I now have a concrete date to leave Boise. I've left places so many times before that I pretty much know what to expect, but it's still weird. Once again, I'll be packing all of my shit into my minivan named Frank, who will groan in his old age about having to deal with me through several states, and once again I'll be trucking halfway across the country. A dear friend of mine is coming with me, so that will cut gas costs in half. And as we know, you essentially have to sell your fucking kidney to fill up your gas tank these days (Speaking of selling a kidney, I read some article about a kid in China who sold his kidney to get money for an iPad 2. Ha! What a tool).
I do enjoy road trips, though... we have a few days to fuck around, so we'll probably be stopping at Mount Rushmore. Or maybe Wall Drug or the Corn Palace. What South Dakota doesn't have in actual touristy shit, it makes up for in fantastic, kitschy advertising. That starts several hundred miles away on the interstate coming from either direction. It's the ultimate in roadside America.
We'll presumably be going through Wyoming, too, which is big and empty. I'm continually amazed at the emptiness of the western United States... it's awesome. literally. I'll miss it out here.
Saskatchewan is plenty empty, though. One of my favorite jokes I've heard so far is that you can go to Saskatchewan and watch your dog run away for four days. Ha!
In the mean time, though, I am still here. And it won't stop fucking raining. It's supposed to be sunny and warm in Idaho right now, but today? It's overcast and stupid and in the 50's. Again. Fuck! I'm trying not to let weather destroy my mood, and it usually doesn't, but lately it's been a challenge... what is this bullshit, anyway?
Whine, whine, whine. Somebody pass the cheese.

I may be going up to northern Saskatchewan before school starts... yay! Trees and lakes and bears, oh my! Well, I'll pass on the bears, thanks. I've realized that in my old age I like nature, but I am pretty fucking terrified of wild animals. I spend a lot of time worried that I'm going to get eaten by a bear. Plus, this past weekend I got bucked a little on a horse AND got hissed at by a snake while running. I like animals a lot... but I'm not sure if they like me!
Anyway, I would like to end on a positive note. Consider it a service message.

Hi-ho, Canada!

I am officially approved to study in Canada. Yay! Yesterday a scary-looking, but small, envelope arrived at my house with the words "Canadian Consulate" on it. Because I worry about these things, my first thought was "Fuck! They're rejecting it!" However once I opened it, all was good. Holy shit! It's actually gonna happen! I don't... have anything left to do except sign up for classes and fucking go there! It still blows my mind sometimes that I'm going to be... a graduate student. Daaaayum. Not JUST a graduate student, but a graduate student studying soil which I fucking love. More than most people. Yep, it's true.

Travel for Real, Bitches!

It's May... usually in May, as was the trend for all years after high school except these past two, I was moving somewhere. Always. Whether it was from home to school or back home or to Maine or... and even if it wasn't exactly in May, it was during the summer. I've been in Idaho consecutively for almost two years now. Holy shit! That's crazy to me. This time last year, when it would have been finals, I was like "WHY THE FUCK AM I NOT MOVING SOMEWHERE."
Chalk it up to maturity or some other character-building shit, but I have learned how to "travel" without going anywhere. It's pretty awesome. Because when you're an Americorps VISTA, the point is that you don't have money. And when you have a job, the point is you don't have a lot of time. Both of these things are required for travel, as it turns out. Life's a bitch sometimes.
But I have learned to love my surroundings and be excited about them, continuously. Granted, it's pretty easy to do this in a place like Boise. This town, while lacking in lovely winter snow, has mountains surrounding it and is generally a clean, beautiful, fucking awesome place to live.
I think a big part of this revelation was using public transportation. Whenever I can I take the bus to work because it's free with my student ID. Gas is stupid expensive, as anyone knows (And more so in Canda! Fuck! No car for me there). This means that unlike driving, I can sit and watch the world go by out the window. On the surface, it's the same ride every day, but in reality it changes. All the time. There are different people on the bus, I may be in a different mood, the weather is different, there are different people walking around on the sidewalks...
Life is constantly changing, and I'm never bored. I travel every time I walk down the street, sit on the bus, or go for a run. There are so many places to explore wherever you go, whether it's a back alley you've never been down or a corner store or somebody's house. Even if you've been there before, there's probably something different about it than the last time you were there.
Don't get me wrong, I love the hell out of visiting new countries and new places! But when the reality of the situation is that I can't, I'd rather enjoy myself than sit around and mope. I plan to explore the fuck out of Saskatchewan and, hopefully, Canada once I'm up there. Car or no car, I'll fly... take trains... walk... bike... whatever it takes!
The world is varied and full of interesting shit. You just have to look for it!
Fuck, I'm inspiring. CAN YOU FEEL IT!

Raptured? Nope. Still here.

I wonder if anyone even reads this? Either way, I think I'll still write in it. I find the urge to write a lot... though I definitely don't like the idea of being a pretentious-asshole-blogger who uses their blog as another form of masturbation. So to speak. Though at the same time, I do plan to write about myself. So... am I a hypocrite? Probably.
As we can see, the world didn't end, even though Harold whatshisface Numnuts claimed it was going to. I had this image of all these people being transported up into the sky... like a fucking God spaceship or some shit. I always wonder with these things, what if they come true? My last words would be "Well, fuck." Truth is stranger than fiction, right? And if it's going to come true what's the point in worrying? Anyway, I was camping in Idaho on Saturday when the rapture was supposed to happen. We joked around that really, it could have happened and we wouldn't have known. Idaho is generally about five years behind everyone else... which is part of the reason why I love it so much. That, and mountains that are beautiful and empty. I digress.
All I could think about when I heard the term rapture, over and fucking over, was the word rupture. Haha. Maybe Harold Camping ruptured when he realized he was wrong on Saturday. I guess he was hiding out in a hotel room waiting for the end... haha! What a douchebag. I wonder if we'll see more of this shit when 2012 rolls around? I'll be up in the frozen north then, and probably fairly isolated. One can only hope. I am pretty entertained by all of these conspiracy theorists, though... from a distance.
I had a crazy landlady who was nice enough, but believed that we didn't land on the moon. Like I said, those things are funny from a distance... but when you have to hear every day how the moon landing was a hoax and all the presidents are related by some bloodline thing and blah blah blah, it gets pretty old. I got the fuck out.
In other news, I've progressed in this running thing and signed up for a half marathon. For real, yo. It's on August 13th (I think... or 12th) back in Minnesota and I'm pretty excited about it. Especially since I ran almost 9 miles two Sundays ago! Yeeeeah! I have to keep telling myself that speed doesn't matter... I'm NOT going to finish this thing quickly. Apparently I'm kind of competitive on some level, because I WANT to be fast. But it ain't realistic at this juncture (possibly never).
I survived two semesters of college chemistry, and it's fucking weird that I don't have homework to do anymore. Soon enough, I keep telling myself... soon I'll have so much I'll be dreaming about it and bleeding out of my eyes. Right? Cause that's what happens in graduate school; eyeball bleeding. WHYYYYYYYY
I'm really, really fucking excited to go to Canada as a graduate student. By the way. Saskatoon sounds like a pretty groovy city, the more I read about it, and I am constantly intrigued by cold, isolated places. It is certainly all of those things! I hope I see the northern lights. I also hope to make it up REEEEALLY far north... like to the Northern Territories. I saw a license plate from there here in town the other day! It was shaped like a bear. Fucking badass.
I am really amused by the idea of a God spaceship. Here is a terrible drawing of one. Shut up, I know it looks like a poorly drawn sombrero. Maybe God digs sombreros! You don't know so stop judging me!

In other news, I made a chocolate cake that is fucking delicious and leaves little crumbs of foodgasm in your mouth. Turns out for vegan baking, vinegar makes the cake moist! Yaaaay!

shit! it's been like, four months and i haven't posted anything. life got really busy all of a sudden, whaddya know. i haven't tanked on the vegetable cartoons... i just need something else to fill this, i think. or something.
in other news, i've gotten into running. which is pretty weird... a few months ago i thought i fucking hated it. biking to work was pretty great, but then it got cold and dark and i didn't want to do that anymore. well, after biking around 70 miles a week then suddenly none, my body was like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING. LAZY SACK OF SHIT" so i tried running again. i hadn't run for years, so i wasn't expecting anything great.
long story short, i ran six miles on saturday with plans to run seven next saturday, and hope to take part in a 10k next month and a relay (two 6-mile intervals) in june. up in the mountains, no less... so my lungs will be like "FUCKING... ALTITUDE..."
it's weird, though, because i totally dig it now. eventually i'd like to do a half-marathon. maybe during graduate school?
anyway!
i'm totally going to graduate school, up in canada, eh? i'm pretty fucking excited about it. it'll be so cold and flat and lovely. real winter, how i miss you!! not to mention they gave me a shitton of money (by graduate school standards). i'll make more there than i do as an americorps VISTA volunteer here in the states (granted... it's not difficult to make more than i do right now. i get unnaturally excited about pennies on the ground these days).
as part of that scholarship, i may have to teach. i'm not gonna lie... the idea of teaching some snot-nosed college kids kind of scares the shit out of me. i'm not good at explaining things, am often not sure of what i think i know, and am often wrong. erp... but at the same time, it would be pretty good for me, i think. character-building and all that shit. plus, i could be a real asshole to a bunch of young adults. :D
spring is in the air! which back home means the smell of cow shit thawing. i still get nostalgic when i smell it. is that weird? probably.
oh yeah, saskatoon (my future home) has THUNDERSTORMS!!!!!!! like real ones! not pussy-idaho-bullshit thunderstorms that last ten minutes with no real oomph. i wonder if saskatoon gets funnel clouds? then my life would be pretty complete... there's something absolutely thrilling about the feeling of a hot, sticky, midwestern summer night where you don't know what will happen. cloud-to-cloud lightning... does that mean... a funnel cloud? a TORNADO? A HURRICANE? A TSUNAMI? anyway. maybe joking about tsunamis isn't very tactful at this juncture. note to self...
DISCLAIMER: despite joking about tsunamis, the author of this blog post feels deeply in her heart for all the victims of the recent tsunami in japan. i am not a heartless asshole. not to mention that a tsunami tops my Shit That Is Scary list. like, seriously. what's that noise? oh, it's just a FUCKING WALL OF WATER ABOUT TO CRUSH YOUR SOUL. so i can't even imagine what kind of hardship they're enduring.
speaking of that, the earthquake moved japan. like, literally MOVED it. HOLY FUCK. AND it shortened our day!

look, i even drew a picture of japan. see? not mocking it!