Today I was shopping in the local Mexican supermarket, Rancho San Miguel. Limes are sold for 10 cents each and a 3.5 lb bag of tortilla chips cost 3 dollars. Meanwhile, I was talking to my Dad who was harvesting soybeans with the combine. As I was reflecting on being in Ohio and riding with Dad amidst the amber waves of grain, Jesus walked by in a mechanic’s shirt. I smiled; glad to be in California.

Still keeping very busy… finished writing a paper last week about my summer with hustlers, worked on setting up the apartment some more, helped setup for the fall family festival at church, played some apples to apples at Mandie’s place, played in the band sunday morning, stopped in at the college lunch, worked on biogrid projects, hosted small group and led music since Joel was out of town… etc…

I’m also still plugging away at my summer reading list (which I blogged a few weeks ago) and getting ready for my first in-person interview Wednesday at IT Convergence. Oh yeah - and got sick Sunday and discovered that I’m without health insurance! Oops! Spent all day yesterday figuring out a cheap way to see a doctor. (Ended up taking advantage of my “student” status at DePaul and got it taken care of for only $60.) Oh and then there’s the $275 cell phone bill… ouch… stinking 45 cents/min when you go over… and all the madness with moving to the new apartment just added up.

But life is flying by as usual and I have to remember to stop every once in awhile and take it in. Maybe I should go for a walk by the lake today… for no particular reason.

Oh and from Josh’s blog… happy halloween!

Turn on your sound and watch this ad - definitely a pretty cool short video!

Having watched it a few times though, I disagree with the statement it makes. As a musician I create beauty. Artists create beauty. And I think that just because the billboard picture was an unrealistic, invented thing doesn’t mean it’s not beauty. In fact I think that learning to create beauty in your own appearence is just as much of an art as music and painting. The trouble is that so many people are so fickle… and we so often judge based on appearences. But racist people don’t make the existance of race a bad thing. If you have a passion or desire to be beautiful then I think you should learn and study and figure out how to do that. And don’t feel bad about it. And remember that it is in no way connected to your value as a person. God doesn’t look at appearences - he loves and accepts you as you are. So you’re free to look however beautiful you want to, and put as much much energy into it as you want to.

Saturday morning (the 14th) I had and eye doctor appointment. To catch you up: I had LASIK three months ago and it worked out great however they said they could improve my left eye even more (it hadn’t quite been corrected to 20/20). So two weeks ago I went in for the “enhancement” on my left eye. But then I came home and 30 minutes after the surgery was sitting down on my bed and accidentally fell asleep… without wearing the guard on my eyes. I probably rolled onto my side while sleeping because when I went in the next morning there were a bunch of little wrinkles called “striae” and I couldn’t really see much through the left eye. The doctor immediately scheduled a surgery and a few days later he went in to try to fix them. Now you’re caught up. Saturday I found out that the corrective surgery had dramatically improved my vision. However it is still not 20/20… and it is difficult to say at this point whether it ever will (or even can) be. It’s not too bad - I can see out of my left eye - things are just a bit blurry.

Saturday night I boarded an airplane for Charleston, South Carolina and spent four days with my sister Joy and her husband Brad!! We had an awesome time… it was nice to get away from the unseasonally cold Chicago weather. We even spent all Sunday afternoon playing volleyball on the beach wiht Brad’s AWESOME family. (Brad has 7 brothers and sisters… over time his parents have adopted 5 kids from the phillipines!)

Soooo… then I flew back to Chicago on Tuesday night. I had barely gotten off the plane when my cell rings and it’s my roommate telling me that my truck is missing from it’s parking spot at the apartment. And then, while he’s on the phone with me, my landlord calls - freaking out - to tell me that the resident maintainance guy, Barry, saw three people who looked “like crackheads” (and could have been since my place is down the street from a shelter) going into my apartment Monday afternoon. Donna (my landlord) was understandably very concerned about what these people were doing in her building and even mentioned possibly starting the eviction process.

So I spend hours making phone calls and talking to Barry and my roommate and his cousin (who had been hanging around quite a bit for the past week)… and finally figure a few things out. My car was towed because Donna forgot to tell me that I needed a sticker and give one to me. Luckily she was very graceous and payed to get the car back for me; and luckily LTS didn’t damage the truck in the process of towing it. As for these three random people… Barry claimed that my roommate’s cousin was one of them but the cousin said that he didn’t bring anyone up to the apartment while Isiah was at work Monday… so Barry possibly just mistook someone else for him. At any rate he’d sortof overstayed his welcome anyway [he had been sleeping there and hanging around all day while Isiah was working for like a week and a half - I saw more of him than Isiah] so I asked him to leave that night and not come around at all for awhile, at least until things cooled off with Donna and Barry. This seemed to appease Donna.

In the meantime I had my forth phone interview with IT Convergence, where I’m hoping to join a team of Oracle RAC experts in their consulting practice. It must have gone well since I’ve been asked to do in-person interviews next Monday. Also, I’ve been continuing to work on the new metabolomics project at IBG and am also getting involved in another project to setup a new grid interface to our 20-node computation cluster. And still finishing up that article I’m writing about male prostitution and my experiences working with it over the summer. Hope to finish that this week.

And of course I’ve still been doing a little swing dancing… in fact my friend (and partner at Emmaus) Kaylyn is totally getting hooked now! Check out this awesome post on her blog about dancing. Oh yeah, and I’ve been doing church stuff too… in fact I played guitar in the band again this past Sunday morning and led bible study Sunday night. Oops, didn’t have time to prepare for that… and had to totally wing it - but I think it turned out alright!

And last but not least, Aris is finally moving in. I spent all day Saturday and some more time Sunday afternoon with him, getting furniture and stuff for the new apartment. This place is going to ROCK when we finish getting it setup! Everyone in Chicago: look forward to our housewarming party. It’s going to be a blast.

And of course this week is already totally filled up with plans… this is just how my life has been lately. But on the upside, I just got an AMAZING letter from Italy.

Ok, don’t have any more time to write… gotta run!

BioMedical Informatics Workshop
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

Spent all day today at this DePaul workshop on medical image processing and bioinformatics. I was most interested in the bioinformatics stuff since it’s directly related to my involvement in the Illinois BioGrid. Plus, I got to grab lunch with Fendy - a friend of mine from GE - and he showed me an awesome chicken place a block from DePaul’s downtown campus. And Fendy even dropped by for one of the sessions at the workshop - Ming-Yang Kao from Northwestern who talked about Algorithms for solving complex problems.

Uploaded by thesongboy on 13 Oct ‘06, 3.21pm CDT.

Jeremy and Mindy
Originally uploaded by ohtoberich.

Rich’s first batch of pics from the exchange!

(Hint: click on the picture to the right and you will also see me in the background of the pictures immediately before and after that one in the set too.)

WCLX 8
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

Yes - so this weekend was CRAZY fun!! Basically I did nothing besides WCLX 8. For you non-swing-dancers out there, this is sortof like a swing dancing social “convention” that we have in Chicago once every year where people come from all over the country to hang out and swing dance at awesome venues until 5am every morning. Major props to Noel who already has pics posted (it only ended last night)! Even though he doesn’t have any pictures of me actually dancing I promise that I did… a lot in fact!

You can look at lots more pictures of my friends dancing at Noel’s website:
www.lindysynergy.com/wclx8/index.html

Uploaded by thesongboy on 9 Oct ‘06, 9.50pm CDT.

Done Moving!!!!
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

Chris and Bob came over last night and helped me move all the rest of my stuff. Moved everything with just three trips, not bad! And last night I slept in my new apartment! I am so excited - I’ve got some great ideas for this place. It’ll probably take a month or so but it is going to be an AWESOME apartment. Right now I just need to focus on the basics though. For example I should probably buy some silverware.

Uploaded by thesongboy on 3 Oct ‘06, 6.31pm CDT.

New Apartment - Moving In!!
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

Well I’m not totally moved in yet. Major props to Tessa who came over and helped pack half my stuff. Then her and Solomon [pictured] helped me unload it all at the new place. So tonight I’m sleeping at the old place on Thomas St then tomorrow I’ll move everything that’s left and I’ll be living at the new place! Can’t wait!!

Uploaded by thesongboy on 2 Oct ‘06, 10.43pm CDT.

Nigerian Independence Day!
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

I guess yesterday was Nigerian Independance Day! So the pastor was about to give the benediction at the end of church this morning… and suddenly this loud music starts blaring through the windows. Turns out there’s a parade going by the church. What are the odds. That’s the church in the background of this pic and the float says “Happy Birthday Nigeria”. I love Chicago!

Uploaded by thesongboy on 1 Oct ‘06, 12.25pm CDT.

Deep Chicago Rhythm Owls
Originally uploaded by thesongboy.

Well I had so much free time this weekend and didn’t know what to do with it that I decided to hit the Clipper again Saturday night… (haha - yeah right!) Well it WAS my last Saturday living two blocks away, so I felt like it was worth hearing some great free music!

Uploaded by thesongboy on 30 Sep ‘06, 11.49pm CDT.