June 13, 2008
Packing on a Friday night
It's 9pm on a Friday night and Tiana and I are winding down from an evening of packing things up. Our place is a pretty crazy mess. We are moving into our friend Stef's house a month and a half before we actually leave for England to save a little bit on rent and get our deposit back early.
The little things that take up the bulk of our small apartment are DVDs, books, and crafty stuff. I've already sorted out my DVDs into ones to sell (already sold some) and ones to keep. My books are in three piles: 1) Ones to sell/thrift store, 2) Ones to store for 3 years, 3) ones to take with us to Nottingham. By far, the 2nd pile is the largest, making its way into multiple storage bins. Well actually, there is a 4th pile call the recycle bin where some really awful books (that shall go unnamed) may actually find their way into toilet paper one day. This vaporous pile is actually extremely small, thankfully.
Early this week, my unconditional offer from the University of Nottingham arrived! This means I can start working on my UK Visa application (which I already have, and it's a really long form to fill out). Also, Tiana's new passport came in the mail yesterday, so we're basically ready to proceed with all the official paperwork stuff.
And lastly, two weeks ago we bought our one-way plane tickets to England! We are flying into Manchester on BMI airlines and taking a train the rest of the way into Nottingham.
We are still working on finding an apartment, though. And Tiana will have to find a job. So, there are still a few big things to work out.
Posted by ericisrad at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2008
2 Years
Tomorrow marks being married for two years!
Posted by ericisrad at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2008
Hyatt Hotel Stay
Tiana and I are currently chilling at the Hyatt Hotel & Resort in Mission Bay, San Diego. Yes, we're staying in a hotel in our own town. But, we're not paying! We graciously received a gift from Tiana's work (Catholic Charities) along with a bunch of her co-workers who are also staying here.
It's a pretty sweet place, right on the water. It's so sweet, apparently, that they sometimes forget to only book one room per group, and so last night while we were eating dinner on our balcony, another couple came into the room! It was a bit awkward, yeah. We told them to go back to the front desk and get another room, and I called the front desk to let them know. We could have been playing a totally scandalous game of Settlers of Catan and they could have walked in on us!
The pool here is totally rad and has a really cool family atmosphere with waterslides and such. Speaking of, Tiana and I are going to meet our friend Lilian and her family by the pool for some more hangout time.
Hurray for updating our blog!
Posted by ericisrad at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2008
Big Updated: Thesis and News
Last Friday, I passed my MA thesis defense! My thesis title is "Contradiction, Paradox, and Irony: Philosophical and Theological Stances of Hegel and Kierkegaard." For Geoff and Myles who asked, there it is.
John Wright was my adviser, and my two readers were Dr. Rob Thompson and Chris Simpson (my 'external' reader at LCCS). The defense went rather well, and it was oddly a lot of fun. My committee asked some great critical questions, and they tell me I handled them well. Turns out they are passing the thesis "with distinction," which I'm extremely humbled about, as apparently I didn't think this was even an option.
I know many have already asked to read the thesis, but I may have forgotten a few names. If you're still interested, please leave me a comment below and I'll e-mail it your direction (just put your e-mail address in the e-mail box, no need to put it in the comment itself--I'll see it). The thesis is around 110 pages double-spaced, ~41,000 words. I'd love to hear your thoughts, further questions and criticism.
The evening after the defense, we had a small, casual graduation reception. The purpose of this particular reception was to allow our parents to meet the professors in the department. I introduced my parents to all the professors and it was a really pleasant time, enjoying finger foods and the like. As time was getting short with my parents needing to help my sister Jenna move out of her dorm, we had just enough time to introduce my parents to one remaining prof, Dr. Rob Thompson -- one of my thesis readers. With apologies to Dr. Rob Thompson, Hegel, Schelling, and most of all my parents, the conversation ended with something that very much sounded like this:
My Dad: I have to commute a total of 3 hours every work day. It really puts a strain on my back. Of course Janet here only --My Mom (Janet): Yeah, I only have to commute about 6 miles to work!
Dr. Thompson: When I was in Nampa, Idaho [at NNU] I would get annoyed if it took me longer than 5 minutes to get to work.
Me: Wow, yeah, it takes me 25-30 minutes to get to work in the mornings.
Dr. Thompson: The delays were almost always caused by a cow in the road. There's another cow in the road this time--it was always a cow.
Dad: That happens a lot where we live too, and it gets incredibly dangerous. Not too long ago a whole heard of Blank Angus got out and were on the road -- and you couldn't see them!
Me: Whoa! That's like the "black ice" of cows!
Them: [laughter]
Me again: Even better, it's like "the night in which all cows are black!!!"
Them: [crickets]
Graduation the day after the defense was really cool. Apparently, graduating makes people forget awful philosophy jokes. To tell you the truth, I didn't really think much about graduation until I was actually there. I was so focused on just getting the thesis done, and then trying to not focus on much at all in the week and a half of relaxation before the defense, that I kind of forgot that graduation is a big deal. That, and the PLNU campus turns into a crazy zoo. They have split the graduation up in to one graduate graduation and two undergraduate graduations, so it smooths things over a bit regarding the zoo factor. I must admit that it was nice to feel young at graduation: most of the people were slightly older than me, if not twice my age who were graduating. Aside from a friend of mine who is 65 years old in the MA theology program (and he has the energy and heart of a 20-year-old!), most of the students in our program are about 3 years younger than me, at least.
After graduation, Tiana threw a graduation party for me at our good friend Ester's house. It was a totally awesome time of relaxation and conversation with good friends and family. In addition to my parents and sister, Tiana's mom, sister Shalina, brother Stephen, and sister-in-law Shannon where all there as well. I was really thankful for being surrounded with good, loving people.
Okay, now rewind a couple days to Thursday morning, the day before my thesis defense. It was already a roller coaster of a week. I wake up, check my e-mail and decide to check out this page (I'd been hitting the refresh button on it all week). My name is printed on that page on the bottom, which means... It's official: I GOT THE OVERSEAS RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP!!! This means that the funding for my PhD tuition is basically paid in full! (technically it's for a year of funding but it 'renews' each year upon 'satisfactory progress' or something like that). I was pretty emotional and immediately called Tiana who was still on her way to work to let her know the good news. She was super happy and relieved -- we were not planning on taking out more loans on top of the undergraduate loans that we are still paying off. And then I called John Wright, who was also incredibly stoked. So, the next day I went into my thesis defense with the semester-long weight of worrying about the ORS lifted off my shoulders.
Tiana and I decided to wait until our parents arrived in San Diego before telling them. Now that they know and are super excited for us, they are all incredibly eager to visit us in Robin Hood country. So now, what remains is trying to figure out all the details on how exactly we can get over there so that they have somebody to visit. We've already received some extremely helpful tips from a couple of students already in the program (thanks Anthony and Aaron!). And, Tiana also found this incredible resource which, although that guy attends Durham University, should still apply pretty well to the UK in general.
By September 22, I will begin my PhD studies in theology at the University of Nottingham to study under Conor Cunningham. We hope to move to Nottingham a month ahead of that time to find a place to live and do some job hunting for Tiana. There will not be any employment restrictions placed upon on her from my student visa--the only restrictions will be on me. I will most likely continue doing work for The Centre of Theology and Philosophy, and perhaps some assorted side projects for some extra scratch, but my full-time computer programmer days are coming to an end. There's a bunch of other details of the move to work out, of course, but this post has gone on long enough, and I'm sure we'll figure those things out in due time.
Thanks to everybody for all the encouragement and conversations along the way. Special thanks to my wife Tiana for her encouragement, laughter, for reminding me what is really important, and most of all her love. She's a keeper.
I honestly have no idea how we ended up in this position to be able to move to Nottingham for PhD work, but we are really very thankful for everything.
Posted by ericisrad at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2007
Update from Tiana about the Fires in San Diego
Hello family and friends!
Well, I imagine most of you have heard by now that San Diego is experiencing another firestorm, only this time, its kinda worse. "The four major fires ripping across San Diego County have burned nearly 300,000 acres and destroyed or damaged 1,250 homes and 100 businesses since Sunday. More than 500,000 people have been told to evacuate..." but I wanted to let you know that Eric and I are not included in that evacuation request. We are safe although we're keeping a close eye on what's going on by going online every couple hours. If you zoom in a few notches on this fire map, http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap/, we are pretty much closest to "North Park" or where the 8 and 15 collide, so that gives you an idea.
Both Eric and I have coworkers who have been effected - half of my coworkers have people staying with them...my boss alone has 11 of her family members evacuated into her home! There are thousands of people here in SD to keep in your prayers...
Point Loma Nazarene University, where Eric works and also attends a Master's program, has closed down classes and most business offices for the week. My Catholic Charities office is actually only 4 blocks or so from a Witch fire evacuation area (in Mira Mesa/Miramar) but we've been told to go into work both yesterday and today (go figure! ;) The air quality is poor and gives us headaches so we stay indoors with the AC on. My agency, Catholic Charities, plans to coordinate with the Salvation Army and Red Cross to provide assistance. They have prepared for many of us in the days/weeks to come, to volunteer as case managers for those who have been displaced and are applying for FEMA money.
Fortunately, San Diego seems to be doing and incredible job of responding to the disaster...at this point, there are tons of volunteers (probably partly because so many are not able to go in to work and want to donate their extra time), more food and donations than can be accepted, and lots of entertainment at the evacuation sites to keep everyone preoccupied.
If you would like more local SD information you can go here - they're always updating the front page http://www.signonsandiego.com/
So, that is a brief update in case you had wondered. I received a call from my mom tonight saying people are wondering how Eric and I are doing out here in San Diego so I didn't want anyone worrying. Thanks so much for thinking of us, really. Please pray for the many many people who are suffering and are tortured with the unknowns... for the firefighters who are feeling fatigued and have not slept since Sunday...
I hope this email finds all of YOU well. I miss you lots and hope to see you soon. I know the timing is bad for this one but seriously, if you're ever in San Diego, let us know!! We'd love to see you!!
peace and love,
tiana
(and Eric...who also greets you hello and says, "we're ok" ;)
Posted by ericisrad at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)
