Friday, February 8, 2013
Snowboarding is not for fat people
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Amy's give away
Amy's Blog!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Gonna be a daddy
We didn't tell anyone, minus family and some very close friends till recently. We've decided to start expanding the circle of people who know, prompted by the fact that Diana's Relief Society President announced the pregnancies of everyone in the ward in their meeting on Sunday, so everyone in church now knows. I couldn't understand Diana's initial hesitation to announce it to the world, but as my good friend Amy said "I just hate hearing everyone's pregnancy horror stories when you tell someone you are pregnant. And then they want to feel your stomach as if pregnancy makes that okay." And sure enough, we didn't make it to sacrament meeting without having several people come up to us and tell us their pregnancy horror stories. We've avoided any stomach touching for now.
On the other hand, I've complied a huge and surprising list of smells and sounds that will make Diana want to throw up! Her sudden revulsion to a myriad of food means that I get to buy lots of foods that I like that I normally wouldn't buy, like ALL the yogurt that I like but she doesn't. (My life is sad) It's quite liberating, as long as I keep her stocked up on cherry tomatoes and baby carrots. What this means for the future? IF everything works out the way I hope it does, I'll be getting a new full time job either in Utah or out, either one implies moving somewhere else, starting Grad school in January, dealing with a new born of some sort and a freshly un-pregnanted wife. Life is going to be busy. Good, but busy.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
My salsa woes
I bring this up because today I was grocery shopping and I was craving some salsa. I decided to go for some local brand type stuff, Here's where I got confused: The hot salsa had red lettering and coloring, the mild had yellow and the medium had green. Wouldn't you be confused if you were going off of the description of the bottle? In the back of my head I was thinking I wanted medium, I even had it in my hand for a minute. But then logic took over, "they wouldn't put yellow labeling on the weak stuff and green labeling on the good stuff" I thought. Confident that I had finally gotten it right, I walked out of the store, purchases in hand.
As I sit here writing this, eating the tamest salsa I've ever had (pretty sure I've had ketchup with more kick) , I'm trying to burn this experience into my brain so that this will never happen again. But then, if I can't even remember something as simple as this, what else could I get away with forgetting?
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Announcement
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Adding to the fire
Lately there’s been quite a bit of discussion regarding LGBT issues and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of the recent debate has revolved around President Boyd K. Packer’s talk titled “Cleansing the Inner Vessel” http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1298-23,00.html in the latest General Conference. This debate has included several of my best friends, two of which I respect very much, even if they are quite opinionated, which is partly why I love them so much. Their arguments and thoughts are carefully constructed, backed by research and vast stores of public thought and study. This blurb, this string of rough thoughts is not even close to being as well thought out or eloquent as my friends’ arguments, but since this topic has been weighing on my mind lately, I needed to get it out into the open. As I listened to President Packer’s talk, I thought to myself “this could be the beginning of our belief that there would be divisions in the church in the latter days”. I think to some extent this might be true.
Homosexuality is likely the great moral question of our generation. Do we have the attention spans to deal with it properly? We don’t have the Women’s Suffrage movement of the early 1900s, or the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s to deal with. Our dilemma isn’t one of visible gender or the color of one’s skin; it’s a much more internal, personal issue. And being such an intensely personal issue, I find it hard to reconcile or even state my feelings in any coherent way. I realize as I try to address some issues, I’ll gloss over or even completely miss other important topics, so forgive me. Ha! I just realized that I’m likely apologizing to nobody… At any rate, might as well dive in and see if I can’t get something of a decent rant out of this.
The issue of homosexuality has been well documented over thousands of years in humanity and lately it’s been somewhat fashionable to document it in nature. The choice/innate debate has been pretty well run through the mill, so it’s left to the individual to side with the staunch believers that it’s solely a choice (contrary to testimonies from the LGBT community), those who emphatically point to scientific evidence (let’s be honest, who can’t make statistics or “experiments” say what you want them to say) and that nature made them that way (then why don’t we see more human women eating their young?) or fall somewhere in the middle. Personally I believe that there are people who are born with tendencies that lean strongly towards homosexual behavior. These tendencies could be so strong as to easily lead people to believe they have no choice in the matter. The growing lack of personal accountability, the blurring of once clearly defined gender roles and the attitude that if you say something is bad or wrong then you’re a bigot, racist, or discriminatory all facilitates and enables society to accept previously taboo behaviors.
Clearly there are scores of people in the LGBT community, ardent believers in Christ who are deeply affected by traditional church’s stance against LGBT behaviors. Lately I’ve come across myriad stories of LDS teens who are being told that their feelings and desires are matters of choice and an affront to God. These teens fall into despair over the internal conflicts, and some sadly commit suicide. Depression is a subject I’m well acquainted with, and it’s a disease as much as it’s a reaction to situations or circumstances. Prolonged stress, compounded events and other factors make it very easy to think that there isn’t a solution to a given situation. It’s easy to think that there’s only one way out. And it is very tragic that anyone comes to that conclusion, even more so when they act on that conclusion. That being said, I think it’s wrong to blame any religion for sticking with its “guns (probably the wrong term for what I’m about to get into)” and not budging on issues of morality. What’s the point of having a moral code if you’re going to change it every time a special interest group pops its head up and starts calling you old fashioned (no, I can’t account for the LDS church’s shift in policy for allowing blacks to receive the Priesthood other than calling it revelation)? There are appropriate ways to deal with depression as well as thoughts on suicide, and blaming an institution is not one of them. Friends and family left behind will surely feel the weight of responsibility and wondered what they could have done to prevent it, but the truth is, a determined suicidal person, though there are signs, is hard to foresee and even harder to prevent. It’s said that most suicidal people do not want to die; they lack sufficient coping skills to help them deal with their problems.
In hearing some factions claims that the LDS church is hate-mongering, which is a rather chic thing to do in the era of the 30 second sound bite, they might do well in actually reading President Packer’s talk, posted above, or they can read this comment from Elder Holland quoted in an Op-ed. “Elder Holland spoke about other church leaders: "I'm reminded of a comment President Boyd K. Packer made in speaking to those with same-gender attraction. 'We do not reject you,' he said. '… We cannot reject you, for you are the sons and daughters of God. We will not reject you, because we love you..’” http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700072199/A-call-for-civility-following-Mormon-Apostle-Boyd-K-Packers-address.html?pg=2
I’m reminded of the incident in the book of John Chapter 8 v 1-11. Heck, I’ll even post it here.
Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
After Christ fed the five thousand, He taught some doctrine which was hard for some of his followers to accept. John:6:60, Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? What President Packer said was very unpopular in many circles, and it certainly was against the beliefs of many in the LGTB community. If someone told you that a trait you had was innate and unchangeable, that you were beautiful and wonderful because of it, while the rest of the world looked down on that trait and said that it was something which, though the road would be long, hard and painful could be changed, which do you think you’d choose?
Monday, October 11, 2010
Planning for the future...
Also, last night D and I had a discussion about our future and what we wanted most. I said I wanted an inside dog and D talked about if we'd have a boy or a girl first... We went to bed last night and I had a dream about a fluffy little puppy, and D dreamed about a blond haired, brown eyed girl... I think we'll get a dog, and something tells me that D will get her little girl, just not now.