Where do Cate and I work now?

See below for the pictures of the place that will be paying us for the next few years:

Who wouldn't want to traverse a bridge, spanning a ravine full of redwoods, on their way to work everyday? While neither of us technically has to walk over this, it does lie between our two buildings, so we could manage it if we desired.


Santa Cruz may not be the big city, but we do have all the amenities of the big city, including outhouses!


While beautiful, I can only picture hippies, drum circles, and Phish when I see this. Let's pray that I am wrong.


Not only are there a thousand bike shops in Santa Cruz itself, there is also a Bike co-op on campus


This building houses all of the leftist loons that don't bring any money to the university; regardless of that fact, they've built us a new and modern facility wherein one will find History of Consciousness (HistCon for short), Literature, Feminist studies, etc.


In following the advice of its older sibling, UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz has gotten itself some tree sitters in the hopes of becoming a big time university. We shall see if it will work (The Grateful Dead have already donated their entire collection of DAT tapes to the university's library, so it appears to be working)



And finally, just to prove that we are in the middle of a redwood forest, these three baby deer (fauns?) were having a nice snack next to the main parking garage on campus.

The Hinds House

Here is the Victorian that is housing us for our week in Santa Cruz

Our New House

Picture time. As you will see, we were pretty stunned by how awesome the place is. With a bit of creative shelf building, we'll have a castle, basically.

In this picture, we see Cate in her new backyard - complete with porch, lilac bush, apricot tree (unpictured - it is directly behind me and provides a modicum of shade for the backyard bench), and yard (which is 'ours", as Dr Phil Scott, MD put it).


Here, we see the narrow, but charming, creek that runs between our backyard and the backyard of Dr Phil Scott's daughter's house (as well as the three dogs they own which we are welcome to pet/play with any time).


In this next picture, Cate is pictured in her new playground. The only differences will be: the door is disappearing in favor of a six foot sliding glass door, the refrigerator is leaving, to be replaced with a new one which will be moved all the way to the left, and, lastly, in the fridge's place will be a brand new oven (which, we assume, will cook evenly - something of a novelty for us).


Pictured here is the soon to be vacant wall (as you can see, the old oven is there now). This wall will be completely empty - amazing.


Lastly, we've got our garden - flowers, vegetables, and other assorted good things growing in the earth. We have been instructed to make this our home, so we are to do what we would like as far as planting or not planting.

i have a job

!!!!!!!!

The cottage

totally exceeded our expectations. they are still doing a lot of work on the place, so it will be even better when we move in next month. new windows, new appliances in the kitchen!!!, new sliding door to the back porch! Dr. Phil (the landlord) is awesome. And much to Mark's delight, the doc is also carpenter, and has a workshop filled with tools (toys) that he is most eager to share. Ill post more pics later, but this one more accurately reflects the true size of the place.

West Coast trip itinerary

7/30 fly to San Francisco, drive to Santa Cruz, check out our new cottage

7/31 Cate's interview at UCSC

8/1 visit the Seymour Center (potential wedding venue)

8/5 fly to seattle, relax at Lake Cushman with Cate's parents

borrow Dan's porsche?

8/8 Meeting of The Parents lunch (reservations under Raschal).
Wendy and Chase's rehearsal dinner at super fancy restaurant on Lake Union

8/9 Wendy and Chase's wedding. 300 guests + open bar = good times

8/10 attending Mark's mom's art show. check it out here, hanging out with his family on the plateau



8/12 return to NYC

During any spare moment, Cate will be revising the manuscript for the paper she needs to graduate. and thanks to the new iphone, you can expect frequent updates.

Wedding cake

While our wedding is still more than a year away, researching wedding shit has provided a fun distraction from my lab work. I recently came across this blog with incredibly hilarious cakes. im thinking something like this would be perfect for our reception:

Cottage you say?

Yep. The Raschal's have their own cottage in Santa Cruz now!!! The living room is 15 x 13, the kitchen is 11 x 12, the bedroom is (only) 10.5 x 10.5, but there is also a 4 x 4 closet in the bedroom, two closets in the hallway and... drumroll please: a porch, a backyard, and a CREEK!!! Here are some pictures (admittedly not the best - we'll improve on these in August). They are still doing work on the place (they replaced the tile in the kitchen), so what you see here is only a rough approximation of what it will look like. Oh yeah, and we can have a garden in the backyard. Woo hoo!!!



And who helped make this all possible? This man, Andre Willis and his son Coleman. They checked the place out, charmed the owner, took the photos, and, voila, here we are now. Thanks Andre, you're the best.

Philharmonic In Central Park

A gorgeous night, the soft sounds of the NY Philharmonic wafting over the heads of several thousands concert and picnic goers, friends are extremely enjoyable and a DOG!!! That's a pretty nice recipe for an evening. Obviously repeating it every night would be a bit tiresome, but on special occasions? It's absolutely perfect.

Freedom sucks

So does forgetting to charge the battery of the camera (though, as the camera recently died, who knows whether a charged battery would have mattered or not). Anyway, on the Rashcal's recent trip to Iowa to visit Brett/Tim/Jack as well Dan/Kate, we got stuck in some sort of a "Freedom Ride." Basically, a shit-ton of motorcycles (ranging from Harley's to crotch rockets) are cruising through Illinois in the name of freedom - and slow ass transportation. We were actually stopped on the highway as these clowns made their symbolic ride for freedom (though, on a purely visual judgement of said riders, it would be hard to guestimate the parameters of the freedom they have in mind). They, thankfully, ended their ride at Middle East conflicts memorial.



Iowa was nice: we saw the kernels (the minor league team owned by a popcorn company), played some whiffle ball (beers in one hand, babies in the other), ate some bbq, saw the incredible destruction caused by a flood (in turn caused by the erosion of top soil in an area that never flooded back in the day), and ate a nice brunch on the lawn (babies make less of a mess when they eat in the wild).

Ghost Graduation

Apparently the Raschal's old camera (we've now got a fancy new Canon Elph) shows my family and fiancee for what they really are - GHOSTS!!! I'm not quite sure what to do with this new information? Did I really graduate? Do they really exist? Who are you? If they're ghosts, did the people I introduce them to just humor me? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!

actually, i want to live here

ok, so this ad is for a 500 square foot apt on the lower level of this place, but still, for $1275 a month, it could be awesome.

new home

i want to live here