Michael the Refugee

As you might recall, in April 2008 my roommate TC died from head injuries sustained in a freak longboarding accident.  (Wear your helmets, kiddos!)  Since he owned the house, there was an immediate question of what the surviving residents--three guys including myself--should do.  On the advice of TC's family and their attorney, we rode out the long process of probate court.  Well, two of us did.  A few months after TC's passing, Jake got himself a house and moved out.  And shortly thereafter, Josh began the process of looking to buy one himself.

In the midst of this, in mid-June of last year, we received notice that the bank was finally going to reclaim the house.  I was at my sister's wedding in Utah when Josh texted me the news.  Fortunately he was able to get hold of the representative, who gave us until July 6 to find a new place to live. 

The then-currently-pending deal on Josh's house, or the one he was hoping to get, was not that close to closing.  Seemed to be another month or two off.

Fortunately, one of our friends, who happened to have been out with TC at the time of the accident (Ray, who also announced the news of his passing), was renting a large house from some people and had a couple of spare rooms.  It was win-win for all--he would use our modest rent to offset the cost he was bearing, and we'd have temporary lodging until Josh's house was ready to be lived in.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of space for the full amount of our stuff, plus all of TC's stuff that his family didn't want, but which had to be out of the house anyway.  The old place had to be utterly emptied and cleaned. 

Fortunately, in exchange for our emptying and cleaning the house, the bank gave us some relocation money which we put towards a storage facility.

And so it was that on Independence Day Eve, 2009, after living in the house of the dead man for nigh on two years (longer after his passing than before!), we packed up a U-haul and our cars and some borrowed pickup trucks and made a delivery at a Storage One facility, then unloaded the rest of our stuff at Ray's, then helped a girl that Josh knew move in to her little apartment, then back to the U-haul store to return the truck, then we had a late lunch at Roadrunner's to thank our helpers, then back to TC's to get more stuff, and then to Ray's to get things kinda set up.  Took showers and headed over to our friend Kerri's for an evening of relaxation and games and homemade pizzookies with friends.  Very long, very hot day. 

But that wasn't the end just yet.  On the Fourth we cleaned out the old house and picked up some other things that didn't fit in the main move.  It was kind of odd to see the house so desolate. 

Anyway, on with the story.  Because, dear friends, the drama is just beginning.

The deal on Josh's house fell through, and in frustration with the existing-homes market, he began to consider getting a brand new house for a comparable price and less annoyance.  He and Lincoln (TC's brother, who is something of a house-buying guru) set out to find a good one, and they did, and it was scheduled for completion in October/November. 

I was all too happy to hear that, because Ray's dog was driving me crazy by then, but not as much as the astonishingly crappy cell-phone reception.  My poor phone would only last a day and half between chargings, because it spent so much time and energy looking for a signal that didn't exist.  Such is the cost of living at the tippy-top of Las Vegas, in a house with some kind of metallic insulation. 

And then the stuff hit the fan.  The owners of Ray's house, who live in St. George I think, heard from their daughter who lives in the neighborhood, that there appeared to be multiple people living in the house, whereas (unbeknownst to myself and Josh) the contract Ray had entered into had stipulated that he have no roommates.  I'm not fully sure of all the details and who told what to whom and what percentage of that was true, but it got ugly.

The owners felt, justifiably, that they had been cheated.  Ray felt, admirably, that he was just helping out some friends in a transient need.  They--an upper-middle-age couple--came by to investigate for themselves and were somewhat pacified in meeting with me and in my assurance that Josh and I were nice honest people who weren't doing any damage to the house, with no intention of staying indefinitely. 

Still, they asked that we be out of the house by November--it was then early October, and Josh's house still wasn't ready for us, nor would it be for another couple months.  So we needed to find even more temporary housing.  Josh found refuge with our friend Jaron.  But as Jaron's house was already holding Jaron, his sister Marleah and her new husband, and now Josh, I didn't even bother asking. 

I threw myself on the mercy of our Elders' Quorum, and my brethren generously responded with a handful of "you can stay with me if you need to"'s.  Through much pondering and weighing and praying about the options, I took up Mike Mitchell's offer--a spare room in his little condo with no Internet and only one TV channel.  A day or two before Halloween, Terance Hardy brought his SUV and we loaded it and my Civic with all the "big stuff"--bed, dresser, nightstand, and such.   Fortunately Mike's place was only a five-minute drive away from Ray's (whereas Ray is a good 20 minutes from TC's) so it wasn't a big deal for me to make subsequent laps carting the food and smaller items.

Living with Mike was far better than I had hoped and we became pretty good friends, bonding over such things as Lego Star Wars on his PlayStation, episodes of The Office (which fortunately his one TV channel ran twice a day), and making cookies for a charity bake sale.  In a space that small there's really no place to go to avoid your roommate except your own bedroom, so I'm glad we got along.

And for the first time in far too long, my phone had full bars thanks to a tower immediately to the north of the complex.

At length, Josh's house was nearing completion.  I joined him for the walk-through.  Standard cookie-cutter McMansion, I suppose you'd call it.  The kitchen is magnificent, with a big island and lots and lots of cupboards and drawers.  Two floors, five bedrooms (four kinda small and a huge master), lots of little nooks and crannies.  We have informally dubbed one the Make-out Room and another the Passion Pit, but thus far neither have lived up to their illustrious designations; the Passion Pit is really more of an office where the computer is set up, and the Make-out Room looks more like a formal visiting room.  Yesterday the dining room finally got a table to match its intended use. 

And I guess that jumps the gun a little.  Just before Thanksgiving, Josh got the keys and we began moving stuff in.  While I was out of town on a cross-country road trip for Thanksgiving he and a crew of friends moved our stuff from the storage facility to the garage, and we were joined by the first of two more roommates, Dan.  (The other, Nick, has said he'll move in shortly after the new year, so I guess that's any day now.  His room already has some of his stuff in it to stake his claim.) 

Almost immediately after my return, Dan and I moved the bulk of my essentials from Mike's place.  As I've been with Josh the longest, I got the biggest of the small rooms, the only one with a walk-in closet.  It's also the room that juts out of the house on the western side, which I'm afraid will mean it will get really hot in the summer.  I hope the walk-in is worth it.  I think it will be.  I could get used to having one.

It's nice to have a "permanent" place now, but psychologically I'm still adjusting to the notion that I can unpack and re-integrate all my stuff.  My books, especially.  A lot of crap is still in the garage, both mine and Josh's and stuff we "inherited" from TC.

Michael the Physicist-at-Large

The old-timers here will recall that I moved to Las Vegas originally to take a job with a small structural engineering company.  As the economy got shakier, the company had to tighten its belt and jettison some personnel.  I survived a few such cuts but in April they had to let me go, with the greatest regret and highest recommendations.

Fortunately I had been wise and regularly put away a generous amount in savings.  Additionally I was blessed in that TC's family told us to just hang on to our rent, to put it in our savings as well.  So there was no great panic, financially.  Indeed at first my reaction was one of great gratitude and faith.  I was not hurting, indeed I was free--free of a job I didn't love, a job that turned me into somebody I didn't like from the moment I entered the office every morning to the moment I left.  Free to redefine the course of my career and find something I actually enjoy. 

But then the doubts and fears came.  I had, and still have, no idea what I want to do "when I grow up."  I am loathe to leave Las Vegas and start all over somewhere else.  The network of friends I have here has taken me four years to build. 

In July, I sent a birthday greeting to an old friend, my first college roommate, with a very brief synopsis of my life--we didn't communicate that often.  He replied with joy, and asked if I'd like to help edit the technical material in the textbooks his company produces.  I said I'd sure try. 

So we tried it, and he liked how I did, and sent me another, and another.  It's not much but it's something.  He'd like to see me set up a web-based independent company, kind of, to solicit more of these projects.

Meanwhile, indeed before I was even laid off, I was driving on east Cheyenne one night and saw the College of Southern Nevada on the side of the road and thought, "I wonder if I could teach a physics class there someday.  Like on the side or something."  I knew one of my co-workers taught computer classes somewhere.  I looked into it but didn't see any positions that needed filling. 

A couple months later, the layoff came, and one of the first things to come to mind was that earlier impression.  I put it off, but it kept coming back.  I went back to the CSN website and this time there was a posting for a Part Time Physics Instructor.  I sent in an application and resume and cover letter and transcript, the whole bit, and...nothing.  Thanks for applying, we'll let you know, have a nice life. 

Until, that is, the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving.  I was on the road, at a motel in Las Cruces, NM, when I checked my email on the computer in the lobby.  A Dr. Wu from CSN wanted to talk to me about teaching a course in Conceptual Physics next term.  I wrote back that I was traveling but would love to meet when I returned.  

And so it was that two weeks later, I had the shortest official job interview of my life.  She asked me about my teaching experience, and I told her about being a TA for many years at BYU, and tutoring various friends with their math here in Vegas (including a number of CSN students), and volunteering in my church's weekly "Smart Night" helping high school and middle school students with their math, physics, and chemistry.  And then she started handing me the textbook and lab manual and introducing me to her colleagues as "the one who's teaching 110 this spring." 

I was thinking, Whoa, I kinda missed the part where you said 'you're hired.'

So, yeah.  Introducing Professor Christenson.  Or Mister.  Or Master...maybe I can get them to call me by my degree.  Or not. 

We'll see if I like it.  We'll see if I'm any good at it.  We'll see if they want to keep me around and give me more classes. 

Michael the Heartbroken

Unlike the previous two sections of this now-lengthy "State of the Michael" address, this one does not end on a happy, hopeful note.  There is no gain that can possibly compensate for this loss--only a restoration of what was, and what would have been.

If things had continued the way they appeared to be going the weekend we attended two weddings in Utah, or when I brought her home to meet the family over Fourth of July (2008), or the day I visited her family in Idaho about a month later...by everything that is good, holy, and right we ought to have married.  I had even allowed myself to project a goal date of Feb. 7, 2009--a week shy of the anniversary of our first date, and the umpteenth anniversary of a romantic disaster that needs as much redemption as May 20 did, which turned out to be the day we had an official "DTR" and began to openly use the words boyfriend, girlfriend, and dating.

On Sunday evening, August 10, 2008, my world exploded.  A week of emotional withdrawal following our return from Idaho, which I had optimistically attributed to sheer exhaustion from so many travels, turned out to be like the sea retreating from the shore ahead of a tsunami.  A danger I had considered, but in terror didn't dwell upon, burst fully upon me with the tear-choked words, "I can't be your girlfriend any more."  No particular reason, she said.  I hadn't done anything wrong; in fact I had done everything right.  She just wasn't "feeling it." 

The heartquake struck at 2 a.m. the next day and continued for three hours until it was time to get up anyway.  The kind where your chest is in spasms and your whole body is shaking as you watch an entire beautiful future disintegrate into nothing and realize that the happiness you borrowed from that future has been lost and the account closed.  That all the joy of the last six months adds up to nothing.  That you will never be able to hug her again for long precious minutes, that you've held and massaged her hand for the last time, that her hair is not yours to stroke, that her sweet laughter (upon which you once swore you could live with no other sustenance) is gone out of your life. 

I was worthless at work that day, insomuch that I had to leave at lunchtime.  My dear friend Mindy, who had coached and counseled me all through the relationship and even before, took me out to Del Taco.  I barely ate that day, nor indeed for nearly a solid week.  Food--all and any--reminded me of her. 

A second heartquake struck at 3 a.m. the morning of the 12th, again lasting until my alarm went off. 

I refuse to love another.  I refuse to love again.  It's just not worth it.  It only ever ends in agony unmatched. 

And there will never be another I can love as much anyway.  She fit into my life better than I could have imagined anybody would.  She was custom-made just for me, a gift from a loving God who knew me better than I knew myself and cared enough to put somebody so perfectly tailored into my path.  It is her.  She is the one I have been waiting for, of whom all previous iterations and dispensations were a type and a shadow. 

It was against this backdrop that my job dried up and I was moved from one house to another like a refugee, but none of that mattered as much as losing her.  Being laid off was like a pinprick in Gethsemane.  Much as I tried to tell myself it was better to be unmarried than just-married under those circumstances, my jar of heart-pulp wouldn't listen.

Much as there have been some intense spiritual experiences in the aftermath, the pain always returns.  Better, it had been, were we to have married and then one or both of us died by tragic accident or disease.  Death is kinder.  Death has been subdued, even sweetened, and will be reversed.  Death is powerless against family relations sealed in the temples of our God.  The dead yet live in the spirit, and we shall renew our sweet associations on the other side. 

Whereas I have yet to find any promise of reversing a unilateral break-up; personal agency becomes an irreducible and unyielding factor. 

She is all I want.  All other gifts and blessings are meaningless if I cannot share them with her.  Food was better, sunsets more glorious, rain more welcome.  Truth was truer, faith was more sure, hope was more cheerful, and charity had only to be thought about to be felt in full.

My dear N----, I love you.  I miss you.  Please come back.