Jess and I are entering our very last week of work with Communities in Schools and AmeriCorps. Friday will end the year of service with a joyous (and likely sinister) session of laser-tag with fellow staff and students of our mentoring programs. And honestly, I can't think of a better way to end this year than to be able to shoot laser-beams at children. I see it as a chance to get some payback, heh.

I'm packing up my things this weekend to get ready for the move next Saturday. Edinburgh is coming up really fast, but I think I'm almost ready for it. The realization that I'm leaving and moving to another continent on my own has finally hit me. Bellingham could have used a second thought.

So things are quickly coming to and end in Spokane. Positive and negative emotions are abound, but I try to remind myself we can't stop time and we can't stop change. Another adventure begins.

I'm quite excited about this post. I composed some music over the past year, some pretty basic stuff, that has been sitting untouched since I created it. I decided I would dust off a few tunes, ranging from polished to hardly thought-out, to show my peoples what I've been working on. Here are 5 short samples.











It's a start... I'm just excited that they're finally up for someone to listen to. More will come, someday. Enjoy.

More photos! This time, from Independence Day weekend when my parents visited Spokane. We all had a great time and those of us sluggin' it out in Spokesville look forward to their next visit.

I took some photographs with a film camera this year. Here are four of them that weren't completely terrible.

From top to bottom: my first apartment in Spokane, Washington; ice cream in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Fremont Bridge of Portland, Oregon; and Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Okay, lets try a third jump start for the ol' bloggy here.

It's almost been a year since I created this blog to illustrate life during my year of service with AmeriCorps. I updated it here, I updated it there, and I got about a good month worth of blogging before and after I became too busy/distracted for consistent bloggery. I covered my first apartment, a car that I bought on my very own with my own money, my pursuit of graduate school, and the sometimes mundane sometimes illuminating day to day of living under the poverty level in Spokane with my girlfriend and two sisters. It's been an amazing year that has had its ups and definite downs that I'll remember for the rest of my life. However, it's not quite over yet.

Less than 5 weeks are left in my year of national service with AmeriCorps VISTA, and less than 7 weeks until I arrive in the United Kingdom for graduate school. Okay, let me rewind a little -- a lot has happened in the last three months of silence. I was denied admissions to University of Oregon Sociology MA/PhD, accepted into the following: Portland State Sociology MA, Western Washington MEd School Counseling, University of Edinburgh Global and International Sociology MSC, and University of Edinburgh Social Anthropology MSc. I decided to go through with the Social Anthropology program at Edinburgh because:

1. It's a one year program that is actually cheaper than two years of in-state tuition (if the US Dollar doesn't bottom out in August, that is).
2. It's the most prestigious school I was accepted to by far -- ranking in at number 20 worldwide, in the top 4 among UK universities, and more specifically houses one of the top-5 social science, anthropology, and sociology departments in the UK. It also housed the Scottish Enlightenment and was the reason Edinburgh was known as the "Athens of the North" during their philosophical revolution.
3. DUH -- it's in Scotland! 

So September 8 at 6:35am, I depart Spokane to begin a year long venture abroad in the Old Country, pursuing anthropological and ethnographical knowledge of the diversity of human cultures.

Side note: a list of famous anthropologists include Paul Farmer, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and Indiana Jones. Soon you can add me to that list.

Again a major change has presented itself in my near future. This will be the seventh move in six years -- and yes, I'm going to be quite ready to find a place to plant my roots after this excursion is over -- hopefully.

Enough for now -- for more frequent updates, check my Twitter or Flickr. Also feel free to add me if you have Google Plus.

Today I bought some donuts and now I'm fretting about one heck of a Wednesday tomorrow. That's about it. Move along, nothing to see here...