hey juney juney juney juney june

hot. sweaty. desert in the summer. 100 or so is the norm right now, and while it is not *quite* as uncomfortable as say, minnesota at 100 degrees, it's still burning hot. the worst possible place to be is in a car. unfortunately, due to how this city is set up, the car is unavoidable in most situations. biking may even be worse--but i don't even want to try it.

so, summer camp is in full swing; four weeks down, two more to go. this has been taking up a major amount of my time, including weekends, so that i am behind in not only blogging but also basic survival tasks. well, it's not that bad, but i'm definitely in the work zone right now. the kids make it a lot of fun, it's the work that goes on behind the scenes that is exhausting and sometimes tries my patience. owell. i'm sure i will look back with fond memories of this crazy experience. next week we will have a float in the electric light parade for the 4th of july, then the following week a big luau party with 300+ expected. after next week, camp will end, with a final wrap-up week for my americorps program, including a graduation party that i am coordinating at la posta de mesilla friday, july 20th. my new job starts monday, july 23rd. in the meantime, joe, fresh off a trip to nyc, will be heading to MN for 10 days starting sunday. i have no doubt that the time that passes while he's gone will go quickly, as i'll be in the thick of things with camp.

remember when joe and i went to marfa, texas last october for the chinati open house? well, just found out last night that sonic youth will be playing the free concert there this year...which is amazing! we were planning to go anyway, because it's such a great time, but now...! wow. we can hardly believe it.

am very much looking forward to starting the new job. it is really a great opportunity that popped up seemingly out of nowhere. the potential for this project is huge, since we are starting from scratch. i know it won't be easy, but i like a good challenge. and the salary is icing on the cake. since we have lived so cheaply for so long, i'm hoping we can continue to do so and save up for travel & the like.

more on the job. i will be the after school arts coordinator for a new initiative in gadsden school district, at gadsden middle school. it is located in anthony, new mexico, 20-odd miles away (yes, there is a bit of a commute, but i will be splitting my time between there and alma/court youth center, joe's school). this is made possible by a major grant from a national funder, and there are 5 sites around new mexico, serving what was identified as some of the neediest areas. anthony being a border town, it is 98% spanish-speaking. and low-income. the program is a comprehensive approach to improving students' lives including health services, key family supports and then our component, after school arts classes. middle school, while a challenging age, is a critical time in children's development...i certainly learned that by my experience working at the high school level this year. many students have so many issues coming into high school, and i had often thought that if only they could have been reached earlier...so, yeah, the potential is great. i also believe that the support system at alma/court youth center is great for a project like this, so i really look forward to getting started. however, as i've said, right now i am absorbed in my current job and haven't been able to get in too deep with the new job, with the exception of a conference in albequerque last week. i learned a lot about the new program then and met a lot of interesting new people. should be great!

and, of course, joe is thrilled that he can stay & continue to teach. they really love him over there, not least the students, so i think overall that things will turn out well. i am admittedly a little disappointed that i won't have any time off between jobs, since our original plan had been to move. there is a romantic lure to floating & being unsure of what will happen, but that can also be super stressful too. altho las cruces itself isn't ideal, there is so much more to explore around new mexico & the southwest in general so we should be able to keep ourselves entertained.

we have flirted with the idea of moving into a different house, but since our lease is month-to-month now, it's not urgent. if something great pops up in the next month or two, we'll move. if not, it's not the end of the world. i'd like to have a washer & dryer, less bugs, and more energy efficiency in terms of cooling/heating. plus an oven that works correctly. altho i haven't found anything in our neighborhood (where we'd stay, due to the proximity to alma), other houses are so cheap in general that i think we could upgrade substantially without paying much at all. or, we'll just stay here. we'll see.

uhm, yeah. just found out that joe and i will be headed to ruidoso for work a few days in july...heard it's beautiful and also that it is 15 degrees cooler up there in the mountains so that will be a nice mini-escape for me...i'm going to need it by then!

minne yay!

got back from a great trip back home on sunday night; unfortunately, work has been so crazy that i haven't had time to post all the photos yet. here are some samples:





that's my nephew, reece, with whom i spent the majority of my time. that was great since he started walking and talking since i saw him last at xmas. plus he really loved hanging out with me, so we charmed each other.

basically, i got there and we (my mom, and brother's family) headed up to ely to my aunt's house for three days, which was relaxing and we did a couple of hikes around the edge of the boundary waters. that's where we saw the lady slipper. ely was a nice change from the desert i'm used to.

back in the cities, i babysat my nephew with my mom during the day because my brother and his wife, andy, just bought a house so they were moving out of their apartment. i hung out a lot with my dad, which was really good, and i also spent a day each with both sets of grandparents and other extended family.

i went to minneapolis and ate at yummy restaurants that i miss out on being down here. we went out with dwyer, tiffany, jesse and katie, carter and adam friday night at peninsula on nicollet. saturday katie and i went to the walker, shopped around uptown, ate indian. then dwyer and tiff came back and jesse and katie had a big barbeque for eiko and trevor's birthdays.

so now back and the summer camp i'm supervising started monday, so it's been busy. working lots. i'll check back with the blog soon i hope. also working on some cool packages to send out.

joe good, cat good. getting hot. that's all for now!

about to embark

on my trip back home to minne. got off work tonight at 9pm, came home & packed in 45 minutes and now i'm sitting here looking at my pack and thinking that either i am getting really good at packing, or, i am not bringing nearly enough because its a small amount. no checked baggage, no monkey business. biggest concern is how to entertain myself during a 4 hour layover in denver. but my book is fat and getting to be quite good so i just may be set.

work has been intense and will be even more hectic upon my return, so i will really savour the free time in MN. hope to see some of you there!

g'night.

chiricahua

here's a few photos from our hiking/camping trip this weekend in southeastern arizona. it was amazing.

view of the chiricahuas:


joe and joe, near the end of the hike:


cactus flowers:


we (8 of us) got there after dark friday night and set up camp. woke up around 6am saturday morning in order to have time to make breakfast & coffee and break down camp before 8am. went to the chiricahua national monument visitor's center to catch the free shuttle up to the top of the mountains. from there we took a nice leisurely 7.3 mile hike all day down through the monument and ended up back at the visitors center. the rock formations were crazy! then we took a gravel mountain road through the park which took two hours even though it was only 19 miles long. we picked out a nice, isolated forest campground for the second night and made a big meal and a nice fire. next day was relaxed, hiking around the forest and playing in the creek. overall a beautiful weekend...it felt really good to get out of town and take advantage of the southwest.

check out my flickr page for lots more photos.

past week

things have been hectic but i got a much-needed day off today, so here's an update:

joe's surprise birthday potluck went really well. i had told him that i would make dinner and we would go out afterwards, but our friends and i coordinated a mass entrance at about 7:30 for dinner and drinks at our house. i made fig and olive tampanade, orange ginger tofu, strawberry poppyseed salad and garlic mashed potatoes. friends brought over sushi, pasta salad, fruit, stuffed mushrooms, chips, cake, bread, wine and beer. the neighbors performed a song about joe, and we eventually went up to the mountains to enjoy the full moon. i think joe was really happy about how it all turned out.



on thursday, joe and i worked this big picnic in the park for my americorps program. all the kids in our afterschool program were invited, along with all their families, to celebrate the end of the school year. there were hundreds of elementary kids running around, and joe and i had the most intense face painting session he's ever done. it was nonstop (free) facepainting for hours. that was crazy.

friday night was the opening for the museum show that joe's in. it was great. i'm going to leave him to blog about that one.

this weekend was big for me, because we had an americorps event that i coordinated, with the help of some of my coworkers. basically i had been busting my ass the past few weeks getting together everything for this neighborhood beautification project. our budget for the project was nearly zero, but we were able to secure donations for everything: we worked with the city of las cruces codes enforcement, habitat for humanity, a local community center called 'the dream center', etc. what we did was go into this low-income neighborhood and completely repainted a house, put in a bunch of landscaping and seeded and fertilized the lawn. all the paint, tools, most of the landscaping materials, 100 flowers, etc. were all donated. we even got 25 pizzas, bottled water, soda, and medeterranean food donated to feed the volunteers both days. we had 45 volunteers between americorps members, their friends, local kids from the shelter and the group homes and even walmart sent over some employees to help. it was awesome, and i'm really pleased with how everything came together. the couple that lived there are very happy too. so that was both saturday and sunday, all day long, plus lots of overtime the past few weeks for me, hence my day off today. i'd like to post a photo of it, but i'm not sure if that's kosher or what...especially because some of the kids we had helping out aren't supposed to be publicly linked to the shelter/group home etc.

saturday night we hung out with our friends ilana and joe, who are moving back to DC for the summer after finals this week. that was bittersweet, since they won't be back in cruces until after our americorps contracts are up, so we may not see them again.

so, yah. it's been fun. a big thank you to anna for sending me a letter from france, and to chelsea for sending a package from guatemala. nothing beats getting things in the mail. i've got some packages to send out myself, hopefully today.

see ya

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE!

yay birthday fun time. just before we started dating, i think when i was turning 17, joe sang the beatles birthday song for me. he doesn't even remember it...but i do, since i had a huge crush on him. i still do. love ya babes!

so this is about the best youtube has to offer for that song:

messing around

hey all, i'm fooling around with my blog template, and somehow on this computer at work the format is all wrong. on my mac at home the posts are up near the top. what does it look like to you ? is this post way below all my links ?

shoe don't castle gatsby

i know i haven't written anything in the past two weeks. i've been waiting for something exciting to happen. it hasn't. so i didn't. write. in. the. blog. let me try to scrape something together.

well, first of all, i got some really sweet shoes. i ordered them from zappos because, truth be told, i had combed the LC for months for flats and came up empty handed every time. i had reached a period of shoe desperation, so i splurged. the beauty of zappos is the free overnight shipping; last night at about 12:30 in bed i realized that, oh yah they're probably here already, and sure enough they were sitting right on our (never used) front doorstep. yeeess!

FOOT SHOT.


we saw grindhouse on friday night. that was a trip. a gory, gory trip. super fun 3 hours of laughing and cringing at the same time. not for the faint of heart. it was two films, back to back, with fake previews in the middle. i thought rodriguez's film was more true to the vision, and it was much more fun to watch. although tarentino's half paid off big time at the end, there were some long lulls in the first 3/4. and i particularly liked the fake preview called 'DON'T!'

speaking of sick things, i read 'the castle in the forest' by norman mailer. mailer posits some disgusting theories about hitler's youth, i.e. that he is the product of generations of incest, that he literally gave his brother the kiss of death, etc. all told through the eyes of a devil. i just used joe's favorite word, posits.
anyway, with all that grime, and it was a really grimey novel, there is some really beautiful prose. heavy, heavy freudian overtones. it was a joy to read, although the content makes the reader feel dirty. not like trashy-romance-novel-dirty, either.

now i'm reading joseph campbell's 'the hero with a thousand faces', and 'the great gatsby', which i don't know why i hadn't gotten around to that one before. of course i love gatsby...who doesn't? i am (was) reading it with one of my high school students in his english class. but about that...

...i actually just found out yesterday that i would be pulled from my site, onate high school, today. i'm going to be working at our main office, planning for our summer camp and other misc. community projects we have lined up. so today was pretty weird, last day at the high school. i'll still be doing the after school elementary program until school gets out in may, and then in the summer i'll be with kids all day again. the change of pace, for now, though, is welcome. and unexpected. i usually try not to mention my job in this blog (have you noticed?), and i don't really want to go into too much detail.

what else? still volunteering at the museum on the weekends, actually volunteered for joe and myself to do some face painting this saturday, and don't think he's too pleased about that.

in all honesty, i've reached a boredom plateau with cruces. it is magnified by post-spring break syndrome. i'm getting restless. however, i do have a MN trip lined up end of may: may 25-june 3. so that's something.

i don't know. i'm in a crappy mood so should probably cut it off here.

san diego

just finished dumping a bunch of photos from the california trip. i'll leave the trip report to joe's blog.

JOE, ANDY, DWYER and TIFFANY WENT SURFING:


1920s ARI:


ME and DWIFFANY:


it was super fun.

spring break, phase 1 complete

after a few days of pure leisure, we drove up last wednesday to ABQ to pick up alex from the airport followed by an immediate drive back to old el paso to pick up ben. went home to cruces for a late dinner and a drink at el patio, which was short-lived because we had missed the jazz band.

woke up the next morning and went on a hike in soledad canyon, in the organ mountains. there was a threat of rain which never materialized, and in fact the skies opened up mid-hike. did a bit of rock scrambling and the boys had lots of fun throwing rocks.



decided to forego a trip to white sands in favor of camping that night at faywood hotsprings. didn't realize that we were driving straight into a severe weather warning in effect until 430am, got there at dark with some dark clouds looming overhead. despite this, we quickly set up camp and hopped into the springs. we lucked out because it only sprinkled a bit, and we spent several hours soaking and drinking in a couple different tubs. unfortunately, we didn't get any photos of that place, due to the darkness.

we woke up early-ish the next day and headed over to city of rocks to play around on the boulders. again, the guys were bouncing off the rocks and burning off some boyish steam. we did stop for a catnap:



we came back to cruces that night and headed out to chope's in la mesa for some sloppy mexican. then we went for a pitcher at high desert and brought home a growler. we watched eddie murphy's delirious, also a boyish activity.

next morning, we were lazy and joe cooked breakfast. the guys checked out the farmer's market, coas bookstore and then joe's studio. went to andele's for more mexican and stopped by old mesilla. then we hit the road for albuquerque, and got to the hotel just as the sun was setting. stayed downtown and went to the nob hill neighborhood for pizza and home-brewed beer. a local tipped us off to a pub called 'two fools' just down the street. after a few drinks we returned to the hotel. had to get up at 6am the next morning to drop alex off at the airport and then head to el paso to get ben to the airport by noon. had an interesting conversation with ben about religion on the ride home. got back to cruces and slept a lot, and watched 'in the mood for love' (very good, by the way).

overall we had a great time...thanks to ben and alex for making the trek down here. looking forward to phase 2: san diego, which begins wednesday night.