caitlinnick

Mr. Mostlymittens carries the torch

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:02:40 GMT

i'm home now, watching scrubs and futzing around on the computer, in my living room, with my cats and my wife. i am, notably, not in prison.

one may ask, but Rookie, why would you be in prison? you seem like a stand-up/law-abiding sort of chap. and your question would be apt, for i am indeed just such a fellow.

i might've been enjoying prison food tonight instead of caitlin-chili, because i might've killed a man or two. i might've slayed men. it was a very real possibility.
caitlin and i have spent the last couple of weeks searching for a new vehicle. Fivel Fatmouse (see below) has taken us far, and has been a wonderful addition to our family. but he's a big, hungry boy, and we just can't afford to keep feeding him like this. (he's also not terribly helpful when trying to find public parking.)

so we hit up the trusty search-site, Craigslist. as one feels when looking at a rainbow, we felt the possibilities were endless. like a rainbow, however, we found only illusions, myths, and broken promises.

the first attempt was a 2004 honda civic. i went to see it the day before my mom arrived for a visit. it was PERFECT. low miles, great gas mileage, drove well, clean title - the works. and what's more, the kid selling the car was asking a very reasonable price. we agreed. a deal was struck. a bargain made. hands were shaken, and hopes soared. the next day, as we piled inside the van to go get our new car, i get a call - the father had found out what his sons were charging, and forced them to raise the price by $2000. damnit.

the second attempt was to be made in the realm of dealerships. let me say this, once, now; i won't go back to that land without a weapon. we were hustled, cajolled, solicited, pushed, and lied to. we drove a car. we wanted this car. we made an offer, which was refused, then accepted, then refused. three or four days later, i have come to wonder whether it is truly the way of the world that large men in dark suits wait around the corners to smile and pick my pockets.

yesterday we went to a smaller dealership, and made a deal on a car. it was going to cost us more than what we had initially wanted to pay, but our exasperation was such that the extra money seemed worth it. we asked the dealer to give us a day to think about it.
this morning, caitlin found a car up in Novato. a 2004 honda civic - as if the irony weren't thick enough already. the asking price was reasonable, and so we went to see it. after negotiation and test driving, we payed an uncomfortable-but-reasonable sum to a nice young man, and had ourselves a car. little did we know that the tax at the DMV would slap us so hard, but i suppose that's just how it feels when the other shoe drops for the third or fourth time.

anyway. lords and ladies, it is my great pleasure to introduce,

Mr. Mostlymittens:

(okay, this last one isn't actually our exact car, but i didn't have any daylight photos.)

let's hope i don't have to ever do that again. at least not for a few years.

-r.

Stranger Than Fiction

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:42:22 GMT

caitlin and i recently bought a few movies for cheap prices - among them, "Stranger Than Fiction." i had forgotten, unforgivably forgotten, how amazing this movie was. i have watched it again, and remembered.

good evening.

-r.

curiosity

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:04:30 GMT

among my basic personal drives, i think the greatest is my desire to understand why things happen. the "how" and "what" are interesting in their own ways, and i do pursue them, but it's the "why" at which i'm always grasping. for this five minutes, the "why" i'm curious about is the israeli-palestinian conflict. i'm sure i'll move on to other things, and i very much doubt i'll ever have the full explanation of the situation, but the conflict has set up camp in my cortex.

"married life"

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:34:33 GMT

"so. how's married life?" i am besieged by this question, and being myself in all my nerdsome glory, i've become entranced by its implications. i've cobbled together a couple of general precepts, and will list them. once listed and understood, i will follow these premises with my response to this ubiquitous and vexing query.

1. i have been asked this many many times, but almost exclusively by unmarried people. given that married people seem not to feel the need to ask, and all unmarried people ask in the exact same way, this implies that there is a general social understanding that all marriage is inherently similar. if unmarried, one asks the same question of everyone, thus suggesting a particular expected response, and once married, one no longer asks the question, implying that one knows the answer firsthand.
2. the existence and pervasiveness of the question imply a general concept of married life as necessarily distinct from unmarried life, and even somewhat mystical by comparison.

So. How IS Married Life? (you ask)
not very different from unmarried life, at least for me. the inherent implication is, of course, that my experience is abnormal - so don't take this to be representative of the general population. however, i never was the type of unmarried person to have meaningless trysts, nor even to engage in (what i considered to be) casual relationships. romantic or otherwise, my relationships have always been committed and meaningful, born of mutual affection and personal compatibility (or combatibility, in bryce's case).
for the year or two before we got married, caitlin and i had been living together, in either official or unofficial capacities. and even before that, we lived very near to one another, and spent much of our time together. we argued "like a married couple," made decisions together "like a married couple," and generally seemed to behave in ways that most of our friends described as analogous to married life.
so now that i'm married? it's about the same. as i told the man who most recently asked me The Question - my life now contains approximately 30% more Caitlin, my diet has improved, and the tax breaks are nice.

good evening.

-r.

Rookie's Breakfast-which-is-almost-always-actually-lunch recipe

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:26:39 GMT

like omelettes? me too. i don't cook much around here, since caitlin's an amazing chef and i'm a lazy bum, but i do cook a mean omelette pretty regularly, and i've gotten pretty efficient at it. here's my favorite:

Ingredients:
3 large eggs
milk
shredded cheese
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 slices of smoked turkey, chopped
salt
black pepper
turmeric
chili powder
garlic powder
dry basil

Butter a 12" frying pan, and fry up the onions and turkey until lightly browned. While frying, whip the eggs with a splash of milk (don't use too much, or it runs in the pan), and add the above spices to taste - for a spicier omelette, use more pepper and turmeric; for sweeter, fry a little more onion, and use more basil. Remove the onion and turkey from the pan.
Pour the whipped eggs/spices into the pan. When the egg has cooked approximately halfway through, spread the onion and turkey over the center of the eggs. Use a spatula to fold the sides over the onion and turkey. Flipping the omelette to cook the edges of the other side can be tricky, so I like to either cut the thing in half or use two spatulas. Anyway, flip the omelette, and let it 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on desires runniness. Flip back over, sprinkle with cheese, and serve.

Another ridiculously long Yosemite dueling picture-post

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:06:54 GMT

Caitlin: This past weekend, after the job stuff and school had me not feeling so great, I dragged my darling husband once more into the semi-tamed wilderness of Yosemite National Park. Since we probably weren't going to go for Thanksgiving this year, and all the roads were still clear of snow, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to get away, and see some of the sections of the park that we haven't before. To be perfectly honest, the over-commercialized Valley was getting boring.
R: s'true. the despite its enormity, after a couple of visits, one begins to get the feeling one has seen everything that the valley has to offer. also, caitlin neglected to mention that she'd been begging to go camping every hour on the hour for the prior month and a half, so - you know. it was about time.
C: Let's give me a little credit here. It was at least every half hour. But, at last! The magical day of my husbands acqueiescence arrived, and on Saturday we drove off to the park. My possibly bad plan was to stay at a walk-in camp called Hodgdon Meadow. It had 105 campsites, but still. A walk-in campground can be sort of scary, especially mid-way through the weekend when people are already ensconsed in their camps.

R: as things turned out, we were more than fine for space. of the 105 sites, i'd say maybe a third were taken when we got there on Saturday. by the time we left on Monday, there were only a handful of other people in the campground. all of which gave the place a pleasantly secluded feel during the day, and a nightly ambience of terrifying, dangerous isolation.
C: Adding to this was the fact that we camped at the furthest removed spot, down a hill, with no other inhabited campgrounds around us. It was just us and some really, really tall trees.

R: we had arrived fairly early in the afternoon, and while we didn't have enough light left to drive anywhere, we decided to explore our surroundings and try a little birding. i was thusly reacquainted with the knowledge that i loathe birding in Yosemite.
C: Birding is Yosemite is hard...the place is too big, with too many different habitats. It's really difficult to know where to go, especially if you've seen the normal repertoire of coniferous species. We did each get a few lifebirds in two days though, so we really can't complain much. Uhhhh.....birding aside, we returned from our little walk for an awesome dinner that Nick cooked for us.

R: it had been a while since i'd cooked over an open fire - i guess it had actually been a while since i'd cooked anything at all. but the barbeque chicken came out pretty nicely, if vaguely underdone, and we only had to cook and eat by flashlight one night out of the two.
C: By pretty nicely, he means absolutely deliciously. We went to bed well fed, if not in any way warm...it dropped below freezing both nights, and despite having about 4-6 blankets, couldn't seem to stay warm in any capacity. Partly to blame is my hatred for confining sleeping bags...but in the end, we survived. Nick made oatmeal in the morning, and then it was off to Tioga Road, which passes through the mountains and climbs up to 10,000 feet towards the end. But first! We met a very special friend along the side of the road.

R: it came quickly to my attention that i'm the only person in the world who has any common sense in reference to bears. upon seeing said bear, you know what caitlin did? screamed, "BEARBEARBEARBEARTHEREWASABEARGOBACKBEARBEARBEARBEAR!!!!," made me turn around and go back so that she could roll down the window and take flash-photography of the young, but still formiddable predator. in her defense, the people behind us were stupider - they got out of the car and walked over to take pictures.
C: And I didn't roll the window down all the way, just enough so that there wouldn't be window glare when I took the pictures! Besides, the bear was at least 30 feet away from us still, and seemed pretty content to do just what he's doing in the picture: snuffle through leaves and dirt.

R: whatever. it was a baby bear. you keep the windows up, engine running, and a blowhorn handy in case momma bear shows up. anyway, we drove through the valley a bit, and hopped (for the first time) on tioga road; our hearts all a-flutter.
C: The above picture is really the first little attraction you hit while on Tioga Road, called Siesta Lake. While I wouldn't take a nap there myself, it was a pretty little spot. They had an interpretive sign, talking about how the lake is a glacial remnant which will eventually disappear; the lake will get smaller and smaller until it turns into a marsh, which will turn into a prairie, which will turn into the forest. You know, hundreds of years down the line.

R: ecologyecologyblahblah. anyway, upon finding nothing but frustratingly elusive birds, we kept moving. we came to a little stream, around which there were some walking paths and big rocks for bouldering around on. we were mega-tired, and caitlin had gotten kind of cranky by this point and started worrying for my safety. i, of course, ignored my safety altogether and climbed ever upward to my peril.
C: Yeah, but like he said, I was cranky from having not slept due to the freezing cold. So eventually I managed to convince him that we should head back to our car. The obvious presence of our mammalian friends helped.

R: that there, dear friends, is not a rabbit-track. it is, in fact, about twenty times the size of a rabbit track, and were a bear to place his or her paw just there, he or she would find it to be a pretty good fit.
there were mountain lion tracks too, but nothing with stark enough light/shadow contrast for photographing.
C: From there, we still had to cross back over the river. Anyone who read our very first Yosmite post may find the next shot oddly familiar...

R: the waters of that terrible place seem to want to claim my wife. but for their shallow depth and imperceptibly slow motion, she'd be lost to us.
C: Once I had escaped the river, mostly unscathed, we continued down the road. Up and up we climbed, and as we went there were more signs of our increased elevation, and the decreased temperature. There were numerous rock slopes that were covered in quickly melting icicles. The one thing I couldn't capture on camera was that there were tiny drops of water moving underneath the ice sheets, so that it looked like the whole rock wall was moving in front of us.

R: i may have eaten one of those icicles (which caitlin originally spelled "icecycles"). i may have feasted on its mountain-streamy-goodness. maybe.
C: (ignores the husband) From there the road wound around a few valleys and overlooks, and we stopped at Olmsted point, where Rookie quickly took to clambering around the rocks again, and I demurely followed the trodden path because of tiredness. Here he is with a cute little bristlecone pine.

R: not sure she's ever been "demure" in her life. but anyway. yep. that's me. standing by a tree. about 9,000 feet up.
C: In the picture below there's a little lump of a rock in the middle, just cresting out into the sky. See it? That's half-dome, from really far away. There'll be video of it on my facebook in a little bit.

R: being from the midwest, one forgets that there are grand places in the world. from atop a hill in iowa, one might be able to describe the landscape as "big," "peaceful," or "pastorally quaint." let me remind you: there are places that are so regal and grandiose as to stagger the imagination. not to say anything against cornfields, of which i'm quite fond.
C: You know what he's also fond of? Snow. For about fifteen minutes of driving every time we'd pass snow he'd yell like I did for the bear, until finally I let him out of the car to run free. There he is, in the middle of a snow patch, and if you could see his face, it would radiate with insane happiness.

R: "insane" is a bit harsh - i was homesick. it was a tiny, hardened, icy patch of home.
C: If you say so.
R: caitlin's falling asleep, so i guess we'll wrap things up. finally, we reached the top of Tioga Road, where it becomes Tioga Pass. caitlin wanted to get me up to 10,000 feet, and we got there. the view from the top was pretty spectacular, and i've got some video of the meadow and surrounding mountain peaks that will go up on facebook.

C: I'd say more, but the oven just beeped to say the pizza's ready. Gotta go!
R: needless to say, it was another great weekend at California's camping-Mecca. the nights were a frozen hell, but the days provided a much-needed and gorgeous escape from the concerns of joblessness and homework.

R: and because caitlin absolutely adores the close-up function on our camera, please enjoy,
CAITLIN'S CLOSE-UP MONTAGE!!!!!

(R: puzzled as to why there's a picture of my hands? if you look very closely, you'll see tiny puncture wounds and bitty little rocks embedded in my flesh. check out caitlin's facebook in another couple hours to see why.)

sooper!

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:47:40 GMT

i actually went out for pizza and beer with...dare i say - friends! this marks the first time i've just hung out with people since beloit without needing some kind of pretext (i.e., gaming, frisbee) to do so.

very exciting! now caitlin and i have both found some kind of casual, non-each-other relationships!

-r.

Trivial, and other (pt. 2)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:57:27 GMT

(i have absolutely no time whatsoever to post. and yet.)

-during the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton was often painted by the media to be the "first female presidential candidate." she was nothing of the sort. in 1964, Margaret Chase Smith submitted her name for the Republican nomination, and in 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first woman, and the first (major party) black candidate to submit her name for the Democratic nomination. both women were pretty cool, albeit very different in their experiences and politics, and both have been largely lost to the biases of textbook and history book publishers and authors. check 'em out.
-this one's not new for me, but it's worth saying: eminent anthropologist and epistemologist, Clifford Geertz, wrote the worst sentence in the history of modern english;

"In any case, whatever the models, the image of the hardy traveler, sorely beset but terribly interested, never leavs the book, and it connects his account to a type of social consciousness - vulgar in the root, not the tendentious, sense of the word - that this almost classic normalien (even though he was, as he carefully points out in Tristes Tropiques, by his own choice, not literally one) would never admit to and indeed has spent much of his career distancing himself from." (Works and Lives, 1968)

as may be apparent, i'm back from minnesota. i was there for a funeral, and it was accordingly not an easy trip, but i think we're all handling it the best we can. i delivered my first eulogy - a bizarre experience - and got to visit my grandfather's grave for the first time in years, which was cathartic.
now that i'm back, i have a monstrous amount of make-up reading to do, which is in fact what i should be doing at this very moment. but i've accomplished quite a bit of it already, and have also put together a preliminary annotated bibliography for my thesis - at this point it's really nothing more than a list of books, and descriptions of why i think each one might end up being helpful for me, but it took a long time and should make the research process flow a little more smoothly.

-r.

Trivial, and other

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:30:14 GMT

-in 1969, a Native American cultural group in San Francisco took control of the recently-abandoned Alcatraz Island, claiming it under the terms of an old treaty in its capacity as federally forsaken land. They claimed the land and its buildings, saying that they intended to turn it into a Native American cultural center. The federal government, however, ignored the issue entirely, and after a year the media and the public lost interest in the story. The activists on the island lost all momentum in the public sphere that after a year of occupation, and simply left.

other news? i have an art-blog now. i'm still setting it up - i need to go back and enter captions - but all the images are up. i created it mainly for the sake of being able to involve myself in the weekly meme, Illustration Friday. but i thought you all might be interested as well. you can find it at http://idlehands-busymind.blogspot.com.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:20:36 GMT

some weeks ago, i was on the phone with my mother, from whom i have inherited my great love of literature, and she recommended to me a book. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz. i was skeptical at first, because while she and i may share a passion for books, we have fairly divergent tastes. but she told me that she and my sister both enjoyed this book, and i agreed she should mail it to me. which she did, and fifteen minutes ago, i finished reading it.

this is a remarkable book. with any conscience at all, i must warn potential readers that it is at many moments sexually graphic, unflinchingly violent, and designed to tear the heart to pieces. the story chronicles the life of oscar "wao" cabral - an ugly, nerdy, deeply romantic but hopelessly asocial young man - as told through the history of his family's experiences and ultimate escape from the Dominican Republic under the cruel dictatorship of President Trujillo in the mid 1900's. it is a tale of superstition, destiny, fear, sex, violence, and identity.

in the interests of fairness, i will say that there are moments when the voice of the narrator becomes confusingly anonymous, and i would think that a basic knowledge of Spanish is extremely helpful (if not necessary) for full appreciation of the text. but overall, Diaz paints a horrifying but extremely moving portrait of a man trying to live a life of meaning. if you're interested in history; if you enjoy dark, gritty fiction; if you're interested in ethnic studies or social psychology - i recommend you pick up a copy of this book.

(by the way? my birthday is on october 30th. if everyone i've ever met pitches in a dollar, you guys could get me a copy of "The Red Book" diary of Carl Jung. just a thought.)
(and if we work together to set up an international fundraiser, and everyone who's ever lived donates a dollar, i can buy the original manuscript.)

-r.

Trivial

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:59:55 GMT

-i'm told by a reliable (yet unbearably obnoxious) source, that lesbians are actually generally at a higher risk for breast cancer. this is because, apparently, the lower rate of births and breast-feeding amongst lesbian women has something to do with putting a chink in the armor of their immunities.
-according to studies done by one dr. spiegel at Stanford, the average life span of women with breast cancer is lengthened by approximately two years by attending breast cancer support group therapy for a year.

oh it's such a perfect day.

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:45:47 GMT

a classmate in globalization tonight asked me to e-mail her my reaction paper and notes on the book we just finished discussing in class. apparently she found my discussion points thoroughly insightful, to the point where she wanted record of them along with my interpretation of the text.
i also submitted my application for a job today for which i am radically unqualified, but which represents the very height of what i could possibly hope for in a job right now.
and faust's been extra cute today.

it's been a good day. sleep well, friends.

-n.

Trivial

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:49:50 GMT

-apparently during the early days of Italian immigration to the United States, there was some tension between the Irish and Italian communities related to their interpretations of Roman Catholic practice, particularly as related to feste. Feste is a religious festival celebrated by Italian Roman Catholics, which seems heathenish and actually pagan to the similarly marginalized Irish Roman Catholics.
-walgreens only offers one weekly planner, and it costs $15. i've been assured that this is a pretty middle-of-the-road price, but i still can't help feeling i've been screwed with my pants on.

Don'tcha know?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:00:40 GMT

i've decided that i have trouble remembering to post here. and it's not that i don't have things to say, but more that i have trouble thinking of interesting or creative ways to say them. but i've had an idea. i'm going to start a series, which will inevitably fizzle out, of items of trivia from my life. the content of the trivia will give you some idea of what i'm up to on a day-to-day basis, and the series shall be called,

"OH KNOW HE DIDN'T"**

10/11
-Did you know that the popular "and God bless the United States of America" that ends every presidential speech was not a convention until Reagan started saying it?
-Cuban American students as a group have much higher achievement and school engagement rates than Mexican American or Puerto Rican students, but while Cuban American students tend to feel disengaged when they are not achieving high scores, Puerto Rican students tend to feel more or less the same level of engagement regardless of their academic achievement.
-George W. Bush's economic policy took Keynesian economics - which suggests a regulated market and a distribution of wealth to combat poverty and inequality - and perverted it such that he regulated the market and used deficit funds to cut programs for the lower and middle class and offer tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest 5% of the population. his economic policy was actually an keynesian abomination, manifesting with the worst possible effects of neoliberal (anti-keynesian) practice. that's talent.

-r.

**kidding. just kidding.***
***it will be called "KNOWTABLE FACTS"*****
*****seriously though. it won't be called anything. i'm just going to knowtify you of knowteworthy items.

oh, and another thing -

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:26:09 GMT

the small-government people make me crazy.
[whiny, frightened voice]Oh NO! if the government gets too big, we won't have any freedoms anymore! whatever shall we do?[/whiny, frightened voice]

shut up and ponder the state of the world a moment, would you? [ironic, judging tone]as if government is really the only power in the world that could or would curtail your freedoms. as if corporate interests wouldn't eat your Goddamn freedoms on toast.[/ironic judging tone]

Genesis

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:20:47 GMT

it looks like it's going to be a busy quarter. i'm apparently taking 1 additional class more than the standard workload. anyway, while i haven't had the kind of full exposure to them that i'd need to make a full assessment, i figure i could probably jot down a few initial impressions:

The Study of Social Well-Being:
Cons:
-There are at least two other students in the class who have made it abundantly clear that they will be making things difficult for the rest of us; a woman in her third year who is quite sure she knows more than the rest of us, and a person (gender unsure) who practically sent out fliers warning us that he or she will be offended early, and offended often.
-The professor seems like kind of a push-over
-Actually, the whole course seems like kind of a push-over. A lot of reading, but next to no writing, most of which will be extraordinarily easy.

Pros:
-The professor is a professional social worker, and she seems very knowledgeable about this particular specialty.
-The readings look interesting.
-The class will be largely discussion-based.
-I've already learned a bunch about the movement to end welfare in the US, and much about why it failed and how it partially succeeded.

Prejudice & Discrimination:
Cons:
-The material seems pretty basic; for instance, we've started out with definitions of terms like "race," "minority," and "discrimination"
-The professor has a very think accent, and he's often hard to understand. He's from Congo, and has only spoken English for 4 years.

Pros:
-Professor Goma comes off immediately as passionate, effusive, funny, and knowledgeable on a broad range of historical and theoretical topics.
-While the course does seem to address some remedial material, Prof Goma seems to have a knack for approaching this material in thought-provoking and often preconception-breaking ways.
-I'm already working in a group, and my groupmates seem like friendly and intelligent folk.

Globalization:
Cons:
-The same two annoying people from Social Well-Being are in this one too.
-The class involves a lot of economic theory and reading, which lies on the far side of the discipline from my normal comfort-zone.

Pros:
-The class involves a lot of economic theory and reading, which lies on the far side of the discipline from my normal comfort-zone.
-Professor Jennings, who is the director of the Grad program, seems very smart, and very casual and approachable.
-The class is all discussion, all the time.
-Taking a class with the Grad program director gives me an excuse to get to know one of the most potentially useful people at CSU.
-I have already gotten a good critical overview of neoliberal theory, and how neoliberalization and financialization of foreign markets screw national and regional economies to the wall under the guise of protecting individual freedoms. You want to know the craziest thing about neoliberalism I've learned so far? While it was the drive to promote neoliberal states - states with unregulated capitalist marketplaces and corporate freedom - that created the IMF and WTO, it was also the belief in fundamental neoliberal theory - that states shouldn't bail each other out and should instead compete on the world stage - that drove Reagan to want to abolish the IMF.*** Extra-strength Crazy.

***try reading this sentence over to yourself a few times, and then try to imagine reading it for 3 hours. that's what i just finished doing. i get to present on this topic next week.

Delicious Dinner

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:47:34 GMT

Here's tonight's dinner. It's my attempt to pretend that it's autumn in the awful 90 degree hot place that I currently live.

It's a butternut-apple-sweet potato squash soup, with herby biscuits on the side. Nick really liked it, which was awesome.

Here's a close-up:

Wunderbar!

-Caitlin

chicken soup for the 20-something soul

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:36:06 GMT

i had a conversation about my thesis and my theory-related future plans with professor rob lafleur** the other night, during which he told me with excitement and pride that our respective research fields would put us in a great position to "be of use to one another."
One Another.
i might've cried. if i were, like, a human. who did that kind of thing. you know? i might've.

last night, i sojourned to the mountain of knowledge, and attended my first graduate level course. it made an impression, and i'll talk more about that once i've been introduced to the other two courses. i have decided one thing, however:
grad school's gonna be hard.

**of the beloit college anthropology and history depts. - a wonderful man and a great mentor

-N.

My dessert

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:10:22 GMT

Hey all. I (Caitlin) made a bread pudding today. And I think it looks pretty darn nice.

Yum!

-C.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:33:44 GMT

Better Angels wallpaper. One of these days, Buttons is going to send me her sketches. She promised.

In the meantime, I keep producing piece after piece in the name of a project for which I have no intention of doing any of the art, and for which I seem utterly incapable of writing a damn word.

posting an awful lot.

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:56:58 GMT

i seem to be posting a lot. which i guess is largely because i'm drawing all the time and like to share. here's something marginally substantive, to tide you over until we do real things:

our new apartment comes equipped with a gym, of sorts. it's actually a large game-room/lounge area that's been (mostly) converted into a workout room. it still has some remnants of its last incarnation - a little coffee table, a couple comfy-but-ratty chairs, and a beige couch that may have been just about any other color, but many years ago. time has worn away that memory.
since its renovation, the management have added to this room some exercise equipment. there're two treadmills, two stairmasters, an eliptical (which is a bike that doesn't go anywhere), and an all-purpose weight machine, which is a jumble of metal beams that may or may not have been developed during the age of steam power and monacles. one of the treadmills, one of the stairmasters, and the eliptical thing don't work. there's also something called an "ab-roller," the point and use of which might be surmised from the name and the design of the thing, but it would have to be done by a brighter mind than my own. for now, the weird thing has me stumped.
as i think about it, i might be developing a principled aversion to workout rooms, and exercise equipment in general. at their core, these machines are meant to simulate physically demanding life experiences, but they do so without providing any experience of life itself. they are, at their most basic level, a sham - designed to develop the appearance of strength and fitness for operating in the physical world, on people who lose time spent living directly proportionate to the amount of time spent cultivating the appearance of vitality. they are lie machines.

however, they also serve this purpose so that i can work on my health and fitness without looking like a noodly idiot out in the world. so i'll probably keep going. the good news, for now, is that i can still run a mile. i'll work my way back up to two, and hopefully just keep getting better.

-r.

hunter update

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:45:31 GMT

post-photoshopping

arts

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:27:47 GMT

some muscle study. mostly an excuse to practice arm/leg muscle structure, both of which still elude my grasp, though if nothing else i'm starting to get an idea of where all the muscles are supposed to be.

some neverwhere fan art - hunter, standing over Defeated Foe # Whatever. i'll probably finish, crop, and photoshop this later, assuming i can get a satisfactory picture of it.

The Cats and the Caitlin

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:15:10 GMT

Hello all! As promised, an update on the cats, and a general description of what my life is going to be like starting next week. I know I haven't posted here (or on my regular livejournal) in a million years, and I'm sorry. :-(

We've been moving into our apartment all month. We started the first weekend of August, and took a new load of stuff down every weekend until Sunday. Sunday we moved the cats and the bed, and were officially here to stay. We had to go clean our other apartment on Tuesday, but with the bed and the animals moved, we were here more permanently as of this weekend.

The trip down took about 2 hours, and the cats were...alright. Faust did really, really well. It was just really important for him to be able to see Hestia. Cause he's a good big brother. The Kitten (or Mitten as we call her most of the time), was less good. She cried and squirmed and scratched her kitty case the whole way down. And once we got here, this is where she spent about 6 hours:

She's that brownish blob under the couch. And I think that may be Faust's tail in the corner of that picture. He was really excellent the whole time, and off exploring instantly. This may have had more to do with his inability to fit under the couch (and we didn't have the recliner yet), so it was a sort of forced bravery. But he handled it well enough.

Hestia did come out eventually. She mostly seemed very concerned about the long hallway. It really freaked her out. But then the windows were just too interesting...

They really love those giant windows. And hey, so do we.

Another cute picture, showing just how much they think they own the place now.

Alright, to be honest, we put them up there. It's a little too high for them to jump right now, but we're going to get some shelves for the desk, and then they'll be able to manage it.

So, that's the cats! And then what's up with me...

Well, I have graduate school orientation on Monday. And I start classes on Thursday. Right now I'm signed up for Intro to Museums, Museum Fundraising, and Museum Education and Outreach. It's a pretty good line-up of classes, and I'm excited to be starting. Four days! I begin grad school in four days!

Otherwise, I still don't have a job, but I'm working on it. I applied to another position at the California Academy of Sciences today, though it would be a collections job sooo...not quite what I'm going for. That's alright, I need experience everywhere I can get it. I've also applied to a therapy position with autistic kids again, since I have some experience with that now. We have enough financial aide and savings to keep us going for a while, but a job would be nice.

The other thing that's got me really excited is that I invested in a trial period with a CSA (community supported agriculture) at Eatwell Farms (www.eatwell.com). So every other week, for 8 weeks, we're going to get a giant box of organic produce. Given how much we cook, and eat fruits and veggies, I think this is going to be awesome. We just went for the trial though, because I'm honestly not sure this is going to be practical. It promises to be delicious for the next two months though.

I think that's about it for me and the beasts. I'll try to make updates once school actually starts to let people know how that's going.

Much love to all!

-Caitlin

our joints are the most entertaining joints.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:48:46 GMT

R: greetings family and friends! caitlin and i are (sort of) successfully moved into our new apartment in Hayward, CA. we've unpacked most of the boxes, situated the furniture, and even had time to do a little decorating.
if i went another 6 hours without posting pictures, my mother would fly out and murder me in my new home, so here again, you know it, you love it -

C: Hello all you happy people! To provide some background, Hayward is the city that CSU East Bay is in, where Nick will be going for his masters in Sociology. We decided to live here instead of closer to my campus (SFSU) because he has class from 7-10 at night. Also...San Francisco is scary expensive. Even this place here in Hayward is $300+ more than what we were paying a month in Sacramento, though it's much much bigger, and much nicer than our previous place.

Here's the layout, and Nick even photoshopped in the furniture:

R: i think this little bit of work should clearly demonstrate to the reader the thousands of hours i've spent drawing furniture, and the dedication i felt toward this endeavor. it's all EXACTLY to scale.
anyway, caitlin's right. while this apartment is costing us exorbitant moneys, it is much more spacious, and in a much nicer complex than our place in sacramento. and when we moved out here, we actually had some concept of what we wanted to do with the space, and while we were furnishing and decorating, we kept in mind a couple of basic tips out of some interior decorating books that have somehow manifested in our lives. every other apartment i've ever been in has looked much smaller once furniture was moved into it. this place actually looks bigger.
C: I think we've done a pretty good job. And I hope you guys like it too. Or that it maybe entices you into coming to see us. Look! Shiny apartment! (and you can follow along on the handy little map!)

R: #718. we don't live on the seventh floor. thank christ. we live on the third floor, and getting our furniture and MANYMANY boxes of books up the stairs was hard enough.
C: Here's the long front hallway. To the direct left (that you can't see) is the bathroom. To the right there is the bedroom. To the less direct left is the way to the kitchen (which you also can't see). And then the doors on the left are the coat closet. And THEN the green door at the end of the hallway is the door out to the patio, with the living room to the right of that, and the dining room to the left.
Are you oriented yet? Eh...

R: when we first toured the apartments in this area, we were absolutely blown away by the sheer volume of closet space in most of them. oddly enough, though this apartment was the priciest one we toured, it doesn't have a whole lot more storage space than our sacramento place. the majority of the storage is contained in this hallway, and while it was enough for our stuff, there's no space for anything else. we could not, for example, sublet to dwarves or stash babies.*
C: You think he's joking. One place we visited has <b>seven closets</b>. In a one bedroom apartment. But, anyway, our place...this is a close-up of the front hallway. We've put up a little coat hanger for our backpacks and canes and things. And we have my nice sconce and old iron mailbox on the walls. We think it looks nice.

R: time-out for a personal aside: the washing machines here just totally washed out the color from one of my favorite shirts. i'm going to have a destructive relationship with the laundry machines at mission heights. i can already tell.
anyway. i'm okay. deep breaths. where were we? ah. yes. i feel i should give credit where credit is due, in fairness to all parties. and the credit is due to me. i hung those things, perfectly level, in that attractive pattern, with the steady hand of a craftsman. i'm an artiste, on the computer, and in the home. martha Goddamned stewart.
C: Uhhh...yes. Nick seems to be some sort of instant master at hanging things properly. Like the pictures in our bathroom! Here's our bathroom!

C: Thrilling, I know. At least the pictures are nice I think. Moooving on...

R: the living room is, i think, the perfect example of what i was talking about earlier. in most apartments i've ever seen, if you tried to cram 2 bookshelves, a tv, a loveseat, a recliner, a desk, and a bunch of miscellaneous other junk into a single room, that room is going to shrink in size. in our place? all these things are situated comfortably and accessibly, and there's still plenty of space to move between rooms. case in point: this picture was taken from a solid 12 feet away from the loveseat, and there's still nothing between the camera and the living room.
C: The living room really is the best part of the apartment in my mind. We've been careful in our purchases, but the space is just wonderful and open and airy. And those giant windows? Look out over a huge garden below us, and has a maple tree right on our level. And when the windows are open, we get all the wind sweeping in from the bay.
Below we have the workspace area, with the bookshelves, desk, my awesome vintage lamp, and our Gosselar painting of a Magpie and a Barn Owl (a lovely wedding gift from Ms. Maggie Gosselar herself).

R: having a gosselar or two hanging in a room really brightens things up. not quite like having gosselar herself hanging around your living room, but nothing ever is...
C: Here's the little shelf. We bought it from Ikea and Nick painted it himself and hung it up. This is probably not the final design for what will go up there, but it's cute as-is and brightens up the room. If you can't tell, we're really investing in the little things to make this place comfy...

C: The dining room. And a picture for which I chewed out Nick already. He photographs the ugly litter box, but doesn't get the cute light that came with the apartment? *rolls eyes* He claims he was trying to give you a picture of the view of the patio outside. At least you can see the hanging monkeys I guess...
Also, the dining room isn't decorated yet. We're getting there.

R: there has been some talk of putting in a hutch. which would look nice, i grant you. it does necessitate, however, buying a hutch.
C: I'm thinking more large squares of fabric. But that's for later. Here's a picture of my second-favorite things about the whole apartment. Both the front door and the patio door have SCREEN DOORS on them. I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. We just keep the doors open all day. The temperature in here is incredible.

R: i remain a little upset that i live in a room that comes without air conditioning, but i guess that's kind of status quo 'round these parts.
caitlin is right, though. the balcony is incredible. there's a ton of space, and it looks out over the large, verdant courtyard, and it even has that little annex you see there at the back of the photo, from which you can see the hill behind our apartment. the hill houses a horse ranch, as well as small birds and an enormous blue sky, all the time. rural peace is about fifty paces away.
C: For the patio, we're going to buy some cheap furniture and a hummingbird feeder. We already bought (and brought) a few smaller plants, but we also got this giant grasses that we're putting in the corners. I think one of them may be taller than me...

R: ...she says, as if that's difficult.
C: I'm gonna ignore that. Here's the dining room looking into the kitchen. While it's not -that- much bigger than my old kitchen, there are a few notable differences. The bottom cabinets are deep enough to let my nice serving platters lie flat and not dangerously tilted. And the oven is big enough for two racks! Two of them! Luxury of luxuries.

R: truly, 'tis a temple.
one must understand, while in many homes, the kitchen is simply a place to throw something in your Nuker Deluxe 3000 and hit 'start,' in the Cragoe/Lill household, the we spend damn near as much time in the kitchen as any other room. caitlin cooks an entree and at least two side dishes routinely, or alternately a mish-mash of all the foods we could want cooked into a single dish. while she does so, i am usually chopping vegetables, garlic, onion, meat, and anything else there is to be chopped. we also wash all our dishes by hand. suffice it to say, even a small step up in kitchen quality is a big deal around here.
C: And as an added bonus, the kitchen has this adorable area over the sink. Decorations subject to change, but this was a decent first shot I thought. The crocodile will likely stay on the shelf. He looks good there.

R: he does look good there. and he's not alone.

we're pretty comfortable in the new place. we're settling in fine. and hey, so are the cats i guess - we just spent thirty seconds panicking because we couldn't find hestia. turns out she'd been sleeping in the tv-stand.
those are the pictures, and this is the post. caitlin assures me she's going to make another post about the cats, and about her schedule as news unfolds. in the meantime, we'll be applying to jobs, getting accustomed to our new environment, and learning to relax in a climate not quite so close to hell's boiling lake of fire.

*two of a number of possible scenarios in some of the other fine apartments we've seen.