This site is dedicated to sharing my writing, along with other random thoughts, pictures, life updates, and various funny or interesting stuff found on the Internet.
I walked across the street for lunch with a couple coworkers, and on the way back we spotted these phones on the sidewalk. Any speculations about what might have happened?
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"All persons living and dead are purely coincidental, and should not be construed." - KV
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 The replacement glasses It seems like I’ve posted less during my break from school than I did during the semester. What’s that about? Well, I guess I have been busy, for having been on break. I was back in Illinois for about a week and a half, but my mobility during this trip was a bit more limited than usual. This wasn’t all bad. I still managed to make it up to the Quad Cities for an evening, and spend a little bit of time with each of my siblings. Because I stayed most nights in Paxton, I got to hang out with Bob quite a bit, which was quite enjoyable. I even took him on a ride one morning, when we borrowed a truck from one of our uncles to go pick up some of my belongings that were still in Urbana.  This calls for hibernation. So it snowed quite a bit while I was back, and stayed pretty cold, but we borrowed the truck to go to Urbana on the second of two relatively clear days. The road conditions were pretty good on Route 45 that day, and we cruised along at or near the speed limit most of the way. Just a mile or two south of Thomasboro, however, we suddenly found ourselves sliding out of control on a patch of ice. I had only enough time to let off the accelerator, hoping to regain traction soon, before we drifted into the left lane at an odd angle. We regained our traction at that bad angle, and the truck’s light back end and high center of gravity sent us back-over-front, first into the ditch, and then into the opposite side of the divided highway.
It all happened too fast for us to do much other than brace ourselves for impact, and the only thought going through my head was, “this is going to cause a lot of damage.” I’m still not entirely clear whether the damage I was anticipating was bodily or property. The truck slid to a stop on its passenger side, facing the opposite direction in the lane farthest from where we’d started. Bob and I checked with each other to make sure we were each okay, and as far as we could tell at the moment, we were. In order to get out, we had to climb out through the cab’s broken rear window, as we weren’t going to be able to open either door. I waited for Bob to climb out first, as I was suspended above him by my seatbelt and had to wait until he got out to be able to release my seat belt and find my way out of the car.  That's where I was sitting. To look at pictures of the vehicle after the fact, I have to wonder how we made it out without any major injury. Some of the folks who stopped to help us after the accident mentioned something about me having blood on my forehead as I climbed out, so I worried about whether I’d sustained a blow to the head during the accident. With my previous experience of being ignorant as to the state of my own physical well-being due to a concussion, I suspected it would be best to get checked out at the hospital. I had some soreness in my left shoulder where the seatbelt had forcefully restrained me, but after the EMTs gave me a good once over, they verified that I didn’t seem to have any major injury. At the ER, they x-rayed my shoulder to make sure, and they said that I shouldn’t worry about a CAT scan unless I experienced any post-concussion symptoms in the next 48 hours or so. So now that I’m back in LA, some folks are calling me “Crash.” I think it might stick. Last week was the two-year anniversary of my motorcycle accident, followed shortly by the twelve-year anniversary of my decision to stop using drugs for recreational purposes. Incidentally, four years ago on MLK day I was pulled over on Route 45 (just a few miles south of where the latest accident took place), where I was given a ticket for speeding and informed that my license was suspended for parking tickets. This driving stuff is hard work. On Thursday, I’ll get back into the classroom for the final course of my MA degree, a fiction workshop class. That and my thesis work will be how I spend just about all of my free time for the next four months, and then you should all be able to start calling me Master Crash. Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, Bob is on his way to St. Louis for the night, and tomorrow morning he’ll fly to San Diego to get started on his USMC career. Maybe it will work out so that we can attend each other’s graduations in May? We’ll see.  Nagoya Castle Wednesday morning, I returned home from my trip to Nagoya to find a letter from the folks at the TA program, which informed me that I was not accepted for the coming year’s group of TAs. (They were very friendly about it, explaining how the constraints of a limited budget meant they had less to work with, etc, rather than just saying “suck it, loser.”) The good news: that means I’ll graduate in the Spring! (Provided, of course, I bust ass and get my thesis finished!) The trip to Japan was simply wonderful. I’m still fantasizing about going over there to live. All of the food was delicious, and the people I was with went out of their way to make sure I had a nice 29th birthday. In less than a week I’ll head back to Central Illinois for about a week and a half… which at the moment seems like much more time than I’d like to spend there. Maybe I’ll hole up at my mom’s house and work on my thesis the whole time  I saw kids on the corner last Saturday night, wearing bags on their heads. Tomorrow morning I’m hopping on a plane for Nagoya, just shy of three years after getting engaged in Tokyo, and just over a week after breaking off that engagement near LAX. While I’m in Japan, I’ll enter my thirtieth year here on Earth, my final year of trustworthiness. I guess my hopes of making my first $10 million before 30 are shot. :-/ I had the pleasure of reading some of my work for the Graduate Reading Series at CSUN last weekend, and I think it went pretty well. I could barely resist pointing out to the audience that the piece I read is a work-in-progress, and that there’s probably going to be a lot more to it at some point. I refrained, however, from trying to apologize for myself. I’m still waiting to hear about the TA program, at which point I’ll know whether I’m finishing CSUN this spring or the next. Finally, I’ll be flying back to Illinois on Christmas Eve to visit with friends and family, and to collect all the countless books I left in Urbana three years ago. I’m even planning to get my own place so I have somewhere to store them. But then, maybe if some gets me some Nook-e for Xmas, I won’t need as much room? Come on, Santa. I’ve been good.
 looking sharp and sharply looking So I went into the eye doctor a week and a half ago and discovered that I’m slightly nearsighted. While I’m inclined to blame this, in part, on the fact that I’ve been working a desk job sitting in front of a computer screen day-in, day-out for the last three years, I’m not sure that’s entirely the case. Tonight I went on what is becoming my regular evening walk around the neighborhood, and as I once again was marveling at the clarity with which I can now see distant objects (and particularly illuminated objects at night), I happened to look up at the stars overhead and notice the Pleiades. I was astounded by what I saw – I could pick out each of the individual stars! Even as a child I could not do that, which leads me to suspect that my nearsightedness, however slight it is, has been around for quite some time. Everything else is good, for the most part. Yuka is coming out to Cali for Thanksgiving, and we’ll drive up to visit Tim, Yasu, and the boys. We’re also going to see Mary Poppins while she’s in town. Fairly soon I should be going in to interview for the TA program, which will play a major role in determining whether I’ll finish my MA in 2010 or 2011. With these new glasses, I’m thinking it might end up being 2011, but we’ll see. I’m going to be spending my 29th birthday in Nagoya, Japan. I can’t wait. I may even ride the Shinkansen this time. And I’ll be sure to eat lots of ramen. Speaking of eating, I’m still working on being conscientious about my eating habits. I haven’t been using the Livestrong calorie counter thing lately, as it’s a bit of a hassle to update regularly. Instead, I’ve just been trying to keep track in my head each day. I’ll let you know how that works for me. I may have grown up listening to David Alan Coe, but that don’t mean I can’t get myself edumacated. I had a little case of the Mondays going on today, but then I came home to find a letter in the mail from CSUN informing me that my thesis proposal has been accepted. Yay! Now I get to really get to work! I’m stoked, though, because it means I’ll finally finish Never Enough, the piece I started ten years ago as a freshman at Bradley University. But I am applying for the Teaching Associate Program, which would give me some valuable hands-on experience in the freshman composition classroom. If I’m accepted to that, it will push my graduation back by a semester. As I told my sister, though, that means I’ll either graduate in the Spring 2010 semester, during the same month I’ll be having a wedding ceremony back home, or I’ll graduate in the Fall 2010 semester, during the same month that I’ll turn 30 years old. So either way it’s going to be a busy year! Speaking of wedding, I think I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I simply can’t keep eating the way I did three years ago and expect not to put on weight. I’ve tried going to the gym with varying levels of success, but my gym membership expires this month and I’m not comfortable forking over another year’s worth of membership fees to continue seeing limited success. I wasn’t really thinking about this, though, when I accidentally stumbled onto this Lance Armstrong website the other day. After playing around with it, and discovering that it claims I can lose 2 lbs a week by keeping my calorie intake at 1674 or less each day, I decided that I might as well give it a try. I’ve noticed in the first 48 hours of using it that simply having an awareness of how much I’m consuming is enough to make me reconsider certain choices. And best of all, it’s free. So maybe by the time I meet Yuka in the aisle, I will have shed a few of these extra pounds I’ve gained since I’ve been working a desk job. No promises, though That’s it, for now. I need to get started on this thesis!
In the last month, I have missed celebrating the birthdays of my brother, my mother, and two of my sisters. To make up for it, last weekend I had the great privilege of going up to Northern California to celebrate Angelo’s 4th birthday – we had a blast. Per tradition, we went to the zoo during my visit. We celebrated Labor Day with the true working person’s pastime (and also that of the Dude): bowling. Be sure to visit the web album for some video of Angelo opening his birthday present from grandma. Since I’ve been back in LA, I’ve been getting back into the swing of grad student life. This semester, currently slated to be my second-to-last in the grad program, part of what the grad student life entails is writing my thesis proposal. Who knew that so much research was needed to basically say “I want to write a 90-page novella”? The good news is that it’s really forcing me to think about what I’m doing with this piece. Anyway, I suppose that’s about all I have to say for the moment. Stay tuned for more exciting news.
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