Away From Here

• Was talking to a friend yesterday, the one that's compiling the breakup songs, and I shared one of mine which is a punk song. She immediately turned up her nose and asked if liking punk music is a regional thing, like techno is for Europeans. I agreed at first, but I think it's more a cultural-attitude kind of thing. Europeans have a brand of punk music. Chileans liked it. I used to hear it all the time down there as a missionary, and no, not because I brought it with me and listened to it of my own accord. Like in the streets. I really miss that about South America - that music was always blasting from people's homes and no one thought twice about it. Anyway, it has a lot to do with the skater/surfer/snowboarder culture, and isn't limited to Southern California. While a lot of it is kind rebellious, a lot of it is also rooted in positivity that seems to escape many other brands of music. Anyway, the post title actually comes from a British punk song that I've come to appreciate because it's so wonderfully British punk rock. I don't know how to describe that brand of punk, but this song screams it.





• Insight/inspiration/revelation is funny and amazing thing. I feel like I've been doing a really good job lately on keeping my thoughts centered on good things, and it's funny how I see that evidenced throughout my day. Lately I've been studying judgment v. condemnation, and out of nowhere while I was walking to my car from school the thought popped into my head about how restraining prejudiced attitudes towards others is entirely related to extending forgiveness to all people, and I had never made that connection before, but it made perfect sense to me. This morning I was reading about relational ontology for my personality class (which, hopefully, I'll take the time to explain at some point), and then I had a few thoughts materialize out of nowhere about how I can be more productive and how I should alter my prayers. It's just amazing thinking about how God can be involved in the details of our lives if we have our eyes opened to it. Not really related, but if "details" are the small things, then what's the word for big things? Now, more related, while Heavenly Father is completely aware of those "big things" that we have going on, what an incredible evidence it is of his intimate love for us as his children that he would get involved in the minutia of our day to day lives, like how I can avoid being lazy and just get more stuff done. Even those little things matter, and that is so comforting to know.
• I can't describe how much I'm loving this personality class. Usually I'm mostly engaged in my readings, but when I read about this stuff I can't believe how interested I am in the material. It almost feels like there is never enough, and I am almost sorry that there isn't more reading when I finish it for the week. I'll really do my best to share some of the stuff we've been learning about, and hopefully I can do it justice, because it's really abstract and those things are hard to explain without being overly wordy. But I tend to do that anyway, so maybe it'll work out fine.
• I know that you guys very rarely click on the links that I post on here, but if you ever do click on one, I hope that you would click here. No, it's nothing political or anything like that, because that's so boring and lame, right? I'll just post the intro to the post here:

  Anyway, when we have leftover dinner, the permanent roommate packs us both a lunch. Since they look identical, she started leaving a Post-It note so I would know which lunch was mine. At first they just said Chris but I guess she got bored with just writing my name. She started writing funny messages. I saved my favorites.

  And here's an example...




So cute, right? I was reading them thinking about how much I wanted to be married to someone like that, and then I realized that we all would probably want that. Anyway, follow the link, there are more.

• That's all folks!