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 Today I emailed my brother to see if he still had his list of contacts for Teaching English abroad.  He emailed me back saying that he does have a big list but it will take him a day or 2 to compile.  But then he called me on the Gmail Chat thing.  And we spoke about it and he and Natalie are thinking about going to S. Korea again.  And so then I was thinking about it and I thought "what the heck, maybe I could go with them."  They want to be in the city and I want to be in the countryside but we could be relatively close to each other.  

So I asked him when he was thinking about going.
September, he relied.  
So about a year from now? I asked him. 
No, about 2 months from now, he said. 


But the thing is, I think that would be alright.  
I think I may teach English in South Korea starting THIS September.  
I mean, the timing is perfect because I'll have finished my Master's, my lease is up Sept 1, and I have nothing stopping me from going.  

This is the most hopeful I have been in awhile. 

Now on to my personal South Korea research.  ... 


EDIT: I found a company with their US Headquarters here in Portland (http://www.korvia.com/), applied online, and they called me back today and basically accepted me.  Now I just need to submit my documents, and I'm set to go.  
Holy Craziness.  

And you thought I wouldn't do it.  

 I made a new mix.  I started it the other day.  I may tweak it a bit still, but this will be the basic set-list. 

1. Wet & Rustling - Menomena
   
2. Strictly Game - Harlem Shakes 
3. Losing Home - Shawn Smith
4. Ain't No Rest for the Wicked - Cage the Elephant
5. Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh - Say Hi
6. My Only Offert - Mates of State
7. Story - Great Northern
8. Warped Sister - Booker T. 
9. White Dove - John Vanderslice (this is the one song I'm not sure about still)
10. Everyday - Vetiver
11. Furr - Blitzen Trapper
12. One Red Thread - Blind Pilot
13. Full Moon - The Black Ghosts

 

 Today I went to West Linn High School for a Sustainability Showcase.  I went on behalf of SCRAP but brought along some stuff for SOSI too.  
My SCRAPmate Eleanor and I lead a project on making coasters.  

Here is how you do it:
1.  Get a piece of tile
2.  Hot glue gun 4 buttons to the underside to give the coasters some lift
3.  Cut a picture out of a magazine (or maybe some old wallpaper, tissue paper.. it's really up to you)
4.  Put a layer of Mod Podge (or in our case just glue diluted with water, which is really what Mod Podge is) and decoupage your picture.  That means put a layer of the glue directly on the tile, lay your picture down, and then add another layer of glue on top of that. 
5.  Let it dry and it's done!

Here is the one that I made today.  In case you can't read it it says: "It's all make believe isn't it" which is something Marilyn Monroe is quoted as saying and a phrase which I often repeat.  

 Yet another day has gone by.  Work was droning.  I fell asleep on the bus ride home.  I got curry noodle soup for lunch and had the leftovers for dinner.  I spent over two hours looking through new music and creating mixes.  This was, by far, the only moment I was alive for the entire day.  In this time I smiled.  But when my eyes became blurry and the sound of too much music slashed between whispers of the tv in the other room, I had to retreat even from what made me, at one point, smile.  Away, away.    
Dimmed the lights, lit the candles and crawled up in my bed. [in a freudian slip i write the word dead.]
Escaped further. Watch the lives of others on The Hills. And in watching this I finally felt hate, hope, romance, friendship, love, and fear. 

Yet still I feel as if I am an emotional drone.  

 whoa lost.  you rock my world.  I'll miss you until January 2010. 

 We just had our weekly Tuesday meeting at my Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative job.  As it turns out the accounting system didn't include December's budgeting and thus the numbers reflected were off.  So... we have one month's less money than we had anticipated.  

Boss just said that they can pay us for May but as of now June is not going to happen.  That means that actually starting May 26th when the payroll period for June starts I am out of a job.  Unless we get a hold of some money really fast.  

I'm... actually hoping I get laid off or whatever the word is in this instance.  But then I'll be out of a job which would suck.  But I don't know, maybe it would be a good thing for me. I'll pick up some babysitting gigs here and there, spend more time on my thesis, get out in nature more often, volunteer anywhere my heart desires and find a better more-suited job for me.  

I can't say I'm extremely disappointed. yet. 

No I don't.  I believe that our future = some variable of our past decisions and choices + other people's influencing decisions and choices (to be) the future possibilities given the two prior statements.  

So.  Which ice cream will I eat?  You can determine this by: my past ice cream history (what did I like and not like) + Others ice cream choice (what is available at the store, what the person in front of me ordered, and what I think I might like based on other people's suggestions) + what I might pick based on that.  This might narrow down my ice cream to say: coffee, strawberry, and french vanilla.  Which one will I eat?  It could be any one of those.  The variables are constantly changing so my choice can be constantly evolving too, even if it is from a narrow pot and thus what seems like a "fate" is really just statistics.   

 ugh, i want to call into work sick today so bad.  i am beginning to dread my tuesdays and thursdays.  
i am so over my internship.  who can blame me? I've been doing bitch-work for more than a year now.. 

drink coffee. shower. take a vallium. oh wait. not the last one. 

 I always pick a quote from a song and post it as my gmail chat status message.  In some way I feel like it is an accurate depiction of my life at moment.  I can listen to the song a million times before and then one day I hear it again and it just speaks to me in a way I had not heard before.  

So I thought maybe I should document these lyrics and the dates that I had them as my status:

February 2009: My mind has changed my body's frame but god I like it  (TV on the Radio - "Wolf Like Me")
March 2009: I've got a negative edge that's why I sharpen the others a lot (Nada Surf - "Blizzard of '77") 
April 2009: I've been losing lots of keys lately, I don't know what that means but maybe I've been better off with things that can't be locked at all.   (Jack Johnson - "Losing Keys") 

 On the days where my interaction with others is scarce, minimal at best, small talk with the check-out cashier, no thank-you and yes please, I swirl 'round in the dark caverns of my mind.  On these days I wonder if I define myself standing naked in the mirror, or upon the reflection I cast in my friends' eyes.  If our character is defined by who we are when no one is looking, I am a quiet wandering soul.  I observe and reflect and do not divert my eyes away when I am caught staring at strangers.  Instead I try to jump into their inner-souls, figuring out who they are and what that might make me.  I live in comparison.

I stare into strangers eyes in attempt to create meaning.  We move so quickly, jumping from one thing to the next, I just want to linger for awhile.  

 

 I'm pretty amazing at Tetris.  

High Score: 193256

level 10 bitches.  

 I spent my entire day working on uploading & burning cd's for my brother.  I started about 12:30 and now that it is 5pm, I am ready to stop for the day.  I'm not sure if I have mentioned this, but somehow I lost ALL of my cd's.  Really and truly all of them.  It's an incredible bummer.  So I have also been illegally downloading music from Limewire and from the library.  

Here is the CD that I made:
I call it: Where the People are Pleasantly Strange

1. Sleepyhead - The Passion Pit
2. Dreamworld - Rilo Kiley
3. Jailer - Asa
4. Mr. Hurricane - Beast
5. Love Between the Sheets - Cuban Cigar Crisis
6. Evacuate - The Boxer Rebellion
7. Wolf Like Me - TV on the Radio
8. Half Asleep - School of Seven Bells
9. No One Does it LIke You - Department of Eagles
10. We Care - The Management
11. Changin' - The Moondoggies
12. Too Too Too Fast - Ra Ra Riot
13. American Names - Sebastien Grainger
14. Summer Grof - The Spinto Band
15. Geraldine - Glasvegas
16. Lying in the Sun - Koushik
17. Mostly a Friend - Lesser Gonzales Alvarez
18. Her Morning Elegance - Oren Lavie
19. The Sound - Human Highway

It's pretty good, if you ask me.  

My username comes from one of my favorite bands, Pink Floyd.  I love the album "Obscured by Clouds" but I think that was taken already.  So instead I became CloudsObscured.  

I've always like the image Clouds Obscured creates in my mind.  Obscured by Clouds seems to make sense, but switch it around and it doesn't really.  At first.  I like to think that life gets in the way of the clouds.  Maybe the sunshine is obscuring the clouds.  Or maybe something even darker and more mysterious than clouds.  I really haven't decided.  

But I really do like my screen name.  

(Also, on a similar note, my friends page is titled "Bricks in the Wall" which is obviously a Pink Floyd reference too.)

 I am getting REALLY fed up with how slow Gmail is.  So much so that I am considering not using it anymore.  What BS.  

 It's concert season.  

Here are shows I REALLY want to see:

• Ratatat $20 @ Crystal Ballroom
• STS9 $22.50 @ The Roseland 3/6 ... 
• Animal Collective, $20 @ The Roseland 
• Thievery Corporation $32 @ The Roseland  4/20

Here are show I wouldn't mind seeing (preferably if someone paid for me):

• M. Ward $20 @ Aladdin Theater
• AC Newman .. Only $10 but in Eugene so not really possible. 
• Andrew Bird @ The Roseland 2/20
• Ra Ra Riot 
• Fleet Foxes $15 @ The Crystal Ballroom 4/12

 I just found out that the song "Heartbeats" was not originally done by Jose Gonzales, but rather The Kinfe, a Swedish band.  I'm heartbroken, but not really.  Both versions are amazing so I don't care. 

 
Hey Pandora, why you got to put up an ad for Pepto Bismol?  That's freakin nasty man.  I do not approve.    

 Last week I ate at Chipotle for lunch.  Then I wrote a letter about my experience to the company.  

Dear Lyn, Patrick, Dawn and Joe,
I am writing to let you know about an unfortunate experience at Chipotle today. Now, you should know that I love Chipotle and have never had a reason to complain. I have eaten here countless times actually. Today I ordered a side of chips and guac and a side of rice and beans. My rice and beans were fine and as expected so there is nothing more to say there. But the chips? Now that is a different story. One bite of the chip and I was consumed by the taste of salt. I figured it had to just be that one, so I took another chip bite. Blek! And another... Yuck! Now imagine here I am eating lunch at my desk at work making all these unsighly scenes and sounds. Finally my office-mate, Teri, asks what the heck I am doing. "I'm just trying to eat my tortilla chips but all I taste is salt!" I tell her. Teri tells me she likes salt so it would probably be fine with her. I offer her a chip. She takes one bite and... "ooh, you are right," she says "it's really salty." She throws the chip away, unable to eat the rest. What? A salt lover throwing away a 1/2 of a chip? Wow, it must have been really bad. So I ask you fine fellows of Chipotle, what can do do for me and my co-worker Teri whose mouth still lingers of sea salt residue?
Sincerely, Sarie (and Teri too)

They wrote me back today with this response:

Sarie (and Teri),

Thanks for writing. I'm sorry sorry we left a bad taste in your mouth. I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it. I really don't know what happened with the chips that day, but we'll contact the restaurant to make sure the chips aren't over salted in the future. 

In the meantime, if you'll send me your mailing address, I'd like to send you a coupon for a free order of chips and guacamole. Thanks again for letting me know.

Sincerely,
Shannon Kyllo
Chipotle



I think this means I win at life.  

EDIT:  It was suggested by theotherjay  that my free chips and guac offer was not a Win At Life moment.  Perhaps it wasn't.... But this might be!

Hi Sarie,

I am  sorry to hear that our chips were too salty for you.  We pride ourselves on great chips and we will monitor our salt portioning on them.  Please let me know right away at the restaurant if you find anything not up to your usual experience Iso we can take care iof it same day for you.  We would like to set up a office day for up to 10 people for you to make up for this.  Please lets us know what day would work best for you and your coworkers or friends.  We can fax you a form for you all to fill out and then come on by to pick it up to have here or take back to your office.

Let me know if there is anyhting else we can do for you,

Chris Politowski, GM


Director Building Chipotle-0437
Phone: 503-241-7475
Fax #:  503-241-7472

 Oh man.  I signed up for Twitter.  I don't know how it works really.  I mean, I know how to write stuff, I just don't really see the point of it yet.  
I guess you should search for me if you are on Twitter.  My name is CloudsObscured, of course.  


Also, more importantly.... LOST tonight!!!

We are all very excited.  
I mean seriously, Obama and then LOST right in a  row?  What a lucky week. 

Also, these are some of my favorite song lyrics maybe just because I love the song,  but ok, random day today.  

Images of broken light which 
dance before me like a million eyes 
That call me on and on across the universe 
Thoughts meander like a 
restless wind inside a letter box 
they tumble blindly as 
they make their way across the universe