Take a Tour...

Welcome to the Fryer house!

C'mon in, it's nice and warm, but please take off your shoes.

Just head on up the stairs on the right. On the left are stairs to the basement.


This is our living room at the top of the stairs, with our dining room in the background.


Please, pay no attention to the clutter. We have it there just, y'know, to hold the table down. It's a very light wood.


A left from the dining (or straight from the stairs) leads us to the kitchen.



And, of course, life wouldn't be complete without a kid on the kitchen floor.

Ta~

Wow, It's Nearly Christmas...

Watching my son put ornaments on our small Christmas tree this evening gave me the feeling that I really am somewhere completely new and special in my life. It's such a foreign sensation being a parent right now. I'm watching my boy excitedly play around the tree as I did when I was little, and it's very surreal. It's one of those things that I knew would eventually happen, but there was no way I could have ever imagined it feeling like this.

The whole moment was very brief, as other things were on my mind. Our water heater decided to crack enough to leak all over the laundry room floor. So, as seems to be the trend at our house, we'll be replacing it with a much more energy efficient appliance. What fun to be with a barely functioning source of hot water for a few days! So much for enjoying the one creation of modern man I love above all others.

Michelle's folks stopped by this evening, because I had called up her dad about the water heater. Luckily, a friend of his is a certified pipe fitter and will help us out with the installation. Her parents were out shopping, and in their travels they also picked up my fledgling family's first Christmas tree.

Austin had a blast hanging up ornaments and seeing the many colors of lights. He was insistent on keeping the rest of the house lights off to better see the tree glow.

It hasn't really felt like the holidays this year, though. We see houses covered in lights, but we have no decorations of our own. There was nowhere near enough time and funds for us to take care of that on top of everything involved in assembling a house. It's not as though we won't make use of the spirit we have, though. Austin's seemingly bottomless well of energy, while is often hard to keep up with, does also replenish us, even when we are at our most exhausted.

I still have to admit it will be a tough holiday for me. Not having a single person on my side of the family within arm's reach... It's a bit depressing thinking about it, even though I finally have the wife and son with me that I'd been dreaming of for years. I will just have to be sure to coordinate with my sister to ensure our computers are streaming video to one another. I know Austin'll be excited. He just loves seeing himself in a camera.


All the peace and love in the world is in you, enjoy it.

~Evan

PS, came up with this the other day: "Welcome to Japan's Currency Exchange, where we have a Yen for your money!"

One Month In...

I can hardly believe it, but Michelle and I have been married for a month already. Time continues to slip through my fingers (as does my ideal of writing an entry here at least once a week.) As always, life with her is just fine, because really it's me hanging out with my best friend all the time. We relax with puzzles or movies in the evenings that we don't have anything urgent to do.

It finally feels as though life has finally settled into a regular rhythm. Of course, most of it is Michelle and I playing tag-team to take care of Austin and make sure he stays on only part-time daycare. It seems unfortunate that we have to work so hard to maintain such a delicate balance of our time, essentially limiting how much we can really accomplish in a day. Austin is definitely a kid to require some surplus supervision. He has a tendency to try to dismantle anything with a button. Or a power cord. Or with some string. Or something on the counter. Or on the desk. Okay, let's just say anything in this material plane of existence is in danger. Sorry, folks, he really is my son.

We've been spending much of our time finally building our home. The majority of our efforts have been on making our living room more livable. So in the past month, we've found furniture, lighting, and a television armoire that we really like, and finally where we live is feeling more like home. It's not the fact we've put in lots of stuff that makes it feel more like home. I prefer to think that I'm not that materialistic. I think it's more because we're making the house ours. Instead of seeing the spaces where the carpet has been worn by the feet of other people, we walk around our personally arranged furniture. We've been gathering our twigs and leaves and arranging our nest to what makes us comfortable. It's not just our house, it's our home now.

Michelle and I are particularly proud of how we've replaced our lighting throughout the house. Here's where I'll be getting on my little soapbox for a bit. I have gone through my entire house and cut the electrical cost of lighting my home by seventy-five percent. While there may have been a bit of initial investment in these small, spiraling compact fluorescent bulbs, they will last me for years and each one uses less than one quarter of the energy of the equivalent light output from an incandescent bulb. Believe it or not, the initial investment wasn't much at all. If bought in some bulk, they come out to around two dollars a bulb for the basic wattages that one would expect. Take into account that they last over five times longer and use one-fourth of the energy, and you'll find they save tons of money over the rather long haul. If you keep your eyes peeled, you can find them for even less. We went to Lowes recently and they were offering rebates making packs of four bulbs free! The cost of lighting my entire house dropped seventy-five percent, and we have barely spent a dime. Please folks, do yourselves and the rest of the world a huge favor. Make your homes more energy efficient. You'll save tons of money, our rather old electrical grids won't be as strained, and in the end we'll decrease our need for so much fuel in general.

[steps down]

A couple weekends ago, I had the opportunity to babysit my new niece-in-law along with my son. Now, Austin is a challenge in himself at times, but he's constantly getting better, particularly his manners lately. What made the evening and following day more of a trial at times is the fact Alisa, who is seven, had to get through some culture shock of dealing with our house rules. Okay, I will admit, most of the time I was rather amused by her misery, but hey, who doesn't enjoy the suffering of children? What I thought was especially funny was how every ninety seconds or so, she would change from loving to me hating me, then back again. She just couldn't fathom that people not only can, but voluntarily, live without constant television and junk food. You would have thought she was stepping into 1952 Russia, our rules are that repressive. Austin seems to manage just fine, though, with his television time being earned through good behavior.

The next morning, I wound up with a third child. Our friend needed a sitter for her two year old daughter, Alexi, and since she and Austin play so well together, I said sure. Michelle had to work all morning, so I really was on my own with three kids. The two young ones played lots and occupied each other, I played some cards with Alisa, and I made everyone lunch. When Austin has an actual friend to play with, he's got a really good demeanor, and when playing host, is more than happy to let people know of all the rules of the house, even the ones he regularly breaks. While Alisa made things a little tougher, it was nice to know that I could handle watching the number of kids that I hope to wind up with. I could also appreciate why taking care of that many kids is readily a full-time job.

Not much else going on these days. I've been working every day, with each day being identical yet radically different. I'm still waiting to get the remainder of my signups for the jazz band so we can start up in January. I joined Michelle for her company Christmas dinner, and it went much better than I had anticipated. We went to Jax Cafe, which is an absolutely amazing high-class restaurant in Minneapolis. I wasn't completely bored, and the food and drinks were top notch.

Oh, I should mention Thanksgiving in here too, since that happened as well. It was a nice dinner, very low key, with just Michelle's local family around. I'm still thankful for the greatest thing in life: indoor plumbing. It was still a little tough being away from all my family, and it's been regularly hitting me how much I miss them, along with my friends. But I guess I have to remember how hard it was spending holidays away from Michelle and Austin, and how everything felt incomplete without them.

Well, once again, because I haven't written in so long, this entry has gotten quite lengthy. I'm still working on getting pictures of our house and home up for folks to see it and how it's changed. I almost got a video shot tonight that I plan to upload somewhere, but Michelle decided that she, and about half our house, was not going to be viewed. Oh well, the time will come. Hopefully this weekend, when it might be a little more sunny out and the lighting will be better.

Toodles all~

Well, it happened...

It finally, really happened. Last weekend, Michelle and I got married. At 2pm, Saturday, 11 November 2006, she and I finally pronounced before the world the vows we had tacitly made some time before. I'm not really sure what to write beyond that point. It was a godsend to have seen the friends and family that we did, and it truly broke our hearts to say goodbye.

For the wedding day itself, everything went very smoothly. Nothing went awry, and the whole day went off with only the one hitch. (Get it? I was reprimanded for it the first time I used that line.) Having my friends run the dance made it even more special, and as always I was astounded by the rounds of wonderful words they had to say.

Unfortunately, we haven't gotten in all the pictures that were taken that day, and even more unfortunately no where near enough pictures were taken. So here are a few that I felt that my few readers might want to see...

Here are Austin and I getting ready.

The kindly gentlemen who were willing to stand by me (Joe, Warren, Ken, and Jaime).

The Gents trying to pose with Austin. This is as far as we got.

The recently appointed Grandma Pat and Austin getting the ring bearer pillow ready.

Me with the man who made me all that I am, and to whom I owe everything.

Mom and Michelle's mom Kathy lighting the Unity Candle before the ceremony.

Michelle being walked down the aisle by her father, Mike.

Michelle and I lighting the Unity Candle during the ceremony.

The whole wedding party. Can you tell which of the girls is my sister?

The newly expanded Fryer family.

My family.

My beautiful wife and I. Every time I think I couldn't be luckier in life, she smiles again...


Our first dance, Nora Jones' "The Nearness of You".

Well, that's enough out of me. Everything wrapped up far too quickly, and though it was a very long weekend, it practically evaporated before my eyes. This week has more been a matter of falling back into a normal pattern, just with a slightly heavier left hand. Still, I wish everyone could have stayed just a little bit longer. After all, why would they want to miss out on this the morning after they left:


Toodles folks~

Snow and Halloween...

Well, the whole of October has come and gone, and it's odd to believe we've lived in our new house for nearly a month. To me it feels like I've been there several months now, but to Michelle it's not quite home yet. I think it'll take some time for it to settle, and maybe because we have half our basement rented out for a while that keeps it from feeling like it's completely ours. But I do think in time, after Thanksgiving and Christmas roll through, it'll feel like our home entirely.

I have no doubts that some of you have been curious as to how I've been faring out here in the climate of the northern Midwest. All I can report is that I'm having a ball. I've been waiting to live in a world that actually shifts and changes. Early in October, we saw the first signs of snow. It was falling outside the school as we were setting up some of the aptitude testing in the computer labs. So often now, I feel like I'm home and in my usual routine, as if I'm not far from California. But these little moments crop up to remind me how far I've gone from where I grew up and that I'm something of a foreigner in this land still.

There are also wonderful moments of great fun I have here at the school. I don't know if it's healthy that so much of my fun comes at the expense of the kids, but I also don't care. The kids need to be messed with. To me, fun was when during those early snow flurries (that's what the national weather service calls them, they wouldn't even be considered drizzles if it was rain), the fire marshall randomly showed up and set off the fire alarm to drill us. So all these wonderful little ten- to twelve-year-olds were standing outside without coats on a breezy, snowy morning. Through their whines of misery, all I could do was smile with the other teachers.

And within a week of all that, it was sunny and warm again. On one afternoon, Austin and I decided it was nice enough to wander around and meet some of the neighbors. We definitely lucked out on the neighborhood, and that point was driven home on Halloween. We got Austin dressed up as Buzz Lightyear and very excited to go around the trick-or-treating. We had gotten started a little late, since Michelle doesn't get out of work until after six. By the time we reached some of the houses, they were just trying to unload their candy, so Austin by the end of our rounds could barely hold up his bag. Of course, the poor munchkin was absolutely freezing, yet wanted to keep on trucking. We kept him wrapped in a blanket until it was time to ring the doorbells. He's a real trooper (unless we put him in pants he arbitrarily decides he doesn't want to wear; now that's hell).

On a final note of feeling like we're home, it's the little things you only do at home that make you feel like you're there. The night before Halloween, we stayed up to carve our pumpkins into Jack-O-Lanterns. We actually had a nice afternoon, though with a cold breeze, to go out to a proper pumpkin patch and pick out our pumpkins and pet some of the animals who kind enough to stand in a pen for us.



Austin is so odd sometimes, because he so desperately wanted to use the spoon as a scoop, but wouldn't dare reach in with his hands and pull out the innards of the pumpkins. I guess he really takes after his mother in being a neatnik, since of course I never made any great effort to remain clean and neat when I was a child. (Mom & Dad, keep your comments to yourselves.) In the end, the big moment was to put our Jack-O-Lanterns on our front doorstep and light the candles inside them. That was the biggest reminder to me that this house is my family's home.


Toodles, everyone~

The music of my past...

Last night, I had a bit of time to myself and went searching through my music library. First, I was looking for Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, so I put 'Jesu' in the search field. Now, it turns out I don't have that exact piece, but what came up was an excerpt of the colonial chorale When Jesus Wept from my American Music class. After listening through that piece that has a sound so distinctively American to me now, I had the inkling to then search for 'New England'.

What popped up was Ives' Three Pieces from New England and Schuman's New England Triptych. It was for the Triptych that I was looking, for it was the most amazing set of works I ever played in high school. I still feel like I know those pieces inside and out; we rehearsed them and tore them down and rebuilt them so thoroughly. We then performed that set, along with other works, for the state conference on music education in California in my junior year. I still have the program we displayed for our performance, because I used that for signatures as opposed to a yearbook.

I'm not quite certain why the music activated my memory so vividly last night. A whole flood of semi-dormant memories came back to me, and they still are this morning. Now that my thoughts are in that section of my mind, I can recall sitting in the band room, watching my favorite teacher conduct the Euphonium portion of the chorale from When Jesus Wept, the middle movement of the Triptych. That moment was such as special place and time, a small portion of a great thing I was a part of while being educated in music under that teacher (who I miss a great deal).

I think that what helped to bring all this to the fore in my mind is that I'm working in a school with kids just starting out on their instruments. It's bringing me back to my own beginnings in music, of which there have been many. And so with that weighing on my mind, and then hearing the Triptych, it all came back to me. I, of course, had no concept of how truly special that band program was at the time, but since leaving it and encountering so many others, my old band had a quality and caliber rarely seen elsewhere.

I very much want to give that same kind of experience to these kids here. Granted, these aren't high schoolers who have been playing at least four years prior to arriving, but I can at least get them all started on the proper footing. It's thrown my aspirations for a bit of a loop, as through much of college I had decided I would rather pursue a career in teaching government and history, rather than music. And keeping with that allowed me to graduate sooner and begin my life with my family.

But now, it's getting hazy. I'm working the technology end at an arts school which puts me in cahoots with music teachers more than anyone else. And starting in January, the jazz band will be under my direction alone. My work experience and my minor have been invaluable to me, and my full degree has done little more than put me in a higher pay scale (nothing to sneeze at, of course). At least I know that in some capacity I want to be a proper school teacher, and that will come in time. It is just that who and what I would be teaching has become less clear. What keeps recurring is the feeling that as music and band have always been not only so important to me, but such an integral part of me, and I think has done nothing but made me a better person, that I want to make sure it is given to kids forever more.

For still today, even at a school for the arts, the importance specifically of music is completely underappreciated. In nearly any study taken at any given school, those schools with proper music programs have students who are better disciplined and have a higher capacity for learning than those schools without. Just another item on my list of things to change or improve in the United States, and I swear, it seems the section on education keeps getting longer.

Ta~

Ah ha! We meet again...

Well, it seems that it has practically been an age since I've last written out to the world. Who knew that buying and moving into my first house would occupy so much of my life? I had simply assumed that Michelle and I would just have to sign a couple pieces of paper, move our few possessions and our son's many, and everything would be peachy keen. Okay, so I didn't assume that at all. I knew it would be a long and drawn-out process to get all our finances in order and the utilities up and running (only yesterday got internet and phone back up and running, and even that may change, depending on how much we want better internet and more tv). Plus it's taken me over two weeks to finally clean and sort through our junk to get to the point where one of our cars could actually be parked in the garage, of all places. Of course, it's not the car I drive, but it's at least something. Maybe someday I'll be able to live the dream of parking my own car in the garage during winter! (Not this winter, but someday!)

So all that was a rather roundabout way to say that I finally have both internet and a slightly more eased life so I can finally write to everyone. Although, at the moment, I'm typing this out at work while waiting for a couple computers to finish doing what they're doing. I won't explain what exactly I'm doing, as it would probably lull you into a state of boredom to the point of thinking less of me.

Speaking of work, it is going quite well for me. I like working as the tech guy at a school, and as it's turned out, I think I'm more on the ball than many of my new peers at other schools. And since it's middle school, these kids are easy and fun to mess with. But what I've also managed to do is become a resident music technician as well. I've started going in to the beginning band regularly now to help those kids who have only just started playing their instruments for the first time. It's lots of fun, and it makes for a nice break from dismantling and reassembling computer hardware and software. Starting in late November, I'll even be teaching a music composition class after school, and after winter break, I'll be the jazz teacher here too. The big thing for me will be to learn enough piano and brass to get by teaching the kids a little technique.

Austin turned three this month, which feels rather unbelievable, but it happened. We didn't get in much celebrating because three days later we went and bought our house and started moving in. I'll be posting up pictures below. It's taken a couple weeks now, but the new house is slowly turning from where we live into our home. For me it's been a great relief having things settle into their proper places in the house. I'm beyond prone to misplace things by simply setting them down where I wouldn't look for them, and previously nothing had its place where I would look for it. But now, it's shaping up well. Now I can set my keys down and only lose them for fifteen seconds instead of five minutes.

Michelle's doing well enough, considering the wedding is about two weeks away now. Her job as a teller at a new bank is working out, and some shimmers of hope toward advancement are poking through the clouds of the entry-level world. She's overdue to be noticed for her abilities and intelligence where she works. But all that is still taking a backseat to the coming days.

I'll be posting up pictures here quickly. I just wanted to say that I hope everyone is doing well, and that I'll see you sooner than later. This will be both an email and a blog post, so that those of you who are a little more savvy can bookmark my blog and read what I post there too. Now that I have internet at home and loads of computers to write on, I can finally keep up with it, if nothing else than for the sake of all of you I am out of direct contact with. Still, I plan to send out emails when I can to whoever will read them.

My lovely future wife and son playing in our new front yard.



Our increasingly big little boy.



The front of our new home on Orchid Circle.



Here's the back. See the deck? That's been a long-time dream of mine.



The ol' Rav. Notice the plates? Yeah, never saw that coming.



This picture is for my dear Uncle Dave. I have one of those rare and highly soughtafter two-tone 1992 Corollas, and wouldn't you know it, it's what I'm lucky enough to drive! Yeah, I saw it coming.



And last, here's our little family out to dinner on Austin's third birthday.

Toodles~
Evan

PS, this is both an email and a blog. To follow the blog, it is posted at ebfryer.blogspot.com

Where I'm coming from...

My life has changed so much that it couldn't be considered simply a new chapter. It seems better suited as a sequel, or new testament, if you will. But you probably won't.

So here's where I'm from:
www.xanga.com/pavlovspuppy

Hope to be writing more soon,
Toodles~