Cats Stats and St. Pats

So this weekend turned out to be pretty nice despite the craziness of unnoficial St. Patrick's day and all the work I have to do for next week.

Friday was unofficial. For those of you who are not from around here, this is a holiday that was invented by local bar owners to compensate for the fact that St. Patrick's day always falls on spring break, when many students are away from campus. To celebrate unofficial, students drink all day and disrupt classes. The lecture I TA for had 4 or 5 police officers and 3 security guards outside checking people's bags. On unofficial, no one is allowed to have any beverages of any kind in classrooms. Last year, around 90 people went to the hospital for alcohol poisoning I've been told. I already knew I would hate this holiday, but several unexpected things made it worse.

First, a student in lecture had a shirt on that was so terrible that it totally ruined my day. I wanted to punch him in the face. I won't go into details, but let's just say he succeded at offending Irish people, Native Americans, and women. Good job, asshole.

After that I taught and had a student get all up in my face about a lousy 2 points on a test question. Then at noon, walking back to my office, I saw a guy stumbling along, drunk, holding a Jones Soda bottle and mumbling "fuck" over and over to himself.

This was too much. I had to go home for the rest of the day.

Saturday was better. Got some grading done and then went over to Katherine's house for a game night. She has some crazy cats. One of them likes to chew on fingers A LOT. Check it out:



The other one just likes to lay on shoes and jackets. Not that weird I guess.


We played a bunch of different games including one that's kindof like balderdashand trivial pursuit combined but with personal questions instead of definitions, if that makes any sense. They guessed it was me whose last words would be "bring my body to the top of Mt. Diablo so I can be eaten by turkey vultures."

We also played Clue: Museum Caper. Here's a thief-eye-view of Lisa.


Today (Sunday) I went back to El Charro for lunch before doing FOUR HOURS of statistics homework. I had two al pastor tacos and one lengua taco. The al pastor is just so so, bu the lengua was very good.


(lengua on top)

El Charro Taqueria

I found El Charro when I was recently tipped off by my geologist friend Amanda that there is a Mexican market in town. I went to check it out and was pleasantly surprised that it is also a taqueria. What is a taqueria, you ask? And how is it different than any other Mexican restaraunt? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Taquerias are usually self-serve type restaurants where you order at a counter and bus your own table. They usually have minimal decor (it was especially minimal at El Charro) and sometimes more minimal menus than other Mexican restaurants. Taquerias usually have things like tacos, burritos, tortas, gorditas, and sometimes have a few (or many) entree style dishes (platillos).

As far as a market goes, El Charro was not too impressive. They didn't have much that you can't find in the Mexican aisle of Meijer. They did have some meats that you possibly might have trouble finding elsewhere.

I ordered one of my favorites, a burrito with milanesa ($4.99). Milanesa is a little like chicken-fried steak. It's thin pieces of steak that are breaded and fried and then chopped into bite-sized pieces for the burrito. Now, I must preface this review with the fact that I have high standards when it comes to milanesa burritos. My burrito contained refried beans, iceberg lettuce, and tomatoes in addition to the milanesa. I think it also had some sort of cheese. The cheese was not very good, the tomatoes were not that great (they are out of season to be fair) but the milanesa itself was very good.

I also ordered horchata ($1). Horchata is a little like sweetened rice milk spiced with cinnamon and other spices. The horchata here was maybe a little on the thin side, but still delicious.

I'll definitely have to come back and try the tacos, gorditas, and perhaps some of the weekend only specials (tamales, posole, and something else I can't remember).


As far as taquerias go, ehh not that great. As far as Mexican food in Chambana goes, not too shabby. Pretty impressive for a town with only about a 2% Latino/a population.

El Charro
55 E Green St
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 337-6647

Blog Transformation

Hi everyone, Eric here. Just letting you know that I'm thinking of turning this blog into a food blog--at least a partial one. I like the style of Ebeth's blog and might make mine into something like this.

This potential change was inspired most recently by my discovery of a taqueria in town. That's right, Champaign, IL, a city in the middle of Illinois with only a 4% latino/a/hispanic population, has a taqueria. And it looks like a pretty good one to boot. They've got milanesa, lengua, barbacoa, and al pastor. They've got gorditas, tortas, posole, tamales, tacos, and other good stuff. Expect a review of a milanesa burrito soon.

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.