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swordandfire
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Name: Eric
Location: California, United States
Birthday: 4/6/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: Anime, Video Games, Board Games, any Games Workshop Game (well almost any), Movies, Books, Biology, Tennis, Reading a bunch of forums, wathcing lots of web toons, finnding out what is happening in my life after college...
Expertise: Procrastination, bad spelling, some say my miniture painting skills, smash brothers, maybe some other stuff as well...
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Nicholas Elric
Member Since:
11/5/2004
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| Well here I am roughly six months after my last xanga post. In that time alot has happened and I'm definitely not where I thought I would be but, I think all things considered, I am grateful for what I have and where I am.
I finally went on my first run in La Verne today. It was good to get outside and get some sun and exercise, although my poor malnourished body was not exactly up to task. Still, I figure if I sneak in a run or two a week I will be a healthier happier person.
After my run I was able to just sit in a patch of shade on some grass and think for a bit. It was nice. Sometimes I fear that I keep myself busy with this or that so I won't have to think or feel. In retrospect that's probably true and something that I need to address.
It has been a good week. It's spring break at school and I have a break in my research. The past six months have been full of failure in terms of research. Perhaps not failure but not the type of success you hope for. Still, I believe I've figured out my problems and will hopefully be able to give my professor some results in the coming weeks once the new supplies I ordered come in.
I'm finally starting to feel at home here in La Verne and at school at Cal Poly. It feels less like I'm a stranger and more like I belong there. I'm even starting to develop relationships that might turn into friendships. Right now I would say we are colleagues, either TAs or lab mates, but the camaraderie is nice.
I think I did good job as a TA. I taught an intro biology course for majors. I was far from perfect and had an unfortunate incident of blatant cheating in my class but overall I think the students liked me. More importantly I think some of them learned. It made me happy when I had students asking if they could work in my lab or how they could get involved in research. I'm teaching the same class this quarter and hope to do even better.
Spiritually I'm not sure where I am. I can still say that God is good but the longer I live the more I see that I don't understand. Sometimes I'm not sure if I want to understand. I am in an environment at college that tempts me to place too much stock on intellectualism and reason. I am at times bitter and angry. I desperately want to feel and at the same time don't want to feel. Yet despite all this God has placed me here. Indeed he has placed me here in LA and at a church with a priest that is perfect for where I am.
At first I missed my priest and preachers of old who would take a passage and use intellect to glean truth from it. They would use their knowledge of the language, of the culture or their knowledge from their schooling to expose upon what scripture taught. This priest on the other hand (much to my chagrin at first) generally keeps things simple. He generally tells a story, a parable if you will, either from scripture or not, and generally relates it to love or the scripture lesson of the day. At first my intellect rebeled. I wanted to think. To reason. To test my knowledge. Lately however, I have come to appreciate the manner in which he teaches. He is smart man and could easily turn his homilies into intellectual events but he speaks to his audience and his audience is varied, as only an LA audience could be. We have PhDs and people who probably have not progressed very far if at all in school. We have those who have been in the Anglican Church for decades and those who walk in off the street. In general, he speaks the message well and true and it has been what I needed.
I have recently been roped into serving as an acolyte again. It has been good for me as well. There is much symbolism there. I have also gotten to know many of our parishioners better because of it. Perhaps they appreciate my participation in something they treasure.
I have had to rid myself of "bad" habits from serving at the Santa Barbara Church. We have an old school marine who serves as an acolyte sometimes. He knows all the tricks and proper things to do. Perhaps even more so than the priest. He is quick to point out the mistakes I and other acolytes make. Sometimes he frustrates me. I have to remind myself it's because he cares. He is nice. He reminds me of my grandfather to a certain extent. Not afraid to tell you that you're wrong. I miss him.
My grandmother is moving to the LA area so she can live by herself and yet be close to my Aunt and Uncle. I hope to visit her sometime.
I've recently started watching Battlestar Galactica's 4th season. It will be good to see the end.
I've finally gotten a character in WoW up to max rank. Its fun but I wonder how long I will enjoy it. I believe the main reason it's fun is because Brian is playing it as well and we can talk about it.
End of line ;)
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| Well school starts September 25th and my last day of work is tomorrow! I've been coming in to my professor's lab on Mondays for the past month to get all trained and up to speed. I'm working under Dr. Stathopoulos and will be studying Molecular Microbiology. Here is a link to his website explaining what the lab studies but for those non science types here is a brief description. I'm going to be studying a bacteria (Yersinia pestis) which causes plague. It's most famous for the bubonic plague but also causes the septicemic and pneumonic plagues. I will be studying some specific proteins that it secretes a specific way and this is important because plague is on the rise again in the world at large and is a possible target for genetic modification and use in biological terrorism. Fun huh? :)
I'm moving to La Verne (rather close to Cal Poly Pomona) and will be rooming with Brian Snodgrass. I am confident that many nerdy activates will be happening. In addition, I will be living within 3 minutes of Becca so hopefully we will get to hang out a lot more.
Pretty much all my stuff is in plastic bags already because of these little .... insert appropriate word:
I think I'm going to be throwing away my mattress and box spring just to be sure I get rid of the little suckers... I had to wash all of my belongings that could be washed and put everything in plastic bags. Then we had professional exterminators come over as well. The bites are not even as much a hastle as trying to get rid of the things. You can even sleep fine as long as you make peace with the fact that little bugs are crawling over you sucking your blood as you sleep.
Finally, WAR is here! I'm really excited as it looks like we have a rather good sized group of people who are ready to jump in and play come the 18th (12th for crazy collectors edition people like me). What's not to like about my two obsessions of video games and warhammer combining forces?
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| I just received this email:
"Congratulations! You have been admitted to graduate study at San Diego
State University for Fall 2008. Please log on to your SDSU WebPortal
account at http://www.sdsu.edu/portal for important information regarding the graduate admission process."
Woot! Although I didn't realize you could be accepted before the end of the application deadline...
Cal Poly Pomona has also received all my application materials and I have at least two professors who wish to interview me to see if our research interests coincide so they can sponsor me into the program.
Assuming they like me I then need to figure out which school I want to go too...hmm.
Oh and this last week was national lab week. It was sort of um...lacking in substance, especially compared to Megan's work (jealous).
Lets see, we got a dufflebag and a gift card to In and Out (rumored to be $5). And we had different "fun" days. They were: Crazy Hat Day, Athletic Shoe Day, Crazy Hawaiian Shirt Day and Diversity Day.
Ok so the gift card is kinda cool and we did have a doctor buy everyone pizza so it wasn't all that bad but athletic shoe day? Who does that?
Other work tidbits:
We have an inspection coming up and they realized they should have written SOPs and should have trained us on them when they hired us so manager is writing them all day everyday and crazy supervisor is putting in 18 hour days, going home to sleep for less then 6 hours and then driving back to train everyone in our 24 hour lab. While she might be crazy I definitly can't question her devotion to this job!
We are becoming a smoke free campus. This means that the smokers can't smoke on campus. We also have a policy that you can't leave the campus except on your lunch break. This is going to = lots of grumpy people. I think they are trying to "save" the smokers from themselves or maybe they think it's bad for the company image.
We had to evacuate the building cause someone burned their toast.
From time to time we have people bring in food that is left over from various meetings and soon the word goes out that there is food in the lunch room. Then people inevitably swarm like vultures over it. However, we have people who take entire containters worth of food and put it in their bags or take it out to their cars and they do this even while other people are trying to get stuff.
We have a doctor who likes to sit in his office in the dark with the door closed and the blinds drawn so you have to peek through them to see if he's there.
Sometimes I think our lab could be turned into a show called "The Lab" similar to "The Office" we have so many interesting/ weird people among the doctors, lab workers, security people and office workers here. It's crazy.
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| Updated my gnoblog with pictures of my growing ogre army. (Picture of a Yhetee there as well).
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| I suppose it's time for a general update on the state of Eric's life.
Becca is taking phlebotomy classes (blood drawing, not lobotomy) in between working full time which means she has something scheduled 7 days a week, which means I don't see her nearly as often. The nice thing is there are only 2 weeks left of this before things go back to "normal." This last Saturday they had to practice on each other (she had the wisdom to pick a partner who knew how to do it already and was just getting her cert) and now they are just doing clinical work i.e. working for free practicing on real people. In other Becca news, she is going to have an interview for PA school coming up end of the month so prayerfully that works out well (especially cause it's for the school that would be closest to me  )
V-day is coming up and with Becca's schedule and mine it's gonna be a little interesting. Looks like she is cooking for Kerby and I on Thursday and then her and I go out on Saturday.
Hmm last two paragraphs have been mainly about Becca... does this make me pathetic or just mostly pathetic? 
In other news I have applied to San Diego State and Cal Poly Pomona for their Biology Master's Programs (specifically in their Molecular/ Cell programs). Still working on getting all the necessary supporting materials together and looking into financial aid (thankfully they are much cheaper than Westmont) but it's actually happening.
Just renewed our lease here in Newbury Park. A seven month lease was only $30 a month increase from our move in special. We shall see how school and the lease work out.
Parents and brother are coming down on their Easter break for a bit of pre birthday celebrations. Looking at going to the Ghetty Villa if we can get our tickets in time.
Finally painted a full 1000pts of my Ogres (about half of them) which makes it the first army I've done so, or at least to this standard. Hurray me! Now I should go out and use them at a GW store sometime.
Pre-ordered Smash. Bought one wired gamecube controller and ordered another online. We shall see when I actually get smash but Kerby and I shall be ready  .
Speaking of smash my calender is looking a little crowded with all of these games coming out soon...
Here is a general idea:
Feb 14th: V-day - My day to apologize in advance to Becca for the coming year.
March 5th: Dawn of War Soulstorm - Fun game that ends (hurray!) that I will play for maybe a month. No impact on time spent with Becca.
March 9th: Smash comes out - If online play works well my nights and weekends are pretty much spoken for like, ever as Chris will call every night. Begin sleep deprivation. Time with Becca takes a small hit.
Q2 (April - June) - Warhammer Online releases (and Beta before then!) begins competition with smash and fills in every other free moment + non free moments. Sleep deprivation matures to next level. Time with Becca takes a more significant hit.
Beginning September or October - Start school (hopefully) school work must somehow be crammed into my already busy life of Smash and Warhammer Online. It is obviously of less import than said games who will have had much time to work their addictive properties on me but still it must be done. Sleep deprivation hits stage three. Time with Becca flat lines... Becca may kill Eric.
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