Link from Kottke.org: "Blaine the DJ". Matt's response: "Oh my f***ing god." Let's just say there are pros and cons to the uprising of electronica. ;o)

The last three days have been incredibly relaxing and just what I needed to boost my spirits. Northern Minnesota is absolutely beautiful - trees everywhere, lakes, streams, rocks, and wildlife. We took a four hour hike, swam in an ice cold lake, and picked wild blueberries. :o)

On a slightly different note; I know all too well how this feels. I so often wonder what it would be like to be somebody else - same friends and family - but a different me. I am happy with who I am, but not content. I know there is more somewhere inside. ( * Okay, so that previous link doesn't quite take ya to the right place in her archives for some reason... scroll down to "lunes, 24 de julio, 2000" and read the second paragraph. * )

Sunday evening a piece of a major freeway in the Minneapolis metro area was shut down and evacuated because of "two suspicious orange juice containers found there." This is a sad sad world when we must be paradnoid of orange juice containers.

Later today I am off to a lake home near Ely (a.k.a. way off in the boonies of northern Minnesota), owned by my boyfriend's grandmother, for a few days of escape. Send me e-mail so I have something to come home to. :o)

Internet Relay Chat (otherwise known as IRC and most commonly accessed with mIRC) has been the bane of my existence for something like six years now. Help me.

Download the newest release by Little Plastic Jesus, "Tom is an Arse" (don't ask me what the title has to do with the song other than that it was written for his good friend Tom). Or stream it in hi-fi or lo-fi. While yer at it, check out his mp3.com page and the Wardogz page - these guys are some of the most talented electronic music artists in the area.

My world is a Pop-O-Matic world. I see things in bits of color and shape. Memories come in clips - sometimes of the important aspects, more often of the completely meaningless aspects. Putting these together creates the pop-o-matic art of me.

I'm not quite sure what to say about this. Kudos to whoever had the guts to pick on the company that is trying to take over the world. (I have a love/hate relationship with this place.)

Useless FYI: I've been working for Target for five years and have never been the employee of the month. Go me! :o)

Ever notice that thoughts seem so much more profound as they're happening than when you go to write them down a couple of hours later?

Remember the awful Stinkymeat? Well, Christian is at it again - this time with Stinkyfeet. What is wrong with this guy?! ;P

For some reason, I have been fascinated with sites of the people that worked on Swanky for quite some time. Now they have a site that anyone can contribute to. Don't I feel lucky?

Drive now, talk later. Even as a periodic cell phone user, I think this should be the case in every city.

How not to ventilate you computer... (found this link on Metafilter)

It was a fun weekend, though over much too quickly. Friday night we went to X-Men and I was pleasantly surprised as I usually don't like that sort of movie - though my movie tastes have been changing lately. This movie has a neat site - haven't you always wanted to attend "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters?" Saturday night we arrived a little to late to see a Shakespeare play up at Como Park so we mini-golfed on a cute little course with a cute little old lady running it, went down to southern St. Paul to go to White Castle, up to Uptown to go to Cheapo, down to Eagan to go to the 24 hour Walmart (yes, even diehard Target employees shop at Walmart once in a while), then back up into Minneapolis to play a board game at one of our homes. I'd be interested to know just how many miles we drove just to do those few random things.

More pictures from Trick4 are now up at MNRave. I seem to have found my way into a couple, small and unobvious as I may be. ;P

As much as I enjoy free time and being able to do whatever I want, I'm getting a little bored. I'm trying to figure out how to make things happen and make life a little bit more exciting... or at least not quite so uneventful.

In two weeks I get to see BT live. This man has a fascinating musical style - he somehow is able to combine techno, trance, pop, and classical, and come up with something beautiful. His music has saved my sanity many a night, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather see perform (okay, other than Underworld...). ;o)

Nothing hurts more than when the virtues you hold in yourself are used against you. In my case I try to be as open and as honest as I can, while not hurting anyone or getting in anyone's way. This has been backfiring on me lately. Any ideas?

"Tricknology4" on Saturday night was fantastic! I wasn't quite sure what to expect as it was at the same venue as "One" a couple of months ago, which had insane amounts of security and police and was a somewhat disappointing evening. Don't get me wrong, the talent was incredible, but other factors played their part in it just being a bad night. This weekend, on the other hand, was amazing! We had to wait for about an hour to get in, but it was nowhere near as bad as last time because they got smart and kept the line outside the sets of doors. Once we got in, we enjoyed many well-known djs; Kenny Ken & MC Fearless, Delta Nine (awesome hardcore), D.A.V.E. the Drummer (acid techno and a drum machine), and Taylor (acid techno and trance)! I managed to work my way right up to the front row for Taylor's set to watch the man in action and dance the hour away. The overall vibe was really friendly that night as well, despite the incredible heat (over 100 and steamy), and crowdedness. Some pictures can be found at The Vibe under 'parties' then 'Tricknology4'.

Still recovering from Tricknology4. What a night! More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, Ember.org is an absolutely beautiful site with submitted stories about first loves.

Interview with BT on LA Live.

Too cute. :o)

I'm so anxious to see "Groove!" It's here at two different theatres on the next two Fridays and I hope I can get into it. These two theatres tend to only have indie movies, yet they still manage to draw huge crowds, long lines, and sell outs. I've heard it is a very accurate representation of the rave scene and is very much worth the outrageous cost of movie tickets lately ($8 in the MSP area).

Tricknology4 is less than twenty hours away!

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.. actually.. I can't do that.. it was an absolutely wonderful birthday - (and it was now yesterday). I got to see or hear from most of the people I love. I spent the morning with my sweetheart, and the evening with my family. Had a nice meal, chocolate cake, and got to go pick out a new bike (finally I can go bike riding again!). Gonna sleep in, head back to the cities to hopefully do well on my final for Psychology of Death and Dying (*crosses fingers*), and the rest of the weekend is mine!

The fireworks were fantabulous last night! We went to the state capitol building to watch them again and they were even better than Saturday night!

I'm off to have a picnic and watch the fireworks with Matty... should be a fun evening. Home to Willmar tomorrow for my 22nd b-day then back on Thursday for my final... busy week. Happy Independence Day!

I'm feeling a little bad about not attending Ducktona 500 with Aaron on Sunday as we had all been really excited about it on Thursday night, but I started losing my enthusiasm when others couldn't go for one reason or another and after I had been up all night until about 10am on Saturday morning. I crashed until late that evening then went to Taste of Minnesota with Matt and Ben. It was somewhat disappointing as I thought they'd have more going on there than just the food booths and a few craft booths, but it was worth attending for the incredible fireworks display afterwards. I have never seen such a show in my life!

Since that night I have managed to sleep about 22 of the 38 hours (mostly during the daytime), watch "Falling Down" and "Contact" and way too many snake and insect shows on the Discovery Channel. Time to get in gear and study for my final which is already coming up on Thursday!