CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

I resigned from the graduate program at Penn, feeling very unhappy with departmental politics. I was awarded a Master’s Degree in Spanish Literature, as a sort of consolation prize for not finishing the Ph.D. program I was enrolled in. I got to try to be a “soccer dad” with Jeffrey for several months, while Michelle put in ungodly hours with Merck, Inc., in her new job as a chemical engineer. I started teaching high school Spanish and Social Studies that fall, with an ungodly commute to Moorestown, New Jersey. Neither Michelle nor I particularly liked living in suburban Philadelphia. We fight a lot about money, and about parenting issues with Jeffrey – a step-parent’s role is very confusing.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1997 – it was written in the future.]

My cat Bernie frequently slept on the bookshelf I’d put next to my desk, and she would fall asleep and then fall off the shelf and into the pile of papers on my desk, surprised by her own clumsiness. Cats are like that. I worked very, very hard at Penn, teaching Spanish to lazy, over-privileged, Ivy League undergrads and taking qualifying exams that summer. Michelle and I finally got legally married in a pizza joint in Minneapolis over the summer, too (the Judge came on a motorcycle). Michelle and Jeffrey then joined me in Philadelphia, after she graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota – we rented a house in Yardley, PA, across from Trenton, NJ. I enjoyed taking the train into the city each day for school/work.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1996 – it was written in the future.]

I worked nights for UPS in Northeast Minneapolis in order to save up money. This means I can say I’ve been a card-carrying Teamster. At the same time, I took a really amazing class on semiotics in the Comparative Lit department at the University of Minnesota. We bought a kitten that Jeffrey named Bernardo O’Higgins, that was declared to be “Jared’s cat” to accompany the two other cats: Keska “Jeffrey’s cat” and Charlotte, “Michelle’s cat.”I applied to graduate schools. My first choice was UCLA, but I started at the University of Pennsylvania in August, at the Department of Romance Languages, because of Michelle’s eventual East Coast job prospects – so I rented a charming, run-down apartment in West Philly.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1995 – it was written in the future.]

Michelle and I moved in together. Then I spent six months studying the Mapuche Language (Native American Patagonian) at the Universidad Austral de Chile, in Valdivia, Chile. I got to see Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Uruguay, etc. I was back in Minnesota with Michelle and Jeffrey for Christmas. Michelle and I decided we were ‘married.’ We both had apprehensions about state-sponsored relationships, though, so we didn’t do anything legally binding at this point.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1994 – it was written in the future.]

I did some graduate-level coursework in Spanish Literature and Literary and Cultural Criticism (Lit-Crit) at the University of Minnesota – tuition was cheap because I’m an alum. I also studied the Dakota Language (Native American Great Plains). I worked in a bookstore. I had a bicycle accident in which I shattered my 2nd metatarsil into 23 pieces. Two surgeries and six weeks on crutches later, at some point, an initially platonic relationship with Michelle became ‘dating.’ Michelle and I took several camping trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is why the UP is symbolically important to me.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1993 – it was written in the future.]

I lived in Pasadena in the house my great grandfather built around 1910. I took art classes and tried to learn Arabic. I was a bit aimless on the job front – I remember working as a temp at a Robinsons-May department store warehouse in West Covina. Then that summer, after a huge, confrontational fight with my dad and stepmother, I moved back to Minnesota. My bestfriend Bob and I become housemates again in South Minneapolis, near Powderhorn Park, and I met our downstairs neighbors Michelle and Jeffrey (her son, who is 5 at the time). I started working in a bookstore, and one time the front wheel came off my car while I was driving it (a 1965 VW Bug).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1992 – it was written in the future.]

I was stationed at Camp Edwards, Geumcheon (about 7 km from Ilsan of later residence). I was attached to the Bravo Company of the 296th Support Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. I drove a giant camo green tow truck (named Rocinante) around northwest Gyeonggi province, mostly dragging Humvees out of rice paddies. I found Korea to be a beautiful and interesting country. I was a competent mechanic, but an indifferent soldier. When the Army announced that it was downsizing in the wake of the end of the cold war, I grabbed an honorable “early out”discharge when it was offered, and by December I had become a civilian in San Francisco.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1991 – it was written in the future.]

I ended up in Eureka, somehow. I was broke and directionless. I was depressed. I dealt with this directionlessness by enlisting in the U.S. Army, as a truck mechanic. I completed my training in South Carolina, and narrowly missed getting sent to Kuwait for the first Gulf War. Instead, I ended up in South Korea on December 28th.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1990 – it was written in the future.]

In August, I graduated cum laude (and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), despite the  ‘lost semester’ from the Spring of 85 at Macalaster marring my transcript. My final major was Llinguistics, with a minor in Computer Science. I’d managed enough coursework to have ‘undeclared’ minors in Spanish and Botany. I returned to Mexico, and spent two months in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Then, later, after two weeks in Cuba, I ended up becoming very sick in Merida. So I returned to Humboldt County, where my father was at this time.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1989 – it was written in the future.]

Having forfeited my scholarship at Macalester by dropping out in 85, by January I fromally enrolled at the University of Minnesota. My declared major was computer science, but I soon changed it to linguistics. I dabbled a lot in languages: Portuguese, Medieval Welsh, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Sumerian, Georgian (Kartuli). I worked hard at a book bindery (book-making factory). I studied very hard, too. I rented a room in a house in St. Paul, and Bob and Mark are my housemates, among others.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1988 – it was written in the future.]

After a year working in Mexico City, I travelled (somewhat aimlessly) with a friend by horseback in the mountains of Michoacan (southwestern Mexico). I met lots of interesting people, including many indians, hippies, a draft dodger or two, and a dangerous, drunk, angry man with  a gun. The gun shot bullets.  I got a bullet hole in my shoe, but somehow survived this incident mostly unscathed. Eventually, I return to Minnesota. I rent a room in a crappy house in Southeast Minneapolis and take extension classes at the University of Minnesota, with the intention of returning to school.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1987 – it was written in the future.]