Persistance

Received today at 10:45 a.m. from suspect obsessive girlfriend/fling:

"Arik, did u tell any0ne and u better n0t lie t0 me *wedding d@y 9.20.06*"

The mystery of the bad grammer lady continues - the torrid event referenced in the earlier email was apparently a wedding. Perhaps something scandalous happened before, during or after the wedding between Arik and the crazy lady.

I felt bad having not responded to the message from yesterday. I began to weigh the pros and cons of texting her back to say this isn't Arik's phone. I kind of like being at the receiving end of drama so far removed from my life. It kind of riles me up to get these kinds of messages! But then I thought about pathetic Arik and this crazy lady trying to reach him with these ridiculous messages.

I wrote her back around 3:30 to tell her that this isn't Arik's phone. She didn't write back. Strangely, I hope that she begins to wonder if Arik is just lying to her about it being the wrong number. Maybe she will send even more enraged messages later.

I can only hope.

SMS gone awry

At 9:21 a.m. I heard a familiar "beep" sound from my cell phone during class. A text message had come in. Who would be sending me something? I don't really use text messages much lately.

This is the message I received:

"Did u tell any0ne 4real. and if u did i swear t0 g0d i will never4give u and never speak t0 u again *it began 9.20.06*"

My first reaction was worry. Did I screw anyone over recently? The number did not come up with any name I recogized. Just a 510 number. I couldn't think of anyone I associate with that would use the term "4real". Still, I worried. Then I shrugged it off. I couldn't think of anything that "began" on Sept. 20 anyway.

Everyone reading this, please send a kooky message back to whoever sent me this...and make it very confusing. That would be funny. The number is 510.672.9052

Mwahh hah hhhaahha.....

What happened today

Today in history class we learned about Dumbarton Oaks, designed by founding ASLA member Beatrix Jones Farrand. When I lived in Georgetown from 1997-1999, I jogged by DO nearly 5-6 times a week. It's on "R" Street, NW next to the weird Rock Creek spooky cemetary. Anyway, in my Georgetown days, I was aware of the importance of DO but only because it was the site where dignitaries met to discuss the creation of the United Nations shortly after WW2 ended. I had no idea it was more than a fancy shmancy Georgetown house.

Apparently, DO is also one of the premiere examples of eclectic private garden design from the early 20th century. Go figure.

Anyway, all of this recalling of old times made me think about something rather remarkable. When I was in 7th grade, the rage of fashion was to have collegiate sweatshirts. People would wear Harvard, Penn, and Columbia sweatshirts. It was all very well intentioned, although I bet most of the people ended up at state schools when we graduated high school. Anyway, my sister and I got two such sweatshirts, which we shared. The sweatshirt I got was a Georgetown University sweatshirt - it was navy blue with the school's seal on it (with the eagle, not the Hoya or bulldog). The one my sister had was a Berkeley sweatshirt. It was white with blue and gold lettering and had some scrolls on it or something.

It turns out I went to both of these schools! I never even remembered this coincidence until today. Something about those sweatshirts...

Thinking about DO and that ratty old sweatshirt, I recall how much I like the environs of DC. Not particularly the social atmosphere, but in general the whole weird assortment of people, places, landmarks, diversity, politics and shenanagins. Berkeley is much different, but not worse or better. Just different, and more Asian people.

Frisbee toss

After almost three months hopeful suggestions that it might do us some good to throw a frisbee around, my classmates FINALLY relented. Saturday Dec. 2 marked the inaugural LA 101 frisbee toss. Sunday there was another frisbee event, this one held out in front of Boalt Hall, where there was more room for our athletic maneuverings.

There were several findings from these two activity-laden days:

One, I am bad at throwing frisbee uphill.
Two, my classmates like to dive, even when not necessary.
Three, none of us are that great of frisbee players.
Four, frisbee induces smiles.

I think that as long as the weather permits, we will have somewhat regular frisbee tosses around 4:00pm. So far the frisbee crew has included myself, Nat, Sam, John, Tim, Nicole and Chris. The others will be won over in time, although I don't suspect any of them are really that great at frisbee.

Booking and tow

I returned home around 1:30am. I have been walking home from school lately, but today was different. It being a Sunday, I aimed for convenience and drove to school. Headed down MLK, I spied what appeared to be three police cars in front of my apartment. Terrible thoughts ran through my mind? Robbery? Homicide!? Then I remembered I have very little that would be worth stealing...certainly not a robbery. Maybe a suspect was being chased and he ran into our complex's back parking area and now he's hididng behind all my landlord's shop equipment. Heavens! What is going on this Sunday night anyway? People should be asleep.

Then I saw it: a shoddy late 90s Cadillac Seville was pulled next to the curb and some frightened woman was standing on the sidewalk next to four officers. Apparently, her boyfriend was already in the back of one of the police cars by the time I got home. Soon a fourth police car showed up. He must have done something kind of stupid.

Now I am sitting in bed listening to the tow truck pull that car up onto it's back end...(screech, clunk, clunk, whirrrrrr, beep-beep-beep). On its way to the ol' impound lot, no doubt.

Song

This is a good song:

Peacocks, The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats have planned a tour along the west coast in March. They will be in SF on March 7 and 8. I hope to go on the 8th, but I may be in Portland to celebrate my mom's 60th. Here is a good site with a lot of their mp3s. I don't think Peacocks is a featured track, so you might need to search a little further yourself. It is worth it.

Here is a group photo from Thanksgiving!


From left to right we have: Katherine, Mike, Pedro, Miz E, Jean Paul...we've all been drinking a lot of wine and Maker's Mark by this point.


Yours truly carving the bird. It is actually very easy.

Slightly improved

So as most of you know, Google bought out Blogger a whiles back. Today I upgraded to the new version of Blogger that is supposed to have more bells and whistles. But it looks exactly the same and works exactly the same as far as I can tell. The only difference is that now my gmail address is posted on the banner. Gotta figure out how to remove that...

In other news, I went to see Borat tonight as a break from our studio toils. Sacha B. Cohen put his face into some serious ASS for that movie. He must have nightmares about filming those scenes.

Life at Wurster plods on. Tomorrow there is more serious work to be done at school but I stay optimistic because there are only numbered weeks now until the end of Fall 2006. Rest in peace.

Our Mexico City trip is still in the air due to funding debacles. I am somewhat hopeful Walter will cancel the trip, even though it would be fun to go. Planning a trip like this so last minute just would add to the s-t-r-e-s-s-i-n' levels!

I've been walking home from school the last three nights. It's been nice but I kind of fear for the safety of my valuables as MLK Jr. Way is not the most secure of streets in Berkeley. The journey has been pretty uneventful, except for when I finally get within a half block of my building. The last few nights, a young guy has been hanging out on the corner of Prince and MLK looking like he is up to something. I have no idea what that something is (or was). But, if he insists on doing it on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 2:15 a.m., then my deductive reasoning leads me to think it might have some legal implications. C'est la vie.

Thanksgiving interrupted

Yesterday, with Jean Paul and Pedro in the car on the way to our friend Mike's house, we encountered this scene:



We had to turn the car around on Telegraph Avenue and go around the blocked off area. We had a nice dinner at Mike's and later checked the paper.

This is what we found:

OAKLAND
A family dispute ends with 3 killed, 2 in custody
People dive from windows to escape gunfire after holiday gathering turned violent
- Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 23, 2006

Click to ViewClick to ViewClick to ViewClick to View

Three people were killed and another wounded when a North Oakland holiday get-together turned deadly Thursday afternoon. Two men were taken into custody in connection with the shooting.

There were nine people, including a child, in the third floor apartment at 5321 Telegraph Ave. when gunfire broke out shortly before 3 p.m. One man and two women were killed and another man shot, while another man suffered a broken back when he leaped from a third-floor window to escape the bullets.

Oakland police described the incident as a family dispute gone horribly wrong.

"There was an ongoing disturbance within the group,'' which had started well before the bloody Thanksgiving shooting, said Officer Roland Holmgren, an Oakland police spokesman. He declined to elaborate on the dispute or say what connections the shooter or shooters had to the victims, whose names have not been released.

While two men were arrested, Holmgren would not say whether both men had been directly involved in the shooting.

The hail of gunfire and the heavy police response sparked near-panic in the sprawling Keller Plaza apartment complex, which sits in the shadow of Highway 24. Police SWAT teams, searching for the armed suspects, banged on doors and sent residents at home for a holiday feast scurrying out onto Telegraph Avenue with only the clothes on their backs.

About 200 people were evacuated from the apartment complex, according to a Red Cross volunteer. While most were allowed back Thursday evening, the apartments around the site of the shooting remained off-limits as police investigators continued their work.

"The police told us to get out of the building and just handed us a blanket," said one man, wrapped against the evening cold. He declined to give his name.

Helicopters circled the apartment complex as police armed with assault weapons shut down four blocks of Telegraph Avenue and moved people a block away to Shattuck Avenue as they searched for the shooters. SWAT team members, including snipers and a hostage negotiator, finally tracked at least one of the suspects to another apartment in the complex, which he had barricaded against police. But after talking with the negotiator, the man surrendered without incident. At least one of the men was taken out of the complex in handcuffs shortly after 6 p.m.

Red Cross workers were on the scene to assist displaced residents. Buses and cars were rerouted. Onlookers, at least one of whom carried a paper plate filled with Thanksgiving turkey, stood on street corners and watched the police activity.

Police Lt. Kenny Whitman said several handguns were recovered at the scene. "It was a family dispute," Whitman said. "It wasn't a robbery, and it wasn't drugs."

The names and ages of the victims and the suspects had not been made public as of Thursday evening. A spokesman for the Alameda County coroner's office said that the names of the victims were being withheld pending a "police hold" on the information. The wounded man was taken to Highland Hospital with what Whitman said was a "grazing wound.''

E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

Happy Thanksgiving

Toast the cornucopia and pull those yams out of the oven. 'Tis Thanksgiving and entitlement to take the day off!

All of my studio mates have promised NOT to step foot in Wurster Hall tomorrow. That said, I brought as much work as I could home. Hopefully I will be able to work on my clay model while the cranberries are sim sim simmering.

Roommate Pedro and old classmates Jean Paul and possibly Pete are headed to our good friend Mike's house at 37th and MacArthur for a little holiday cheer aroun 5:00pm. It's kind of a potluck, hence the cranberries. The meal will be followed by an episode of heavy drinking (pending how full we are).

What is going on for your Thanksgiving? Hopefully, family and friends.

Pictorials

This is Doyle Drive of the Presidio-Crissy Field area. Imagine if this elevated highway was brought below into a tunnel and earth was filled around it. How would you design the space above this underground freeway? This is our final studio project...


This is the enormous German chocolate cake we ordered for our aptly-themed happy hour earlier this month. Stilgenbashen is a wordplay on our Professor's name. She LOVED the cake. We scored brownie points for that one! Um, I mean "cake" points.

There is a door. Use it.

Apartment life, as opposed to Bateman Street life, has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantage one is that there is less to take care of at our place on MLK Jr. Way. Advantage two is that the rent is less. Advantage three is that my room has its very own external exit making it possible not to ever have to leave the apartment through our front door. Advantage four is that my room's internal door is the closest to the bathroom - I can hear when people slip out of the shower and don't really have to bother to leave my bed to check. I just use my powerful sense of hearing.

That very sense of hearing, usually a blessing, has sporadically caused me great qualms when I find myself actually hanging around the house. Normally, I am at school the entire weekend. This weekend, an odd one, I find myself on my bed writing a little history paper. Anyway, the hearing problem has to do with the fact that my roommates like to use the bathroom faclities without fully closing the door. Twice alone this weekened I've been here in my room, which is less than 8 feet from the bathroom door, and heard the very noticable audible chime of peeing. Yes, loud audible peeing. Something about the way my room sits next to the bathroom makes it like an echo chamber in here. When the bathroom door is closed, this really isn't a problem - although I can hear it a little bit. But as stated, the door is regularly being left more than half the way open when my roommates relieve themselves.

I clearly do not understand. From my earliest memories, I can only recall that proper etiquette dictates we should make effort to reduce exposure to other people of the realities of our biological functioning. For example, most people will ALWAYS flush the toilet when leaving the bathroom. The idea of intentionally exposing someone to the visual of an unflushed toilet bowl is kind of preposterous, don't you think. Another example is that farting or belching loudly in public is considered very uncouthe. Sure, a quiet burp is ok and emitting some kind of silent gas at times is critical for survival. But the point of this is that we take EFFORTS to mask or reduce the impact on others of these trivial facts of life.

I would like to have this problem resolve itself and the only way I can think to do it would be to walk past the bathroom while the noise is happening in order to shock the user into exercising better privacy strategies (i.e. shut the door). I could also ask directly for the door to be shut, but I do not think that would ultimately prove successful and it seems like an awkward kind of conversation to bring up ("Say, that's some LOUD-ass peeing you got going on in there!").

They emerge at dusk and take refuge in our sewers. Beware.

Today at dusk, about 4:45 p.m., I threw on my running gear and headed out the door to get a little ejercicio. I headed up Woolsey Street from Adeline, hung a left on Claremont, then began running due west down Channing. At this point, it was about 5:20, still light out to some degree. I was passing through the area of Berkeley understood to be the fraternity and sorority area. It was rather loud on the street due to the USC/Cal showdown that day. Down the block, I had even passed a fire engine and EMS crew giving aid to some hopelessly drunk member of Delta Tau who'd taken pregaming to new and dangerous levels.

Let me get to the point of this....

On a fraternity porch, sitting like content housecats, are three enormous raccoons. Procyon lotor strikes again! I couldn't believe their audacity to just hang out like that. What I find even more strange is that they could have cared less about being seen or all the ambient noise around them. I think urban raccoons are getting a wee bit too casual and comfortable in Berkeley. They should at least stay in their dens until 9:00 p.m. or so.

A few days earlier, on Thursday night, I ended up walking all the way home from campus at 2:00 a.m. in the drizzle due to a wiley and incompetent shuttle bus driver who never showed up for the 1:15 a.m. pickup route. I was pretty lucky to have gotten home without a slip. I think the rain kept all the downtrodden criminals and such at home that night. I hardly saw anyone the whole walk home. However, I did see some coons. Crossing Adeline Street (an 80' wide street) I saw two large raccoons trotting toward me. I wanted to see what they were doing in the street like that so I veered off the sidewalk onto the road at a brisk pace. At this point, the raccoons suddenly disappeared into a storm drain. I walked by the drain and could see their glowing eyes in the moonlight and their tell-tale chittering noises.

Damn coons. Before we know it they are going to be surfacing in our toilet bowls or something.

To El Distrito Federal

It appears as though my class (well, 12 of the 14 of us) are going to Mexico City over the winter break. I am excited because this is a place I have always wanted to go. There are some fabulous sites to see from both a landscape and a city planning perspective. I even have a friend living there now. However, I am equally as unexcited because of the fact we are doing the trip over the winter break and that it has the slight potential to be a logistical night terror.

We find out about departmental funding for the tickets tomorrow.

In other developments, I am going to a movie this Friday. I can't believe it, it's been many months since I've seen anything. I have a history paper to write by Tuesday and a 30 scale chip board model to build for studio, but somethings must wait. I wanted to go see The Queen (Helen Mirren) but it looks like we'll go to another queen-genre move (Marie Antoinette). While I haven't heard anything spectacular about the performances in the latter, at least there will be some great shots of the Versailles compound to ponder.

I miss you

I really miss you, Dad. I cannot believe it's been almost three years.

In memoriam - Dale William Edmonds, b. Oct. 28, 1946, d. Nov. 14, 2003

The Apples in Stereo

Here is a link to The Apples in Stereo. Good for listening at your laptop unit...

Impressive

This picture is from way back in September, but I just found it again while looking through my old folders. You see the progression of the rebuild of the Bay Bridge, which spans from Oakland to San Francisco. Eight miles of bridge!

It's going to be very interesting when they get to the point of switching traffic from old to sparkly new...



This picture was taken while I rode the F Transbay AC Transit bus.

Oakland revealed

Although Oakland is well-known for its robberies, skuzzy burger drive-ins, Gold Teeth shops and gang-related violence, there are some overlooked gems one shouldn't miss! Let your eyes be amazed at Oakland's Morcom Amphitheater of Roses. Yes, Oakland has a Italianate renaissance rose garden, complete with water chain and grotto element.

This game is fun

Here I am playing shuffleboard. I enjoyed knocking the other team's pucks off the board.

The white junk on the board is salt.

Headlining

I really want to go to these shows but I probably will be lucky to go to one or two of them.

Nov. 5: Eef Barzelay (of Clem Snide), Cafe du Nord
Nov 17, 18: Hot Buttered Rum String Band, The Independent
Dec. 1: The Dears, The Independent
Dec. 2: Gogol Bordello, Berkeley Community Theater*
Dec. 19, 20: Joanna Newsom, GAMH

*This band is probably one of the best acts to see live....ever. Explosive! I saw them at Slim's in March and was pretty much blown away. I have no idea if the BCT knows what it is getting into by inviting this retinue of overzealous Russian-Serbo-Croatian gypsy punk rockers to perform under its roof. There will be mayhem and chaos. I hope I can make it! Go! Go!