January 31, 2008
I don't know if I'm happy. Mostly this past month I have not been, I've been.. complacent. Allow me to explain, I've been depressed, In an attempt to not be so depressed I tried to accept some of the things that get me down. This moves me from "oh f#$^@#$ I just want to die" to "eh I guess I get by this way". The problem is that I'm still not happy or content because I'm not living the life I want to live, the life I used to live, or a life that's particularly healthy. I have woken up a bit to the fact that I've really let myself go, both physically and mentally this past year, or so. If I do not fix my health, education, and job problems, it will kill me. It's also completely unfair to my significant other.
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It has become clear to me that Britney Spears is an agent of the US Federal Government, or if not the government then at least some political entity like the GOP, or heck even "Big Oil". Her job is to distract all of us from the war. What war? why the one in Iraq that you don't hear much about these days. I oppose the war, and I'd like to know if progress has been made. Are we near an end? Are we killing fewer civilians? Who knows? All the "reliable" (and not so reliable) news sources are still taking about Britney Spears.
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It has become clear to me that Britney Spears is an agent of the US Federal Government, or if not the government then at least some political entity like the GOP, or heck even "Big Oil". Her job is to distract all of us from the war. What war? why the one in Iraq that you don't hear much about these days. I oppose the war, and I'd like to know if progress has been made. Are we near an end? Are we killing fewer civilians? Who knows? All the "reliable" (and not so reliable) news sources are still taking about Britney Spears.
January 01, 2008
I only made two posts in 2007. Amazing.
I'm not where I want to be at present. As I mentioned in my previous post, 2007 really sucked. I lost a good job, I found my self in a spiral of despair and rut. I turned to working nights in retail, and I remain there to this day. A combination of a poor circadian rhythm, laziness, and depressed outlook continued to hold me back for the last several months. Recently I've began searching for answers. Prayer and meditation have brought me nearer to a better mindset, now I need to take action and find a better job. I've applied and been accepted as a transfer student at KU. getting a degree should do much good in getting back on my feet. It will take a while but I think going back to school might be a catalyst or springboard I need to be more productive in general.
Here's a year in review. Not in chronological order, One of the great things about having a blog is that you can look back on important events. This only works when I update regularly, I'll remind myself that in 2008. My ... intention has always been to have one post per week, 50 post per year should be par.
I had a good job, and I lost it. Bad luck? Bad choices? Doesn't matter now, for some time and even now on occasion the turn of events haunts me.
I became an uncle. My brother and his wife had a baby. When the baby was to be baptized, my brother converted to Catholicism. I was quite surprised. Before he and his wife were married, he seemed quite adamant about not converting because he didn't believe in the dogma and mysticism. (side note; "dogma" and "mysticism" are not words in my brother's vocabulary.) I felt that he was either selling out, or his principals never meant that much to begin with. Some time later, I mentioned my surprise to my father. He explained to me that during the pre-conversion counselling, that my brother was taught that he need not follow the catholic traditions, in which he didn't agree. I thought it was a bit sacrilegious to convert to a religion "à la carte". (Interestingly, some time later, some one had told me, in a way, that I'm not a Christian. Because, according to this person, you have to take an all or nothing approach to the Bible. To shorten a long explanation, and give example, I don't agree with Paul when he states that women should be silent in church (1Co 14:34). The point I'm trying to get to is that I realized that I was perhaps to quick to judge my brother in his denominational choice. I still dissagre with his course of action, but I realize that from another person's perspective I've done the same thing(s).
I moved into a new apartment, and out of that horrible place that was the retirement community. We should have moved much earlier than we did. The arrangement there paid our rent, but we're much happier with the independence in our new place.
I adopted a new rat. Vernie and I have rats. We've had rats for over a year now. It's really a shame I've not mentioned them before in my blog because I could have gone on and on about how great a pet that rats can be. The first two were adopted when Vernie had a rat lab in one of her classes. The first rat, Stu, was Vernie's rat for the lab, and the second one, adopted a week or so later, (which we named Rowan) was part of the same class assignment. All three of the rats we have are Sprague-Dawleys, and live in a home-made cage kept in our office. When we introduced Stu and Rowan to each other it was a pretty peacefull encounter. There was some challenges of dominance, but nothing to cause concern. With the third rat, Wilson, we had some problems. We kept Wilson separated from the other two for a few days as recomended on various rat care websites. However, Stu and Rowan were not very receptive of Wilson. Thankfully there's been few serious injuries and nothing long lasting. Rowan had a bite on his belly that became infected and required a trip to the vet. The three rats mostly get along pretty well, though there's still occasional scuffles. As far as we can tell Wilson gets a little jumpy if he hasn't had his out-of-cage exercise and becomes more likely to cause problems with the other two, who are now over the hill and sleep more than they did when they were a year younger at Wilson's age. (side note; Stu and Rowan still wrestle a bit as rats naturally do, however now that they're older it resembles a couple of old men trying to one-up each other at basketball or some other sport that neither of them can really do any more. It once resembled Greco Roman Wrestling but now it's quick exchange of hand-slaps with seemingly mutual truce, as if they tire quickly and need to catch their breaths.
A lot happened in 2007, The year of the pig is wrapping up, I say good riddance, though there were many positives sprinkled throuout, my path was mostly in the wrong direction. The year of the rat is approaching, that sounds promising.
I'm not where I want to be at present. As I mentioned in my previous post, 2007 really sucked. I lost a good job, I found my self in a spiral of despair and rut. I turned to working nights in retail, and I remain there to this day. A combination of a poor circadian rhythm, laziness, and depressed outlook continued to hold me back for the last several months. Recently I've began searching for answers. Prayer and meditation have brought me nearer to a better mindset, now I need to take action and find a better job. I've applied and been accepted as a transfer student at KU. getting a degree should do much good in getting back on my feet. It will take a while but I think going back to school might be a catalyst or springboard I need to be more productive in general.
Here's a year in review. Not in chronological order, One of the great things about having a blog is that you can look back on important events. This only works when I update regularly, I'll remind myself that in 2008. My ... intention has always been to have one post per week, 50 post per year should be par.
I had a good job, and I lost it. Bad luck? Bad choices? Doesn't matter now, for some time and even now on occasion the turn of events haunts me.
I became an uncle. My brother and his wife had a baby. When the baby was to be baptized, my brother converted to Catholicism. I was quite surprised. Before he and his wife were married, he seemed quite adamant about not converting because he didn't believe in the dogma and mysticism. (side note; "dogma" and "mysticism" are not words in my brother's vocabulary.) I felt that he was either selling out, or his principals never meant that much to begin with. Some time later, I mentioned my surprise to my father. He explained to me that during the pre-conversion counselling, that my brother was taught that he need not follow the catholic traditions, in which he didn't agree. I thought it was a bit sacrilegious to convert to a religion "à la carte". (Interestingly, some time later, some one had told me, in a way, that I'm not a Christian. Because, according to this person, you have to take an all or nothing approach to the Bible. To shorten a long explanation, and give example, I don't agree with Paul when he states that women should be silent in church (1Co 14:34). The point I'm trying to get to is that I realized that I was perhaps to quick to judge my brother in his denominational choice. I still dissagre with his course of action, but I realize that from another person's perspective I've done the same thing(s).
I moved into a new apartment, and out of that horrible place that was the retirement community. We should have moved much earlier than we did. The arrangement there paid our rent, but we're much happier with the independence in our new place.
I adopted a new rat. Vernie and I have rats. We've had rats for over a year now. It's really a shame I've not mentioned them before in my blog because I could have gone on and on about how great a pet that rats can be. The first two were adopted when Vernie had a rat lab in one of her classes. The first rat, Stu, was Vernie's rat for the lab, and the second one, adopted a week or so later, (which we named Rowan) was part of the same class assignment. All three of the rats we have are Sprague-Dawleys, and live in a home-made cage kept in our office. When we introduced Stu and Rowan to each other it was a pretty peacefull encounter. There was some challenges of dominance, but nothing to cause concern. With the third rat, Wilson, we had some problems. We kept Wilson separated from the other two for a few days as recomended on various rat care websites. However, Stu and Rowan were not very receptive of Wilson. Thankfully there's been few serious injuries and nothing long lasting. Rowan had a bite on his belly that became infected and required a trip to the vet. The three rats mostly get along pretty well, though there's still occasional scuffles. As far as we can tell Wilson gets a little jumpy if he hasn't had his out-of-cage exercise and becomes more likely to cause problems with the other two, who are now over the hill and sleep more than they did when they were a year younger at Wilson's age. (side note; Stu and Rowan still wrestle a bit as rats naturally do, however now that they're older it resembles a couple of old men trying to one-up each other at basketball or some other sport that neither of them can really do any more. It once resembled Greco Roman Wrestling but now it's quick exchange of hand-slaps with seemingly mutual truce, as if they tire quickly and need to catch their breaths.
A lot happened in 2007, The year of the pig is wrapping up, I say good riddance, though there were many positives sprinkled throuout, my path was mostly in the wrong direction. The year of the rat is approaching, that sounds promising.
