Engagement

Larissa and I are engaged! Since April 11! Hooray!

3 months later

And here I am again! Apparently nothing worth writing about has happened between Christmas and Easter. Well, almost Easter. This is an exciting weekend though. On Friday night Larmeleon and I went out for her friend Jodi's going away party- she is moving to Australia for a while. Then yesterday we went out to eat at ta Flame restaurant in Rosedale, which was good. We had some gouda fondue and a spicyish chicken sandwich. After dinner we went to see a show at the Varsity- was supposed to be The Gaslight Anthem with Heartless Bastards and Good Old War, but a guy from the Gaslight Anthem was in the hospital so they had to cancel. The other two bands played for a $10 cover, and we still have our tickets. This puts us in an interesting situation since the main reason we wanted to go in the first place was just to see Good Old War. We'll see what happens.

Today is perhaps the most exciting day, we are driving down to the happening town of Mason City, Iowa. Once there we will witness Leigh Wakeford doing his thing in the Drowsy Chaperone. Should be pretty awesome, except for the whole "driving to and from Iowa" thing. Ah well, such is life.

Anyway I have to be getting ready for that and eating some food and stuff, so that's all! I guess I'll be back in... mid-July? If I keep up this schedule that is. No promises or anything.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! Namaste.

My day of heathenism in a nutshell

What up what up. It's been a little while since I have written anything on here. Life is continuing to happen. I have been getting a lot of Xmas shopping done, I am almost finished! Hit up the MOA last night. I just have a few more people to buy for. And I have to get more stuff for Larissa. Hundreds of dollars worth of gifts! Kidding.

The other day was pretty interesting- Denny is team-teaching a class in spirituality at Northwestern University, which is a majorly Christian school. He went to school there and is working on his masters at Bethel now to be a youth pastor. Apparently it seemed that a lot of the students in the class hadn't had very much experience talking to anyone who didn't share their beliefs, and Denny wanted to show them that it was ok for people to believe differently then you and you can still be friends with them and whatnot.

So I came in to the class and talked to them about why I am not a Christian. Or why I am an "atheist" so-to-speak, even though I don't necessarily consider myself to be that exactly. Not an orthodox atheist. Mostly I just think it's fine that I don't understand the nature of the universe. I've made my peace with the fact that I won't ever know if there is some sort of higher power. If I do find out after I die or something then that's great, but if I just rot in the ground that's fine too. It kind of gives me more justification to make the best of this life, knowing that it may very well be all that I get.

That said, I definitely don't see any particular reason to believe in the Christian God. There have been literally thousands of all-powerful deities thought up by all kinds of different cultures all over the world for thousands of years... and they are always considered to be the only true God.

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
	...Stephen F Roberts

Make sense?

Anyway. I feel like it went really well, talking in that class, and I think the students enjoyed it too. Hopefully we all got something out of the experience. Everyone was very respectful and asked good questions, some of which I didn't even really have solid answers for. One part that sticks in my mind was after I mentioned that I would like some sort of evidence for the existence of a God or higher power if I was going to believe in one. I know that goes against the whole "faith" thing, but I'm not necessarily down with that. Faith is basically just to believe in something that is not provable or observable with no particular basis in reality... why should I bother? If there is a God, and the only way to avoid him condemning me to eternal suffering and torture is to ignore all of the available evidence and my best judgement (with which I have supposedly been blessed by Him) then he really doesn't sound like that great of a guy to me. Sounds like kind of a dick.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent there. I mentioned in the class that I would like to see some evidence, and one of the students asked me about that and what kind of evidence it would take for me to change my mind. And to be honest... I really don't know what would do it. I said something along the lines of, "Short of God himself riding down on a cloud and waving his arms in front of me and saying 'Hey I exist, go to Church!' (and I would start going) I don't really know what else could convince me. If I did have some sort of spiritual experience I would probably chalk it up to something more scientific... or a hallucination."

I was also asked whether I was open to having some sort of emotional experience that convinced me of the presence of a God, instead of just something cognitive. I don't really know if I am. Part of me would like to think that I am open to that just for the sake of being open-minded, but part of me would like to think that I wouldn't be open to it, because it seems kind of ridiculous and subjective to me... and I would really prefer something objective and provable. I guess this emotional experience would have to happen for me to know how I would respond.

Oh and I just remembered, one student brought up a classic Pascal's Wager scenario- as in, "Why not just belive in God and be a Christian for the sake of 'fire insurance'?" However, this idea totally disregards the possibility of the existence of any of thousands of other Gods- even infinite other Gods, if you include all the ones that no one has thought of yet. If you pick one just for safety's sake, you really aren't helping your odds that much, since you could pick the wrong one and still get burned by any of the other ones if you pick wrong. Anyway, it was kind of fun for me to get to talk about Pascal's Wager in a room full of Christians.

My only regret looking back on the whole experience is that I think I still left them with the impression that I am "searching" for religion, or God, or salvation or something like that. Maybe they were going to think that no matter what I said, I feel like I tried to put it down but I couldn't do it. I think a lot of people look at a state of agnosticism as something that exists only as a transitional period between belief and disbelief, or vice versa. But I am very comfortable with not knowing what's out there. I don't feel restless, I don't "long to discover a higher power," I don't feel like I am all alone in the universe. I'm not in the middle of a dark period of my life, that I know of. If I strive to be a good person in this life and I'm happy doing what I enjoy and spending time with people I love, can't that be enough? It seems pretty great to me.

Anyway. Highlight of that day:
Denny saying that I was a lot like Jesus. Twice.

Calvin

Calvin is getting so big! Check out this picture of him.

Amazing.

In fairness. Bella is getting pretty big too.

Heh.

Yep.

Hallo. Time for a check-in. Work has been going well, I am starting to feel pretty settled in there, I'm catching on to things pretty well (says me) so that feels good. Still crazy busy, but I'm getting used to it so I'm not as stressed all the time. I'm rolling with the punches now, I guess.

Larissa has been really busy with her internship at the Jungle, so we have been squeezing in quality time whenever we can... she has been having dinner breaks around 5 or 5:30 until 7, which is about the time when I finish working, so we've been getting dinner in the city pretty much every day. Which is fun and tasty, but it's also expensive! Ah well. I'm gainfully employed now, so I'm like totally loaded. Or I would be if I wasn't spending my entire paycheck at restaurants. =) It's fun though. Herkimer was really good. Everyone go eat at Herkimer on Lyndale Ave, it's right across the street from the Jungle, they brew their own beers, and they have grilled cheese fondue. And mini burgers.

I'm listening to the current right now, which isn't weird because I listen to the current every day. But at the same time it is weird, because I never listen to the radio when I'm indoors, usually just in my car. I have it on now though because I called in to request "That's the Way We Get By" by Spoon, because the freaking song has been running through my head all day long and I NEED to hear it right now. That song... is like a virus... I was really excited that I got through to the current because every time I have ever tried calling before I just got busy signals, and I was starting to suspect that it wasn't even a real phone number. In fairness, every time I have called before tonight was after they announced that they were giving away some sweet tickets. So of course the lines were busy. The last time I think I called in to a radio station with a request was probably Radio AAHS. Anybody? Radio AAHS? But the other reason I was excited was that Mark Wheat actually picked up the phone when I called. I was expecting an intern or something, but Mark Wheat just casually answered the phone and chatted with me and asked me where I was. He said hi to me on the radio later, but still hasn't played my song. I don't even know if they have that song. I hope so though.

Well, tonight I am going to take it pretty easy, and that will be nice. Yep.

It's a blog! It's a plane! No, it's a blog.

Notice how I started my new job and promptly stopped having time to write on here? I have been a very busy person. Right now I am staying at Larissa's house, while she is in Florida. Actually she is coming back tonight, she has been there since Thursday. I am excited for her to come back! A little bit of that excitement is because I won't be left to deal with crazy poop cat all on my own anymore. Calvin has apparently lost control of his bowels over the past couple of days... it has not been determined whether he is sick, or trying to punish us for not being around or letting him outside for hours and hours every day. I suspect the latter, since you would think that even if he was feeling sick, he could remember to poop in the poop box. But who knows? Maybe Larissa will come home and he will be happy and stop doing that. That would be good.

Poop-cleaning aside, I have basically been working a lot... I don't like to be that guy who has nothing going on in his life other than a job, but it is a time-consuming thing, working full-time. And exhausting. National Wind is a very, very, very busy place, and no matter how much work I do there are always twenty more things on my to-do list... I am always behind on something. Which kind of sucks, because it's hard to leave work at work when you feel like you're failing. Not so much that I am failing though really, it is just too much work for one person to do. Maybe if I stayed there overnight a few nights and worked 24 hours a day I could catch up after a bit. But I am not going to do that.

Anyway. I am going to go check on the kittypoops (a more appropriate name for them now than ever before) and then probably take a nap so I can wake up in the middle of the night when Larissa gets back. Later boners.

Ahhhhhhhh

That is the relaxed sound I make on a Friday evening after the busiest and most stressful couple of days ever! Also, there is a kitty sleeping on my leg, so that helps with the relaxation as well. He is dreaming, twitching all over. It's awesome.

But seriously, it has been pretty nuts at the new job for the past three days. I have been trying to remember so much information and it kind of overloads my brain. There are phone calls to transfer, computer stuff to do, e-mails to check, supplies to order, food to order, plus whatever random things people have come up with for me to do. I even have a dishwasher to load and unload. Since the office I'm working for is working on alternative energy, they try pretty hard to be environmentally friendly, and so they don't use any plastic or disposable dishes- they have plates, bowls, glasses, mugs and silverware and it all just gets loaded in the dishwasher. It's pretty great. They also do a lot of recycling and I am free to order all kinds of recycled office supplies.

It's weird for me, having a job where I am kept so eternally busy. I have a huge to-do list waiting at the office for me when I go back on Monday morning. Stuff to order, all sorts of people to call, jobs to do that I have no idea how to accomplish... it's an adventure, I guess. For the most part I am enjoying being there though. It will be weird to go in on Monday and be on my own... until now I was being trained in by the previous administrative assistant who is leaving. So whenever I didn't know things, there was someone right there who could answer my questions. On Monday I am supposed to be the expert... and my predecessor left some big shoes to fill... we'll see how that goes.

I'm having a hard time blogging about the job I think just because I haven't had much time to process in the past few days. Eventually I will get some perspective and I'll have better things to say. Right now I am going to lay around and watch the Cosby show, and pet this sleeping cat.

Oh, also, Lar and I are headed to Duluth tomorrow morning! That is exciting. We're gonna hang out with Berg and see Stop Kiss and who knows what else. Should be good times. Until we return then!

First Day

Today was my first day working at National Wind, and it went pretty well! I am pretty stressed though, now that I have seen how much stuff I will have to remember every day. It's going to be an interesting process, learning to keep track of it all. I will definitely be busy. So yeah. I don't have much to say about it right now, I just felt like I should write a blog about my first day there. But that is not working out. Maybe later!

Employment!

Hooray! One of my hundreds of job interviews finally paid off and I got myself a job! Starting this Wednesday I will be working at National Wind as an Administrative Assistant. I am very excited... of all of the jobs I have applied for in the past few months this is honestly the one I wanted the most, especially after I interviewed there the other day. Everyone there seems really cool, the job is interesting enough to keep me busy and keep me learning but it's also a lot that I already have done before so I won't be way in over my head. AND the building overlooks freaking Lake Calhoun. Beautiful. So, what I need to do is get a place in Uptown and I will ride my bike to this job and I will be very happy with my life. Deal! It is totally the kind of place for which I would like to be working too, working on renewable energy and community development.

I just found out that my boss from the Office of Civic Engagement, Casey, is resigning from her position. That is pretty insane... I can't imagine how that office will continue to function without her around. I think she has made the program strong enough during her years there that it will be able to persist even without her around to stand up for it... it's just hard to imagine is all.

Anyway. T'was a good day in general, I spent most of it hanging out with Larissa. The cats were being huge brats, we let them outside and they usually chill in the yard but today they were running into other yards and across the street! They totally know they are not supposed to, but they are cats, so they do what they want.

Tomorrow I am hanging out with my family to celebrate my dad's birthday, and then on Sunday we are hitting up the Renaissance Festival for a while. I'm pretty jazzed. Things are looking up!