and i also went to santa fe this summer...

so i might as well share my photos from the glen workshop: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200907SantaFeGlen?authkey=Gv1sRgCNzihKbSheHmeA&feat=directlink.

photos from the oc

beth said that i should post these, too: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200906OceanShoresBevisFamily?authkey=Gv1sRgCIS79_Tn-5_RpwE&feat=directlink.

whitney and pedro!

whitney and pedro are married!

here are the photos i took while in stockton for their wedding: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200908WhitPedroWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfS4OCIpuDgGw&feat=directlink.

tribute to the girls of 79th

beth's house is breaking up.

after a mildly stressful rental search, mari and beth are headed east toward greenlake. they have found a beautiful new house (which i've yet to see) and fun new roommates. nora, a sometime-roommate, will be heading to california (or maybe colorado?) later this summer. and tomorrow, whitney (seen below in red socks) will be shipping her soccer skills south to california for good.

i thought i'd write a post to commemorate whitney's leaving or the disbandment of the house, but instead i'd like to share some advice from getgirls.com: "there's a rule about dating women with a roommate....this rule is that you must also make a good impression on her roommate."

this rule is general knowledge in the kingdom of men, and we don't need "the world's leading source for seducing women" to give us a head's up. still, i've heard (and seen) horror stories about guys and their girlfriends' girlfriends. for example, during the years right after college, i lived in a series of cramped, messy apartments--at one time, we squeezed three guys into a single nasty room--yet despite our ugly abodes, one of my roommates preferred to hang out with his s.o. at our place, not because it had some mystical appeal or because he loved us so much, but because of his relationship with her roommates.

in contrast, i'm a regular at beth's house on 79th; i genuinely like all of her roommates and consider them good friends.

during a recent work lunch, some friends and i chatted about dinners and executions; we pondered what we would eat for our last meal on death row--steaks & ribs, pizza & beer, exotic curries and a bottle of egon muller riesling--each listing was a more wonderful gluttony than the one before.

now, regardless of what we may think of california, it's probably a bit ridiculous (and morbid) to venture any kind of comparison between whitney's last meal as a washingtonian and the smörgåsbord of delicacies my work friends dreamed up for a final night in the joint. but forgive me, i can't resist. indeed, i find it rather interesting that we ate sadza, a simple shona food that mari imported from zimbabwe. sadza tastes great, but it's rather simple; it doesn't set the taste buds on fire or make the stomach purr, and i would be a little surprised if it were whitney's favorite food.

but sadza ignites community.

the kitchen crowds as people gather to help prepare the meal. someone grabs a great pot and dumps pound after pound of corn meal inside. the pot is large, they say, because you never make just a little sadza. and when it's ready, the main dish is a finger food, the ultimate evolution of the potluck. grubby fingers go at it, glopping the sadza in delicious tomatoey-onion sauce; everyone is united in their forklessness.***

yes, sadza is a fitting end to the era. beth, mari, nora, and whitney's decision to prepare sadza seems emblematic of their heart for community (also see this post from 2005), of their friendly openness to people like me. and this sadza approach to life worked.

indeed, it has inspired phrases that you'd see in yearbook scribblings: fun parties (which i used to consider an oxymoron), caroling, talking about guys (errrrrrr...perhaps i mean listening to talk about guys), taking trips, eating too many vegetables, performing sufjan, watching lost....

you know, getgirls.com is right: it pays to be friends with your girlfriend's roommates.

addendum

i was also hoping to say some words about whitney. i think we'll all miss whitney's honesty, her enthusiasm, her encouragement, her funny mannerisms, and her devotion to her friends, and we know she'll settle in well down in cali.

(the links are to other posts about whitney and to other posts with whitney pictures).


the s.o. "soccer skillz" seattle, wa. [PS these are very, very closely cropped pictures; thus the poor quality]

***well, almost everyone. as much as i love this metaphor, there are those that choose to wield silverware, and they don't spoil the community by doing so. some may think them stubborn or contentious, but really they're just adding their personal flare to the event.****

****in case you couldn't tell, i eat sadza with a spoon.


please comment if you have other thoughts or yearbook-like comments on the girls of 79th or whitney.

deleted tunes

my laptop is bursting with mp3s and photographs, so i recently purchased an external hard drive to help with the storage problem. after backing up the files, i went on a deleting spree. the first files to get the ax were 196 songs (that's about 1 gig) from the paste magazine sampler albums. each of the casualties was first given a 5 to 10 second opportunity to increase its ranking to the 3 star safety threshold, but only 1 song was spared (an arcane fire song).

two deletion observations:

• several of my favorite bands appeared to use paste as their dumping ground for sub-par songs. paste contributions from ben harper, ben kweller, bright eyes, cat power, coldplay, death cab for cutie, solomon burke, and van morrison each found their way to the recycle bin.
• the paste music editors and i strongly disagree on several bands. multiple contributions from bill mallonee, brindley brothers, mary gauthier, michelle shocked, rachael sage, sonia dada, and the black keys were included in paste albums and subsequently deleted by me.

a list of the most recently deleted songs (sorted by artist)


andrew david. "iguanas and the s.o." san ignacio town, belize.

dreams

[programming note: it's not wednesday, but i've decided to post a little something tonight anyway. also, my travel writing experiment is turning out to be a flop, so i may return to regular blogging again soon. we'll see....]

for my trip to belize, doctor wendy prescribed chloroquine. "don't worry," she said, "this isn't the one that gives you crazy dreams or makes you monster-sick." indeed, there are several ways to kill the malaria bug and chloroquine's side effects are rather tame. it's malaria med cousin is a bit more interesting however: travelers taking mefloquine complain of the usual aches and pains--headaches, nausea, dizziness--and then some more interesting symptoms like vivid dreams and visual disturbances.

i picked up my chloroquine at bartell's pharmacy on march 24th and have been taking the pills every saturday since. they taste rather nasty, but i didn't experienced anything too alarming until late last week. that's when i started having crazy dreams.

okay, in of itself, crazy dreams really aren't that uncharacteristic for the typical andrew evening; my memory and imagination have collaborated on some rather bizarre late night escapades. but this is new: my dreams are prophetic.

the first visitation of the future occurred last wednesday night. i was dreaming of a hotel in belize when some friends from spokane appeared in the lobby. "what are brady and alisha doing in belize?" i wondered. before i could inquire further, i learned that the hotel's staircase terminated about a flight and a half short of their room. this was particularly awkward because alisha was pregnant (and this wasn't one of my office mate james's flying dreams). after clamoring up onto the hotel's roof and trying to find an alternate entrance to their room (you know, ancient apostle-style), i awoke.

no, i didn't climb my way to work the next morning, but there's a surprise embedded in that little adventure. but before i explain, let me recount thurday's dream. i'll warn you though, my newly discovered talent for divination is in no way correlated with an improved sense of timing. that is, i'm not about to interfere with this vision i've been granted, and although much of the dream may seem irrelevant, there's no way i'm skipping to the end.

my recollection of the dream begins with me sitting in the passenger seat of a nondescript white van, watching as the driver, a heavy-set bald man, scanned his mirrors, pulled into the parking lot arterial, and then attempted to repark in the neighboring space. i say attempted because the space was already occupied--my driver didn't seem to care. he pressed the gas and gunned our big white beast through the rear bumper of the unfortunate subaru. with a chuckle, he jumped from his seat and tossed me a can of lighter fluid. as flames reflected off the walls and cars and puddles of that concrete jungle, we admired our handiwork. the man happily quipped about the surprise of the owner when he or she stumbled from the mall into the presence of their smoking car-cass. he then wiped the grime from his hands and reached into his sports coat.

"how does five million sound?" he asked. he nodded to himself, scrawled a figure in his ledger, and dismissed me with a wave. as i walked toward the mall, i turned to watch him stuff a check in a bright green envelope. he placed the envelope a safe distance from the smouldering wreck and returned to the van.

[i foretell that this post will be continued in the future, perhaps tomorrow....]

[disclaimer: this is creative nonfiction with the emphasis on creative--i may be overplaying my response to these dreams just a tiny bit.]

andrew david. "traveling by van" the highway from belize city to san ignacio town, belize.

you think i'm weird now? check this out (two)

an excerpt from the notebooks of andrew and hakeem
somewhere around page 33
paragraph 2
written by andrew
ca. 1995

"So you have come to the land of the living, my dear friend?" came the slow halting prattle of the old man. After waiting for three minutes and getting no response from the chicken (who lay engulfed in gravy) the old man correctly assumed that the gravy had dulled the chicken's senses or that he was just real dumb (in both cases he was right).

"I pulled your corpse out of the bushes near the post office. You see, I thought you twould make a decent meal, when I realized you were still living. Though trained in the martial arts, I could never kill a fellow human being, let alone a chicken. What is your name?"

Again no response; the chicken hadn't yet noticed the man. He was trying his hardest to think of a way out of the gravy but to no avail.

"Well, young bird, I shall call you Big Bird....no, no....I respected Big Bird until he retired, but he became a [strange indecipherable insult] and went around eating people for sport....no, I shall call you Goliath. Goliath, I am Bruce Lee...."



andrew david "american girls and a young boy they never met" mismaloya, mexico.

africa [1] and/or halloweeen

while not officially recognized by the UN, the continent of africa operates a small satellite in the greenwood area of seattle. for whatever reason, you won't find this northern outpost on many maps. nonetheless, the daily heapings of sadsa, funky drum beats, and celebration of everything african should make it relatively easy to find. at one time, this african enclave (in the person of mari) even crafted a beacon in order to attract fellow (in some sense) africans (these days, however, the most visible landmark is apparently a big tree, but nevermind that):
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1. Andrew David 'Inspiration' Seattle --
2. Andrew David 'The dark continent' Seattle -- as seen in #1, this is actually a picture of a pumpkin sculpture by mari. i arrived at this title at 1am (after many Markian distractions kept me from my all-important task of posting these pictures) because of joseph conrad's 'heart of darkness.' i'm pretty certain that somewhere in that little book he uses that phrase; however, i just can't seem to remember if he's talking about africa or south america. oh, well. the major impetus for this title is the blatant paradox of a glowing dark continent. i'm writing this rather long explanation in order to dispel suscpicions that the title was born out of some subconscious racism. and also its 1am.

i could (and probably will) say much more about the odd shadow that africa manages to cast here in the puget sound, but i was actually hoping that this post could somehow segue into halloweeen. but alas, all i have left to say is, 'here are my halloweeen pictures!' #3 is my pumpkin.
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3. Andrew David 'Jack' Seattle -- this is a pic of my coolest pumpkin ever
4. Andrew David 'Symbol' Seattle -- this is a pic of mari's brother's pumpkin
5. Andrew David 'Murder Is So Dreadful, But Someone Has To Do It' Seattle

and finally, because beth might not like #5, here's a cuter, less threatening pic:
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6. Andrew David 'Beth XI' Seattle -- this is a pic of my coolest Queen Anne picture ever

Alaska pics 4 (the end)

i'd love to hear feedback on any of these pictures or opinions on which, if any, to print & frame. however, many of these pics have been posted at beth's request for memory purposes rather than any aesthetic value. pictures with an '*' are currently under printing consideration. AND, BE GLAD; this is the final segment from alaska. oh, i'm especially having trouble deciding between glacier pictures...

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1. Ramon or Susan David 'We Bring Greet from the North' Seward -- i think this pic has character.
*2. Andrew David 'At the Foot' Seward -- i can't decide which i like the best; i'd like to narrow it down to 1 or 2
*3. Andrew David 'Some of the Glacier' Seward -- there are no anchovies in this picture.
4. Ramon David 'Trail-worn Hikers' Seward -- beth and i.
*5. Andrew David 'Even Less of the Glacier' Seward -- like i said, i can't decide which of these pictures to like the best.
*6. Andrew David 'Vertically Speaking' Seward -- agg ximba.
7. Andrew David 'Moose!' Seward -- taken from long range from the back seat of the truck
*8. Andrew David 'Vertically Speaking II' Seward -- this particular formation reminds me of the fremont troll. i'm serious.
9. Ramon David 'PDA' Seward -- i wonder how long till someone asks me to remove this...

Alaska pics 2

i'd love to hear feedback on any of these pictures or opinions on which, if any, to print & frame. however, many of these pics have been posted at beth's request for memory purposes rather than any aesthetic value. pictures with an '*' are currently under printing consideration.

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1. Andrew David 'Beth and Bad Sky Glacier' Juneau -- the title says it all.
2. Andrew David 'Train butt' Skagway -- i'm attracted to this picture for the same reason that i like taking senseless pictures of bumper stickers. don't know why.
3. Andrew David 'Whale of a Time' Inside Passage -- i know. you can hardly see it. just pretend...
4. Andrew David 'The Patriot' Inside Passage -- even funnier, ahem, i mean more patriotic, in person (i just watched 'good night and good luck' so i feel like i should be a little careful with my words)
*5. Andrew David 'World Without End' Inside Passage -- i really like this picture for some reason. i just love the clouds and the sunspots...
6. Andrew David 'Mum and Dad and Bad Sky Glacier' Juneau -- again, the title says it all.
*7. Andrew David 'Lighthouse Blue' Inside Passage -- see #11. can't decide if either of these work. or, if so, which works best.
*8. Andrew David 'Ice Cream Outcast' Skagway -- this belongs to one of my favorite photo series that features people. so many comical expressions.
*9. Andrew David 'When Towns Go Postal' Somewhere between Skagway and Whitehorse?
10. beth the s.o. 'The crazy people I hung out with for 10 long days' Somewhere between Skagway and Whitehorse?
*11. Andrew David 'Lighthouse Pale' Inside Passage -- see #7. can't decide if either of these work. or, if so, which works best.
12. Andrew David 'The Dawn Princess' Skagway -- :)
13. Ramon or Susan David 'The couple that ate all of our food' Somewhere between Skagway and Whitehorse? -- i think we look awkward here, but beth liked it.
14. Andrew David 'Let There Be Life' Inside Passage -- i like this for the same reason as #2
15. Andrew David 'Bear Attack' Skagway -- :)
16. Andrew David 'Some Engines That Could' Skagway -- boring?
17. Andrew David 'Ferry Jaw' Juneau -- boring?