kayaked out to Caines Head and in the meantime saw sea otters from far off and seals in the water, and we cruised by this bald eagle on the shore, from about 15 feet away. It was pretty amazing, just coasting by while the eagle is staring at us and we are staring at him, and they are huge. It was so cool I couldn't even get a photo. I just stared.
And the fish! It was salmon spawning season and literally every 5 seconds one was jumping out of the water near us. Jump, plop. Jump, plop, Jump, plop. It was really funny. Just seeing fish popping out of the water all over the place. One even hit our guides kayak. I'm lucky one didn't land in our kayak because I would have screamed and there would have been flailing limbs involved. Among the many things I have issues about - another is fish touching me. Especially flying at me from a river. I would have ended up in the water most likely.
We get to Caines Head and hike up to this old WWII fort used to secure the area from invading Japanese (they had captured two Aleutian Islands) and Seward was a place to protect because it's a deep-water port that never freezes.
So the fort was creepy, but the hike was pretty sweet. Then we hop in the kayaks and paddle back to Lowell Point. It was a hard day but beautiful.
That night, we are treated by Eric and Katie to salmon burgers. Yum. And I do not eat fish. Correction! I only eat fish in Alaska. I had salmon and then halibut and then more halibut and then salmon burgers. And Katie makes this kick-ass guacomole dip. We just sat around and bullshitted and had some alaskan ambers and alaskan oatmeal stouts and it was great. We had a fantastic time in Seward.
Next morning is the 18th and time to go home. We are pretty sore and tired so we take our time driving back. We visit exit glacier - the only glacier you can walk right up to (which was pretty cool) and we also visited Portage Glacier area. The drive back is beautiful, going around all these amazing mountains. There's gates all along the way to close the road for avalanches, but as it was August there was no snow! No worries with driving through "the pass."
We make it back to the airport and return the car, check the bags and we're good to go! Overall it was a fanfuckingtastic time!
Soon I'll have a link to view all our photos on iWeb.
Thanks for reading!