here’s life

So, it was friday, and I hurried out of work, and jumped on the turnpike, heading for KC. My flight was leaving about 4 and a half hours, just enough time to get there. I got a call from my mom. My destination in Ohio was getting snow, and flights were being canceled. My dad was in one airport. My grandfather was stuck in Atlanta. Well, I figured I’d just keep driving, and see what I could make of it. But when I got off the phone with my Mom, I had a voicemail, saying that my flight was canceled. Ok, so I dropped off the next exit, paid my 30 cents, and headed for home. I could go back to work. I could try to find a flight from somewhere that would get me there. Sometime, maybe tomorrow….or…
I called up Aduma. “What are you doing this weekend?” “I’m on a mountain, snowboarding. Tomorrow we might go climb a 14er”. An hour later, I had more warm clothes packed, and was heading west instead of east. I drove. And drove. Western Kansas is pretty, but it is long. At dusk I passed a wind farm—fifty turbines spinning slowly. Then it got dark, and all I saw were the white lines. And then, suddenly, I was there, and found a bed, and went to sleep. Well, it wasn’t sudden, but I did have some meaningful times of prayer and singing while riding in my radio-free car.
We got up early, and headed for the mountain. Not quite early enough, it would seem. There was lots of traffic. Well, alot compared to my little big city. And when the right lane ended, all the selfish jerks were driving past everyone on the right, and then merging in, slowing the whole thing to a crawl. I didn’t have the nerve to be a jerk back, so didn’t pull into the right lane and stop. I did try to run over some people who merged in because I wasn’t fast enough to close the gap. Yeah, about that. My car does ok in Kansas, where there is lot of air, and not much hill. But, you get out to the mountains, and it has a hard time. It may have been trying to skip 1st gear, but it would take a while to get going. On the interstate it just annoyed the other drivers. But once we got onto the mountain trails, it became difficult to manage. It was too curvy and slick to go fast enough to keep the turbo pressure up to give the engine enough power to get up the hills. At one point we had to get out and push because the road was too slick and steep, and full throttle just made smoke. Eventually, we got to the parking lot—well, it was where we parked, since the road was blocked with a ten-foot pile of snow. We were a couple miles from the trailhead, and we gave up on climbing the mountain. Instead, we walked up the road (and railing on the road that was level with the snow) and the followed a snow-shoe path to a hill where we did dive-rolls until we were worn out and covered with snow. The trip down was much easier. Except that the car in front of us almost slid sideways into an oncoming car. They both stopped in time, and I was able to run into the drift at the edge of the cliff and stop before running into them. We passed a hydro electric plant with lots of wires, and not much water or drop. Not sure how they managed it. We got milkshakes at the bottom of the hill, in the little town. The lady who ran the milkshake place wasn’t as good at it as the normal lady. Even if she had been doing it all her life, she’d only have gotten a few dozen shakes done. But not to worry because Becky had some spaghetti for us that evening. We had a good time hanging out, and Discussing Important Stuff. Like a name for my car. It earned the title “The Bloviator”. It blows alot of black smoke. But also, in a more sophisticated sense, it looks like an impressive luxury car, and it says alot about driving, but when it come down to it, it didn’t go anywhere. So, it is pretentiously contentless. About that time, we decided to watch UHF. “oh, yeah…they really hate it when you do this!” Shake, Shake, shake.
Sunday we went to church, and heard another excellent message—that makes two out of two. We went for a walk in the afternoon, in the “Impressive Backyard”. I needed to leave, but stopped to get icecream with the others on the way out. But, it was late, and I’d be driving tired, and we wanted to climb another hill in the morning…so I didn’t leave after all. I called a coworker and said I wouldn’t be in. We spent a while wandering around downtown, while part of our party waited for the train. Then aduma and I got supper, and talked about Life. Now I know what to do with my future! I’m going to go live in the woods and eat squirrels. Maybe some rabbits, after the first frost.
Monday started out like another other day. Getting up before sunrise, and heading off—oh, wait, not to work, but to 10732 ft. ASL and then hiking up a snow packed path, and picking our way through unmarked drifts and boulders, and finally summiting at 11722 ft. The view, like all weekend, was excellent. I mean, Kansas is great. It has some nice flat stuff, and some good grass-covered hills. But, it’s not quite like looking down on angled slopes covered with snow-covered trees, and looking over and seeing peaks that are coated with snow. And gazing off the cliff, resisting the urge to jump, hoping that this time, I’ll learn to fly. It sometimes takes a little bit to get the hang of it. Then, it was back down into town, more of the perfect weather we’d had all weekend, and this time I really left. Once aduma got my car started, cranking while I pumped the primer pump. The Bloviator was off and running! I took a scenic route across eastern Colorado, on a two lane that flew past farms and paused in little towns. It was good to see the heart of the communities along the way. It was also a pretty lonely road. I think I went about a half hour without meeting another car. And I drove and I drove. With my sunroof open. And I thought, and I tried to stay awake, and I troubleshooted a kludge of two wireless routers that a friend uses to steal wireless from the neighbors and re-broadcast it. (unplug them both, and then plug them in in cascading order, Does it work now?)
It was dark by the time I got to the windmills this time. They each had a red light on top, and nearly all of them blinked in unison. There was one light that was about half a blink slow. I was driving in the dark and I looked up at the bright stars–so much brighter than in the city, and I inhaled, and smelled…snow. What’s that? Why do I smell snow when I look at the sky? It doesn’t smell like snow in my car if I look out the windshield, but the sky looks like snow smells. It made me think of this page which I read about 4 years ago. It suggest that humans can sense infrared, with lets us see the temperature of an object at a distance. Well, we all know we can tell if some thing is hot or cold without touching it—your skin can easily say “I am in the sun” or “I am in the shade”. But, no, this is something different—or at least feels different to me. That smell of rain or snow. I think it was that I was “seeing” the deep cold of space. Space doesn’t radiate much at all—-sure there are stars, but they are really small compared to the coldness of the nothingness of space. And why do I sense it most when I inhale through my nose? It could be that I am in the habit of associating smells with inhaling through my nose, or it could be it gives me a sample of ambient air to use as a reference. Suppose I have sensors in the skin below my eyes that can tell th e temp of an object straight ahead by checking for heat radiating from it. Now, it might get confused because there is also heat conducting out of the air, throwing off the sensor reading. But if I knew what temp the ambient air was, then I could calibrate the sensor to accurately see how much heat is radiating off the object I’m looking at. And since that is the only way that we ever notice this sense, we think of it as a smell. Maybe we all have special superhuman powers…but we don’t know it. I guess if we all have it, then it’s not superhuman. Oh well.
Well, gotta get to sleep so I can get up and save the world! There are a bunch of planes in a file at work that have my name on them.

So, I’m dredging through Treehugger, a trendy website about Green news, and I see this TED video and it mentions Polyface Farms in the caption. The presenter in the video spends a while talking about Salatin’s biosystem, and how he uses a group of species to work together to make a huge amount of food off of 100 acres. The presentation is about how plants do things to make us grow them, to make bees pollinate them, etc. We all do things to promote one species over another in an effort to promote our own species, and so the selection pressures favor certain behaviors. Rather than thinking that it’s people-versus-nature, we should notice–and build on–the fact that people and plants work together. That is how Joel works with the grass, cattle and other critters on Polyface Farm.

It makes me want to go back to raising animals. Maybe I’m forgetting all those mornings where I went out and walked in the chilly, wet, grass, dragging feed around. Maybe what I really want is have a “hobby farm”, and fund it with my real job. Or maybe I should follow in my family’s footsteps and get a small amount of land, raise as much as I can on it, then quit the industry and go farming full time. But, then I think of the bigger picture—am I getting stuck on a tiny aspect: growing things, and really I should be thinking about how I can help others, serve God, and make life better in general? Growing food would cause a symbiotic relationship with my customers who would get better value food than elsewhere (business sense says they would). And if I could figure out how to help others do the same thing, that would be a benefit to others. And if, while so helping others—-whether here, or somewhere that it rains more, or in Africa where there is just packed dirt—if I also help them discover God’s love for them, then my purpose in life would be complete.

But, before going and doing something drastic, like quitting my job and buying a farm and some cows..,,in India,,,maybe I should do what I can in my current situation—because just moving to Timbuktu won’t magically turn me into a great dirt-farming missionary. So, what is the next step? Do I get my own house in town so I have at least a little area to capture solar energy? Do I start doing more active evangelism? (more than just hoping they ask why I don’t strangle annoying people). Do I go haggle with the City to let me build a cheap house so that I can help everyone who needs one have an affordable place to live? Or do I just keep doing what I have to do, wash my dishes and laundry, clean up my house, and wait for Monday to go back to work? I could change the foodscape in my town, help dozens of people afford their own house, help a town in Senegal have clean water, and help transmit the Gospel by radio into closed countries.
But, I don’t really have time. Right now. What with work and all. And, I’ve got some webcomics to check back on before I go watch a movie.

Today I went and picked up my new car. This is the first car I’ve actually picked out—the others were just sort of there, and available when I needed transportation. Not this Mercedes. It is the car I have wanted for quite a while: a 1984 diesel 300SD. I drove back from Kansas City without incident—except for the black smoke when I accelerate hard. My brother said it was some valve someone must have disabled, which made me feel better about it. By the end of the 3 hour trip I was pretty comfortable with the car.
On my Mazda, I’ve been ignoring most maintenance and upkeep that is not totally necessary. Things like vacuuming it out, or replacing parts instead of just removing them. But I plan to do a little more to this car. As a gesture of goodwill, this evening I wiped down the interior, cleaning the layer of dust off of it. It is still going to have some tears and dings, but it will be a little less dingy.
This car is sturdy. I was looking at it’s structure—the word that comes to mind is “tank”. The undercarriage looks like you could drive over flaming engine blocks without a problem. Not that I plan to do that, but I could. It isn’t impervious to damage, however. The drivers-side doors are slightly bent where it ran into something. I have another set of doors, but they would need repainting to match the rest of the car (dark silver with pealing clear-coat). And I would need to repair the rear door sill where it has been bent inward. But, I’m not sure if I want to do that much work to it. But I do plan to clean the floors, if I can find an outlet to plug the vacuum into.

In other news, last weekend I went, with some people from church, down to Turner Falls—a place in Oklahoma where a creek runs through some mountains. In fact, it seems to be the best place Oklahoma has where cool water and rocks meet in a picturesque way. Which is probably why we couldn’t get in Sunday midday when we arrived—they had admitted 5000 people already, and had closed the park to any more. So, we went to the cabin where we were staying, and played in a different river. This one was warm and red. It was, as they say, “to thin to plow, to thick to drink”. You couldn’t see the bottom when you cupped the water in your hands. But, all this silt piled up along the edges, and made nifty “quickmud”. You could walk on top, but if you stamped your feet, you would sink in above your knees. It was kind of tricky to get back out of once that happened. The river rushed along very quickly—I could barely hold my own in a slow area—standing waist deep, or swimming against the current. But a lot of the 100′ wide river was only knee-to-waist deep. And the bottom was very hilly. It was a fun way to spend the afternoon. As it got dark, I wandered around the 70 acre hayfield between the river and the cabin where everyone else was sitting around a fire. It was quiet and peaceful in the country. I sang “The Spacious Firmament” as the stars came out.
After eating s’mores, we all found places to sleep. There weren’t enough beds to go around, so I slept outside, on a round bale. The bugs bothered me some, so I brought out the DEET and sprayed it on until they all went away. Then all I had to deal with was the fact that a bale is shorter than me by about 2 feet. And, my single, thin blanket was pretty chilly as the night wore on. Other than that, it was pretty ok, out under the stars and the dew. And it was more like camping than just living in “cabin.” (It actually was a house, and other than lacking an oven, was nicer than my own.) Next time you need to sleep on a haybale, here’s what to do:

• Bring a warm blanket. Even in the summer, the nights get cold
• Stack bales together. One bale is too short, and lying crosswise is only comfortable for a little while.
• Bug spray. Bugs live near bales. If I hadn’t had it, my life would not have been much fun.
• Have something between you and the hay. Even if you aren’t allergic to hay, you don’t want in all over you.

So, if you have a choice between a hard floor and some bales, go with the bales. But, roll two bales end-to-end. Or better yet, flop two or three on their ends, so you have a flat platform to lay on. You won’t feel like you’re camping.

Oh, then the next day we went to the Falls, scrambled around on some rocks, and went swimming in the cold water, swam under the falls (we weren’t supposed to) and ate lunch in a trashed-out, overcrowded picnic area. The water was full of minerals, so it was milky, and deposited rock, gluing the creek bed together. After lunch we went down to a big dammed-up pool area where they had a slide and diving board. It was fun. And about as crowded as the Y. Unlike the Y, no one was there telling people not to go down the slide head first. Or when it is safe to follow the next person.

Next time I go, I’m going to Missouri. I guess Turner Falls would be more attractive if my previous swimming experience was in a pond full of cows.

Oh, and this is an awesome video of the sun: http://www.orbitingfrog.com/blog/movies/SuninUV.mpg

So, I thought I’d go ahead and be politically active, and so I contacted my senator and asked that he support “Net Neutrality”. And, today I found a letter in my mailbox from Senator Brownback. Evidentally, senators don’t need stamps, they just have to sign in the corner where a stamp would be, and their content gets whisked to me. Cool.
So, the letter thanks me for my input, of course, and explains why government regulation of the free market would stifle creativity and innovation among the broadband access providers. The arguments I had heard for why these providers shouldn’t be allowed to charge content providers for quality service evidently do not appeal to all people. So, what do I believe? Are the proponents so-called “Net Neutrality” just anti-bussiness activists? Is S. Brownback being paid off? How do you find the truth when everything you hear is at least kinda true, and people you assume to be reasonable and intelligent are on both sides of the issue?

And Net Neutrality doesn’t really matter. Sure, if the pro-regulation people are right, before long the telecoms will decide what you see on the internet, by charging the people who have websites extra if they want their reader to be able to see their website in a timely manner. So it will be like having a couple dozen channels on TV, rather than millions of sites. And if the other side—that says just let the market, not the government, decide—if they are right, and don’t get their way, the internet will become stagnate, with telecoms not able to afford new fiber, and you will soon have slow service across the board. Those are the worse-case senarios.
But, there is an issue with not being able to tell which side of an issue is the correct one. And it is more important than freedom on the internet. This is matters of faith: what do you believe.

I am constanly exposed to different views on God, the universe and everything—the stuff that really matters. From people at work, to things I read, to people I talk to. And maybe this is a problem, but I try not to be the kind of person that is stereotyped as sticking with what they believe, even if it appears illogical, because that is how we’ve always believed, and we aren’t going to change now! Instead, I figure that if it is correct, it will be evident upon careful analysis. The problem is, rather than having a filter that just rejects everything that doesn’t line up exactly with my historic views, I have to logically evaluate everything I hear, to figure out if it is correct or not. And since I hear alot, this is hard.

And usually I am lazy. Too lazy to go check all the facts, so I absorb a view as “one way of looking at things that has some validity”. That’s a lot easier than picking it apart, and trying to decide if everything they claim as premises are actually true, to the extent that they are claiming, and if the interpretation they propose is actually logical. Instead, I grant the idea some credibility, which starts to cast reasonable doubt on my own beliefs. I have been led to believe that the burden of proof for my own beliefs lies with me—-that in order to be intelectually honest, I have to have logical, provable, testable evidence for what I believe before I can call for the same from someone who disagrees. But, with some of the most important things in life—”is there a God?”, “did life form by accident?”, “who says morality isn’t just a helpful ideal?”, “is this true, or do you just want it to be?”—on many issues, it is hard to get out your test tubes and multimeters and prove which view is correct.
Or maybe that’s another almost-truth that I’ve kinda given credance to.

So, maybe I just draw a line in the sand, and say, “This is what I believe, if I’m going to change, you’d better have some incontrovertible proof that this new view is correct!” But, wouldn’t that make me stick with things even if they aren’t true? I’ve been wrong before.

Maybe I need to do more in-depth analysis myself. I did a little research on Net Neutrality, and found out that it is more complex than it looks, and laws might not protect the consumer. We can’t make a law telling telecoms to “be nice”. This page seems to be a good view. But I’ve got no proof that what he says is true

This morning I went over to my small group leader’s house, and after breakfast, we started making a garden in their backyard. We didn’t have a tiller, so we used shovels to turn in the grass. A couple robins stopped by to find the bugs that we uncovered, and we would toss them grubs, which they would carry away in their beaks. By noon we had a three-cornered lot about fifteen feet by ten feet. It is going to take some work to get the grass dead—especially the wiregrass (thankfully, there isn’t much of that). Next step is to chop up the grass as it continues to grow, and once it is sufficiently dead, and the clods broken up, we will plant some stuff. Not sure what to plant yet, probably some pepper plants and tomato plants. Some beans would be good. I’d like to dig up some small spots elsewhere in the yard and put in some winter squash. Probably put down gobs of grass clippings. We do need to gather grass clippings, but that doesn’t seem to hard. This afternoon I got about a dozen bags—they are in my car, waiting to be transfered to the backyard. I hope they don’t permanently make my car smell…

This afternoon, after a nap, I went and played volleyball with some people from work. We had a good time.
I’m thinking that gardening is going to help fill my need to dig things and do things, and I may not have to build a house. Like it would be possible.

Thursday I drove south instead of home after work. I followed this aproximate route. Mulvane is on the line between Sedgwick and Sumner Counties, and Udall is in Cowley. Udall is about 30 minutes from work, while Mulvane is only about 17. But, driving around down there, I began to question if I actually wanted to live out in the rural areas, so far from my (few) friends and other things of interest that cities provide. The significance of the counties is that Sumner and Cowley do not appear (at first glance) to have building codes, so I would have more freedom to experiment with unconventional building methods. It would mean a lot more digging than I did today—my hands are sore, and almost blistered in some places. It seems like a cool idea, but then I realize that I can’t seem to find the motivation to wash my dishes or clean up my house, or even finish building a piece of furniture—what makes me think I could keep at something like building a house, and then living with the results?
Meanwhile, here is a cool modular home company.

net business opportunity: an add-on for myspace, facebook, blogger, del.icio.us, youtube, etc that pulls them all together into a common interface that is better and allows you to add content to any of them, and it self populates over them all. That way, you don’t stick with something that is mediocre because of a lock-in and all your friends are there—all your friends are everywhere. And it’s all connected. It’s Web 2.0^2. Who wants to help me?

Here’s the thing. Capitalism works, and it works well. But, companies have realized that they don’t have to be the best, or even very good, all they go to do is use advertizing to hook customers, and then set things up so they are stuck. Or, be big enough that customers really have no other choice. (how many cable providers can you access?) What lets this work is the sad truth: People put up with it! People don’t demand, or even ask for the option to easily move on to something different if something better comes along. They put their lives into myspace, knowing that if virb.com comes along, they can’t move—their information, their cool profile setup, their global network, it’s all stuck in myspace. And they don’t tell Tom “I’d like to have export options. And if you could make friend requests, bullitin board posts, and messages all RSS so I can just plug them into my new blog, that would be great. I’m not going to sign up for your 24/7 ad machine until I know I can leave when I want to.” If the companies had that kind of customers, the customers would be better served, because the companies would have to actually compete on quality of service. Not just compete on the ability to get that initial sign up.

So, your mission, is to become a customer that cares about quality, that cares about choice. Also, if you want to, let’s build a system that short circuits the corporate lock-in strategy. At least for online social networking. We’ll work on telcom’s later.

So, I’m involved with this Internet Business Forum that is held at the church every friday night. By “involved” I mean I show up most weeks, take notes and wonder which of all the different ways to make money I could get into. I’ve got some major philosophical blocks that seem to crop up. First, I’m pretty lazy. I don’t really do a whole lot. But then there is the marketing thing. Most of the money you make on the internet seems to be by getting people to buy something. Pretty obvious. Problem is, I seem to have a fundamental problem with buying stuff. Sure, it’s the American Way, but everybody seems to be so focused on getting more and more, why should I encourage that? Then there is the problem of making money. Yes, you do need to make money—it’s part of life, it takes money to have food and raiment, but why should I try to get more? I have enough to survive, and I have much more than a huge percentage of the world. And that money has to come from somewhere—from the pockets and credit accounts of other people. So every dollar that I claim for myself is one less dollar that someone else has. Shouldn’t I try to save money instead? Buy things that are the best value, do without, invest in things that will make my expenses go down? That way, I can have more money to do other stuff with—like giving it to people or God. Speaking of giving stuff to people, that is really what I see as the optimum. I want to give to people, and let that help others find ways to save money, and give to others, and the chain goes on!* So, these are the preconceived notions that are floating around in my head as they talk about this way, and that system, and getting in on this other one. But, it’s, advertizing, and marketing…how are you adding value to the system? You are the middle man!

It is true that money, when reached for as a goal, will never be enough. And I can feel this greed rising in me when they talk about the large amounts of money to be made, for little effort. Or maybe it’s not greed persay, maybe it’s excitement at the opportunity to improve my situation. And, I have to remember, if I have more money, I have more money to give away! Robin Hood. I can take from one set of distant “friends” and give it to people I like more! I can write content to get people to click on ads, so I get money, meanwhile, I tell my real friends to get FireFox + Adblock + Filterset.G Updater to make so they don’t have to see the ads that I am polluting the world with.
What am I going to do? I’m not sure. I think I may need to throw out some of my illogical ideals and just offer a service and make a buck. After all, what do I do all day? I help to increase the price of airfares by not working for free. Traitor!

What do I want to do? Build house systems so efficient and cheap that they cost almost nothing and show others how to do the same. Like I can make a living off that. You need to get people to spend more, not less. That’s what keeps the economy going—people spending more, and more and more than they can afford.

*My feelings are influenced by the Free Software Movement, where everything is given away, and the more people you give it to, the better. [actually, I probably fell into the free and open source software community because I already felt that way inside]

I got a request to show some pictures from the current season, so here they are:

So, I’m at this friend’s house with some people from church, and we’ve bbq’ed some stuff, eaten, played a game, and some people are downstairs playing a bongo drum video game, others are upstairs, talking, and watching videos on the internet using the TV. Sure, it’s not the best way to spend an evening, but it has a lot more interaction, and therefore is better, than zoning out for an hour and a half watching a movie. It’s also better than dropping acid (even a face-shield and lab apron won’t fully protect you from the broken pyrex and splash damage!)
So, anyway, if you are watching Mario Bros. Matrix remixes, the advertizements that are targeting your demographic range from beer-ad graphic styles to outright softcore. This is a little awkward when it is a mixed-company church group. Granted, maybe it is a little more suprising to me since I never see ads. So, I repeatedly make comments about Firefox until I was probably getting annoying. I’m not trying to be a nuisence, I just think we can do better than this. He was using IE 7, which has tabs–and admirable leap for the browser monster. But the ads are so annoying, taking up screen space, causing information dilution, and just not necessary. So, get Firefox, install Adblock, and reclaim your web experience, making it safe(er) to watch a guy playing a guitar, using a spoon in his mouth for a slide.

Today I moved. My desk at work used to be one cube-set over from where it is now, but it is enough to change the whole environment. One of the cool things about the change is now I have a flatpanel monitor instead of a bulky CRT. Much of our group of 30 or so people are being rearranged. The purpose it to get the people who work together in position so that they might actually talk to each other and coordinate with each other. This is going to take a shift in Culture, but we may be able to break some of the “over the wall” syndrome. That is going to be the real change, not the fact that my cube is rearranged a little.
My bean plant is growing quite well at work. I used to just have a spider-plant-type critter, but a week or so ago, I found a bean in my pocket (must have fallen there when I was sorting beans earlier) so I stuck it in my flowerpot. A few days later, the dicot was growing out of the soil, and now it is reaching for the florescent lights with a pair of leaves. I’ve begun to leave the light on for it when I go home, so it can get all the light it can. Some other legumes caused a little more trouble. I was out at the park, and I found some beanpods from a tree. In digging out the seeds, I noticed the green, partially-hardened goo stuff that went between the seeds, so I kept some, and took it home and reconstituted it in a small, stemmed glass, setting (sitting?) it on the side of my sink. Unfortunately, I have this habit of memorizing my house, so that I can move about it without having to use some of my sense(s). So, a day or so later, I turn the corner into my kitchen, my right hand moves out, grabs the jar that is always at the corner of my sink (while my right arm turns on the light) and then the right hand snaps back tossing the jar into my left hand and then turning on the water. That’s about when I felt my right elbow had connected with the glass-of-goo, sending it onto the floor. My left leg attempted to nudge it onto the carpet, but I don’t think it thought of that until it had heard the crash, and identified it as glass breaking. And still the water ran. Tree-bean goo, while interesting, does not yet have a practical use identified. (Need a slow-hardening, semi-clear gel that is organic based?)
In other news, I’ve been playing frisbee lately–both disc golf and Ultimate. It’s fun, and Ultimate is lots of exercise. And I get most of the thorns out of my arms and hands by the time Sunday rolls around again. Maybe I should start being more careful, I don’t want to break a hip or anything. I guess really the problem is when I mow someone else down, not so much when I slide on my forearms attempting to catch the frisbee.

Congratulations to my two cousins (and fiance’s) who are getting married, and a call for prayer for my cousin and sister who are overseas, and a note of happiness for my nieces who are getting siblings.