I have had something funky going on with my ear since August. It pretty much started a few days after I was done with Southwestern. I am thinking that my ears got accustomed to going up and down mountains every morning and night, and when that stopped and the right ear decided to get infected or whatever its issues is.
I want to go to a doctor about this, but I am having trouble with that. I have insurance through Aetna, but it is an HMO. That means that I need to set up a primary care physician. I have no idea who I should choose for that. After I select a PCP, I need to get permission to go to an ear specialist. This is completely different from how my old insurance worked. For the last 22 years I would always go straight to the doctor that would know what to do to fix my problem. I never had a primary care physician, because my Dad would always know where to send me. The closest I had to a regular doctor was my ear doctor (because I have had problems with my ears since I was an infant) and my dentist. My ear doctor died a few years ago though, so I guess it is time for me to find a new one.
Luckily, Aetna has this thing that I can use online, but I need all this information that I don't have to use that service. I suppose this online thing wasn't such great luck after all. Well, I have a few hours free Friday. I will arrange to take care of all of this then.
This past Sunday my family held a small memorial service for my Mom's mother. We called her Granny for all of my life, so that's how I'll refer to her here too.
The service was in a small Presbyterian church in downtown Fort Myers. Only members of my family and the two pastors were there for the service. She didn't have many friends here in Fort Myers, because she was from Texas. She had only been living here in Florida for a few years in a assisted living facility.
The memorial was pretty sad. It was somewhat run by my mom in a behind the scenes way, but the actual service was put on by the pastor of the church.
Pretty much everyone who was there that was part of our family got up and had some sort of part in the service. I read Proverbs 31:10 to the end, whatever verse that is.
My mother and Toby seemed to be the most upset at the service by far. They were probably the ones who knew Granny the best. I guess my Dad knew granny pretty well too, but he's 73 and has watched a lot of friends and loved ones pass already, so it seems to make less of an impact on him. My dad got up and spoke, which was funny. He is always pretty funny; particularly because he tries to be funny, which is a funny thing to see. He talked about Granny for a while, but then said some things that I felt applied more to how he'd like us to deal with his death than necessarily how Granny wanted things. We don't really know how Granny wanted us to handle her death, because she didn't talk about death all that much. Definitely not as much as my family does.
One great thing about the service for me and my upcoming little family is that Joy got to see that Toby is as sensitive as I had always promised. For the time that Joy has known Toby, Toby has been in this Doctor/Businessman phase of his life. He is also a husband and a father, which leaves him so worn out that he seems to forget to take off his gruff face and put on the relaxed happy Toby face or the sensitive, caring Toby face.
Steven also got up and spoke. Steven always makes me grin really big when I first see him, because he always looks funny to me. Not funny in that he is weird or anything, just funny because he is always trying to be chill, cool, calm, collected, etc. He does a pretty good job of being that way, because he is always trying to be that way, but I've known this guy for 22 years and I know better. He too got pretty shaken up when he spoke, so he kept his words short and few. The good thing about that is that Joy got to see him be sensitive too.
Joy often thinks of my family as cold and heartless -- especially when compared to me. They do care about people a lot though. There is just something up with my mom and those two brothers that makes them not want to show it. It is pretty funny to me, because they get pretty embarrassed and seem uncomfortable whenever they do something that reveals directly or through implication that they care.
My family is imperfect and flawed just like every family, but I sure like them. It might be just because they're my family, but I get a rush of happiness when I see them. Of course, they also upset me and stuff too, but what else could you expect? They're family!
In my room I have three posters of lighthouses. Each of these posters are similar to the Successories posters, in fact, they might actually be the real thing.
I picked lighthouses, because I wanted a theme and of the posters available at the time of purchase they were my favorite theme. I like the idea of lighthouses because of their purpose. They warn you of the coastline, light up the sea, and serve as landmarks to guide your path. They also make fun phallic symbols for when you're in the mood for sexual jokes.
Here's what they say --
Goals: Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
Focus: All things are difficult before they are easy. Keep your mind on your goals and you will achieve them.
Vision: Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
That last one is my favorite. It is my favorite picture and my favorite anecdote of the three.
My other themes are "Van Gogh's night scenes" which is my current bathroom theme, and "Salvador Dali", whose art makes any meal comparatively more palatable, is my dining room theme.
I have been thinking about whether Joy and I should rent an apartment or buy a home for the time we will be living in Orlando. I know that we'd both be really excited about owning a home, but we'd need to make sure that it makes good financial sense to do so. I have been wanting some information on how to calculate the differences between buying a house and renting an apartment. I learned all of this over a year ago in my Real Estate class, but I lost the fancy calculator we had then, and I've forgotten most of the formulas.
This is where this cool website comes into the picture. They have a really cool library of information available to everyone, and I didn't even need to sign up for anything. It had a calculator and after some reading I remembered a number of the formulas I had learned. I'm now so happy I wanted to tell someone!
I had a really, really great lunch today. In my search for ever spicier foods I have found these gourmet hotdog/bratwurst type things that are made with ground turkey, habenero peppers, and green chiles. I made one of those and put it on this whole wheat sub roll. Then I had some ketchup, of course, and Black Pepper Jack Doritos on the side. SPICY! Yum!
Jessica Brar sent me this e-mail today. I thought it was "funny as hell," and a good proof that even Chemistry can be subjective at times.
I don't know if the story has any truth to it, but I don't really think that matters -- it's funny if its factual or fictional!
Read On!
Chemistry
The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature andpressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is
exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"
I can't believe I haven't posted about this yet! I had so much going on...
Well, nothing is stopping me now, right!?!
Monday morning I was working at Panera. It wasn't such a great day, because people were being unusually grumpy that morning. I was in a pretty decent mood, so people kinda took their grumpiness out on the weird, happy guy.
That was all OK though, because in walks this guy, who was wanting to order some bagels for himself and his girlfriend.
Whoa! Could it be? This guy looked so familiar. Then I thought it might just be my long lost best friend from middle school. I wasn't sure because it had been like nine years or whatever it is, but I had to act, y'know? So, I asked him if he was from Fort Myers. He said he was! He was happy. He acted just like "Gilmore" would! So, then I just came out and asked him if he was David Gilmore!
Yeah! He was, so I reminded him of who I was and it clicked instantly. I guess it helped that he homeschooled right after leaving Middle School. Anyway, we were slammed at Panera, but I still decided that talking to him was more important than my job at that point. So, I stopped what I was doing and asked him to write down his phone number.
When I got done with work, I called Joy and told her about the whole thing, and then decided to just call him. He wasn't doing anything so we met up for lunch. It was so cool. This guy was like my best friend in middle school along with Tonio and Jeed. How cool was this?
I have been doing a lot of reading lately for school, and I keep coming across this main issue of idolatry. I've had it defined, redefined, explained and Biblically referenced for me over and over again, and somethings have finally clicked with me.
I have idols in my life. We all do. Idols are the things that we worship or love instead of God. They bring us pleasure, but also pain when we are kept from having them. They are motivating forces in our lives that often get us to act the way God would have us act, but more often they motivate us to do things that we'd rather not do and things that are against God.
The idols I've identified in my life so far are --
Women and sexuality in general.
Approval and Respect
Money/Security/Financial Growth
Video Games/Movies/Entertainment Media
Astrology
Relationships
One of the things that I believe is that we are made by God as creatures who are driven to worship something. Everyone is motivated by something. Everyone praises. The difference between right and wrong is what we are praising and what we allow our motivations to be. These beliefs of mine and others are stiring me to action. I want my primary motive to be God, but I know that He is not and has not been my primary motive throughout my life. I want that to change. Incidentally, I believe that I cannot just drop motivations or habits. I don't think that these sorts of things can be let go. I think that they need to be replaced with something else... sort of traded out, because of our nature to have habits and worship something.
So, now I have been putting thought and prayer into these idols that I listed above, and I have come up with a few replacements. Now, one of the most obvious comments that can be said about these replacements is that for every one of these things I should be replacing them with God and Jesus, right?
Well, I think that in the big picture that is exactly what I should be doing and is also exactly what I am doing, but here on the itemized, idol by idol level I want to replace specific idols with specific commands and such that God has given us.
Here it is, in list form again.
Approval/Respect --> Authenticity, genuineness, and honesty.
Money --> Stewardship, Backing up words with action, and diligence for God.
Video Games/Movies/E. Media --> Real-life challenges, wisdom, and story sharing.
I don't have all the answers though. I still have no idea what I can do to replace the other three idols. (Actually, I should probably seperate women and sexuality because though they are often the same they aren't entirely the same.) So, if anyone wants to contribute some ideas feel free to comment, e-mail me, call, or whatever. Also, if you are as dumbstruck as I am you could just pray for me.
Thanks for reading this far.
The End.
I guess the new word for this scourge is spamments. I was calling it blog spam, but one word is always better than too, unless you're trying to tell someone that you love them.
I haven't posted in over a week, because I have always been too busy with my time online trying to clear out all these spamments, which has taken longer than usual because there have been more than usual and because I am now closing the ability to comment on posts that have received a spamment. After doing this long enough I think almost all of my older posts will be closed to commentary and I will get almost no spamments. Sad, but that is how I am handling it. Now to write about something meaningful about my life.
In the last few years I have been noticing another pattern of behavior in myself. I get complacent. In fact, complacency is an extremely strong underlying motive for many of the things I do. I want to get to a place where I can be finished and rest. Anything that only requires one set of actions is extremely attractive to me.
The problem with all of this is strikingly clear to many people. Complacency is really, really bad and dangerous.
Well, tomorrow is a big day. Halo 2 is coming out. I have a copy reserved in my name at the GameStop next to my Panera. I am not "hard core" enough to stay out and get the game at midnight, and I am glad, because I gave up that opportunity for more hours at work this week, which will pay for over half of the price of the game anyway. Also, I can now leave work, drop by the GameStop, grb my copy, head to class, and put in a very full day (5:45AM to 4PM -- over 9 hours) of work and school. That should make playing H2 feel like a well deserved reward.
To everyone who also had the game pre-ordered or reserved --
Oh wait, all of you will be too busy playing Halo 2 to read this.
I have been getting a lot of spam comments on my site lately -- more than usual. So, now when I delete a comment I have decided to also close the comments to any entry that is over a month old. This should stop most of the spam, because they seem to only spam on older entries anyway. Here's wishing the best.
Yesterday, I got this new (to me) treo 300 delivered to my door as I was working on an assignment due about an hour later. Today, I went to the Sprint Store and now I am in my room typing away.
This thing is so cool! Yeah, it is really big. Yeah, I feel like a dork when I hold it to my face to
talk with it (I also worry about breaking it too!) Yes, it is visably "previously enjoyed." I don't really care about all those things, OK!?!
What I like is the fact that I can get online anywhere within a major city or Interstate. I like having a PDA and a phone in one. I almost always used a headset with my old cell phone, so having a real reason to do so with this cell phone isn't that big of a deal.
OK, I guess this is the extint of my typing endurance with the little thumbpad. It is cool and all, but I thumptype faster than the shift releases, and I know that I'd do much, much better on a proper keyboard. Besides, I want to stop now and make sure this sends properly to the server.
Last night I listened to an abridged audioBook of Bill Clinton's biography on my way back to Orlando. It has been really interesting to hear his side of the many stories that I heard and read about when I was in Middle School and High School. Toward the end of his presidency I began a process of learning more about his administration and I've found that my opinion about it has shifted.
I think that Clinton was a good president. I know that there was a lot of scandal put on him, but I don't think anything stuck -- accept the Monica Lewinsky bit.
I know that it was wrong for him to have done that, but it isn't exactly new, nor should it completely discredit everything he had done. Many Christians were very shocked by the whole thing at the time, which is shocking in itself. David had this same problem with a woman during his reign, and even had someone killed, but he is still remembered well. I think that Clinton might get the same treatment in time.
I think it is good to get information from both sides of the political arena, and I am glad that I am listening to Clinton's book. I wish that we could have another president that is as intelligent, caring and human as he is.