Only one more month 'til Christmas...

I love Thanksgiving. Seriously, it's probably one of my favorite holidays ever. How can you not love stuffing yourself silly not just once, but twice in one day?! You can't go wrong with pie. Nor with turkey sandwiches for the next week. Mmm, Thanksgiving. And it's all in the name of gratitude. What a wonderful attribute. I'm sure grateful for such a tasty holiday.

I also really like the break that it affords us poor college students. It was awesome to not have to go to class, even though I had to bust my butt working on papers that I had procrastinated. By the way, procrastination is bad. Just ask Elder Hallstrom.

I've been reading a lot lately. Just a month or so ago, Jess and I finished Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series. A lot of hubbub has risen up lately because of the movie coming out soon, and the fact that Pullman is a self-declared atheist. The third book, The Amber Spyglass, contains one of the most controversial scenes where the two main characters kill the angel who is pretending to be God. A lot of people feel like "His Dark Materials" is Pullman's proselyting material--how he's peddling atheism. I personally thought the series was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of interesting ideas contained in it. I can see where the concern would come from, though, and so I've started looking into some of the books that people have written to analyze the series. I'll let you know what I find. One that I just picked up discusses how there is an inherent spirituality in the book even though religion is rejected. I'm only a couple of pages in, so I have a lot more to go before I understand exactly what they're talking about.

More recently I've read the "Wrinkle in Time" series by Madeline L'Engle, and I'm currently reading her book, Many Waters, which is a companion volume to the other three. I like how L'Engle is not afraid to reference God in a positive way in her books--they're definitely not religious books like C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," but they don't cast aspersions on religion or spirituality. It's just an accepted part of life for her characters.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the "His Dark Materials" series... I'm sure things will get even crazier than they did with Harry Potter.

Oh yeah, and the BYU - Utah game was amazing. Glad to have another year of bragging rights, and a year where I won't have to be hassled by the inlaws because of my affinity for the Y.

The Poor Thing in the Bathroom

*As a heads-up, this post is not intended to mock or make fun of. Simply to inform of an event that I found slightly amusing and saddening.

So, today I was in the library on campus and I had to go to the bathroom. So I did. While relieving myself at the urinal, I had a bit of a surprise. First, the urinal that was flushed two down from mine overflowed. Needless to say, I was a little antsy, because I was pretty much anchored to the spot--you fellas know what I mean.

Then there was a second surprise. Someone came out of the stall behind me, and went to go wash their hands. And I honestly couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl. Very ambiguous, very Pat. They (notice the gender-neutral pronoun) walked over to the sink to wash their hands, and were looking around uncomfortably. Manner of dress and hair were mostly girl-ish, but they were in the mens room. If it was a girl, I feel really bad for her. She may have come in without looking closely at the sign. Maybe there was no one else in there when she came in. And when she came out, all of a sudden--there were boys. Wow. Awkward.

But then again, maybe it was just a guy with long-ish hair who would look uncomfortable and out of place no matter where he was.

Two months and a pregnancy later...

I'm sorry to have let down my faithful army of blog readers. All three of you must have been somewhat saddened by the lack of updates for a couple of months. Sorry. So here's an update on some stuff.

Married life: awesome. It's been fun to learn more about Jess, and life is good. It's fun to eat together, to talk to each other, and to just have someone there to be with. Interesting, though, how life doesn't really slow down at all. It just seems to have gotten busier...

Flight of the Conchords: hilarious new show. It's a fictional show about a real band from New Zealand in New York. It's witty, and the show is basically just a vehicle for setting up their songs. Which are hilarious. "Am I freaking you out, Bret? Is this a freaky dream?" --Jermaine Bowie

The Office: yeah, I've been a little disappointed by the recent episodes (though I haven't seen the 4th one this season, so I'm really only commenting on the first three). It seems like they have great material for a slam-bang half-hour episode, but things get drawn out ridiculously, and I find myself questioning, "Just how stupid can Michael really be? Is Dwight really going along with that?" Sigh... here's hoping that we find redemption soon.

Heroes: ...fine, I got hooked by first season. Yes, I'm curious to see how this X-men ripoff turns out. *Sigh*, now it's out. But really I'm only interested in what happens to the amnesious Peter Petrelli, the stuck-in-the-past-stuck-on-the-lady Hiro, crazy old Sylar, and Claire's hot new boy toy (thanks, Jess!). Will Peter turn evil? What kind of internal turmoil will he undergo? Our goody-two-shoes hero may have to find himself again. Hiro is trying to turn Mr. Sark into a hero, but is falling for the lady that Sark's supposed to end up with. So sad. Sylar--is he redeeming himself? Or will he turn out just as psychotic and evil as before? And Tom Welling, er, "West," ... my theory is that he's the guy who pushed Hiro's dad off the roof. I'll betcha he's working for Parkman's dad. He's evil. Poor Molly.

Guatemala research project: I interviewed on Friday for a position in a research lab. I'll find out on Tuesday if I'm in, but it sounds pretty sweet. We'll be going to Guatemala to bring back plants that the indigenous folks use for medicinal purposes. Then we'll test them to see what is effective against what. Then we'll figure out the 30-40 best plants, make a booklet, and distribute it back amongst the indigenous folks so that they can take care of themselves better. Another potential benefit will be that 5-6 of them could be cultivated by the people as a cash crop, then sold to herbal companies. Pretty sweet. It's a paid lab, I'd have the chance to publish and present, and get to help people. And go to Guatemala. Could it get any better? My wife can even come!! Sweet!!! We'll see how it goes.

General Conference: awesome. Absolutely amazing. Maybe I'll post more about it as I review the talks from it.

Car: frustrating. The stupid check engine light hates me. I've now replaced the catalytic converter, the rear O2 sensor, and cleaned the air filter. Still giving me an error, and it upsets me. We also have to get the clutch replaced. Good thing people gave us money when we got married... :) But I still love the car.

His Dark Materials: an interesting book series by Philip Pullman. A little strange, but a good read, and very engaging. It ate up a lot of my time. And Jess's.

Divine Comedy: really funny last night, but I miss a lot of the old cast members. Some of the new folks I find grating. Not cheese, nerves. But it was still funny. Except for one of the last jokes. It was in relation to the Quill and the Sword, a medieval club on campus. The folks in the group are already somewhat ostracized, and then they were made fun of in a way that was not uplifting, but just sad. Several of us were offended by the joke.

Caleb and Sarah: awesome. They need to get married. Soon. 'Nuff said.

Sucking hot chocolate through grasshopper cookies: Choco-bliss. Wow. Wow, wow. Mmmm.

TMNT: we just watched this last weekend, and we both had a good time. I liked it, and it reminded me of the good old days. Except that I didn't like Splinter's voice. April's a ninja? Right... and thanks for teaching good morals by having Casey Jones and April living in the same apartment. Unmarried. That's what I want to teach my kids. *Thumbs down raspberry*

And Jess is an amazing cook. Scha-weet!

And God has been kind recently with my test and homework situation. He's really blessed me A LOT. And I'm very appreciative.

Life is good

Ok, so it's been a while since I've posted, and a lot has happened lately. First, I'm engaged to be married to Jessica, and we're getting hitched next Thursday. I'm pretty darn excited.

I've got a long list of things that need to be done, and I've been stressing about several of the things (like finding a house, making the honeymoon plans, etc). Well, the biggest item got taken off the list yesterday. That's right, we finally found a place to live!! No more awkward moments when people ask about it (20 different people per night...), no more pondering about if my car is big enough to survive in for a semester (just kidding, Jess), and far less stress!

I learned an important lesson over the past couple of weeks that hesitation when looking for housing leads to getting shut down quickly. Granted, I think that losing some of the previous housing opportunities taught me that lesson so that I'd be ready to act when yesterday arrived. We found a place and were calling all day about it, but weren't able to set up a time for an appointment. So we showed up to take a look, liked what we saw, and as we left, another couple came down to take a look. So we decided that we'd take it, and everything has just worked out perfectly. I believe the Lord has his hand in this and has helped us find an awesome place. We've been hugely blessed!

So life is really good. There's still a lot to do, but I feel like things are a lot more handleable. Hooray!

Faith vs Reason

Jessica made a really good point today. We were discussing the fact that I way over analyze things and make them more complicated and stressful than they need to be. I think that this contributes to my problem of not always being as decisive as I should be.

We're counseled to "study [things] out in our mind," but there also comes a time when we need to put our trust in the Lord and step into the darkness. Only then will the light move and further illuminate our path. Elder Packer makes a great point about this in his talk "The Candle of the Lord." So the question for me is, where is the balance between faith and reason? To what extent should I study things out in my mind (going somewhat crazy as I do so...) and when do I start stepping?

I realize that faith is an action principle, and in order for the Lord to tell me how I'm doing, I need to be doing something. So how does this fit with the biggest decision of my life? I think that once I start moving, I'll need something with the subtlety of a bulldozer to stop me if it's not the right thing. Hopefully that's not something that I need to be too worried about...

Current Musical/Car Thoughts

So I've been thinking about some ways to spend my money, and some are slightly more pressing than others. I found out that the reason my check engine light has been on for a long time is probably due to the O2 sensors, not the catalytic converter. Which means the repair is more expensive because it's not under warranty. But, by replacing it my gas mileage should go up. That would be exciting.

I've also been thinking a little bit about buying a new stereo with an aux-in jack so that I can listen to my mp3 player in the car. I still don't know how likely that is, but I'm wanting to do it. We'll see what happens. And then I'll probably buy a small flash memory mp3 player, too. I like music.

New Tentative Feature...

So I've decided to try out putting bands and/or albums that I'm listening to and deciding whether or not to keep them/get more of their stuff. My music library is ridiculously bloated with music that I don't know yet (thanks to a couple of music binges that I went on), and I want to get down to stuff that I actually know and like (and someday might buy the cd).

Leave a comment if there are any suggestions... If I decide that I like the list, I'll keep it. If not, it's gone.

I really should be in bed right now.