well things are still sort of endlessly complicated, but i think that i am doing a bit better. lisa is moving out of the house in the next couple of weeks to head up to portland, and someone is coming by in a bit to see if they want to live here. it will be interesting to see how the dynamic changes once lisa moves out. right now, alex, evan and i are around the house the most and because of that we spend the most time together. ben says he will be around more, which will be nice, because he is a great guy to hang out with. rob is enormously busy and probably will never be around all that much, especially since he plans to run for city council. that should be interesting.

i went for a walk in the greenbelt today, partially inspired by my sister's recent photo post of her travels to SC and various SF places of interest. i have had my camera for awhile now, and when i look at all the photos i have taken i think that i should be able to get more use out of it. i am going to carry it with me a lot more now and hopefully more pictures will be the result. as i was walking by one of the two ponds in the northernmost part of the greenbelt i saw something that looked like a river otter, upon closer investigation i confirmed that guess. seeing an otter really surprised me, i don't really know how it got there, the greenbelt is pretty much surrounded by houses, even at the extreme edges. i walked further and ate my lunch near the larger pond which was full of kingfishers, geese, egrets, a grebe or two and of course plenty of mallards. on my way back i stopped by the smaller pond and watched the otter for awhile longer it was then that i noticed that there was another smaller otter on a small man-made island in the middle of the pond. i don't think that this pond is large enough to support two otters, but i hope that they stick around for awhile so that i can go out and visit them again. it is hard for me to believe that davis can seem so much like a city at times and then you can go for a 20 minute walk and see river otters in the wild, or at least semi-wild.

the only other thing of semi-importance to report is that Rock It! will be occurring twice in Feb. on the 5th and 26th. this is a major coup for me, i had hoped that we would eventually get to this point, but i did not think it would happen so soon. it basically validates the reason why i started these nights in the first place which was the fact that kids like me in davis didn't have a lot of fun outlets during the week. college parties get boring real fast, and not being 21+ limits most kids entertainment opportunities. of course, these same kids would never think of going for a walk in the greenbelt, which is a real shame to me because i believe it is one of the really truly unique things about davis. and yet, most people who go here graduate without ever enjoying it.