Hi, I'm still here

Hey look guys, my neighborhood is in the news! While I don't feel like finding an actual news article, I can tell you that the American Planning Association recently voted my neighborhood among the top ten neighborhoods in the US. What exactly that means, I'm not sure. Check out the site to see pictures of where I live.

Here are some pictures I took of things here. Just some eye candy to keep you maybe interested until I find the time and drive to write a real entry.


These are my walls. Sea foam green paint and green striped wallpaper. My house is full of great wallpapers and other textures. I have plans to make a collage of the textures of 506 West Nevada Street soon.



Here's a cicada I found one night outside my house. Can you spot the copyright infringement on his back?



Another visitor to the outside of my house. Who do you think would win in a fight?



This is, apparently, the art history building. It is an old house literally in the middle of campus. Kindof goofy if you ask me.

One more critter related picture. I was leaving my office on Saturday after picking up some papers to grade and I came out to find this scene.


I said "Hey! What do you think you're doing?!" and he still sat there long enough for me to get my camera out of my backpack and take a couple of photos.

I finally live somewhere!

I'm all moved out of Beth's house and working on moving into Scott's house. Scott recently completed some graduate work at UIUC in engineering and now works for the army corps of engineers in Urbana. I've very briefly met the other two guys I'll be living with. One of them is named John, I think, and I know very little about him. The other guy I met tonight. His name is George and he is an exchange student from Austria.

Tonight I cooked my first meal in my new house. I made some Madhur Jaffrey recipes: Beets and Shallots, and some red lentils served with rice. It was a great success because I remembered to half the salt in the recipes. Madhur has a taste for salty food.

After dinner I poked around all the boxes in my room and eventually decided that I'll need to get my bookshelf up the stairs before I can unpack any more. So instead, I walked to my office to do what I'm doing right now--the internet.

On my way, I pulled out my harmonica to play as I walked. I walked past a game of bike-polo--a sport I'll have to look more into--and then all of a sudden, a wild rabbit came running towards me across the lawn. I was a little bit scared (it was charging me!) so I stopped playing. The rabbit stopped too. Then I played some more, and it came closer. I was like the pied piper! It was seriously interested in my harmonica. I played for this rabbit for like 5 minutes, crouching on the sidewalk while it walked around me and tried to get as close to my face as it could without freaking itself out. Then I decided to see if it would follow me if I kept playing, and it did. It followed me to the end of the block and I heard some encouraging comments from passers-by and then was scared away by a bus.

I will have to try this again. This is just another reason to have a harmonica with you at all times.

Up for Adoption

Just as I thought I was settled and ready to unpack, I found out once again that I might not live here. I had even bought some furniture for my room and enlisted the help of my very nice lab-mate Madhu to help me move it in.

On Friday night, I got a call from Carla saying that Beth had called wanting to talk to me. Carla was already on a train to Chicago to visit her girlfriend for the weekend. I asked Carla if it was good news, or bad. She told me she wasn't sure, in a tone that connoted potentially bad news. She knew that Sailor was coming after all and she wanted to talk to Beth before I did so she could lobby for me. I gave Carla Beth's number and she called me back several hours later.

"So?"
"It doesn't sound good. I tried my best but I don't know what is going to happen."

I felt worse than I've felt for a long time. I hadn't felt that bad since I was involved in all the bad things associated with the divorce of my parents back when I was in middle school, I told Lyndsay later that night. I may have leaped to some conclusions, but I was an emotional wreck. I decided to wait until Saturday to call Beth back.

I spent Saturday feeling mostly unhappy. I spent the morning talking to my mom and Lyndsay about not wanting to be here and my plans for reapplying for grad schools and how to get out of here. I realized that I think I've spent the majority (more than 50%) of my waking hours here unhappy. I'm thinking of making a new Google calendar to keep track of my time spent happy or unhappy, because I might just be exaggerating. Anyways, I called Beth later and she told me something like this:

"Sailor is coming. Instead of making any executive decisions or pretending like I know the best way to deal with this situation, I think we should all just sit down and talk about who should live where. I will be back late Sunday night, Sailor will be here sometime between Tuesday and Friday."

I said OK but wasn't really.

Yesterday I was very confused. I would go back and forth between being really pissed off and being excited about something like planting flax in the front yard or getting a truckload of wood chips for mulch and mushroom growing. Beth so far is not a person so much as a force of nature. I haven't even really had a conversation with her, so its very confusing to me. At this point, I'd almost rather just hate her without knowing her.

Today is Monday, and I think I finally realized how bad this whole thing is effecting me. I'm a nervous wreck. I sleep too much and wake up feeling exhausted. My stomach twists and turns every time I think about leaving my office to go "home." I decided I need to not live here, or at least find out very, very soon if I can live here.

I decided I would simultaneously tell Beth that I need an answer in 24 hours (she needs to be a landlord, not a mediator right now) and secure a room at a house I looked at previously. This way, if she decides to kick me out, I can perhaps guilt her into buying the furniture from me (I wouldn't need it in the other house). I know, this sounds unethical--I was worried too. I called my mom and she confirmed my actions. I think its not really that bad, because even if she said "you can live here!" and then I said "too bad! I'm not going to!" she wouldn't really be effected. Beth would then just tell Sailor "never mind! you can live here!" and all would be well.

So I'm sorry all you've heard about this place so far is about my housing crisis. It's not so bad here. I'm finding some restaurants and good asian markets. You can buy a dozen eggs for 50 cents from the school! I can get cheap meat too from the animal sciences lab. I saw a restored prairie area, and got frozen custard too. I'll tell you more about the good things once they occupy more than 50% of my life, which will hopefully be soon.

Characters, in order of apperance

A more detailed introduction of Beth will have to wait, as I still haven't really talked to her much, but I can tell you about Carla.

We seriously bonded last night. I explained to her about how I ended up her. All about the missed deadlines, about Lyndsay, about us being separated and not sure where we'll go from here. She knew about my kind of trouble all too well.

She met her girlfriend Sharon online while living in Brazil. They both participated in some sort of gay/lesbian online forum and started chatting online. Then they talked on the phone and really clicked. Sharon decided she wanted to come to Brazil and meet Carla in person. They really got along well. Carla then visited Sharon in Chicago a couple of times on a tourist visa. They were apart for a year at one point, but eventually decided they wanted to live together. Since a fiance visa was obviously (and unfortunately) not an option, Carla decided to apply to grad schools in the Chicago area and if she got in, she would be able to get a student visa. She was rejected from the schools that were actually in Chicago and was only accepted to UIUC. Sharon is not too happy about the situation because she really wanted to settle down with Carla, and she is now about a two and a half hour drive away.

I think it's going to be sort of fun being in the house for two weeks without the owner of all the stuff in it. Carla and I get to find our own way around, and it gives us both some time to take some ownership in the house and the way things are run in it.

In other news, this cute guy lives on some lemon balm in our front yard.


Don't touch! Those spines might make you itch.

Hey, life's not so bad

So things turned around 180 degrees shortly after my last entry. Part of the reason was that the other house mate, Carla, had arrived. She's a short lively Brazilian woman who is a grad student in the Portuguese department. Her girlfriend Sharon helped her move in and her addition immediately made me feel much more in control of things. This was for two reasons: first, I was no longer the new guy, and second, I took her to be an ally against the awkwardness of being in a new place.

Carla brought in loads of things she had bought at Target and Walmart (what would beth say!?) including lunch meat. Ham. I was so happy to see packaged sliced ham in the fridge. She also had lots of frozen dinners--this meant I would not be the one with the worst eating habits. Also, she looked around the kitchen for a microwave and after finding none, asked "Does Beth not have a microwave?"
I told her no, and Sharon said "They were on sale at Walmart."
Carla thought she'd better ask Beth before getting a microwave.

Then we had our first house meeting. Beth was leaving again the next day for a two week long trip (remember, I still did not know where I would be living when I found this out) so she wanted to tell us about stuff like watering plants and trash. In the meeting I discovered that things in the house were not ordinarily so messy. Beth had been reorganizing the shelves and thats why there were piles on the floor all over. She had not been able to do anything about them because of her bike accident. I also learned that there are plans to get a washer and dryer. You can't poke holes in these walls, so she is trying to get a special type of dryer donated. If she can't get it donated, she will buy it by the end of September. Also, she is not against having a microwave, she just never uses them.

The other thing I got out of the meeting was that Beth is actually pretty normal and down to earth. She teaches mediation skills to middle schoolers, and therefore she has pretty great mediation skills herself. I think with the addition of Carla as a balancing force, this will be an awesome house.

After the meeting, Beth talked to me one on one and asked how I was feeling about the house. I was completely honest and told her that until the meeting, I thought she was kindof crazy, messy, and intimidating. I also told her that my attitude about living in the house had changed significantly. She told me that she has still not talked to her friend, Sailor, but that Sailor probably wouldn't end up coming till January so I could definitely sign a lease until December if I wanted. I told her I would think about it and make my decision on Friday.

Today is Friday and I've decided I'll live there. I took a wire shoe that I made in an art class and proclaimed to Carla and the house "I am putting some of my clutter in this house's clutter! Here I go!" and I found a place for it. "I live here now!"

I'm Crying, I Guess That Means I'm Breathing

Yesterday was a day of highs and lows. I had been feeling pretty down the night before and when I was woken up by booming thunder, I felt much the same way. Beth was not awake before I left the house, which was too bad because I was feeling brave enough to ask her about laundry (that's another downside to this house--no washer or dryer). I rode to campus and finished registering and I sent a few more emails about rooms for rent. I tried to find the professor I will be TAing for, but she was not in her office. Then I decided to ride to the bookstore to get a new notepad for my back pocket and a key ring for all my lab keys.

On the way, I discovered that my bike is really, really broken.


As you can see, the tube that extends from the seat post has become unwelded from where it attaches to the pedal part. I can't even get the bar to go back in its hole. I probably shouldn't ride it like this for too long. Maybe I will go to the bike co-op next Sunday and check out my options.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I trudged through the book store, leaving with a notebook but no keyring. I rode to the quad, collapsed on the grass, and hid beneath my hat and cried. I called Lyndsay and she helped me calm down. I just freaked out because I essentially have no stability in my life. My bike is the only piece of familiarity I have right now and it is broken. My room has bare walls, my house is cluttered with someone else's crap, I have no friends--nothing.

Lyndsay reminded me to try and worry about things one at a time and suggested that I contact the Whitman Alumni Office to see if there are any other Whitties here. After I was recovered enough to interact with others, I discovered a geology professor and a student in my class that were Whitman graduates here. Hopefully I will meet them both soon. This news, plus my daily adventures in the Kingdom of Loathing cheered me up. Oh, Pandora helped quite a bit too.

Before heading home, I visited another house. It was big, and full of different patterns of wallpaper from the 60's. It was a little more pricey than others I had looked at ($475), but it was fully furnished and utilities were included, so now I have a good backup house. He has three empty rooms, so even if I wait till next week, I should have a place to move into.

Having knocked quite a few things of my to-do list, I rode home, trying not to look at my bike's gaping wound.

The House I Could Call Home

The house is still a work in progress. The first thing I noticed is that it has very small windows in the front and very large windows in the back. I assume this is to aid passive solar heating in the winter and to keep the hot sun out in the summer. The yard is wild, but has awesome potential. There are some herbs and veggies planted in the front and it has a nice small porch with some houseplants hanging outside.

The inside is cluttered. It reminds me a teensy bit of Gilligan's Island Halfway House in Walla Walla, except Beth seems a lot more serious about being a hippy than the Halfway House residents. Lots of happy houseplants and books make up for the concrete floors. The kitchen is spacious and well equipped. My room is small--about the size of my room in Walla Walla. This means I don't really have room for a bed, dresser, bookcase, and a desk. Maybe if I could get rid of the giant dresser that came with the room and trade it in for one that would fit in the closet, I would have room for a desk.

Now to Beth. She has a goatee. It's distracting, especially on someone I don't really know. There, I've said it: the facial hair on my female landlord's chin is distracting. Is that so wrong? I have no problem with it, theoretically. I'm sure I won't even have any practical problems with it once I get to know her, but for now it is distracting. I haven't really interacted with her much at all, so I can't really say much else about her. She seems like an exciting, passionate person from our phone conversations though.

My Birthing

I found a house back in early July via craigslist that seemed exciting. The house is a special ecological design called a passive house. It's basically a super efficient house with thick insulated walls and an airtight construction to reduce heating and cooling costs to about %10 of a normal house. For some reason, Urbana is the epicenter of passive houses in America. The first one was built here. This house is the second one built in America and there is another one going up next door.

At first I was a little worried about the landlord/housemate. She said she studied power dynamics--the sociology of how people exert power over one another. I was more than a little concerned that she would think that she was constantly being oppressed by someone. But hey, I've lived with people with views far from my own before, so I'll be fine for a semester at least. I emailed her and called her and we talked and it sounded like a great fit. She likes tea, is excited I'm bringing a worm composting bin, and is willing to give me some creative control over the garden.

Well, about two weeks before leaving CA (the Wednesday before camping) I called this woman--Beth is her name--to ask what cookware she had and what I should bring. She was with company at the time so she asked if she could call me back the next day. That was perfect since I had Thursday off from work. I got no reply the next day and my mom began to worry (I'm not very good at worrying for myself. This is usually a good thing). After work on Friday, I got an email from Beth.

Long story short, there had been some confusion and she had continued the process with someone else thinking I was no longer interested. This confusion was about half her fault and about half mine give or take %10 or so. I figured this would be an easy thing for her to fix, but it turned out the other person is one of her close friends. Her friend may or may not move in on September 1, so at least I have a place to stay until then. Additionally, she tells me she is leaving on Saturday for Canada and probably will be unreachable. She'll be back "around the 10th" (the day I already told her I'd be coming).

I arrived on the 11th just in case, after a wonderful 5 day visit with Lyndsay. She was in town, I was told by a man watering the foundation next door, but had just left on her bike. I left a note and pedaled in search of food finding a Vietnamese wedding, a non-English speaking woman selling Asian veggies on a park bench, and a veterinary building that smelled like cows on the way.

I got a call from Beth and I was excited and nervous to return to the house and meet her. She told me she had been hit by a car. She was alright, but in shock and hoping for a peaceful night.

I ate, came home, and have proceeded in awkwardness for the last few hours. I'd don't really know how to be social with someone new without being jovial, and I don't want to bother her by unloading my car too much. I'm sure she'll be in a better mood tomorrow.

My Funeral

--I will add lots of pictures to this entry at some later date--

My farewell to California (for a while at least) was really spectacular. My best friends forevers from high school all came with me on a camping trip to Salt Pt. State Park which is about 2 hours north of San Francisco on the CA coast. We camped at a hike in spot which was a bitch for loading and unloading purposes, but was especially remote, especially on the weekdays.

David and I got there on a Saturday and took about three grueling trips to unload the car. We set up camp with a plastic Pikachu guarding the entrance to our home for the next few days. Sunday morning we had a breakfast of eggs with some special herbs and went on a very long hike which took us through forest, prairie, by a pond, and eventually to this amazing summer camp. "Big Mike" guided us through the facilities. They had a working farm with dairy and beef cattle and pigs. He showed us the pool and took us over a hill where we could really see how big the property was. There was lots of space for running and playing. We got to check out this awesome redwood that was hollowed out by lightning-started fire and had a room built in it. It was complete with a door, a window, a bed, and a wood burning stove. The kids at this camp slept in tents and had to do farm chores every day in addition to normal summer camp stuff. They weren't allowed any iPods, cell phones, video games, etc. What a great experience!

We hiked back so we could meet Becca and Dan at our campsite. We got tired of waiting so we explored our general vicinity. After sitting at a "theater" we found and watching some old redwoods grow, we heard "David! Eric!" and found out that we had ended up back at the parking lot somehow. We helped unload the car and bring the rest of our supplies back to the campsite.

Beers were opened, fire was started, and the cooking began. We had trout and risoto for dinner--one of the finest camping meals I've had.

The next day we ventured toward the coast. We watched the ocean, hiked, collected yerba buena for tea, and ended up watching some seals from very close. Just as we were getting ready to move on to the sandy beach, I slipped and fell into a tide pool. This was a blessing in disguise because we stayed longer and found some sea stars and sea anemones and a chiton. When we got back we made yerba buena tea and made some sandwiches for lunch. Then we had to go off to get some supplies we had forgotten to bring with us, such as soap. For dinner we made mole chicken quesadillas which were also excellent.

Becca had brought with her some 'shrooms with the intent of sharing them with me on this trip. I was pretty apprehensive about taking them and was pretty sure I would decline considering all the complications in my life and all the negative emotions I had about this transition. The next morning, however, I woke up to find a banana slug about a foot away from my head on my sleeping mat. This put me in a wonderful mood for the morning and I knew the slug was inviting me to follow him into his world that day. I took a pretty small amount of 'shrooms with becca and went on a hike toward the pygmy forest.


I had a great experience that day and it made for an excellent end for our camping trip.

David left that night after dinner and the next morning the rest of us headed out. We stopped in Petaluma and visited the Lagunitas Brewing Company for a tour--one that I would recommend to any beer lovers in day trip distance of Petaluma.

At home I had a great Vietnamese dinner with my mom at Le Cheval and then had an excellent mexican dinner cooked by my grandma where I got to see my cousin Garrett who now lives in Arizona. The next morning, I was gone.

I Am Reborn

I'm starting this blog now because my life is at a good starting point. I'm starting graduate studies at University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign in about a week. I've already left my home behind, and I'm currently in a state of limbo, like a soul waiting to be reborn. Right now I'm mostly pessimistic about my move to Urbana, but to understand why you'll need a little background info.

I did my undergraduate studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. At first, I was very sad that I had to leave my friends behind, and didn't really make any new friends (I'll probably tell you about my beliefs on different levels of friendship later) till my sophomore year. Whitman was an amazing experience though, and so was Walla Walla. I love that city and would be happy if I ended up back there some day. After graduating in Biology, I took a year off, because by the time I had realized that I liked school enough to do it for 5 more years, it was too late to apply to grad schools. In my year off, my girlfriend Lyndsay and I traveled through Thailand and Vietnam for two months in the winter.

Just before I left, Lyndsay and I both applied for grad schools. Our attitude was that we should both seek out programs and schools independently, but be sure to apply to a few of the same schools so we would have the option of going to school together. Long story short, I made some mistakes, missed quite a few deadlines, and only applied for three schools. Of those three I was only accepted to UIUC, a school that Lyndsay did not apply to. After heart wrenching debate, I decided it would be best if I took the opportunity at UIUC even though that would take me physically away from Lyndsay, my home in California, and all my friends. I'm still not sure this was the best decision.

So Lyndsay ended up at Colorado State University in Fort Collins doing Chemistry. And for the next year (at least) we will be busy grad students in love separated by about 16 hours of highway 80. This is my story.