“God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other.”
-Ray Bradbury
Yesterday was my last day at the COB. Some things I'll miss about being up there every week, 2-3 times a week, in no particular order:
The cafeteria. I LOVED their sugar cookies, and I loved the sandwich bar they had. Just great soft bread with a bunch of different meats and veggies. So great. That was my last meal there yesterday.
Knowing the going ons of Public Affairs and the things that they're up to. Sitting in on meetings and hearing how thoughtful and in tune the employees of the Church are. So impressive.
The people. Always people are what you miss about places, right?
Some things I won't miss:
The time drain of going to and from Salt Lake.
I think I'll leave that as the only thing, if only to emphasize just how nice it will be to have the rest of my schedule free up. I want to make significant headway on thesis and finish that in the next six months. I'm also still keeping my fingers crossed about that sports consulting fellowship. Was supposed to hear back Monday, but turns out the guy is out of the country.
One thing I also really appreciated was how going up there somehow made that distance between Utah Valley and Salt Lake City seem not nearly as long as it used to be. I like downtown Salt Lake. I like the difference from the valley here. It's not the chore to go up there that it once was to me.
And I'll be moving on tomorrow to Europe! Woo woo! Amy and I head out in the morning for the next bit and we couldn't be more thrilled. Just some packing ahead of the both of us, and then about 17 hours of traveling later and we'll be in Zurich, Switzerland, trying to find our way around. Should be lots of fun.
I'll be taking a break for the next while, so until our happy returns, have a great one dearhearts!
So my time at the COB is wrapping up next Tuesday. Wow, NEXTTuesday. I can't believe it's been a whole year. I thought it would be a little more bittersweet for me, but mostly it's just tasting kind of sweet right now. The intern I replaced last year expressed a lot of excitement about being done with the internship, and I can understand why now.
Although the work is interesting, the people are great, and most everything about it is really satisfying, it's also a big drain on my time and energy. I guess I'm in a different mindset than someone who is looking for a place of employment in which to reside permanently. I still have my program to finish up, and I'm not sure that it's a place I'd like to work at long term.
So with the imminent end of my internship looming, I've been thinking about what additional kinds of work experiences I might be able to get to continue to beef up my resume that might carry me from this year to next. (The life of a student is funny that way. Not a lot of permanence, just kind of whatever gets me from here to there, assuming that there is always a there to be had, and that here is not for long.) I've been considering changing course in my degree program, maybe applying to the MBA program and dropping the PhD, and whatever else out there might be available to me. In doing so, I've been keeping my eyes open to new opportunities.
I just didn't really expect for anything to line up in such a timely manner. I've been on a couple of email lists for a long time. One through university recruiting services and the other through the MBA school. Both of them have not been very fruitful thus far. Judging opportunities by the subject line, I rarely even opened the emails themselves, and when I did, they were rarely worth even the few seconds I took to look at them. Until last week.
Last Monday something came up in Sandy that seemed related to my experience in HR that I thought might be a good fit. Then only a few hours later an internship opportunity came up from a sports consulting firm based out of Chicago. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to apply to both. I updated my resume for the first time in more than a year, and I shot off my one response to the sports consulting opportunity. I didn't bother with the HR one. Less than a day later I got a response telling me that they liked my resume, and that I had to complete an assignment by this upcoming Friday. Doing so would likely get me the job. I can do the job remotely, so I don't even have to worry about a commute. Woo!
The company itself is in the business of helping athletes improve at their sports. Check them out here. They do a lot of research into things like what predicts success in the NHL, what mental traits determine success on the field, understanding the value of ground balls, among other things. Knowing me, it sounds like a perfect fit, right? I can do academic type research into what makes an athlete successful. Sign me up! The only downside is that it's not paid, but it's not a huge commitment in terms of hours per week or duration of internship. We'll see if it works out.
Then in one of my final meetings at the COB today, my boss mentioned bringing me back some time in the future as a consultant for future projects. Cool, right?
I feel so fortunate to have such cool opportunities. It feels funny sharing about it here, but it's what I'm most excited about right now, so there you go.
Warning: Will be boring for anyone who isn't interested in personal details about my life.
We made our way out to Reno last week for some Walton family togetherness last Wednesday and got back this past Sunday. Why Reno, you ask? It's not as bad as you might think. Check that. As I might have thought. For outdoor enthusiasts, apparently, it has a lot of things that those types might enjoy. I'll tell you one thing though - that drive between here and there is quite mind-numbing. I don't understand the draw for some people to go to Wendover. That place is garbage. It's like a mini Las Vegas but without any of the fun of Vegas, so what's leftover is cigarette smoke indoors. Gross, right?
Anyway, Reno was a lot of fun. All of Amy's immediate family made it out with the exception of the Johnsons who still reside in lovely Germany. Many games were played including Seafarers, Bang, and Telephone Charades. We went to a terrible waterpark one day, which still was a lot of fun, and then we went to Lake Tahoe the next.
Tahoe, I think, had to be my favorite part. I have never swum in water so fresh. I've been to Tahoe several times on ski trips, so I have some fond memories there, but of the lake itself, I have none. One thing I do remember is the flight attendants always saying as we were about to land was that Lake Tahoe is among the freshest bodies of water in all of the world. It sure does taste like it. Swimming in there felt like what I'd imagine it to be like swimming in bottled water. It was amazing. And just so crystal clear, no matter what depth you're at. I swam out to a buoy and even in that deeper area you could see straight down to the lake floor. We did some rock jumping there, and the kids never seemed to tire of playing in the sand just kind of crawling around on the shore. Then again, when do kids ever get tired of that?
We played many games of ping pong. Amy and I were able to score some new wardrobe items at the outlet mall. And Reno is home to what is supposed to be the world's largest sporting goods store. I believe it. It's like if you were to walk into a huge Macey's dedicated to all things sports. And fudge. And home decor. And some other random things.
One thing the Reno trip conjured up for me though was that I'm on a mighty losing streak. I'm not faring well in board games, ping pong, or any other type of competitive venture. It's kind of irritating.
Last thing: the Walton family is amazing. I tell Amy this all of the time, but it's amazing to be around an entire family that all loves being together so much, and who are in themselves, all so easy to get along with. Even all of the in-laws are really, really awesome. I could hang out with Elisha or Sarah all day long if I had to. They're just all so great. They have come from that kind of circumstances their whole lives, so I wonder if they (YOU) all realize what an amazing, amazing blessing that is. It's incredible to be around a family that is so stable and loving toward one another. It's not just a facade. They're like that all of the time. It kind of throws me off sometimes, but of course I just love it.
The trip was especially fun for me because I feel like I was able to form some closer bonds with Dan and Sarah's girls, not to mention most of the rest of Amy's family. And I can't wait for Germany next week so that I get to do the same with the Johnsons. Fun, fun.
Ours is continuing to Reno later this afternoon. We just spent a weekend in California with wonderful family and friends, attending an awesome wedding, and just having a great time. This weekend it's Reno. Two weeks it's Europe! Woo woo!
Life is just great. We have trips and such planned through the second weekend of October. Just about every weekend between now and then is booked and I just love it.
Something I've been wanting to comment on that I don't have time for right now: I have several friends getting back into lengthy relationships after having done the break-up and get back together cycle multiple times. Don't worry. It's not any of you that I'm talking about. I haven't even spoken with either of these people in months, but it still breaks my heart nonetheless. These are people who have been in relationships that have gone on for longer than a year and have broken up and gotten back together more than five times (which in itself should tell you something about the relationship, right? Stability, people! That's what we're shooting for with long-term relationships).
A word to the wise, or to the oft-lonely and broken-hearted: Do not get into or stay in a relationship because you're feeling lonely. The old adage, it's better to be in no relationship than a bad one, is still true. And it only gets more true with marriage. Be not faithless, but believing! If you think that it's God's plan for you to one day get married, then let his plan work itself out for you. The worst problems arise when we are trying to assert our will above His own.
I was talking to a friend of mine today and he's training to become a clinical psychologist. Not that it really makes him smarter about relationships, but he does spend a lot of time observing people. I mentioned this pattern to him and he said that he thought that people often get caught into bad situations when they can't envision for themselves anything better than what they're currently getting. Makes total sense, right? So envision for yourself great things! Envision for yourself happiness and security and a healthy life-balance and eventually you'll happen upon it. Don't settle for mediocrity, or think you can't do better unless that's what you really desire. Dream great things! Work towards that and you'll eventually find it.
Sorry for that. I just hope that we can all desire more for ourselves. I was talking with a coworker yesterday and he asked me simply, "what kind of difference do you want to make?" And then we had a long conversation about what we would like to do and the visions that we have for ourselves. It left me feeling inspired, and made me wonder how much alignment I've had in my life lately between my day-to-day and what I'm working for in a year, or five, or 20.
My mission president always used to say, "if you have petty thoughts, when will you ever have time to achieve great things?" Small minds live simple lives. Desire and yearn for great things! I think we all deserve it.
I'm done now. Have a great week(end), dear ones!
(I just love this song, Actually, this album. Just great. Beatles are great.)
There are a lot of things on Facebook that just bug me. I'm talking about comments that people make on their statuses, especially political ones. I was just telling Amy the other day that I hate bumper stickers. Even when I agree with them, I just don't like seeing them because I don't really think that we need to be inflicting our opinions on people at every opportunity. (Obviously I feel differently about the blog, because you intentionally come here, although I'm not entirely sure why, but I do appreciate it. Anyway, it's your choice to have my opinion inflicted upon you.)
I don't mind articles or videos because they're at least informative, but I just hate statements that people make because they inevitably are going to fire someone up, right? And you may be surprised by this, but a lot of people just don't know what they're talking about. They just don't. Surprise! Most of the time I feel like I can just brush things off.
And then there are other times when something just sets my on fire.
I think to myself that there is no way that I can't respond to such and such inane comment about the government or whatever. That person has to know that someone else has an opinion in direct conflict with what he's saying. That's when I chime in, and fifty or ninety comments later, it's over. I'll usually participate for about a dozen or so responses, and then I'm done. Mostly because I don't want all the email notifications.
I have one friend whose comments I just cannot stand. I like him in real life, but his online persona bothers me to no end. I vehemently disagree with everything that he says.
This brings me to my point. I started thinking about this yesterday after speaking up on Facebook, about how some people become so grossly misguided about governance, politics, and the like. Disagreements about politics was a driving force behind so many of the wars in the Book of Mormon. In the last half of Alma, it talks a lot about the kingmen and how they lobbied for power, but the freemen put down their rebellion for the sake of the Nephite nation. It is this same kind of conflict over freedoms that prompted the pilgrims to settle in America. It's what prompts most of the world conflict today. And it will be what precipitates and serve as the cause for the wars and rumors of wars that will precede the Second Coming.
You can see evidence of it by the way the country divides itself politically. The borders of the country are clearly blue states (Democratic) while the red (Republican) states are in the mostly central part of the United States. There is not a perfect delineation between the people in these areas, obviously, but it's becoming more polarized, and you can see moving patterns that suggest that people do move their residence towards friendlier political climates. Texas has seen a huge surge in moving because they support conservative principles, so there is a huge shift in people moving from places (California, especially) for that purpose. That's based on actual data, although I'm not going to bother finding the source right now.
This is how the gathering will occur. People don't realize it, but it's truly that way. In the coming years, people will continue to coalesce into like-minded groups and they'll be receptive to the gospel because much of what propelled them to gather to where they have will be based on the ideals that they share in their localities. That's how it's happened before, and will continue to play out in the future.
It's just amazing to me to think about the signs of the times and how watching current events will give so much insight about how things in the scriptures are, indeed, coming to pass. You can see the patterns unfold and the circumstances develop to where those events prophesied of in the future will eventually come to pass, how it will occur.
The gathering is happening. It's going on right now. People don't need to be told by a prophet to go to certain areas because they can already anticipate the changes that are unfolding. They sense the shifting ideals in the places where they live and will go to new areas that will be more welcoming for their kind. This is as true for those with the gospel as those without.
I just hope that it's in a place with nice weather and a body of water nearby.
For the record, I actually really, really love the TV show. It's so campy and goofy and just wonderful. And, I also really loved Michael Keaton as Batman, way more, in fact, than Val Kilmer or George Clooney.
Anyway, just that first clip was awesome, and then it blew me away to think that these were all supposed to be the same character. For the dorks out there who read this, they're all correct. Batman in the comics was at one point that campy, cartoony character, but then in the 80s Frank Miller reinvented him as the dark character we've become more familiar with in his graphic novel, The Dark Knight returns. There ya go.
One of my favorite blog reads these days has been the National Geographic Travel blog. I know that I've said that a few times before on here. They always post fun things on there, this movie trailer being one of them and I thought I'd advertise it for y'all. Something about it made me feel kind of emotional. It looks so interesting to me. And then I lamented that we don't really have more independent theaters around here even though the Sundance Film Festival takes place right around the corner from us. Weird.
A caption for the video reads:
What happens when you send a request out to the world to chronicle, via video, a single day on Earth? You get 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. Producer Ridley Scott and Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald took this raw material — all shot on July 24, 2010 — and created Life in a Day, a groundbreaking, feature-length documentary that portrays this kaleidoscope of images we call life. National Geographic is bringing it to theaters starting July 24, 2011. Prepare to be amazed.
Amy and I went on a date with a couple that lives downstairs from us. They just got married about a month ago and I think we're going to become really good friends with them. Couples dating is really funny. We walked down one night and invited them to dinner and to play games with us and it felt like asking for a date. Amy and I had a post-game chat afterwards about how much we liked them. You know what else? They asked for the next date with us while we were still on the date, so you know that one went well. Plus, they friended us on FB the very next morning.
Really, we have been so blessed to have so many people around us that we love spending time with. We are never hurting for things to do or people to hang out with, and I couldn't love it more. The people in our lives are easily the greatest blessings that we have, of which there are many. It's really great.
As a response to what happened in New York recently these writers write the following.
Ed Whelan:
The idea that a man could “marry” another man (or that a woman could “marry” another woman) could be taken seriously only in a culture that has become deeply confused about what marriage is. That confusion is largely the result of what heterosexuals have done to marriage in recent decades. It will not be easy to rebuild a sound marriage culture. But the spread of same-sex marriage would make that rebuilding project impossible, as it would sever permanently the societal understanding of the inherent link between marriage and responsible procreation and child-rearing. The more confusion there is about the mission of marriage, the less well marriage will perform its critical mission. And the millions and millions of victims — children born into unstable or nonexistent families — will continue to pile up, with all the attendant disastrous consequences.
Matthew Franck:
What has been gained by the forces behind this act? Certainly not marriage for same-sex couples. They have gained a name, but not the thing it names. They have only destroyed a word’s meaning. And they have harmed the thing it does name, by teaching — one of the things the law does — that marriage has no connection to children and families, but instead is just a bundle of privileges from the government, to be taken up if it is in one’s self-interest. New York has struck a great blow, in the name of a false “right,” against real freedom. Same-sex marriage is inseparable from authoritarianism, as we will see when New York’s Christians, Jews, and Muslims lose the religious freedom to act on the truth about marriage as they know it.
Glen Stanton:
Marriage is so much more than a religious, Western, conservative, modern, or legal idea. Anthropologist Donald Brown, in his book, Human Universals, examining the qualities that all cultures at all times hold in common given their shared humanity, lists marriage as one of these universals. And for all the varied ways that different cultures have done marriage, one thing remains commonly consistent – or at least it did until the last few nanoseconds of our human experience. Marriage always brought the two amazing and mysteriously distinct parts of humanity together into an exclusive, socially valued, and protective union. Marriage has always existed to solve the paradox that humanity exists in male and female.
Each of the couples we will see on Sunday — together with the New York legislature which enacted this new law — is proclaiming with a loud and powerful voice that male and female are now merely sentimental terms. Have a husband and wife, mother and father in your family if you like, but no one really needs them anymore. Male and female become to the family what the service agreement on your new SUV is: optional, based on your personal preference. This is exactly what New York marriage law now teaches, and it will not be without widespread consequence. How can it not?
Just thought those were some interesting points. Emphases are my own. For the whole article, go here.
One from last week's performance episode. I love Sasha, and anything that Twitch does has me sold too. It's just another one of those where everything just intersects perfectly - dancers, choreography, music, and performance. Loved, loved, loved this one.
This is all for you, Laura. Before I forgot to say anything about it. Yes, I've read Born to Run, and read some other things about the barefoot running revolution. These are all just my person opinions. I'm not an expert, but I guess I have some idea about this stuff. Here's my take on it:
If it isn't broke, then don't fix it, right? If you're running and everything is feeling okay, meaning that when you are in decent shape, you can run 3-5 miles without any unusual kind of pain, then it seems that regular running shoes work well enough, right? I have run 4 marathons. I'm partial to the Brooks brand of shoes. I have a neutral gait, so everything works pretty well for me.
I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. One of the biggest reasons why people get injured is because they don't have the muscle composition to support the activity that they are doing. Being strong and having good muscle tone is the biggest factor in preventing injury. I think I've been able to run with so little injury concerns is that I've always done running activities my whole life, and before I even took up running, I was regularly working out 4-5 times a week. That, in addition to eating well, are the two biggest factors in allowing a person to exercise without injury concerns.
Anyway, the people who are the most fit are fit in every way. That's what's so good about people who do Cross Fit, because it's a whole body work-out regimen. That's why triathletes are so fit, because they are wholly fit. They can run, bike, and swim. The best runners are the ones who can do all of those things, and will do a variety of different kinds of runs - hill work, speed work, long runs, interval training, etc. Running only short runs, doesn't necessarily mean you are fit. It just means that you can do short runs. And runners should try and run on a variety of different surfaces: grass, sand, dirt, asphalt, etc.
I think the same applies to barefoot running. Although the type of stride is different when running barefoot as opposed to running in shoes, I think it gives you dimension in the way your body can bend, flex, react, and absorb different patterns of running.
I'm actually interested in trying it out at some point, just to see if it can help me add some depth to my running. The Vibram 5 fingers are popular. I think I'm most interested in some of the other minimalist running alternatives. The Nike Free shoes sound pretty cool, Nike Zooms, FeelMax, among others. I think all the major brands are coming out with their own variety.
I had all kinds of hesitations about this race. I was worried about the race temperature because of a mid-summer race time; I was worried about how that temperature would affect my training; More recently I've been worried about how an achy back from sleeping on a bad mattress would affect my running. There were a number of things concerning me.
And all of that has contributed a lot lately to just not wanting to run much recently. I got through my 20+ long runs, but my most recent one was my worst ever. I couldn't run the whole time. I had weird chills going through my back and shoulders. I just really struggled with it. My previous one was fine, but it just really left me not feeling very confident at all about my training.
Flash forward to this morning. We got a nice hotel room at a nearby Marriott and Amy took me at 3:00 to catch the 3:15 AM shuttle up to the start of the race. The temperature was fine down in the valley, but we started from Big Mountain which is 7000 feet higher in elevation, so I was pretty cold up at the top. I had about an hour and a half to kill before the start time which would be at 5:30 AM.
One of my favorite things about running these races are the random little friends you make along the way. I happened to meet a guy named Carlos, about age 30, from Brazil, also running his fourth marathon, also in a Phd program. Turned out we had a lot of things in common and we talked for about 30 minutes, and then we ran about the first 5 miles together before he dropped off behind me.
I felt okay for the first half of the marathon. I did have to go to the bathroom once, which is not great, but once I did that I didn't have much problem with my digestive system afterwards. My first half was about 1:50 or so. Not great, but okay considering that I wasn't trying to set any PRs this marathon. And that's when the struggles began.
Around mile 17 we finally got out of the mountains, crossed up around, over, and passed Hogle Zoon, and I was just having the hardest time. I was not in the right kind of shape for this marathon. My calves were tightening and I had to stretch them out a couple of times. The quadriceps become your shock absorbers when you are going down an incline, and mine were just shot. I told Amy that the very fastest I would run would be 8 minute miles, but I was nowhere near that. I was between 9-10 minutes from 17-22, and then almost 10 through the end of the race.
The night before the race we had seen the mile marker for 21 which was right by our hotel, so I was pretty sure I would see my wife there. I thought really hard about just giving up when I saw her. I was worried about having her get back to work at a decent time, and I really was just dying. I knew that I could finish a marathon so that wasn't a motivating factor for me to get through the end. I knew that I wasn't going to break any records either. To tell you the truth, I'm really not sure what it was that kept me going through the end. I knew that I would have a horrible time, and it's actually kind of humbling for me to acknowledge finishing at such a slow pace for me, especially when I remember how old and slow the runners were who I ended up finishing with.
My first half put me on a 3:45 finish time, but my second half slowed down to a near crawl, closing up at 2:24, so a full half hour longer than my first half for a total time of 4:14. I walked a lot of the last few miles, but I did manage to run most of the last couple miles, albeit at a very slow pace.
I thought the course was really pretty. For a small marathon, I actually thought it was pretty good. So far the Long Beach marathon is my least favorite of them all. The weather was very, very accommodating today too. I think the race start temperature was in the low 70s, and was overcast at the end, maybe high 70s.
I finished it. This was by far my hardest marathon. This was about 100x harder than running the 3:28 in St. George was last October. I didn't have enough training for this one. The 7000 feet of descent just destroyed my legs to the point that I couldn't really run on them from mile 17-18 on. I was in so much pain, in fact, that I was just about in tears following the race. I didn't have much cramping afterwards because that actually came during the race. It was just really, really hard, but I did it. I finished it, even though I didn't have anything to really prove, other than the fact that I'm just kind of stubborn. This is going to sound dumb, but I think my two biggest motivators were that I knew Amy had to get back to work, and I wasn't going to see her anywhere else other than the finish line, and that I wanted the finisher's medal. I wanted to have this race under my belt and say that I had run it, even though it just about killed me to do it, and I'm not proud about my time or how poorly prepared I was for it.
I'm happy I did it. I didn't injure anything. No muscle pulls/strains, and my joints are all okay. Everything is pretty sore, and climbing down stairs is a huge chore, but that's always the case with marathons. Amy asked me immediately after I finished if I wanted to run another, or take a break for awhile. I just told her that I couldn't answer that question yet. It really is the furthest thing from my mind at that point. All I could think about was how much everything was hurting.
My sincerest thanks goes to my wife. I hope she already knows that. I think I thanked her at least several times on the way home. Thanks also to all of the wonderful, wonderful volunteers, especially the policemen directing all of the traffic for us slow runners even though we totally held people up. They never made me wait at an intersection, and they really were just so cool the whole time. I really do want to volunteer more for race support at these things. I can't even say how much I appreciate all of the people who help out through the whole thing. Thanks to the random girls at about mile 23 who were handing out Otter Pops. That really did save me at the time, even though it did make me walk.
And thanks, race people, for playing Milli Vanilli when I was running through the finish. Now this song will be associated with the Deseret News Marathon for me.
Sometimes I take the bus to work. Every time I take the bus to work, I end up getting pretty good naps in. While it takes a little bit longer to take the bus (a little over an hour, as compared to about 45 minutes driving myself), I don't have to pay for gas because of my awesome bus pass that only cost $100 and is good for the whole year. The biggest selling point for the bus, however, is that I get to take a couple of good naps. Frankly, I'm amazed at how rested I feel with them even though the seating is just a little bit tighter than is comfortable, and it's mostly upright.
Well, sometimes I'm really sleepy on the bus, even after I take my nap. And sometimes I wake up a little late and miss my exit. It's never been more than one or two exits which is not a bad walk.
But maybe this time I woke up and nothing looked immediately familiar to me. And maybe this time I realized that I was almost in Orem, which would be about two cities over from my home destination of Pleasant Grove. With my wife out of town, I didn't have the obvious person to call, but there were still others that I know in the area that could have helped me out.
Sometimes I'm prideful, so prideful, in fact, that I would rather just walk the two plus miles in my suit and in about 90 degree weather.
Sometimes I think I have too much pride. And then sometimes I post things on my blog and I think that if I can laugh a little bit about my plight, then maybe I'm overcoming my pride.
I was reading an article about sprinting a week or so ago. A researcher of the mechanics of running said that the root of sprinting is essentially how hard your feet hit the ground. He then said that the world record holder in the 100m hits the ground with more than 1000 lbs of force with each stride he takes. 1000 lbs!
But in the end, humans are naturally adapted to running long distances. This is our evolutionary advantage over other animals. We're not even close to being able to run faster than other animals, but we can run much longer than any of them over long distances. Even horses.
Read this post yesterday about what brick and mortar restaurants and Borders bookstores have in common. A hint: adaptability.
There is a trailer for the Amazing Spiderman movie that is coming out next summer. It looks cool, but I can't believe they're rebooting the series so soon. It's been less than 10 years since the first, and I thought that one was really good to begin with, soooo...why the reboot?
I run a marathon in 4 days. I'm feeling okay about it.
I miss my wife. She's been gone since Sunday. My house is quiet. I think the solution is for us to get a dog to keep me company.
I love these:
Funny how white that audience is, isn't it? Like totally white. As evidenced by the dancing.
Amy and I caught the last Harry Potter movie on Friday. It was really good. It's hard when expectations are skyscraper high, but I think mine were just about evenly met. What's really nice about the movies is that they are able to stand alone. Having read the books, you can watch the movies and still really enjoy them without feeling like they didn't get it right. And you can probably watch the movies without having read the books and still be quite entertained. They do a really great job with all of it.
I can understand that the nature of the story is not one that grips every reader/watcher. Fantasy and magic and wizards and witches just may not be your cup of tea. At the same time I still have a hard time understanding when people feel like the series is overrated. Set aside the thing about how Rowling creates this whole alternate world and weaves a wonderfully fantastic tale through 4200 pages of literature. Every time I revisit the story I remember how perfectly she illustrates core principles and values that everybody should cherish and yearn for more of always - loyalty, devotion, determination, courage, among others. Are those not things that we yearn for?
I wrote this post a couple years ago when I got through reading the series, and I still feel this way now:
Several years ago Orson Scott Card spoke at a symposium at BYU. From what I can remember, his topic focused mainly on the importance of fiction and how it shapes societal trends and values. He brought up an example from the TV show Friends when Ross's ex-wife gets married to her lesbian partner. The ceremony is performed, and sanctioned by a religious minister, and one of the father's of one of the bride's attends in his military uniform. Symbolically then, the show portrays the acceptance of same-sex marriage by both religious and government leaders. This was not by accident.
Card's point in this example is that fiction often presents the breeding ground where ideas and principles are placed. How we embrace the stories put forth often leads to the adoption of the associated ethics and morals that are on display in the piece of fiction, and conversely, our rejection of the story necessarily leads to the denial of those same values. I've made this point on here before, so I'll spare you the same argument again other than to simply say, it's not ever just a story/book/movie/tv show. Our patronage of these products facilitates their growth and acceptance, not of just the final product but what values they promote.
My point (as well as Card's) in bringing all of this up is that Harry Potter is the kind of story that we should want to embrace. It is the kind of book that parents should be reading to children. Not only is the story itself very compelling and entertaining, but Harry is truly a heroic character in spite of the flaws that Rowling clearly portrays him having. He constantly sacrifices, conquers in the face of heartbreaking tragedy, and triumphs over evil. His friends perfectly characterize loyalty and devotion. The story deftly illustrates good and evil and the type of dedication that is required to overcome. Rowling draws from her own loss of her mother to describe Harry's struggles with loss. In the form of the dementors she personifies the suffocating effects of clinical depression. It really is amazing how much real life is captured in her fictional books. I love love love these stories.
And the story really is so much about relationships. You see it when Professor McGonagall stands up to Snape. You see it in (spoiler!) Snape's relationship with Harry's mother and how much he cares for the boy, but Rowling does so well to keep that point hidden until the very end, when it becomes most crucial to the plotline. You see it with Harry and his friends, Harry and Dumbledore, Harry and everyone else in the story. And then of course there is the contrarsting example of healthy relationships that is portrayed through Voldemort and all of his followers. His hold was always tenuous at best over his minions simply because he governed through fear when love is obviously such a greater tactic. The flaws of his leadership is characterized best by the Malfoys who desert him in the end because of the love that they share with one another, even though they may hate Harry.
This series reminds me of growing up reading the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid. I just loved Peter's courage and I wanted to be him. Obviously Aslan was an inspiring symbol as he was used to represent the Savior. But this is my point. So much teaching comes through these stories, and we could do worse than to have kids wanting to be like Harry, to be the kind friends that Ron and Hermione were, and to entertain ourselves through literature that supports the kind of values that we hope to perpetuate.
Friend of mine posted this article on FB today about the new mandate from the governor for public schools to teach gay history. What's the point? Isn't history, history? It's not like teachers ignore the contributions of gay members of society. We read several pieces from Oscar Wilde, and you know what? I love his stuff. The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books, and the Importance of Being Earnest is probably one of the most clever plays ever written. Did our teacher mention that he was gay? Yes. Did it matter to anyone? No. History is history. Does it really make a difference who made it? Shouldn't those details come naturally as a part of the course of learning? Why this emphasis?
Special interests groups. Always special interests.
And you may have heard about the "Amazon" tax that California passed recently that forces online retailers from California to charge sales tax. The idea was to try and cover some of the budget shortfall, but it recovers very, very little and will only serve to alienate companies from doing business in the state.
This post here by economist MJ Perry talks about how businesses are leaving California in record numbers. An average of 5.4 businesses leave California a week. A week! Where do they go? In order:
Texas
Arizona
Colorado
Nevada/Utah
Virginia/North Carolina
It breaks my heart, this California business, or lack thereof. Every time I go home I remember just how much I love it down there, but I really cannot think of a place that is more hostile to my interests than that state. It's so upsetting.
Something I do love about California? Still love KROQ. Sometimes I'll pop over to the website to see what new songs I'm missing and I am always surprised by how much of the stuff I just don't know about. Everything takes so long to filter our here to Utah. I really, really like this new song from Incubus:
Plus, the morning show is pretty funny. Nothing here in Utah even comes close. Well, 97.1 has some people that I do enjoy. This morning KROQ is having a contest for people to win tickets to an LA show and the trick is that they have to tell them which orchestral version of RATM song the guys in the studio are singing. Awesome, right? It's probably enhanced by the fact that I'm listening up here at the COB in a suit and tie and these idiots on the radio are doing guitar riffs and drum beats with their mouths in the most obnoxious way possible.
That's what I got for now. Have a good one, dear ones.
One of the reasons conservatives opposed the state sanctioning of same-sex marriage was the natural extension that it could open the door to allowing for polygamy. "But that's just not true! People wouldn't jumped to those kinds of conclusions!" cried the libs. Well, here it comes.
(Ironic that Mormons are largely conservative, so ideologically we would naturally oppose this when this was a Church endorsed practice for a good number of years. Some members of the Church even think that this practice will follow after this life. But you knew all of that already and I digress...)
Kody Brown, of Sister Wives fame, was forced to move from the state of Utah after the television show made their lives plain for all to see. Utah, afraid of the association between itself and its past "lurid" history, tends to come down pretty violently on any open attempts at polygamy (think, Warren Jeffs). As a result, the Browns, all 21 of them, moved down to a Las Vegas suburb to escape some of the heat that they were facing. (Incidentally, when Amy and I traveled down to California last and stayed in Vegas on the way down, her cousin(?) had actually come back that night from hanging out with one of the kids belonging to that family and had been taped at Yogurtland by TLC, doing the things that polygamist kids do, which apparently is go eat frozen yogurt by the pound.)
(I'm going to try and limit any more parentheticals.)
Anyway, here is an article that gives a basic rundown of the events. An excerpt:
The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.
More commentary on the topic from Matthew Franck over at NRO:
Of course the complete dismantling of all civil regulation of marital relations and sexual conduct is exactly where we have been heading ever since Justice Kennedy’s deeply foolish Lawrence opinion. The Times manages to find one law professor willing to stick her fingers in her ears and say “la la la I can’t hear you” to the proposition that the Lawrence reasoning has propelled us in this direction. And Professor Turley, dutifully speaking for his client, wants us to believe that his claim is a moderate and limited one. But literally no one else has reason to believe such tripe. Here we go. Here we have always known we would go.
Meanwhile, I have been waiting for the next shoe to drop before commenting on this issue, but I didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it has. A polygamist has brought a lawsuit in federal court arguing that laws against polygamy should be struck down on the very same “right to privacy” grounds that the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case. What, exactly, is the argument against polygamy if gay marriage is justified not simply on an expansive “right to privacy,” but also, as Justice Kennedy notoriously put it in his famous “mystery-of-the-universe” clause that each individual has the right to pursue their “own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”? Law professor and uber-blogger Ann Althouse comments, “I think the Lawrence-based argument for decriminalizing polygamy is much stronger than the Lawrence-based argument for requiring the government to give legal recognition to same-sex marriage.” Gay marriage advocates always dismissed the question of why gay marriage wouldn’t open the door to a revival of polygamy as absurd whenever it is brought up, ignoring that polygamy has a much longer record in human history than gay marriage—indeed it is still widely accepted in the Islamic world. Further, what, exactly, is the argument against polygamous gay marriage?
What's interesting about Kennedy's Lawrence opinion is that he states that the state doesn't intrude into private matters of the home and does not pretend to be omnipresent, but it really does in so many other ways. Obviously when it comes to endangering other citizens The State will go to great lengths to enter into the home. But even with simpler things like education. Heck, especially education. I just learned the other day about how Amy's sister was threatened by their school district because of the family's affinity for taking vacations, even though their kids tended to be the most academically accomplished of all of the students. In any case, The State takes a great interest in governing parental behaviors while ignoring other ones that may not be politically expedient at the time. Such is life.
So there you have it. Just like Franck said, "Here we go. Here we have always known we would go."
Amy and I bought a mattress just before we got married. Our only experience prior to this was buying our own very cheap individual mattresses, but now we had a little bit of money, we wanted to get something that would last a long time. We happened upon a sale at Macey's, chose something probably a little too quickly, and that was supposed to be the end of it.
Then over the course of the past several months it has just been slowly wreaking havoc on my back. I know Amy doesn't like it all that much either, but it has been really doing a number on me, to the extent that I can point to the specific vertebra in my spine that is taking the brunt of it. I wake up in the morning and it hurts to take deep breaths and my back always feels tight. It's even to the point that it's been affecting my running. The mattress is just too soft.
We're well outside of the return period, but I thought that if I called their customer service and pleaded my case enough, I could get them to take it back and we could get a different one, probably with some penalties, but worth it.
I never got belligerent or demanding. I don't do that as well as some people, but I was really persistent and kept thinking of everything I could to plead my case. I called today and it took about an hour of begging, but I finally got them to agree to it. The customer service rep talked to her manager at least four times, and in what was probably my last ditch effort, she cut me off mid-sentence and told me that they would do it with a restocking and delivery fee.
I've totally gotten Amy into So You Think You Can Dance. It's kind of awesome. The show is promoting a national dance day on July 30, and they have several different tutorials on dances to learn. I'm hoping that we'll really do it and get into it. Start with this video if you're interested:
Over at Powerline, I read this blogpost about the conservative case for taxes. I thought it was really insightful. Here is a key excerpt:
But here’s the case: one problem with our current tax policy is that at the moment the American people as a whole are receiving a dollar of government for the price of only 60 cents. (I don’t say a “dollar’s worth of government,” but let’s leave that snark for another time.) Any time you can get a dollar of something at a 40 percent discount, you are going to demand more of it. My theory is simple: if the broad middle class of Americans are made to pay for all of the government they get, they may well start to demand less of it, quickly.
There’s corollary point to this. Back in the Reagan years, there was a vigorous internal debate about whether to resist tax increases because “starving the beast” would hold down spending. But evidence is now in: this strategy doesn’t work. My witness on this point is the Cato Institute’s chairman, William Niskanen (who was chairman of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers at one point, and a person whose libertarian credentials are hard to beat). Niskanen noted this striking finding [1] in a Cato Policy Report a while ago:
In a professional paper published in 2002, I presented evidence that the relative level of federal spending over the period 1981 through 2000 was coincident with the relative level of the federal tax burden in the opposite direction; in other words, there was a strong negative relation between the relative level of federal spending and tax revenues. Controlling for the unemployment rate, federal spending increased by about one-half percent of GDP for each one percentage point decline in the relative level of federal tax revenues. . . One implication of this relation is that a tax increase may be the most effective policy to reduce the relative level of federal spending.
Other economists have reached the same conclusion [2]. In other words, if you want to limit government spending, instead of starving the beast, serve the check. (Well, I can hear everyone now, there’s goes your invitation to Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meetings! True that.) Right now the anti-tax bias of the right has the effect of shifting costs onto future generations who do not vote in today’s elections, and enables liberals to defend against spending restraints very cheaply. Time to end the free ride.
An article over at NRO talks about a case of overly restrictive separation between Church and state. Article is here. An excerpt:
This isn’t the first episode of such trouble. In May, with the approach of Memorial Day — always a day of proud and sorrowful reflection at veterans’ cemeteries, typically characterized by invocations of God’s mercy and His blessings on our country — Ocasio required that the ministers who planned to speak at the cemetery submit their proposed prayers to her in advance. Pastor Scott Rainey of Living Word Church did so, and was told to revise his prayers to be more “inclusive” — by excluding specific reference to his own religion. Appealing to the VA in Washington, Rainey was referred to a deputy in the general counsel’s office, who backed Ocasio.
Rainey took his case to federal district court in Houston, where Judge Lynn Hughes sharply rebuked the VA and Ocasio, issuing a restraining order against them on May 26. As Hughes said in his opinion, “the government cannot gag citizens” in the name of “some bureaucrat’s notion of cultural homogeneity.”
I read a pretty cool article on ESPN about what The Decision (Lebron's televised decision to choose the Heat over the Cavaliers) looked like through the eyes of the kids at the Boys and Girls Club where it was televised from. It was a really fun look, and it also reminded me of how important the Boys and Girls Club was for me when I was growing up with two parents who worked and no one else who could look after me in the summers. I still even remember one of the guys that I really looked up to - George Gorey. I ought to look him up. It takes a village...and I feel like I had all sorts of people that I owe so much to because of roles that they played for me during my childhood. Here is the article.
A friend of mine will occasionally send out songs or albums that she's really into, and I do the same thing every time. I'll just set it aside for a month or three, start get into the music on my own, and then remember that she sent it to me way before it all got big. That's happened at least three times that I can think of right off the bat. Anyway, the latest is this song. And I just love love the video.
And that's all I got for today. Have a great weekend, y'all!
This is very journaly and sans pictures, so brace yourself.
I had my last long run before the Deseret News Marathon on Friday. It just about destroyed me, and maybe I'll write about that somewhere else, but not here. Because of that run, I thought beforehand that I wouldn't want to drive the full-length of I-15 between Utah and California so I suggested to Amy that maybe we should stay with her aunt and uncle in Las Vegas, stay the night, then drive the rest of the way in the morning. That plan would have been fine, but it ended up making the drive feel much longer than normal, and it made Saturday feel pretty darn short, even though we got in around lunch time.
We arrived to have lunch with the Dave and Caitlin and company, then parted to do some shopping and take care of a few things. That left us with just enough time in the afternoon to drop by the pool before we would go to the Angel game that night. Living in not-California means that I only have a couple of opportunities each baseball season to catch an MLB game at Anaheim stadium. We had terrible seats, but at least they were inexpensive, and the Angels did us the favor of actually putting some runs on the board. They've been pretty hot as of late with their veteran players finally stepping up to lead the team. Jered Weaver pitched the game against Clayton Kershaw, which should have actually been a premier match-up, except that Kershaw was overmatched and Weaver was in his All-Star form. There's nobody's pitching motion that I like more than Weaver's. He has long limbs that really just whip that ball out over the plate. It's a really cool thing to see.
Sunday turned out to be a really busy day between making sure that we saw both of my parents, managing schedules, while still trying to make sure that we made a full block of church meetings. Normally we would just go with the Reids, but we needed a more accommodating time for our appointments, which meant that we would go to church in a random ward. I thought the Irvine stake would work out well for us since I would know people in just about any of the wards and it would be fun to see old faces. We weren't able to attend my old family ward, but I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could make one of the wards on the other side of Irvine where the Redfords go to church. Turns out that we picked the right ward, just the wrong Sunday, as they happened to be away on one of their Shasta trips for the summer. It mattered little, however, because I was able to run into a guy that I had signed up with for last year's St. George marathon. I got to catch up with him, and a few other people that I just happened to know, people who I forgot would also be apart of that ward. One guy who bore his testimony in sacrament meeting had some familiarity to me as well, but I couldn't place it until we were in Elders Quorum. When I heard his voice again, saw his face up close, and heard his name, I put together that we had both served in Chile together as part of the same group of missionaries that arrived and left together. That was a fun little reunion for me.
But the best part of the meetings was how Amy and I felt while there. We have appreciated our family ward here in Utah, but in some ways people have been slow to acknowledge our presence. It was a couple of months before anyone from the bishopric met with us, before we got home and visiting teaching assignments. Even now, three months later, we still don't have callings. When we dropped into this Irvine ward we had all manner of people come up to us and ask our names, our lives, if we were visiting or staying. I even had a few different soft pitches from people saying that I should move there and be a part of the ward. The classes were all so engaging. The quorum and relief societies felt united and interested in each other. There was a great sense of familiarity with everyone. It was exactly how anyone would hope to feel attending a new ward. It was a really great experience. Amy and I are hoping that we can be the kind of people who would lead the way in making our own ward as welcoming as it was in the Irvine Westpark ward.
Every evening in California ended with games. Always games. Glorious games.
The day of the 4th started quickly. We left at eight to pick up some items for a salad, some last minute essentials, and then were ready to leave just a little after nine. We celebrated the day with about five other couples and three sets of kids. Although the parking is very limited at Newport, that also naturally limits the number of people who are actually on the beach, leaving us with plenty of free space for whiffleball games, catch, and whatever else we can think of. The day was hot, but with the water cold it was a perfect situation to be in. It was just so nice to hang out in the ocean water. There were even these little fishes that would swim up the shore, lots of shells buried in the sand, and just a clear, clear blue-green water. It was just spectacular. Freedom dawgs graced our festivities, along with a couple of other salads, a number of red fruits, and plenty of desserts to snack from.
That night we watched a fireworks show right over by Tustin High School. They were fun.
It's just fun to be at home, around people that I love so much. I love how familiar Mason is with Amy and I. He seems to have a pretty good crush on her too. I love being around Ryan and Tyler, especially how much Ryan is growing up and wanting to be a part of everything. I love being at the beach all day long. I love napping on the warm sand with the rolling waves drowning out the sounds of everyone who is at the beach. I love free and plentiful snacks to munch on the whole day long. I love playing games with people that just really love playing games, even if I only seemed to lose the whole weekend long. And I just love being around people that are so close to my heart. You know what else I love?
