Happy New Year, etc.

What a great way to start out the new year! I went to work this morning. It was a blessing that I was able to wake up on time and be to work by 8, considering last night was New Year's Eve, and our landlady is a grandma with a lot of family over for the break. With lots of little kids. That stomped around and pounded on the piano around 12:30. Sweet. Fortunately, by the time we crawled into bed, they had all done the same. Phew. Though I complain a little bit, double-pay is pretty sweet. And Jess had lunch ready when I got home. What a great wife!

Sunday was super-relaxing. Because we attend a student ward, and most of the students are out of town, we just had sacrament meeting. So church started at 9, and finished at 10. Mandy and Paul came over for lunch (tons of fun!) and then we took a 3 hour nap. Followed by like 6 hours of reading. I finished 3 books and Jess finished two. Holy moly.

Yesterday we watched a couple of movies: Masters of the Universe (that's He-Man, for the uninformed) and then My Big Fat Greek Wedding (MBFGW). The He-Man movie was truly awful. Even loving the cartoon and toys when I was little was not enough to redeem that waste of an hour and a half. MBFGW was a lot of fun, though, and enjoyable. It had good humor, and it was interesting to watch the collision of two cultures. Naturally I was drawn to reflect on my own Mormon culture, and thinking about how similar parts of it would be in a parallel situation.

"The Dark is Rising" has been a fun series, and I'm now on the last book. Once I got past the first book, everything has been fairly fast-paced and exciting. I think the only reason that anyone might need to read the first book would be to get familiar with some of the characters that reappear in book 3. Meh. At least it's all been uphill from there...

Also, I had to shave my beard off last week. Sad stuff. I had a week's worth of scruff, and it made me kinda happy. At least we got to play with it when it was time to shave it off... I may post pictures soon. If I get around to it.

I'm discovering that I have a lot to talk about...

I'm working on reading the entire Old Testament. It's the only one of the standard works that I haven't read all the way through, and I want to change that. I'm trying my best to look for principles that are applicable to my own life, or things that help me better understand the gospel. Some parts are more difficult to find connections than others.

I finished Exodus today, which had a lot of neat stuff, especially at the beginning. Towards the end, we see that the Lord really cared about his temple-on-the-move (the tabernacle) and gave very specific details about how it should be built. And Moses recorded those details. In case you want to build your own at home? I'm not really sure why.

Chapters 1 -7 of Leviticus are the handbook for sacrifices--it gives you all the hows and whens of what kind of sacrifices to offer. Sweet. Biggest thing I pulled from those chapters: the Lord asked for sacrifices that were "without blemish." For a farming/nomadic society, it would be really easy to sacrifice the weak or broken animals that were going to die anyways. But the Lord deserves better than that. If we sacrifice more, he can also bless us more. Cool stuff. Also, Aaron's sons? Very foolish. See Leviticus 10. They died.

Enough for now, right? Ok, I'm done!