Shayla

I think the starting it out with your name is a pretty good idea.

Wowzaaa it's so cool to be hearing a lot from everyone. Makes me happy. Though I'm already pretty darn happy. I just can't wait to get the hell out of this nasty place and on to beautiful, peaceful places, like MN and Glacier, and then seattle. My upcoming agenda pleases me.

Jesse and I just got back from a 3-day get-away to new england. We drove up to costal maine and back. Stopped in Portland ME, Augusta ME, Bangor ME (where Stephen King lives), Acadia National park ME, Bar Harbor ME, Portsmouth NH, and Mystic Connecticut. The coolest towns were portsmouth and portland. They were really pretty, being right on the ocean, with lots of brick streets, colonial homes, seafood restaurants with local brews (I'm sort of into beer now), and a great fresh smell of ocean air hanging in the breeze. I thought the whole time of how much mom would love it there. Then we went to Mystic and I thought of Lu as we ate at mystic pizza, where the Julia Roberts movie was filmed. And the pizza was really delicious. It was a great get-away. And unbelievably difficult to drive back into nyc last night. But the end is near, so I know we can do it. We're thinking of pushing up our departure date to like the 20th or so. Although, I might still leave on the 27th so that I can still hang out with brea in D.C. when she comes out. And on the other hand, the sooner I get home, the younger the kittens will be, and watching kittens grow is one of the happiest things I know.

Anyway, yeah, Glacier is in the northwestern corner of Montana. It's all in the state except for a portion that spills into Canada. I have always driven there, but my friend Hannah is taking a train there to see me this summer, it's costing her about 250 dollars and I can easily pick her up from the train station. As far as other expenses go, it's about the cheapest vacation I know of. camping is $17 dollars a night and that would be split between at least two people since I would be tagging along. Then there's always food, but usually I just buy some groceries and live off of that. I usually end up spending somewhere around $400 for a one week stay out there, transportation included. And driving's cheaper, but you gotta bring someone with you for that cause it's a kinda long drive. It's truly an amazing place. The Grizzly factor is a hard one to get used to at first, believe me I know. I used to have nightmares every year before we left to go out there. But now I've been there six times, talked to lots of regulars about it, hiked over 100 miles of trails in the park and never even seen a single bear. And rangers and locals have told me that they make a lot of effort to stay away from us, so it's really just a precaution to be educated and mindful of their presence.

Jess, as far as san diego goes. I looked up some hotels on hotels.com and ended up finding a really nice place right on the ocean for $100 a night. It was great. But that was off-season, it was november.

Tammy~ Way to go on the school work. Writing was never my cup of tea either. I'm actually waitressing in glacier. I applied kinda late and got the last position they had. I'm staying in a dorm there, which costs $11 a day and includes 3 meals. So you can't really beat that. And I'm working from June 13th-September 15th. I'll probably stay for another week or so afterwords and camp and get in some last hikes and dips in the mountain lakes.

Kate~ that rocks that you got your license! Way to go.

And I might have some things to donate to the fundraiser, maybe I can sort through some stuff when I get home.

Tonight I'm going to one of my roommates film screening at the IFC. I'm really happy for him, he's an excellent film maker, just finishing his degree at columbia. I have cool roomates. Jesus is a film maker whose already doing amazing work, Paola is the spanish voice of micro-soft and has been doing some really cool work out here as well. Rachel worked as an actor and assistant producer for Greys Anatomy for a couple of seasons, and her girlfriend is still top dog of the make-up crew for Grey's and tells us all kinds of stories about the actors in real life. And then there's Jesse and I, the two bums from MN. But it's all good.

Anyway, I better get going. I'll yammer on later.

Take care all, Stay beautiful.

Shayla