I try and try to think that I will consistently post on here, but perhaps it is not meant to be. Anyways, had a pretty relaxing week, with the exception of a rather large mechanic bill that will definitely make my summer living a bit more conservative. But anyways, on to the good stuff.

About two weeks ago, my neighbor (in my duplex) asked me whether my swamp cooler was working, which was about the same as usual, not too much, but I have survived a couple years. Anyways, she was pretty crabby with a bad back and 85 degrees in her place, so of course she complained to our landlord about the swamp coolers, who decided that she would have them replaced. The new coolers are amazing, it not only keeps me cool throughout the day, it has temperature control! Before, it would continuously pump in the cool desert air at night and I would wake up to 60 degrees in my house in the morning (very cold) to a not so cool 80-85 degrees in my house when the temperature would reach 105 outside. While that is cooler than outside, I can now keep my place at 75-77.

On another note, I had the pleasure of watching my same neighbor's cat hunt a pigeon today. I was up fairly early and while reading, heard some crashing sound in the back, only to see the cat pawing at a pigeon with a rather large gash in the back. Sadly the pigeon was still alive and making some sounds. The pigeon tried to run off, but wasn't too successful. Later the cat decided to have the pigeon for breakfast right outside my front porch. I got some poor quality photos of it that I may upload later.

As an aside, I just finished "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. It is about Chris McCandless who tried unsuccessfully to live in the Alaskan wild for a summer. It is a pretty amazing book, definitely worth the read. For me the book surfaced memories of the road trips that I have taken across the country either by myself (down to AZ) or with family and friends. While my trips are significantly less rugged, my road trips always bring about feelings of limitless possibility, and I am sure that McCandless certainly must have felt that when in Alaska. Some of my fondest memories are when I was riding along with Dad in his old van as a kid and I would see an out-of-state license plate. I would dream about where they were from and the amazing places they were going to go visit.

The book has recently been adapted into a movie. I think after reading the book, I don't believe the movie can capture the emotions that Krakauer conveyed, so unless anyone has seen it and can vouch for the movie, I will pass.

-Trevor

For those of you who wonder what I've been up to this year, and of course I'm wondering that myself some days, I've been working a lot on analyzing the housing market during the Great Depression. This all dates back to me going to College Park, MD last summer and taking thousands of photos at the National Archives, though of course through the grant that my adviser got, so I definitely can't take much credit. Anyways...

Some of the photos I took during my trip to the National Archives last summer were of various maps that indicated survey neighborhoods. These surveys contained a lot of neighborhood level information that we can do some pretty cool stuff with. Anyways, a side project of mine which may be useful in my dissertation is to digitize some of the old maps. My initial work has been in New York City, which unfortunately a hired gun took some not so fantastic photos of the maps . However they are mostly good enough to get started on digitizing. Anyways, take a look at the photo that I uploaded where I'm transferring the old map of Staten Island onto Google Earth. It is a bit tedious, but surprisingly a lot of fun (at least for me).

-Trevor

It has been a while since I've consistently posted, but I thought I wanted to let those who read this know about a classmate of mine who has some tough luck recently. For those who don't know Steve, he's got to be one of the greatest guys that I've known who always has something good to say about everybody. Furthermore he knows of and has been to St. Joseph, MN, so that instantly puts him in a league of his own. Anyways, earlier this year he was diagnosed with cancer on his tongue which spread to his lymph nodes. What's worse is that it has now spread to his lungs.

Anyways, I basically hope that if you get a second, check out his blog: http://stevenmanos.blogspot.com and make sure to keep him in your thoughts.

-Trevor

I think this may have been the longest it has taken me between posts. Hopefully I will be a little bit faster next time. However, a stalker with an ip address near Avon spurred me to post lest I find myself kidnapped and raped. Anyways, this post is unrelated to my return from my squash hiatus. It was certainly good to be back on the squash court tonight, though it will be awhile until I am back in form.

BTW, here are a couple of shots of Tucson as viewed from the Catalina highway up to Mt. Lemmon.

-Trevor

Display Mode: Basic, Enhanced.

Here's a video of Robosaurus that I took while at the Barrett-Jackson car auction. It looks pretty scary, so try not to defecate yourself.

-Trevor