hey dad.

and everyone too i guess. really sucks about sweet little brightblue heto and his humble holiness. he was quite sweet. i miss him, while im sittin here rite now where id always hear him chirpin away. but guess what pops? remember when i lived with you rite after i moved out of that crappy apartment i had here in town, at the Placerville Apartments? I lived with you all fall. and i recorded tons of music, and made a cd. and in the background of EVERY SINGLE SONG on that album there is tons of sounds heto was making. his legacy will live on forever. ill give you those songs, youll love to hear his sweet chirpin behind my crappy buzzy guitar and such. anyways, love you, sorry about him, but you gots good friends in edd and his sweet girlfriend. and thats just to mention animal friends. couldnt even start listin your human ones. love you pops, seeyis.

hey family, i miss you guys!

sorry i haven't been writing everyone. i do miss you all dreadfully...i have just been in school-land for a while now.

first off, i would like to say i am so so sorry dad for the loss of HETO. he was a very good boy, and i will miss going in there hearing him causing a ruckus. i hope that it was a peaceful passing and that is happily singing away and growing his beak as long as he wants to now forever... what a sweet little guy. i hope eddy is keeping you good company. animals make life so nice and they are the most gentle and thoughtful little companions.

secondly, i am sending good wishes and joy to mikie who is over in florida right now...i hope all is going well and he probably can't check this, but i can't wait to hear all about it.

here are a few pictures from a little trip down to santa rosa and the russian river valley for my friend nichole's birthday.

burrito and the china dance

two video shorts I made today, from mikie dot com to you. mmmmyess, you like.

mikie's whistle-along!

Stuff, lately

Hi everyone. Here's a quick little photo and video post for you.


This is Jarom, posing on his last day of snowboarding this year. He walked over to the creek and requested the picture.

Last week was a perfect day to go kite flying. Jarom suggested it, so we went over to the park. It was the first time that Jarom did it by himself! He was doing great, and then disaster struck. A very sad day. See for yourself:


Oey watching the kite flying action (you can't see the kite here, only the raven Oey was eyeing).


First round of kite flying--look how well he's doing!

And then . . . it happens. It drops.


The kite, stuck among the reeds, never to be recovered. It may still be there to this day.

Okay, and I wanted to say THANK YOU to Mikie for the rack. I've got it all installed (after a few bumps and hiccups), and it's awesome! We are going to St. George right now, and it will be holding our bikes for our triathlon. Thanks again Mikie! Doesn't she look great? (minus the dirt-speckled car, of course).


Thanks Mikie!

Okay, lastly--I chopped the hair last night. 04.07.2007 - 04.17.2008. One year and ten days. It was a hackjob; I just picked up the scissors and cut away. Looks okay for now.


Antes

Despues

We've got much more news coming in the future, especially regarding a recent acquisition of ours. . . . More on that later.

Papa is the best!

Way to go. It was so fun to look at those pictures of Willy and Ivy! I'm in love with them. You totally did it and followed through with our agreement, way better than all that money you were going to give me for answering the phone! I love you. And I CAN'T wait for our way awesome trip. I'm so giddy about. I have to go shopping for it though. Matt and I need to get all the backpacking things that all you have. What is it? We need backpacks, sleeping bags-or do you just use regular ones, a tent. Anything else? So if anyone see any great deals- call me. I'm talking to you Joey! If you see another 20$ tent. Please buy it for me. I'm will pay you back in full, taxes and all.

Letting the Cables Sleep

this video basically sums it all up since college ended, pretty much

hey everyone

hey guys i made a flickr account and i really have been enjoying takin pictures of late, so if you wanna check em out heres the link.
right on about havasu falls, i hope everyones as excited as me and emma and matt and pops and heather (who are the only people ive talked to about it so far.)
anyways, love to everyone from little reclusive joseph who loves life just as you all do and wow my family is cool.
seeyis.

http://flickr.com/photos/25497687@N03/

wendy and teddy

first off, matt - don't miss mikie's question below!

anyhoo, tonight mom and i went over to visit bonny and the new baby wendy elizabeth! what a beautiful little doll. claudia came to the door holding this quiet, soft eyed little angel and mom and i just oohed and ahhed the whole time.

we also chanced to be there for dolly's birthday! perfect luck, because we had brought a tiny gift for dolly and teddy as well as tiny gifts for bonny and wendy. i even got to have cake and ice cream. we hung out with carl, joe, dolly, bonny, claudia, lowell, and the babies, and a friend of dolly's. everybody was in high spirits and talking about how bad they want matt and amy and kids to move back here!!! both teddy and wendy are just the sweetest, most good-natured babies, looking around at everything, curious and lovely and peaceful. bonny says that her baby sleeps a lot! so far, she sleeps at least 8 hours a night! we couldn't get over her perfect little precious body, just a tiny little girl, what a nice bundle of joy, with petite little features and elvish ears. we each got to hold her.

amy i wish i had more pictures but i started feeling obnoxious taking even these! wendy blinked every time i used the flash! so, sorry they're not the greatest, but here goes:

and now for some birthday girl and teddy pics!

what a bunch of cute lil mamas in this family!

Matt, how do you correctly post photos from Flickr to Blogspot?

asks a frustrated Mikie

mount tam

So over the weekend Darin and I decided to take a nice little getaway to Stinson Beach and Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. We really had a glorious time. It is nice to re-discover that it doesn't take long and you can suddenly be in a beautiful new setting, removed from the hustle and bustle of your personal daily life and just out in the world enjoying a fresh April afternoon.

We left around 9:00 on Friday morning and made it out to Stinson Beach by noon! And you know us, we do not drive fast. It was a gorgeous leisurely drive through rolling green hills and wildflowers. All around us, for the entire trip, this springtime world was GREEN GREEN GREEN. You know how you drive through landscapes like that, and you just want to get out and run and frolic in the hills, arms flung out, singing in the sunlight and flopping down in the soft grass? well we got to experience that...but more about that later. anyway we had a nice lunch in stinson beach of veggie burgers/sandwich and fries at this cozy place called the Parkside Cafe, with petunias blooming in the window boxes and a view of the park and the ocean beyond. Then we walked down to the beach with our cameras, backpacks, blankets, all that jazz. turns out it was way too windy to enjoy...sand continuously blew all over and into our stuff and in our eyes and i had to wrap all up in a blanket because it was a chilly wind! so we just walked a bit on the beach with seabirds coasting low overhead, and happened upon this enormous patch of blinding white lillies:

We ended up heading over to the tiny fisherman town of bolinas, a town so averse to tourism that they don't even use a road sign directing you off highway one! a town of artists and smiley's saloon and sunbleached terra cotta pots and seafood and janky jeeps and bursts of flowers everywhere. we found the little cove there to be much more sheltered from the wind and i got some good reading time in, finishing one of my spring break reading assignments. darin gathered an assortment of flotsam and jetsam:

After Bolinas, we headed up to the campground at the Pantoll Ranger Station on Mount Tamalpais. You take a switchbacky road up from Stinson Beach. We talked about how fun it would be for all of us and our friends to live in little cottages and ranches scattered around on the mountainside. It is absolutely beautiful: chaparral forests with madrone trees, cypress and redwoods, manzanita and lupine, amid, once again, GREEN GREEN GREEN rolling hills. we easily got a campsite and set up our camp. we had to carry stuff up from the car, here is darin carrying his very heavy load:

and us getting cozy in our camp:

we then did some late afternoon hiking through the forest and hills, pretending to be in the shire, and out to some gorgeous land where we could watch the sunset.

we had a nice freezing cold night in our tent with the wind howling wildly in the treetops. darin built a fire that whipped and swayed dangerously in the wind so we let it burn out. we wore all our clothes and bundled up in all our blankets and we made it through the night!

next morning we cleaned up our camp and headed down into town for coffee and snacks at the cute general store. all the bicyclists were gathering there and we sat out on the steps and watched people go by and imagined living in a tiny community like this where there is only one store that still sells organic fruits and vegetables, hummus, tofu, all the good stuff! as well as soda pop, household goods, catfood, toilet paper, beach gear. all the necessities, and if you live nearby you can just have a running tab.

we drove back up into the hills and spent the day hiking about on mount tamalpais. everyone in the bay area calls it "mount tam." as i mentioned before, we felt like hobbits crisscrossing the countryside on trails through the hills. i just cannot explain it, how wonderful it feels to come over the hill into the shade of a beautiful grove of oak trees and see people coming up the trail far off in the distance, and sit and read for awhile and daydream of building a tiny cabin out on the cliff overlooking the ocean.

here's the view from the east peak, the trail near the visitor's center, you can see all of marin county, san francisco, alcatraz, mount diablo, the farollon islands, and on clear days you can see the sierras 140 miles away!

i hope we can all come back here together sometime and let the kids zip around on these lovely trails!

Susan horning in while Mikie at attention

Well what do you know. Here we have Susan showing her appreciation for Mikie as he stands proudly at attention. Just thought the family might enjoy seeing how Susan caught the Mikie in such a serious pose to honor him with a salute from the long pink horn. She even packed her purse along. It's amazing how she came along just at the right time and was able to be an unplanned part of his Shakespear play. But there was a round of applause at the end of the scene. I bet that you think that this is a fake and that Stan showed me how to do it. Well, you might be very wrong. Then again.........................

Love papa

back in santa cruz

My Poetic Idol nomination

[Sorry if you've seen this posted in multiple places--I'm just really trying to get it out there!]

Some of you may know that in the past I had some success in a poetry competition.

I've been nominated again!

Since my last successes they've changed the way a poem wins. There's no single judge or team of judges doing all the work. Now the whole Artella community votes on twelve finalist poems, and the winners are based on those votes. My poem New/old (There's a Polaroid in everything) is one of those twelve finalists.

I would love it if you would participate in the voting! But don't automatically vote for mine--I want to be fair. If you can, read all twelve poems and vote for the poem you think is the real winner. If that's my poem--why thank you.

First you will need to join the Artella community by creating an account on Artella Cafe. Once you create your account, it will email you a password. When you receive the password, go log in and vote for the winning poem!

If you get a chance, please pass this information along to anyone you know who may be interested and who may have the time to do it. Voting ends May 15, at which time the winner will be chosen. Any voters I can get will help! I think there are currently only 53 total votes (as of today). The winner gets a $200 prize, along with some other stuff! So I'm excited. Please help out in the voting process. Love you all.

--- ---

If you didn't get the embedded links above, here are the links/steps to follow:

(1) Create an account here
(2) Vote for the winning poem here (you'll have to log in first)

one more

re-edit (shorter), plus some different music. sorry guys for clogging up the thing with these

once again, read Heather's first

these two videos are pointless. but since they mostly include all you guys I wanted you to have em too.
peace out yo



Porcelain - by Moby


Sho Nuff - by Fatboy Slim