In-Between-Week

Well, the last time we spoke, it was last Tuesday, and I had just come back from a quite spectacular weekend. This time I am coming back from a fun, but certainly not spectacular. I went to a party at some friends’ house. I met these two extraordinary people at the Faerieworlds afterparty, and it wasn’t quite a party this time, just us three and their little girl (4 years old). Biggest fire I’ve seen in a while. It started so small and just kept getting bigger, and then it was just a giant pile of smoldering coals, and the only thing I wanted was a couple sticks and a bag of marshmallows. But alas, we were devoid of marshmallows – it was a mallow completely devoid of the marsh factor.

But that was Saturday, I still need to fill you in on the rest of the week. Got back a midterm from Linear Algebra (the class I had the worst time with last term) and it was an 87, and with the curve, that is an A! In addition, I got a 95 on my several-variable calculus midterm, so yay me! On the less bright side, I got a C on my second chem midterm (but got an A on the first one, so I’m sitting around a B– at the moment, and I fully intend to bring it up before this term is done) and it was pretty much my fault. Grades overall are going well.

I am going to go see Avenue Q this weekend, which is supposed to be hilarious (I know nothing about it really) and the tag line is “60% adult situations, 40% foam rubber.” It is basically a musical/comedy with muppets in really adult situations (Rod and Nicky who are roommates discussing if Rod is Gay, or the song “The Internet Is For Porn”) and I cannot wait.

Above all else at the moment, I need two things. I need something I try to go unmistakably and irreversibly right, because there has been a lot of things recently that have been seemingly good, and then crash down several days later. I’m kinda gettin’ tired of it… The second thing that I’m gonna need really soon is sleep. I just havn’t been getting to bed when I want, and this is my fault, so I’m going to work on that. I also think that I am building up a tolerance to my sleep meds.

I have developed an amazing connection with the people here, but at the same time, I really miss some of my friends back home. I have been spending a lot of the last week feeling really alone, until last night. Chelsea, for some very strange reason that I do not understand, is my anchor. She keeps me safe and sane, no matter what crap I am going through. It is quite remarkable, because to look at her, you would see no great soothing power, or great gift of calm, but when I hold on to her, everything just seems easier. Like the problems that I may be having just kind of melt away for that short second, and when I take a second look at the world, nothing seems as bad. Quite incredible indeed.

Well, I know it was a short entry, but that’s all the updates from this in-between-week, a week where nothing is really happening, but is simply recovering from the extraordinary events of last week and waiting for the repairs for the damage come next week.

“… and tread on for miles across weirdish, wild space. Headed, I fear, towards a most useless place: the waiting place. For people just waiting”

Goodnight, and I love you

Changes

I am proud to announce that I am establishing an actual routine rather than just haphazardly writing and studying when I can. I am going to a place called Perugino every Tuesday and Thursday before work. It’s this amazing little coffee shop, with amazing lattes and even more amazing baclava (although they didn’t have any today, much to my dismay…) and I am going to try to write each Tuesday when I come here. So that’s what I am doing, being that it is Tuesday!

I said last week that I was going to go see CATS, and so I did. The singing was incredible, and the acting likewise. The show declared in its program that dancing would not be the focus, and it wasn’t much to my dismay. The music was also significantly lacking, and it didn’t have that punch that we have all come to expect from Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. However, I did fall in love. The actress who played Victoria (for those who are unfamiliar with the show, Victoria is the pure white cat, and is traditionally the best dancer, because she is always in front and has a couple solos in the show) was absolutely magnificent given the small stage, and I honestly could not staring at her for the whole 2 hour show. Her name is Chelsea Morgan, and I met her after the show and took a picture and did, to the best of my ability, keep my mouth shut. I’m going to see it again on the 27^th, and I can’t wait.

On a slightly related note, Kat and I broke up yesterday, and it was quite possibly the best break up all time, and I won. I mean I won in the fact that I broke up with her first. Her whole purpose in coming over yesterday afternoon was to break up with me, and during an awkward silence, she broke first and said “what are you thinking about?” and that allowed me to say what I wanted to. Her response was, with a goofy grin, “are you serious?” We broke up because the spark of a relationship was gone, and we had been better friends than significant others since the start of winter term, so we decided to make it official. So everything is good, and we are still going to be great friends.

Circus news: I finished editing my Aerial demo video, and it is online for your viewing pleasure at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GMJ3RL1jFM and I hope you enjoy it. I had to cut a lot of things out of the video, being that (especially for silks) I had over 18 minutes of footage, and it is a 3 minute song, so only the most dynamic things made the cut (that also show my range). I will make another video in 6 months or so, I think I can do better. I have quite a few acrobalance partners now. A girl named Isha who just might be the most adorable thing ever, a co-worker from bounce named Ashley, who was certainly not lacking in people staring at her last night when she came to juggling club, and Daniel, the guy who runs juggling club. We are actually working on some three person acro moves, and its going well. I am getting stronger all the time, and more graceful.

I did a lot of dancing this weekend at my friend Yona’s house, to some music by a band named Faun. I miss dance so much, and just being free to move. I missed movement, I have been so focused on tricks and technique, and I forgot what it was like to indulge the organic part of myself. I feel that since this weekend, I have felt more connected to myself and the people around me. Quite an extraordinary weekend with those people. AND THE HOUSE! I felt healthier and cleansed just stepping foot into that house. It was outside of the city limits, so at night, there are no lights, there are no cars, it is completely silent. I went outside for some air around 5 AM or so, and there was nothing. It was just me and the world, with no distractions. And if I had been wearing shoes and it had been warmer than 35 degrees with me in my short sleeve shirt I would have danced right there. But it was cold and muddy off the walkway and I had no footwear. So I just admired everything from the stoop. Sometimes (more often than we do, I think) we need to stop and reconnect ourselves. To look up and sideways and all around and see what is around us. Look at the blades of grass that make up that boring old field. To figure out what we are capable of when we free ourselves from what we think we can and should be doing – it is truly astonishing how much of my potential I have not been utilizing, and I will not soon make that mistake again. In addition to looking at the world around us more, we need to look at each other more. Touch our friends on the arm when we are talking, give hugs and kisses to say hello, instead of a casual “sup?” that expresses no love at all. We all have amazing people in our lives, and we need to spend more time letting them know how much we appreciate them.

So that’s my hippie rant, that is getting adopted into my life philosophy. Last weekend changed me for sure. And while I may not be there anymore, I can remember what it was like, and try to keep that feeling going as long as possible.

I think that’s all the updates I have from the front lines this time (after all, it has only been 5 days since my last blog – Friday: CATS, Saturday: homework and Yona’s house, Sunday: sleeping because I was up till 7AM on Saturday, Monday: juggling club. Yep, that’s everything.)

So, until next Tuesday, Adios, gute nacht, bonne nuit, good night and I love you

Oh, and languages are seriously cool (who knew German was beautiful? Cuz I didn’t! Never payed attention enough to it to hear its beauty)

And now, off to work with my favorite girls at bounce, and then spend all night stretching so as not to re-injure my back...

Winter 2010.2: BusyBusyBusy

I am officially half way through my term, and that makes me happy indeed. Classes are still fairly uninteresting, but I am learning some seriously creative thinking from my vector calculus class. As a result of this creative thinking, I destroyed my first midterm (grade pending, unfortunately) so I am fairly excited about that. I also got the highest grade in chemistry I’ve gotten all year (89%, which is an A–) so all is well there. I also finished my first college paper this morning on Moldovan, and I’m pretty proud of it indeed.

In other, more interesting nooz (tis a silly day, just so you know), my hall, Ganoe, had a party a couple weeks ago. It was Joel’s idea, and he is a genius for it. He called it showerpalooza, and it was anyone who wanted to from Ganoe to meet in the third floor (boys floor) showers to listen to music and eat junk food and generally have a blast. But here’s the cool part: we got our RA’s approval. Albert and Ginny are awesome, I’m just gonna say that right now, They said as long as we behaved and wore bathing suits at all times, it was all good. And it was all good, we made a calendar of people there (we are going to print it one day) and I was in September (doing the Captain Morgan stance, because talk like a pirate day is in September, on my birthday actually) and April, miming some Ganja (4:20 – arn’t we creative). And then the RA’s showed up. Now, I know what you’re thinking “but Connor, you said the RA’s were ok with it!” and so I did, and so they did – but they did not talk to the whole complex about it, so the RAs on duty doing rounds through our hall asked what was going on and wanted to write us up for noise violation and having boys and girls in the same shower (more specifically, having girls in the boys shower). I went and got Albert, and he kept us from getting written up (which really, can you blame us for breaking the rules if the person in charge tells you that it is ok?). So the party ended early, and by early, I mean around 10:00, this party wasn’t that late. So we just hung out in the lounge, and I spent 30 minutes recovering from my Mountain Dew chugging competition with Evan (he beat me by less than a second) and this was a 16 oz. Soda. I do not recommend it for those of you considering a soda chugging competition – use sprite or pepsi – the Dew and Orange soda will kill you.

Our group of cards playing friends has gotten larger, we are now playing games of Kemps with at least 6 people, most of the time 8, and it is pretty crazy indeed. We live at carson dining and common grounds cafe, and I am pretty much only in my room to study and sleep (which isn’t that often).

This past weekend, I went to an event called Faerieworlds (note: Faerie, not Fairy – there is a difference, look it up). And yes, it is a awesomely lame as it sounds. Several hundred people dressed up as faeries and woodland creatures (including me) on two different nights. There was Good Faeries night, and I didn’t have an outfit for that, so I just did some face paint, and we listened to a band called Woodland, who were good, and then a band called Delhi 2 Dublin. Delhi 2 Dublin is amazing, and one of the coolest things I’ve heard in my life. I’ve heard of fusion bands before, but this was like nothing I’ve ever heard. They mixed traditional indian music (sitar, this drum called a dhol which can produce different sounds by hitting the two sides of it), celtic (this really sexy fiddle player who can jump around like a rock star and still play incredibly complex melodies without missing a beat), techno and hip hop (they had a DJ guy who did this) and traditional Indian vox. Now, you have to understand, they did not alternate between these styles, they did all of them at the same time, all the time. It was CRAZINESS!!! 300 Faeries dancing all night to these guys. The next night was Bad Faeries night, and that one I dressed up for. My costume was some handmade clothes with fabric hand sewn (by me, over 3.5 hours of time) to the sleeves to look like wings and be fun to dance with. We got to listen to Abney Park, who are classified as Industrial Pirate music – the Genre is Steampunk-esque, and I have no idea what that means, but the steampunk kids came out in force for these guys. Then we got to hear Beats Antique, who were just a techno/trance group, who were accompanied by one of the best tribal belly dancers in the world, Zoe Jakes (http://www.zoebellydance.com/ will give you a good idea about what kind of show we saw).

So then I woke up on Sunday, and decided to go back to sleep, because I had been dancing until 1:00AM both nights previous.

So this week was filled with homework and studying and quizzes and tests and papers, and I am going to be rewarded for my hard work, because I am going to go see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS tomorrow night at the Actor’s Cabaret, and I am very very excited.

Circus still going well, I’m taking it easy this and last week because I worked a little too hard and injured my back. I have really started working on Acro with my new parter Isha, and she is such a quick learner I just kept pushing us, and my body was not ready for the work it takes to be a base. Flying I can do all day, but basing takes different muscles (mind you, neither one is easier, basing is harder on lifting strength, but flying has more to do with core strength and balance to the point of perfection) and I injured my back and have been recovering ever since. Plus, I am fighting off sickness, so it has not been a good couple weeks for me.

But, staying positive, still loving the weather and the people.

Oh! And before I forget, if any of you have not seen my juggling demo video, you should go watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8icEfv81RTU, I will be editing/publishing my Aerial (Trapeze and Silks, and possibly some hand-balancing too, I’m not sure) demo video this weekend, so keep an eye out for that.

Except the Nazis. I don’t like them. The Pacifica Forum (primarily white supremacists) are the likely group responsible for the Swastika spray painted on the floor of the LGBTQA (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Questioning Alliance) Office in the Memorial Union. On the upside, it was a really big unifying factor for the students. Signs have been going up all over the place saying “an attack on one is an attack on all” and there were enough students at the protest in the middle of campus yesterday to fill up the amphitheater and then some. I was in chemistry at the time… and at work the time before that. My life is getting in the way of my activism…

Oh, and amazing(ly depressing) movie that is quite likely to be on my top ten movies very soon (and very near to the top of my favorite gay/lesbian movies list): Lost and Delirious. Staring Piper Perabo (who also starred in Imagine Me & You, another one of my favorite Lesbian movies) and Micha Barton, who plays the aptly named “Mouse.” One of the reasons I loved this movie (aside from the wonderfully depressing aspect, and the good love story, although not great sex scene, I might admit) was how it was told. It was not told from the point of view of the Lesbian Lovers, it is told from the point of view of their roommate Mouse, who comes from a small town and a small world (“Until that night, I had never felt anything, you know, down there, I didn’t know what that felt like” she is 17, you figure it out) and it is her telling the story as she sees it from the outside of this relationship, quite uncommon for a love story – which I appreciated when I got done being upset about the plot…

Kat, Evan and I had a discussion the other day about favorite movies, and I could do my top 5 no problem, so I shall now attempt to compile a top ten. For the most part, they are in no particular order, with the exception of 1 and 2, those are set at the top, and they are equal.

Contact

Pump Up The Volume

Girl In The Café

Boy’s Don’t Cry

Hook

Aladin

The Breakfast Club

Finding Neverland

Moulin Rouge

Lost And Delirious(?)

(Runner Ups: Mouth to Mouth, But I’m A Cheerleader, Tipping the Velvet, Unleashed, The Matrix)

When it comes to my top ten, the last 2 or 3 are always up for grabs and change quite often, but thats the list right now.

Of those 15 movies, 6 of them make me cry, and 8 of them make me angry (in a good, inspired way)…. Woah… what does that say about me? I like extreme emotions among other things, I think.

Well, I’m outta here, that is a blog that is over 1,600 words, and almost 3 pages single spaced, I think I’ve given you people enough to read until I get around to posting another one of these things.

I love you all, Go Ducks, and do your best to keep learning, wherever you are.

“You have brains in your head, and feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose”

~Dr. Seuss (Oh! The Places You’ll Go)

Winter term, entry 1

So I have obviously been very busy. I was supposed to post this blog on Saturday, but due to crazy busy-ness, I have not. So I am writing it now, while I have the time.

I’ll start with classes.

Math 342: Linear Algebra II

Its a continuation of linear algebra I, and therefore sucks by default. To its credit, however, the teacher this term is far better (and seems to know what he is talking about this time). We are still in the reviewing stage of things, but looking through the book, linear algebra seems to get more interesting when it starts getting into real world applications. In a similar way that precalculus is terrible with all those proofs, because they become necessary later. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though…

Math 281: Several Variable Calculus

I have yet to see the calculus bit yet, so far it is more like vector studies with a little bit of matrix algebra thrown in there, but I expect we will get there soon enough. I did read through this book a little bit, and by the time you get to the 5^th chapter, it is completely beyond the scope of my knowledge (not just in terminology, but in ideas) so I am really looking forward to getting taught something I know absolutely nothing about. The teacher is kind of hilarious. He reminds me of Dr. Strangelove (not just because he is polish and his accent matches, but in his mannerisms – and I don’t mean he has a Nazi hand – but every time he says the word “computer” I can’t help but giggle a little), and all jokes aside, he is really good. He has a sense of humor, and likes to tell math jokes, and since he is in a room full of math nerds, the humor is not lost on us. The thing I like most about him is that when he is asked a question, he answers it very precisely, unlike the teachers I had last term, who all had a round-a-bout way of answering anything, usually leaving all of the students even more confused than before.

Chem 335: Organic Chemistry II

We are still in the reviewing stage of this class as well, although we have gone more in depth into stereochemistry (now we know a little about stereotopic analysis, although we have no idea what the application of that one is…). I don’t know anything about what we are going to get into this term, but I know that whatever it is, we will be on top of it, for sure. The teacher this year kicks some serious ass. He is competent (and actually does O-chem for a living…) and really knows his stuff. He is organized, good at controlling the class, which is impressive, given that there are more than 400 of us, and I really like learning from him. That’s really all I have on this class so far.

Linguistics 211: Languages of the World

Taught by Prof. Scott DeLancey, the man who has the ability to make anything interesting (and who I had last term for Ling 301), is teaching this one, and he is living up to his name. We started off with a discussion of language, and what it is, and what makes a language dead, and that there are actually two different definitions. These definitions refer to Latin or Visigoth. They are both “dead,” but there are thousands of people who speak latin all around the world. Latin never disappeared. There was never a time when Latin wasn’t spoken. The difference between Latin and English is that nobody has Latin as their native language anymore. People learn it from books. That is the definition of “dead” we use in this class (which makes Visigoth dead as well, because since nobody knows it, nobody has it for their native language).

This class is cool because, first of all, we cover every single language class (note I did not say every language, given there are between four and six thousand of them in the world) from Belorussian all the way to Kuot and over to Klamath and we have to remember where all of these languages are spoken. The other reason the class is cool is that there is no homework. 30% of our grades are the two midterms, which are just match the language with the country/area (15% each), 30% a short paper we write due in three weeks on some language in the world, and a second, much longer paper, on a different language that is our final (40% for those who are not keeping track) and that’s it. So this is my first class where I have to actually write anything, and today is the day I get to thank Ms. Toews and Ms. Harings so very very much for teaching me ever since 8^th grade and putting up with my crap, I know there was a lot of it. I learned well, and I am helping all of my friends with their essays for WR 121 (which I don’t have to take) and laughing (silently) at the grammar mistakes that got pounded out of me in 9^th grade.

ENOUGH OF CLASSES!

Circus update:

I am now working two days a week at Bounce Gymnastics, continuing to teach silks and trapeze, but now I have added acrobalance, juggling, and hand-balancing to the list of things I teach (not that I am an expert in hand-balancing, but I am better than all of the students, and I am better than Francia – so I get to teach it). I really do get to work with the most amazing people there. My co-workers are amazing people and artists, but it is the students whom I love most. They are just so full of positive energy and they want to learn so much, and it really pushes me to work harder for them. In addition, those who really want to learn – I push them harder as well. I ask more of them than others would, because they can take it, and they keep showing me that they can take more. Amazing little kids, I swear.

On my circus training, I am still attending juggling club here on campus, and working on new things. I am getting to do some pretty awesome passing patterns with the people here, but I am also learning (teaching myself) to juggling ping pong balls with my mouth, I can do two without hands, and 4 or 5 with my hands and mouth (depending on the day). I also found a new acro partner, named Isha (pronounces ee-SHA, emphasis on the last “a”) and she is perfect. She is just so tiny and light and flexible and wants to learn so much. I am enjoying learning to base, and she is learning to fly. I also get to work on some flying with a man named Seager, so I am getting everything I need.

Plans for circus:

Dave Kha sent me an e-mail yesterday telling me that a woman in florida (who she is working for, I don’t know) is looking for contact jugglers for a commercial. I sent her an e-mail telling her that Dave told me to contact her, and that I am making a demo video for contact juggling that I can send within the next week (I am making the video for other reasons, which I will explain next). This commercial will be shot in Orlando, FL, and if they decide to use me, they will fly me down there for a weekend and pay me to do it! I don’t know if I will get the gig, but I’ve got a shot, at least. So that’s cool.

The reason I am making the demo video is for something else entirely. I am making a full video including aerial silks and trapeze, juggling (balls, clubs, and rings), poi, and contact juggling. Emilie has found a circus school in Philadelphia that trains professionally, and if I want to work for Cirque, that is the place to go. We plan on going there for a month together over the summer and doing work-trade for them. Taking classes and teaching classes – the demo video is to show them what I can do for them – it’s going to be a showcase of the best that I’ve got. So I’ll be filming and editing over the next week, and you should look for it on youtube in about two weeks or so (also, if you go to www.youtube.com/derachne919 and click on the “favorites” tab, the first one is “ElementalFirstNight” and that is a video of me on stilts doing fire breathing for New Year’s Eve at the Tucson Museum of Art).

PLUS! With all these amazing jugglers (and acro people and contact staff masters and blah blah blah) there are a lot of people who are interested in forming a professional company, and one who is interested in helping me lead it (plus, he wants me to help teach acro at lane community college). The future is literally wide open, and I couldn’t be more excited.

I still have the greatest girlfriend, and the best friends anyone could hope for, and life is pretty much as good as it can get at the moment. It is cold and rainy (although we had nice sun showers today) and I love every day of it (except when there is a fire alarm pulled and we have to go stand in the rain for a half hour at 11 at night, that kinda sucks).

Questions? E-mail em!

Week 2 and Coming Out

Well, it is Saturday morning. I had a werid night last night. We all snuck down to the basement of my complex and we did what college kids do best. No – not get high and have an orgy – watch The Lion King with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and gummy worms.

But Im getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to where I left off.

Wednesday was a fantastic day. I went to my classes, and they let me just sleep (I didn’t, but I could have and not missed a thing).

Diff E: We went over homework problems that people didn’t get very well (if I hadn’t gotten them right before the homework was due, I would have gotten help rather than turn in a wrong answer) and so I got to just sit there and listen to them talk about things I already knew because I had just done them.

Lin Alg: She taught in class some of the concepts that were in the homework that she hadn’t covered yet. I, of course (along with most of the class) knew all of this already, having had done the homework, we had just read it in the book. Yeah, that was enthralling…

Linguistics: amazing, as usual. We talked more about the IPA and phonetics. I can now read those crazy pronunciation guides in dictionaries!!! W00t! I wanna be a crazy old man like him when I get old. I am going to emphasize how cool this class is every time, because I know how boring I make it sound...

Chemistry: the first quiz! The dreaded first quiz! How will he decide which questions to use? How hard will it be? 3 questions in 10 minutes, will we have enough time? Aaahhhh!

That was, unfortunately, about 60% of the class, and that is why 60% of the class got two of the three questions wrong (I'm estimating that one, about two thirds of the class groaned when he put the answers on the board). I did not study or prepare in any way and I got 100% with 7 minutes left to go. Because I am a genius? No. Because as with all my classes, I have studied this crap before and cuz I'm bored. So I drew on my hand for the next 25 MINUTES while he talked about the quiz questions. Then I finished it and drew it on paper too… Came up with this:

It is a rough design for a tattoo that I am planning on getting. Now before you all jump on me with “you need time to make sure a tattoo is what you really want” and I know that. Otherwise I would have gotten it already. And in addition, I’ve been working on this design for a couple months now, and I’m very close to where I want it to end up. The basic idea is this – it is a contact ball on fire. The first 2-3 rows of flame are actual flame (you know, blue, yellow, red, orange flames) but after that, they fade into green. I’m talking leaves here.

Couple bits of symbols I’m working with here.

fire into a plant: circle of life, fire goes to life. Plus, how fire is a large part of my life.

The ball in the middle is shaded in as if it was lit, but it will not be burnt: standing in the fire and come out unscathed

The flames blowing to one side: people try to extinguish your fire, but no matter how hard they may blow, I will continue to burn.

So, then we move on to Wednesday night, which was hanging out with Alyssa, Kyle, and this kid James and havin a good time. I slept really well, and due to not having classes the next day till 1:00, slept in till 11:00, which was extremely nice.

So our discussion section for linguistics was awesome. We went into more depth about vowels and consonants, and straightened out all the confusion about certain symbols. I’m really not going to go into it – because if you wern’t there, it will bore you to death.

That was pretty much the end of Thursday, to be perfectly honest.

Friday… god – I don’t do anything these days. Got up and went to class, learned the official names for some logical arguments and proved a teacher wrong with her own logic – that was a great boost of confidence in my classes.

Saturday on the other hand was a fantastic day. I got up at 10:00 to a phone call from Kat, one of the people I met at the LGBTQA trans meeting the other day. She said we were going to go to the Valley River Center and Gateway Mall to get Rose some clothes. Rose is a very new transexual (for those who don’t know, transgender is when you believe you are a girl in a boy’s body or vice versa, whereas transexual, as far as I understand it, is when you actually take measures to correct that ex: hormones, surgery etc.) and she needed some clothes to match who she really was. Shopping for a transexual is hard – you have to find clothes that emphasize all the right parts of a body – no easy task. So we made it a day (literally, we left around noon and came back around 9) and had a blast. I got some new pants (fantastic skinny jeans with horizontal tears in them – with pink tights underneath – that are fabulous) and a nice hat. I also got some more practical clothes, got some wool fingerless gloves and a winter hat/beanie. I really love living in eugene, I cannot stress that enough. Back at home I was afraid to be who I really was most of the time, except around a few people. About 90% of people in my life don’t know that I am genderqueer. And I made it that was on purpose because I was living in a town where I was afraid to be who I was in public. Some people in my life don’t even know I am bisexual. I keep these things hidden a lot of the time. For those of you who want an explanation of genderqueer as it applies to me (it is a very broad category) which would be most of my family, feel free to e-mail me and I will tell you all about it. I told my mother about it because I was tired of hiding all the time. She asked me not to tell people, I am not sure why. But I don’t care anymore. This is who I am, and now I am surrounded by people who understand it and accept it. Even encourage it. I have never met another genderqueer person or met a trans person. And it was this that made me feel alone as I did in Tucson. I found a group of people like me, really like me, for the first time in my life. I cannot express how amazing that is.

So, we got Rose a killer jacket (I found it, I am proud to say) and some shirts, a pair of jeans and we spent 8 hours laughing our asses off. Then we spent most of the night with Raven (someone else I met at the meeting) in my dorm’s lounge, just laughing and eating dinner.

A note to the three of you – I am so glad I met you. Raven, I am sorry I messed up your pronouns, it won’t happen again I promise. I know I just met you, but already you are such a positive force in my life, being able to talk to you about these things, and knowing you will understand.

Well, it is Sunday, and I just got back from breakfast a couple hours ago. Had a lovely breakfast with Kat (she stayed with me because she didn’t want to deal with her roommate last night) and then she went home to play catch up on homework.

I realize that this blog may upset some people, and I am sorry for that. There are a lot of people I know who are not as accepting as I would like them to be, and before, when I lived in Tucson, I was content just to hide those parts of myself from them in order to stay close to them.

But as the saying goes

“Those who care don’t matter, and those who matter won’t care”

I love you all, no matter how you may react to this

Peace out, have a great Sunday,

~Connor

Week 1, complete. Week 2, bring it on!

A quick note - I write these stream of consciousness, so there are several things that this blog will have that it should not - and those are spelling and grammar mistakes. It will also not have something it should, and that is linear structure. I say things as I remember them, and it's my blog, so there...

Well, the world continues to move on, day by day, no matter how much fun I may be having. Classes still are boring, but everything else I am doing is fantabulous! I made some new friends (who are roomies, even though I met them on two different occasions) and their names are Jessica and Alyssa. I pretty much see these two on a daily basis and we have such a good time. More people who will be good friends in college I think. I had a good juggling club last night, got sick last week and had a great movie night. Had an LGBTQA meeting and wasted an entire day without noticing. All in all, a good weekend.

Friday. Friday was filled with some classes (snooze) and the crazy old man known as Proffessor DeLancy, who I believe is the coolest teacher ever.

Chemistry was kinda funny though. But first, the back story. I do my best to stand out in any situation, especially the classroom. It is a good idea to have your teachers know who you are. However, in this chemistry class of about 400 people, I had decided not to even try. But on Friday, he had asked a question of how a pi bond was possible in ethene because according to the lewis structure, the 2p orbitals do not match up. And we were getting all sorts of crazy answers. Now usually, after 2 wrong answers, he answers it for us and we move on. But after four incorrect answers he was still taking hands, at which point I got bored, raised my hand and said “Molecular groups can rotate around a sigma bond”

“Perfect, couldn’t have said it better myself!”

So I saved us some time, but if I went up to him the next day, he would not even know I was in his class. Which sucks, so now I intend on going back to sitting in my seat drawing on my hand and designing my next tattoo until he says something interesting or something I didn’t learn is 9^th grade.

Well, I got out of chemistry and OMG! FREE HUGGERS!!! Yeah, 3 girls with free hugs signs (for those of you who do not know what that is, go to Free Hugs Youtube Video) and I am going to join them this Friday. So that pretty much made my day. This was followed by a 3 hour juggling practice on my part, which was cold, and I got a little sick. Which sucks. Im almost recovered now though. Later that night: movie night with Allison, Graham and Jeff. Holly stopped by for a little bit too (for those of you who know who Holly is, fantastic – if not, oh well) and everyone loved her, we all had a blast together. I slept like a rock on top of it all.

Saturday was BLOODY COLD! Saturday was a waste. I honestly cannot remember a single important thing about that day. Sunday we had the most useless hall meeting of all time, to discuss hall conduct (I had two phrases to fix everything: 1) be respectful, use good judgement and 2) if you have a problem with something or someone, talk to them yourself if you are comfortable. If not, go to the AR) One of those days I helped Alyssa who woke up feeling terrible. I made her some tea, and warmed her up. So yeah, weekend was filled with lots of chill out time. Which was needed. I did some really cool linguistics reading, which has helped me out with foreign languages a lot. For example, the English “d” is hard. Say “d” and feel where your tongue is. The tip should be touching the spot on the roof of your mouth just behind the tops of your teeth. This is called an alveolar stop. Now, do the same thing but with your tongue on the backs of your teeth. This is known as a “soft d” and is what all d’s are like in spanish. I have tried to explain it as a cross between a “d” and a “th” because “th”s are done with the tongue on the teeth. W00T LINGUISTICS.

MOONDAY. Day of the moon, and the bloody cold, made colder by sick. I got to meet my Diff E Professor. His name is Boris Botvinnik, a very russian name indeed. And I was wondering the whole first week “so, is he actually russian, or is that just his name?”

Verdict: HE IS SO RUSSIAN!

I continue my streak of never having had a native english speaking math teacher in my life (slovak, czech, chinese, russian). Yay me. Well had an LGBTQA meeting for trans people (I am not transgender or transexual, but I wanted to get involved. For those of you who know the longer story behind that, fill it in here) and it was amazing. Meeting these amazing people, and one of them is the leader of the juggling club! What a cool thing, eh? Ian is the name there. When we introduced ourselves in the meeting, we had three questions.

name (duh)

Preferred pronouns to be used for you

Board game that describes you (two people said black box, which I didn’t know – Kat is going to show me – Kat who is a girl and identifies as male or female depending on the day)

Ian answered as following “Hi, my name is Ian. Erm, I’m not sure at the moment, so if we could use gender neutral pronouns or just avoid pronouns alltogether that would be great.” I don’t remember his board game. Raven said candyland though, and we all had a good laugh about it when she said “how do you win that one again? I just liked looking at the pretty pictures”

So, Ian is an expert juggler and ze (not a misspelling, it’s one of those gender neutral pronouns) is a pretty decent sort of person too. Very shy though.

Tuesday (today) went to class and got help with some ridiculous problems in the homework, then spent 3 hours tutoring a guy in my class who overslept and missed the help session. He owes me coffee.

So that was my weekend – yes, it was boring by my standards.

Future: quiz tomorrow in chem, homework due in both math classes, circus on Thursday (I am going to assist with the silks class) and due to the not having any classes on Thursday, Alyssa, Kyle, and I are gonna hang out on Wednesday night. So that should be fun.

Let the classes begin!

U of O Entry 4

Let the classes begin!

I left you on Saturday night with shopping with my new friend Allison. In this blog I promised you juggling club and fantabulous nonsense, first class and the coffee I was drinking. Since then there have been more classes, chores, more shopping, and my more friends!

So, to be perfectly honest with you, I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened on Sunday night. The university put on some event that was fun, but not fun enough to be worth mentioning. I did some partying, followed by an insanely long walk (long because people learned to hold parties further from the university after 8 parties got broken up by the cops within 1 mile of campus after the big UO win against Cal, 42-3 for those who don’t pay attention). This was followed by the movie watching in the previous blog, which was in turn followed by sleep. Lots of sleep.

Monday! Which for some reason my computer won’t let me type in all CAPS because it is too smart for me to take literary license with my blogs. Side note: The Ting Tings are fantastic for writing to. Monday I did some more organizing, some more shopping for school supplies, and a whole lot of doing nothing. Went to dunch/binner with Andy before juggling club. But do I go to juggling club on my bike? No. On my own two feet? No. On an aero-plane? Hell no. I jogged… on my stilts. For those of you who have never been to the university of oregon, it is very hilly – so as to say that when you are running down hill in jumping stilts, you can clear about 20 ft. in a single stride. And let me tell you, if you think you’ve gotten weird looks for how you dress or talk, you know nothing as to the looks I got taking strides bigger than an elephant is long. Friggen’ awesome. Well, juggling was a blast, I got to see some familiar faces from introDUCKtion, and some new ones too. I am not the best by any means in any discipline (except contact juggling, I am the expert, w00t) but I brought up the idea of a professional company and one of the guys (Dan) was really interested in that, and wanted to learn acro. So we are going to base each other and start the company! Exciting times. AND!!!! I learned how to pass 7 clubs with Dan. For the jugglers reading this (nobody really) you do a split timing 2’s pattern with doubles. Code for “pass every other club, throw it very high, and throw it as soon as you get the club into that hand. And if you see a club coming you can’t catch perfectly, don’t try – just duck. And run, and cry when it lands on your head (been there, done that). Then I jogged back on my stilts, and promptly died of exhaustion. And even though I was exited and exhausted I did not forget to set my alarm, and I got up exactly when I needed to (7:30) without anyone else’s help (yeah, Mom. I told you I could!)

MARTES! A day which had nothing spanish in particular about it except a girl’s phone went off in class and she told someone not to call her during class, and she said it in spanish (¡no llamame cuando estoy en clase!) and I just felt like yelling across the room ¡No traegalo el telefono a la clase! (for those of you who don’t understand that, it was don’t bring your phone to class).

I only had one class on Tuesday, and it was Differential Equations at eight bloody ay em. And then I was done.

For those who have not taken Diff E, it is fucking hard, and takes a lot of energy to understand the semi-abstract concepts presented in this class. For those of us who have taken 6 months of Diff E before, it is going to be the biggest snooze fest. The first two thirds of the course is review. Yeah. Easy as pie, one might say.

For the rest of Tuesday I went to lunch with Allison when she had a break and… well, God, I don’t do anything these days. Or I do and then I forget about it. AH! I did laundry, yes I did. I did laundry and did my homework that isn’t due till next Wednesday. The teacher (who is a sub, because our prof gets back in town on Monday – great vote of confidence for this guy, misses the first week of classes) told us that we would learn how to do these problems over the next week. Well, I had two hours to kill for laundry, and so I just did a little reading for some of the harder problems, and I did it all. Because I am that smart. No, in reality, because Ms. Kolesikova kicks such a large quantity of ass as a math teacher. Cheers to you.

I still need a good name for my dragon picture, so if you have any good ideas for dragon names, please do tell me. And I need help with a puzzle. When you have a 4x3 poster (too heavy for sticky tac) and your walls are made of concrete (no push pins) and you arn’t allowed to use the ceiling to hang things, how do you hang up said poster. I am accepting all suggestions. Because right now my amazing favorite poster of Van Goghs sunflowers is sitting under my bed getting flattened (on purpose, but it would do a much better job on my wall…)

MERCREDI! There was absolutely nothing french about Wednesday, none of my friends are taking french, except for the fact that after *sprinting* from one class to the other because I didn’t know exactly where they were and twice went into the wrong building, if someone had asked a favor of me, I would have responded with “but I am le tired…”

If that person had said “well, take a nap, ZEN FIRE ZEE MISSILES!” it would have made my day. Well, now I know where all my classes are, so I will simply be walking quickly instead of sprinting (getting the building right on the first try will help).

Class 1: Diff E, same story as yesterday. Cept he had us do some problems on the board, and when I didn’t go up to try them out, he asked me “you not want to problem on board?” (he is Chinese, in keeping with my tradition of learning math with non-native english speakers – the proffession is hardcore Russian too…) and I responded “oh, I already did them yesterday.”

“Oh, well… Sih- here an sure ever-one elz dus right”

I can understand Czech accents like they are not an accent at all, but you put a chinese accent in front of me, and I take the next 30 seconds decoding it… I hope I can do better with Russian, because if this guy tried to teach me something I didn’t already know, I would be f*%ked.

Class 2: Elementary Linear Algebra. I don’t really know what I expected of this class, to be perfectly honest. I think when they designed the class name they said “what is the most complicated way to say ‘math designed around linear equations?’” Yeah. Linear Equations. As in, no square roots, no multiplication of variables, no squaring variables. Just linear variables and (for the most part) whole number coefficients. The most complicated it is gonna get before November is solving systems of three equations and graphing two equations at inequalities. To anyone at BASIS: didn’t we finish that class in like 8^th grade?

Class 3: Linguistics. In 2 words: seriously cool. The proffessor is Prof. DeLancy, and he is a crazy old man with long hair and a crazy old man beard. And he uses sound effects in his lectures. He is fantastic, excited about everything, and has a serious sense of humor. I’ll come back to linguistics in a bit.

Class 4: Organic Chemistry. Yes, I took this class already too – in 9^th grade and 10^th grade. I read through the book in a skip reading fashion, and the syllabus and I will not learn anything new for a month and a half. We are going to spend 3 weeks alone on naming and Lewis dot structures. In addition, the number of people in this class is >300. Pardon me if I didn’t take the time to count. But he said “all… well, more than 300 of you, have taken Gen Chem before yadayadayada.”

I looked at one of his homework assignments, and it will be an easy class.

We all looked at my schedule before I left for college and said “wow, you are gonna have no free time”

Well, it is the opposite. At least for the first time, I am gonna have SO MUCH FREE TIME!

And now, for the irony of the whole situation. Is it not sad that the most interesting class, and the one that is teaching me things from day 1 I didn’t know is the only class that does not contribute worth a damn towards my major?

So, more on linguistics. Linguistics, for those who don’t know, is the scientific study of language. So now that we’ve got that cleared up, we can start learning. That was what Mr. DeLancy said, and followed it with “but honestly, what the hell does that even mean ‘the scientific study of language?’” So we defined some terms, laughed at his drawing skills (he started it) and really defined linguistics, and why we study it. We talked about how human language (spoken) is different and superior to human language (written) is different and superior to animal language. I would love to explain all of this to you, but I do not have a 50 minute lecture’s worth of time to write. I’ll do it in person if you ask. It is complicated. When it takes 50 minutes to explain what the title of the course means, you know the class is gonna be complicated and therefore fun as hell (if you are like me and love learning).

So, bright future in classes one fourth. Hopefully I’ll get into better ones for winter quarter.

However, due to increased time, I accepted the job working at Bounce Gymnastics, and I am drinking some coffee at the Eugene equivalent of Café Milano (but way cheaper) called Café Perugino, and it has free (fast) internet and amazing coffee, which I have been enjoying for the last hour. Around 5:45, I will hop back on the old cycle, and pedal myself over to Bounce, where they are going to hang up my trapeze in the only place they have room: OVER A BLOODY TRAMPOLINE!!! CAN YOU IMAGINE THE CRAZY S*%T I AM CONSIDERING DOING WITH THAT?!?!?! And then my trap will live there in peace and harmony and I will never have to carabiner it to my backpack ever again. Thank God – that is tough to do while on a bike…

So, that’s all in terms of updates except the plans for a vampire movie night with Allison tomorrow night (Interview with The Vampire or True Blood, season 1 – we havn’t decided which yet) and the new friends. I met a girl named Tina Foley who reminds me in a somewhat creeepy way of Sarah W. from BASIS, and she is fantastic. And I met one of Evan’s friends whose name is Callie, and she is fantastic. I am including a picture of Evan taken from his facebook so you all can see what he looks like.

Thats it for me folks, sorry that was so obscenely long, I’m sure not even my own family will make it through this one without falling asleep…

Until next time – be safe, have fun, and LEARN MORE THAN I AM GOING TO! PLEASE!