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cavin' Saturday November 30

So, i spent my entire thanksgiving break driving all around the state of IL; Jon had no car, and I was a charfure, I drove to home and back, and I visited the luxurious beauty that is Macomb, IL. As if that were not enough Todd, Regan, and I are leaving shortly to drive five hours to Kentucky.

Once we get there, we will stay over night in some sleazy travel lodge, and then go on a five and a half caving expedition tomorrow. After that, we'll drive five and a half hours back Sunday night such that we all can go to class on Monday.

Its been that kind of break.

(regan typed this dictation-style as i walked around, hence the capitalization.)

thanksgiving break Wednesday November 27

let's do a little timeline of my body weight:

• third grade: upset over parental divorce, and sparked by a number of other factors i will most likely never remember, i go from the string bean to being the pudgy kid. a pudgy smart kid. since grade-school kids rather annoy me right now, i'd have to say i would have been a real treat to deal with. a fat, smart kid who thought everyone cared about his knowledge. man, that's enough to make high school sound good.
• eighth grade: puberty begins to strike, and my build gets more manly and less boyish; naturally, this trims a bit of pudge.
• tenth grade: i date a girl named gina. she gets me a job at a pizza hut.
• eleventh grade: i work at pizza hut for two months, while holding a job at a chinese restaurant. gina dumps me. i am unhappy. i am stressed. i eat, and climax at 210 (or so) pounds. over winter break, i decide i have had enough. during the spring musical, i went on the three-day diet...for a month. coupled with singing and dancing nightly in the musical, i lost about twenty pounds to round out at just below 190.
• twelfth grade: i drop a little more, hitting 185.
• sophomore-junior year summer: i go to japan. due to strong determination, complete isolation (i chose when and where and how often i ate, no societal or social pressures to eat with a group impacted me), lack of funding, exercise, and good japanese food, i lost about 15-20 more pounds, to round me out just below 170.
• junior year, first semester: i get depressed. i eat out a lot. i gain back a little bit of weight, but i am still barely beneath the 180 threshold.
• thanksgiving break: every family member is pushing everything at me. temptation is unbounded. resistance is futile. the scale is tipping.

i don't wish to make anyone think i obsess about my weight, but that is your judgement after reading the rest of this. in fact, i am aware that it is quite natural for people to fluctuate throughout their lifetime. however, i also have a very interesting experience from japan -- as my mom once said (she visited awhile back): "there are no fat people in japan." excepting sumo, she's basically right.

the western approach says, "well, just look at what they're eating, for christ's sake, you've got raw-ass fish, rice, veggies, and yucky seaweedy things," and, yes, that is absolutely correct. and as someone who used to be a picky eater, and who has had "western tastes" his entire life, i adapted rather easily. and it was healthy. i never felt better.

the japanese like to pride themselves on the freshness and quality of their foodstuffs. even asako commented to me about how my water tasted bad, she even said that tokyo water tastes bad compared to that fresh, pure mountain stream of water that is ishikawa's water. i don't know about that, i mean, i had to boil my water in nishikawa heights this summer, and i can't say one way or another about it's taste...it's water. i guess i don't have the buds to judge the issue. anyway.

but really, even though i am full right now from dinner at my dad's, and lunch at the china palace, i feel sick. the sickness is not in my full belly, the sickness is within my head; it makes me feel fat, it makes me feel like this mass i can feel in my stomach is vile, evil, and working against what i want for my body...but then, at the next mealtime, i will eat up just the same, without giving thought to the amount, or when i should stop.

i am a compulsive eater. i always have been. i can stop myself if it is just me, but the holidays and times of general depression are too much, and after this little thanksgiving whatever we've got going on here, i'm going to turn it around and get to where i was at the end of the summer.

don't doubt it, either -- i made this commitment in may when i went to japan, and i didn't let anything stand in my way. now, i have to fight the battle on my own turf, where the temptations are greeting me on a daily basis.

yes, it's cold Monday November 25

now that it's snowed, you know it's going to stay cold

ah, yes, the wonder of living in illinois when it gets cold out. however, there is a certain freshness in the air that i would never trade, and its effect is doubled by the lack of students residing on campus.

my mom Sunday November 24

tomorrow i'm leaving to go home for thanksgiving break. to celebrate the idea of family, i posted a photo album of pictures i took over labor day weekend of my mother. mom, i hope you don't object, but they were just too funny when i looked back through them yesterday.

what the hell? Friday November 22

last night at about 4am or so, the phone rang. naturally, i didn't wake up. i can sleep through a thunderstorm without even turning over, and you all know that i can fall asleep faster than anyone else. also, you can even walk into my room and take my pants off the floor and i won't wake up.

so it's not surprising that i didn't hear the phone.

the problem, however, is that everyone else did. katy and becca and charlotte (who stayed on my couch last night; we're going out to breakfast with stephanie this morning) apparently dealt with the following:

• the phone rang, the answering machine picked up, and someone discussed how i needed to watch my back, that they were going to kick my ass, and apparently they also used the word fuck a lot. there's mention of "i'm walking down california right now..." as well as threats to throw a brick through my front window.
• repeat until desired.
• then, katy answers the phone, and says, "look, it's 4am in the fucking morning, and if you don't stop this shit, i'm going to call the fucking cops, okay?" and hung up on them. katy's a champ.
• the calls ceased.

i went downstairs this morning, after hearing the story from katy and charlotte, and checked the machine. katy had turned the volume down without me noticing, so i was wondering why it wasn't doing anything, and began pressing buttons searching for a response from the unit. i inadvertantly erased the messages.

no one who heard the messages recognized the voice. so, i guess i'll file this with the pants issue. "unsolved, and who cares".

the hot wok challenge Thursday November 21

only nathan and i are stupid enough to engage each other in an eating contest.

nathan and i were talking at a party a few weeks ago, and there was a thing of chopsticks on the counter at this really nice apartment. nathan and i have previously had discussions about the merits of chopstick efficiency and usage, and i bet him outright that i could finish a hot wok-sized portion of general tso's chicken faster than he could with a fork.

the events depicted below are purely factual. no detail has been altered.

nathan and i facing off nathan, with his paltry fork, attempting to shovel inefficiently my streamlined sticks of wood sticking it to him less than five minutes after starting, i defeated the "older brother" figure by about fifteen seconds.

i know most of you think, "at last" Wednesday November 20

this is how i feel right now

if you ph me you'll notice that the curriculum detail lists me as an electrical engineer. tomorrow morning, i will go to the liberal arts & sciences office, run a manila packet across the quad to the ealc office, and the paperwork will eventually filter down to little things like ph; who knows how long it will take before it says "junior, east asian languages and cultures"?

but that's not the main point. you could say such a change has been coming for over two years now, but i would not have had it any other way -- i needed the engineering education i've received thus far, and i have enjoyed it. is has by no means been tuition wasted. however, as of this semester, engineering has been stifling my creativity in terms of my personal life and my course load.

for example, next semester, i couldn't take contact improv with todd and regan, introductory narrative writing with todd, reva, and esther, nor oratorio society (a choir) without the fear that i would be cutting myself short on engineering hours. i may like engineering, but i've said many times that i would never want to be one.

charlotte and stephanie came to ece 210 with me the other day. stephanie remarked about "us smart people", referencing engineers. i don't think that has anything to do with it -- they do it because they have a passion for it, and she doesn't. and really, i don't have it either.

so why was i studying it? i liked it, but it started to cut into my real interests and passions, and that's why it needed to go. maybe it's the caffiene buzz, but i feel great right now.

bootlegs & exams Tuesday November 19

semester progress chart

ece 229 tests bombed: two
ece 210 tests bombed: soon to be two
japanese tests aced: two
bootlegs posted: guster, wilco
nights spent on the town: soon to be five (not kidding. that's how much of a loser i am)

right. the pressure to change majors seems insurmountable right now because my ass was just handed to back to me by an eleven-page, two-hour electromagnetics exam. however, i also remember last year, where i was in two different ece classes i liked -- 249 and 290 -- so i resolve that it's just because i am in all these electromagnetics courses, which scarily remind me of physics. except on crack.

so, the wilco bootleg is done; of course, in a week with three tests, i managed to find the procrastination time to do this. feel free to download it all and share it with all your friends. it won't all fit on one audio cd, so you'll have to either pick and choose, or make two discs. i recommend the latter, and use disc-at-once because most of the tracks have no spacing or fading between them. wilco was that good, they just went from one song to the next.

this is only going to be up for about a week because i am using other people's server space, and we don't want to encroach on todd's quota for that long.

[Ed note: Wilco setlist removed because it is no longer available online.]

awwwwww Saturday November 16

this is the cutest picture i have ever seen. hands down.

thank god it's...friday? Friday November 15

the weekend is looming over me. funny thing, actually, that a usually-celebrated event can become a dreaded one; next week i have three exams. the weekend brings them closer.

but it is not just that, it is the perpetual state in which i live; i continually live for the end of class, the afternoon, after work, this weekend, next month, end of the semester, next summer, that semester, that fall, and next year. i keep myself consistently busy, but at the thought of dropping any of my responsibilities or activities for the sake of free time, i freeze up as if such an action would suck any and all fun out of my life.

wednesday night, we were entering schnuck's when i said to todd:

"if i could do it all over again, i don't think i would pick engineering."

"why is that?" he asked.

"well, i take that back. i only say that supposing that i get to keep the engineering knowledge i've already learned. like, the reason i took it in the first place was because i was interested in it, and now that i know what it's about, it's time to move on to something else. it's like if i were to become a new undergrad all over again."

as we entered the special buys aisle, i proceeded to tell him that if i changed majors to ealc, i would graduate on time. i would feel like i'm scoring more points in the game of collegiate life. even if i add ealc as a major, i won't have to do any extra work to get it (we'll work on that sometime soon). my engineering classes right now are difficult for me, and i feel like i'm not doing well. maybe it is because i don't like them? maybe it's because i'm not where i belong?

or maybe it's just because i'm in the two hardest core classes in the major. i think that's it, or at least, that's what i tell myself. so i remain. i realize that the statement about scoring points is a silly one, because it's not what you learn or even what your degree says, but it's about learning to stay in the system as long as possible such that they have to pay you more when you get a real job. engineering will take longer, so we'll stick with it. but slowly, so i don't have to give up everything else just to have time to study.

i'm working the fall musical, fame, tonight. last night i worked with laine, a fellow employee, and we spent a few hours chatting and getting to know one another. meeting new people is always so innocent and fun; i was really enjoying myself. that is, until she told me she liked pop country, was unfamiliar with wilco, and turned off the guster cd when i left the room. she said because she was feeling sick she wasn't in the mood for "that kind of music", but what she was really trying to tell me was just how terrible her taste in music is.

audience participation Monday November 11

so i've noticed that recently i have been receiving less hits and less comments on this site. that's not incredibly discouraging, as i do run this site for my own personal benefit more than anything else, but it did make me wonder why. maybe the redesign..? i wondered.

then i realized that my hits went way up when i (a) got a domain and (b) started posting from japan. clearly, this life i lead here is not that interesting compared to the unfamiliar territory i was braving then. the sole solution? go back to japan next fall to finish my minor.

i just registered for spring classes today, here's the line-up:

• japan 104: intermediate japanese ii
  it's just like all the other japanese classes i've taken, this will be no surprise whatsoever.
• rhet 144: introductory narrative writing
  esther and reva are taking it with me, and hopefully my better narrative writing skills will be visible here.
• ece 350: lines, fields, and waves
  it's one of my three-out-of-five requirements, and it uses the same textbook at 229, which i am in right now. therefore, i'll take it to avoid buying a new textbook. seriously, i paid $75 for this one; tony told me this class was easy.
• ece 313: probability with engineering applications
  another required course. yay. i don't really know anything about it, but people have said it is challenging.
• ealc 328: japan at war and peace i have to take two 300-level ealc classes to graduate with a minor in ealc. since i am currently in 315, modern japanese fiction, i am going to tack on some knowledge of modern japanese history as well.

that's seventeen hours. we'll see if i don't drop one of those.

the masquerade par-tay Saturday November 9

katy threw a collegiate kegger party © at our house on the 700 block of california avenue two weeks ago. it was terrible: the house was flooded with people we didn't know, it was a mess, a girl threw up all over todd's stuff and in our sink. we were not happy campers when we (todd and i) came home from our respective jobs at midnight to find the following:

people we don't know trashing our house more people we don't know trashing our house

so i was immediately hesitant when eric and emily suggested having another party this weekend. however, at the house meeting, we clarified that the only thing it would have in common with the last one was the word "party", and that this would be invite-only, classy, fun, and leave our house better than it started. which is exactly what happened, and i am proud to say that this is how the party in our house looked last night:

that rug really ties the room together

everyone who attended had to bring a mask. due to my poetic fridge experience, i was feeling all crafty and creative. so i made my mask, instead of buying one like everyone else did. remember as well that i am one cheap son-of-a-gun. my first idea, when i learned that a mask was required, was to wear a paper bag over my head. then i thought: if i poke eyes in it, fringe the bottom, and round the top...

todd and i pulled out all the stops

i was bashful, better known as inky, from midway's 1980 arcade hit, pac-man. bashful, according to the abstract of the game, is a shy ghost, but he'll still eat you if you get near him when you haven't recently eaten a power pac yourself. overall, the night was excellent, and i hope that we do it again sometime. the house was dressed up in fabric to the nines, and we're electing to leave a lot of it up. if you come over, you can see it.

tonight i plan on going to the japanese cultural night for dinner, and then to the hockey game with reva so she can drool over brian. i know i've gone picture-crazy, and these are not worth putting in the main blog, but still worth seeing:

todd and mark: seperated at birth?
it's prom again
just plain scary

...and make sure to read this article.

so here's what's happened Friday November 8

the last time i posted anything of substance was eight days ago, when i talked about my trip to the department of motor vehicles. a lot has happened since then, and i'm going to try to (a) be as concise as possible, (b) not do a laundry list of what i did, and (c) be as entertaining as possible.

after the dmv, i went back the next day with my passport and successfully got a new license and state id card so they can't screw me if i lose it again. i got a new student id card as well, and between both i racked up $30 in losses. i also took my japanese literature midterm, and i don't know how that went. i finished the two essay questions in an hour and twenty, and that's all that matters to me. if she didn't like what i wrote, she should just give multiple-choice tests. i've been doing those like a pro since sixth-grade science with the beloved late keith schascko.

after that, i hit up hinode, the thai-run japanese restaurant, with plinko, where i ate some crazy sushi. the shrimp eyes were still looking at me as they entered my mouth. i've spared y'all by not taking a picture of this.

i got the afternoon off of work, and nathan and i rolled up to chicago to visit nate's hononegah friends, who were throwing a halloween party (because that's what day it was). the apartment that luke, kuhlman, and bangser live in is really nice, and it's conveniently located. there was an amazingly attractive u-of-i graduate named anne there, and i really enjoyed talking to her. then she started ignoring me and left for work.

nathan and i went as nerds, like two years ago. a shark from snl, nerds, secret service men, a mexican diplomat, mr. clean, and genghis khan

from the pad we went out to a party at kuhlman's boss' place, which is a $2.5 million dollar penthouse on the 4th and 5th floors of a building. and when i say nice, i mean this is the view from the roof:

the view from the balcony

so all the food and drink was free, and nathan and i really took advantage of the pretzels. there were lots of attractive women there, and they loved the nerd get-up, but then we realized they just thought we had money. there was no reason to lead them on, and even if i did have money, i don't want some dumb bitch who's going to spend it all. i want to horde it into an unnecessarily large amount that will just keep feeding itself until i can no longer set limits on what i can own; then i will establish a system of power using my wealth to control large sections of american politics, and via that i will change the world as i see fit to make myself even more money. i want to ensure the future of my fortune -- and i don't need some dumb bitch getting in the way.

all right, enough about that. we went out to a bar after that, had a reasonably decent time, ate some burritos on the way home, and all of us went to bed alone. it was a real bachelor event start to finish, and i really appreciated that aspect.

the next day i went to o'hare to pick up asako. you've already seen the picture of this event, scroll down if you haven't. nathan and todd accused me of having japanese goggles on when i said that she's cute. it's hard for me to explain my friendship with asako, because it is so symbiotic and dependent upon learning. unless you're one of us, or learning english or japanese currently, it might be difficult for you to understand. hell, charlotte's learning japanese, and she still couldn't tell what was up between the two of us. i appreciate that, because i know that she and i both know exactly what's up.

we went home, mom set us up really nice, and i got to snuggle with the poochies. next day, we drove to champaign via chicago, and i showed her around campus all saturday night and sunday. basically, monday was normal; i showed asako the sights like papa del's (the best pizza on campus), we went out to dos reales with todd (the best mexican), and all that. i showed off uiuc.

tuesday i drove her to rose-hulman institute of technology in terre-haute, indiana. first of all, let me reference the simpsons halloween episode of this year: homer bought a hammock that duplicated him, but created stupid(er) homers. soon, there were thousands of homers, and it was actually quite balls-out funny. but the key point here is the mutation factor.

indiana, as an entity, is like someone put illinois in this hammock and produced a mutant-like similar state called indiana. foremost, we've got the shapes: illinois is bigger, healthier, and follows a major river on the west. indiana is smaller, follows a smaller river on the bottom, and man, touches michigan. yeeee.

therefore, whenever i brave it to go into that state, i tense up. my freshman year of college jon and i once took a wrong turn getting on 57 and ended up in indiana at night. it was creepy. ever since then, it's never gotten better. i went to bloomington, indiana last spring to see guster. good show, but when i was driving back with heather through the winding hills of southern indiana at 1am, i felt as if the whole state was about to suck us in my car up and spit us out as a piece of flaming, twisted metal and carcasses on the direct other side of the illinois border. there'd even be a little note next to it, informing other illinoisians that that's what happens when you stay out past indiana's bedtime.

so i wanted to get out of terre haute as fast as possible. this required looking at my yahoo directions, which i felt i had been smart enough to print out and bring along. not even three miles from rose, i was looking at the directions determining how to get back on 150. and then i saw the car in front of me. right in front of me. stopped.

i know that the following happened:

• i yelled an expletive very loudly
• i slammed on the brakes
• i hit the car in front of me's bumper

i still can't tell you the order, but i think that was it. so we pull off, and we investigate the damage that i caused this girl's car. i had slowed down enough by when i hit her not to cause any structural damage, but i did chip her paint decently on her bumper. how, you ask? illinois requires license plates on both sides. my license plate dug into her paint. without it, i'm sure there wouldn't have been any damage.

so i'm freaking out: not only am i in indiana, but i'm stuck there until a cop shows up. with two obviously sorority girls from indiana state, which is just down the road. the cop takes literally 30 minutes to show up, and in this time period i have exchanged every piece of information with this girl and her friend possible. first she called her dad, and then we start talking about school and life.

the dad phone call when like this:

"daddy, it's cara. i'm in a car wreck, got hit from behind."

"great," i think. "chipped paint and now i've wrecked her vehicle and instantly become public enemy number one, superseding her boyfriend, on her father's 'to-kill-this-week-with-my-legally-registered-in-the-state-of-indiana-rifle' list."

she and her friend are smokers. they are "well-dressed". they have make-up on. their shoes make them tall, and they wear those damn sweater coat things that heather totally was wearing before most of these posers. either way, if these two had been at uiuc, they would be sorority girls, and they would be annoyed that they had to even deal with me. this sounds judgemental, but after awhile, you've got to accept that while there may be exceptions, statistics is not a junk science.

so in our conversation, it doesn't surprise me when they ask:

"so are you in a fraternity?"

i try to think of a good way to say no. usually i'd say, hell no, but i did just rear end this girl. i need to be as kiss-ass as possible, so i offer:

"no, i never really got around to having time to rush my freshman year, and ever since, with my job and all that..." i trail off, hoping they don't press for details.

"well, that's good. you're better off not in a fraternity," cara indicates. "we just came from the triangle house at rose, distributing party fliers for them for something this weekend." she explains.

she continued to talk about how smart the engineers were there. she's a sorority girl, talking about dreamily smart engineers. i must be in indiana, i think. so we talk about a lot of things: her fake id, uiuc's number one greek system, which schools made us news & world report's top engineering colleges list, and about the suburban that totaled her side in a parking lot last march. all in all, i almost felt like i befriended her. i'm sure that when the time comes for her to call me with the damage estimate, we won't be friends anymore. i'm already financially bracing.

i made it back to chambana around 11:15, and i rolled into the urbana espresso to talk to todd and nate. i wasn't expecting to, but i became hooked on the refridgerator poetry on the backside of the espresso machine. i don't know if i had something to say, or whatever, but i stood there talking to todd and nate for 45 minutes rearranging magnetic words.

yesterday was uneventful, and today was productive. and i went to espresso again. i noticed that my poetry had been left alone, so i just started to add to it as i talked to the various people around the counter. i got sucked in for an hour and a half this time, and this is what i came up with (with, in the end, a little guidance from todd):

and i think that sums it all up. tomorrow is the masquerade party, and i'll post pictures of my costume to that after i make it tomorrow. the weekend should be good, and i'm really looking forward to finally getting on top of schoolwork. i've had enough hijinx for awhile.

too much for now Wednesday November 6

there's going to be about six posts worth of material soon, as there is a lot to discuss in the past week. however, i have some ece homework due tomorrow at 1pm, and it's time to do that. this post should be removed and updated by friday. if not, i will not feel bad if you have lost all hope in my site. quoting angela, in an email to me:

i love how your life is always getting back to reality or normal or something... just in time for it to spin out of control again.

asako Saturday November 2

asako-san ga kita.