Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Spray-Paint T-shirts

     Well I've made more than a couple custom t-shirts in my day, including tie-dyed, spray-painted and puff-painted t-shirts galore. But two that I created just yesterday have to be two of my favorites already, and they aren't even done yet!

hurr's a peek:

Lyrics by Brand New

Lyrics by Jonathan Larson

Vegan Voodoo Donuts

Cruelty-Free never tasted so good!
       Today, I went back to high school to play some volleyball with my old team, or at least what's left of it. I went with my friend Melissa, who was my libero in high school. Although we didn't actually get much court action, it was an enjoyable time and tomorrow we will hopefully be more involved since two of their varsity players will be working the freshman/senior picnic [can't tell you why the other four seniors on the team aren't helping out as well...]. But the most fun was just getting to be on the court with Melissa again! And just chilling with our old coach, who pretty much hated us our first and only year with him [we had the same coach fresh through junior years, but he "quit" so we got a new toy to play with senior year, and suffice it to say we butted heads a bit. Or at least, I butted heads with him! hahah we were both wayyy to stubborn and had different ideas of my place on the team hahah, but it's all good now!]
  
     Then, this afternoon, I went downtown to hangout with my old friends Kira and Nico! We browsed around American Apparel, where I bought some super nice but basic t-shirts that I'm gonna do work on and make awesome. But the best part of the day was mostdef adventuring to Voodoo Donuts and finding that they make superduper yummy vegan donuts!! That made my day, as did all the compliments on my hurrr. Maybe they will encourage me to actually wash and blow-dry my hair more than once a week! then again.. probs won't.




P.S. I'm still working on putting up a post about the Motion City Soundtrack shows in San Francisco last week. I'm taking forever for two reasons: 1) they were some friggin amazing, life-altering nights, so I'm giving them time to marinate in my brain before spewing them out to yous and 2) I'm a lazy procrastinator and haven't gone through all my pictures yet :]

Friday, August 26, 2011

MotionCity

everything about the past two days

Hi! I'm sitting at my gate at the San Jose airport [love SJC, so many business-types to people watch! And going through security is always a synch]; sorry I haven't posted in a long bit of days, but I've been in various cities in the Bay Area [mostly San Mateo with my friend Karla!] since Saturday now without a computer to upload my photos and such on. But believe me the posts to come about my amazing two night affair with the lovely lads from Motion City Soundtrack and my day in the city with Ms. Karla Gaitan will be much worth the wait! I took so friggin many photos, I'm gonna have to post roughly 17 times to get all my favs up!
Welll... I wish I could post some kind of photo for you guys, but alas, I'm currently twiddling with my mother's IPad,so I doubt very much I would be able to figure out how to post anything but words!

Wooo! I figured it out. This is a photo of Jesse Johnson of Motion City Soundtrack. He was the highest contributor to the pure joy that caused a very silly, very large smile to be plastered across my face for pretty much the entirety of the past two nights [only times this smile wasn't shining was when I was belting out Justin Pierre's beautifully tragic lyrics or head banging my body into paralysis]. :] <--- that's a little bit like the smile I was rocking.

Friday, August 19, 2011

the first three days of the week

     Yep. you heard me right [or, at least, read this right]. For the past couple weeks, the first three days of the week have been my favorite days. Not Hump Day, not T-G-I-Friday, not Saturday... it's all about Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays for this girl. But before you call me crazy [well... crazy for this reason], lemme explain.

    Sundays:
Photo credit: http://4.bp.blogspot.com.

Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime at 9pm

Photo credit: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com.
Against the Wall on Lifetime at 10pm


Monday:

Photo credit: http://img.poptower.com.
Switched at Birth on ABC Family at 9pm
[the season finale was August 8th]


Photo Credit: http://blog.newsok.com.
The Lying Game on ABC Family at 9pm
[the series premiere was August 15th]


Photo credit: http://theremotegeneration.files.wordpress.com.

Teen Wolf on MTV at 10pm

Tuesday:

Photo credit: http://www.daemonstv.com/.
The Nine Lives of Chloe King on ABC Family at 9pm


Photo credit: http://s2.daemonstv.com/.
Awkward on MTV at 11pm


     And I won't lie, Tuesdays are definitely my favorite. Chloe King has got to be my favorite show right now, and it might have something to do with this guy :]

Grey Damon as Brian Rezza
Photo credit: http://www.theninelivesofchloeking.com.

 

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Portland, Oregon.

     I say this all the time, but Portland is honestly one of the only cities that I've been to that is just as beautiful during the day as it is at night. It's buildings, people and energy are just so breathtaking and unique. As much as I love both Beaverton and Santa Clara, I wish I could call this little big city my home [and I'm sure I will someday].

     Hurr are some pictars I've taken during my most recent treks downtown:
 









The Steel Bridge










Wednesday, August 17, 2011

who am I?...


Photo by Jessyka Dart-Mclean

    So I decided to write down a list of random things about me. Probably more for my own benefit [as in, pretending that I actually understand myself and know "who I am"], but also so that anyone that reads this little chunk of internet space will know a little more about good ol' me.
Hurr we go:
> I love waking up before the sun rises and going to bed far after it sets. I guess you can say that I like to be awake, but honestly, it's more like that I hate to sleep. Sue me.
> I don't know any better feeling than driving in the Phantom Avenger with the stereo blasting [most likely the Matches], the windows rolled down, and the crisp smell of an early October morning in Oregon pouring over me. [Except maybe falling asleep with your hand entwined with a guy you really like and your head on his shoulder.]
> I love words. I believe they are the most powerful thing on this earth; more powerful than money, than fire, than any one [wo]man could ever be. They have the power to build you up, but can just as easily [and as quickly] pull you right back down.
> I love that elephants have amazing memories and never forget. Sometimes I think I am an elephant in that sense. I have a really good episodic memory [but a painfully horrible semantic memory, so I guess, you win some, you lose some], which is usually a great thing [I could tell you when and where I got every single one of my socks from, and believe me, I have a lot of socks, and could tell you who, where and what occasion for practically every present I have ever received], but sometimes it causes the difficult parts of life to stay in the present far past their expiration date.
> which leads me to... I strongly believe that anything that has happened in the past [the past in all-inclusive, as in five years ago, or five seconds ago] is in the past and because of that simple [but frighteningly often misunderstood] fact, you should not, or better yet, cannot dwell on things. If you did something shitty, don't kill yourself over it any second longer than it takes for you to realize it was a shitty thing to do, just apologize and move on. There's nothing you can do to change what you've already done, but you can keep yourself from doing it in the future. On the flipside, if someone does something shitty to you, again, just accept the person's apology [even if they don't actually give one] and move on. Learn from what was done to you; know how much it hurt you and why it hurt you and vow [to yourself, to others] that you would never do something to hurt someone the way you were hurt.
> I friggin' love white tigers. Like it's not just a mental condition; it's a physical condition, it's a disease. I want to have a pet white tiger, but I know that they shouldn't be held in captivity like that. This is also the way that I feel about the color purple. I cannot get enough of that sixth shade of the rainbow. I see it [on anything, on anyone] and can't help but smile. I will pick something [a phone, a item of clothing, a hair color] for the simple fact that it is purple. Can't help myself.
> I type like I speak [but still use proper grammar and spelling... unless it's on purpose] or sometimes I even make up my own words. Like friggin'. And pictar. And cheeeyahhh. Or give a word a new meaning that makes absolutely no sense.
> The quote I live by [most days!] is "Always do what you are afraid to do." It was said by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Wise man. [He also spit out, “to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment,” another favorite of mine.] I can honestly say that many of the best things in my life have come out of me doing something I was almost too scared of to do in the first place [rowing is one of them. I am absolutely terrified of water, like I can't even put my head under water in the bathtub without hyperventilating, but now I can spend three hours on a tiny boat that is only staying up right because I trust the guys rowing in it and not even think twice about it. But I still can't put my head under the water in the bathtub.] I also love the quote: "Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did." by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. But there's a back-hand to this one: if you take it too seriously, and do anything and everything, you will begin to regret things that you did, while still regretting things you didn't do. Some experiences weren't meant to be had, some people weren't meant to be together, some things weren't meant to be said, but you have to be pretty extreme [which I can be sometimes] to truly take this advice too far [I've only done it a couple times].
9. I love the number 9. Ever since my freshman year of high school when I timidly chose #9 outta the pile of smelly, old varsity volleyball jerseys that I went on to wear proudly for all four years of high school. And surprisingly enough, I ended up with the #9 all over again in my new sport in college, rowing. As a coxswain in an eight [which I coxed this last year as a novice], I am the unofficial nine seat [the stroke in the stern is eight seat and bow in the bow is one seat]. So maybe rowing and I were meant to be. I may have doubted it for a while, but it's growing on me.
> In that vein, I guess I could talk about my boys now. All fifteen of them [soon to be 21, I think!, as a varsity coxswain]. In high school, I only ever had one good guyfriend, and that was only for the last couple months of senior year. [Spencer Gates, love you bud.] But I decided that college would be different, and different it has been. I now not only have more guyfriends than I can count on my fingers and toes, but a couple of them look to be turning into something more like a brother than a guyfriend. And that was only our first year together.

Okay. There you go. Ten's a good start for now. And I gotz to go to sleep because I have to [more like, get to!!] get up before the sun [yay!] to row before an oral exam and half a class spent reviewing for our Friday final, then I get to prance around Portland [another of my favorite things, but we'll get to that later] with my dearfriend Michaela Hanson [actually, she's yet another of my favorite things... errr.. people.] But all in all, I'm stoked for tomorrow! And imma take lotso photos!

PS: as you can probably tell, I'm gonna add some of my favorite photos of myself to these "who I am" posts. I guess I just think that what photos of a person that that person likes the most really say something about her, kinda like, what she hopes other people are seeing when they look at her, or how she perceives herself. [I guess I just gave an eleventh fact about myself, but what the hell.]

Motion City Soundtrack


Photo credit: http://www.livemusicguide.com/.

    Heyy so, I just got my tickets to see Motion City Soundtrack at the Fillmore in San Francisco! Come next Friday, I will have heard every single song on MCS's four albums live! Wednesday, August 24th, they'll be playing 2002's I Am The Movie and 2005's Commit This To Memory and Thursday, August 25th, they'll finish up completing my life playing 2007's Even If It Kills Me [I still consider this album as the best present I have ever received EVER. Thanks, Will!!!] and 2010's My Dinosaur Life

Photo by Katie McAuliffe.

        I am so stoked for this that I'm pretty sure I've almost peed my pants from excitement at least twice. And on top of the amazing-ness that is this tour in general, I scored myself some VIP passes, so I'll be meeting the band before the show.

Photo by @jcpmcs.

        No big deal, except for the fact that I'll soon be meeting Jesse Johnson [@jessemackj]. Jesse Johnson. JESSE JOHNSON. Or as I like to refer to him: "my favorite person that I've never met." See my dilemma now? After Wednesday [or Thursday, I'm not sure], I'll have to find a new nickname for him, which will be a tough transition because I've called him that for such a long time, I can't even remember when it started. Oh wait, I can remember. It was when they played with Panic at the Disco at the Portland Expo Center [bythewayy, worst venue ever guys, but it was the first time I saw you live, so it was a special show :]; and I went with my sister Shannon Reed of Simply Shannon and her hubster, Erik Reed, back before they were a Mr&Mrs], and I was for the first time introduced to that which is Jesse Johnson's half-mullet hair flipping back and forth over his keyboard and magnified about 100X on the wall on the Expo Center by the stage lighting. It is a moment that shall live in infamy.

Photo by Jedd Lopez.

As will the first time a saw Jesse Johnson donkey-kick off his keyboard during MCS's performance during the Hillsboro stop of the 2008 Warped Tour. Annnnddd now, since I've gotten myself a Twit [@kathryn_mac], Jesse Johnson is also officially my FAVORITE Twit picture poster. But like anyone else even had a chance.

Photo by @jessemackj.




     But enough about that dilemma, because HELLO, best two nights of my life coming up real quick. I've been listening to all four albums in order and each in their entirety for days now. I'm pretty sure I'm ready and I know all the guys of MCS are! They'll kill it in Los Angeles this weekend, but those shows will be child's play compared to the epic-ness that will be spewing out of their hearts, souls, and speakers in San Francisco.

Hurr's some [more] pictars:
Photo credit: http://userserve-ak.last.fm.
Photo by Katie McAuliffe.
Photo credit: http://userserve-ak.last.fm.
      Overall, I'm so friggin' amp'd for these shows, I can't even explain it [although I certainly tried to]. And come a week from now, I will be in the Bay Area, anxiously waiting the final hours and minutes before 7pm finally strolls along to introduce myself and anyone else who will have the privilege of being at the Fillmore [including my friend and fellow Motioncityaholic, Karla Gaitan] to the raw ecstasy of hearing all four of MCS's albums live. And although I certainly won't be able to explain my experience after the shows [but again, I will try to], I will hopefully have enough killer shots from my fancy new camera that'll speak for me. If you haven't bought tickets to one of their 7 city stops (LA, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit), go get 'em hurr: tickets, son. Also, MCS bassist Matthew Taylor recently caught by with Alternative Press Magazine's Jason Pettigrew to talk about the tour: chhheckkittt. 

     Oh, and just for the record, I would eat meat again to be able to go back in time and see this concert: jealous of my older siblings [who went to concerts before 2006]. The Matches, the Format, and Motion City Soundtrack? I would've died and went to heaven, or maybe that is heaven. I saw Justin SanSouci [formerly of the Matches] the last time I saw MCS in San Francisco, so maybe I'll see him again? Hope so. :]

Saturday, August 13, 2011

The Ambassador Apartments in Portland


I will live in these apartments when I get out of school. I hope they are as gorgeous inside as they are outside!


the Dew Tour

Tyler Hendley in Friday's Skateboard Street Semi-Finals

Alec Majerus in Friday's Skateboard Street Semi-Finals