Douche On, Douche Off

Just an observation.

Douchebags are popular, and not all popular people are douchebags (but given the number of douches, most are).

I know this because (pick one):

A) I work with a...
B) I live with a...
C) I am myself a...
D) I regularly use a...

douchebag.

I've Lost My Voice

Something strange happens here in Georgia. They have these things, called trees, that grow so they can shed yellow dust on everything, poisening some humans (and even dogs). It reminds me of the movie "The Happening", which was mediocre, but the concept is logical: trees will attack you with allergens until you just want to kill yourself!

But some things can be worse, like:

• Styrofoam peanuts, left overnight, can multiply and migrate quickly. They are keen on hiding in tight, inaccessable places. When encountered with free-roaming stryofoam peanuts, run away or capture and place them in an air-tight container.
• Milk, when dropped from a height of about 3 feet, can explode from inside a container leaving splash marks as far as the living room (about 12 feet).
• Shortly after purchasing my car, I got pulled over for not having my tags. That was OK, but then I learned if you have a crack in the windshield longer than a dollar bill, you will need about 220 dollar bills to replace it.
• When I moved to GA, I got stuck at the Atlanta airport for 10 hours. The Atlanta airport likes to play the game "musical gates", where previously assigned gates can be changed at the last minute before departure.
• While I've been accepted to University, I can't enroll until late May, and because I mistook the role of the word "accepted" as "enrolled" I'm stuck paying 500 dollars rent until June when I can live on campus (as an enrolled student) paying 425 for EVERYTHING. Plus, they have a free pool table.
• The store where I work claims to be better and smarter than all other competitors, but even when I apply my 10% discount their cost for groceries is still higher than their main competitor!
• I was seven minutes late on my first day of work, plus I clocked out late. Also, I lost most of my vocal capacity on that same day.

• I won't have enough money to travel and see my friend Hanne when she visits the USA for the very first time!

I guess I can't blame the trees for everything.

In the Key of Love, a Verse

From 1 Corinthians, 13-14:

If I could speak in any language in heaven or on earth but didn't love others, I would only be making meaningless noise like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I knew all the mysteries of the future and knew everything about everything, but didn't love others, what good would I be? And if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, without love I would be no good to anybody. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, I would be of no value whatsoever.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in tongues and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.

It's like this: when I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

There are three things that will endure-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love.

Love and Valentine's Day

So it's the weekend of Valentine's Day, neatly etched in-between the Christmas season and my birthday on the 16th, and I've heard a lot of talk about love via the Internet and You Tube. A common issue people have with Valentine's Day, and any other holiday for that matter, is the exploitation of the appropriate theme of the day by commercial enterprise. It's a valid argument, if not a cynical one.

Let's not allow the commercial sector to diminish the values that we hold dear. If love is important to you, every day of the year is a potential holiday.

Therefore during these popular holidays I am urged to reflect on the past year, relevant to the theme of the day. So if I take the time to consider what is love, and how I have displayed love throughout the year, I am more likely to celebrate life and love on a daily basis and not just Valentine's Day. Cultural traditions and social pressures can interfere with our personal reverence by insisting that on these "special days" we should drop a dollar or two, but if you make a daily effort to consider what is most valuable to you, this sort of influence becomes irrelevant. That's why for me a holiday is primarily a date marked for reflection.

So I offer my reflection on what I have learned about love this past year, what is love? For me, there is a difference between being in love, and sharing love. The simple difference is that in the second case there are at least two parties active and involved in loving each other, while in the first case there is no other person to receive love. This means I can be in love with a girl, or a car, or any thing at all, but that person or that thing does not reciprocate. Therefore, this is not love at all, but attraction to a need or from a wanting, and confusing that with love means you cannot receive it in return. Attraction is fine, even pleasant, and desire is usually disappointing.

I think love is the product of dedication and trust, both of which require consistent selfless action, not attraction to a fantasy. And only when those two factors are met, and recognized equally, can two people share love. Another issue emerges, however, when love itself becomes the desire. The desire for love can make us forget that we need to develop dedication and trust, together, before we get to share love. This error is understandable because both dedication and trust require hard work, and often sacrifice and compromise together, for the sake of another person who may not initially appreciate or offer these in return.

For this reason love and risk usually meet together in the same sentence. Just remember that what's at stake is only your time and energy, and if you offer this first and it isn't welcomed, it is their loss and your heart will still be safe. This is why it can be so exciting when you find someone who responds to your work, it's actually validating.

Love is like a goad for two people, working together, each trusting, and each dedicated to whatever service is needed from each other. Love is the result of our selfless efforts, the energy that moves us when we feel like giving up. Keep in mind I am not only talking about couples and romance, but of family and community as well. So the better question now is: what is dedication, and what is trust? Make a holiday out of those values!

Jesus Said This

"If the light you think you have is truly darkness, how great that darkness must be!"

Tule Fog

(Nov. 23, fog warning, Accuweather.com-compare with image to the right)


It is the time of year when something very fascinating happens in the state of California: the Tule fog (pron.tool-ee)

Tule fog is a weather phenomenon named after the tule grass that grows in abundance throughout the Central Valley (seen right is satellite imagery of the Central Valley, covered by a blanket of Tule fog, the bar at top right equals 600 km.), and is caused by rapidly cooling overnight temperatures and moisture literally draining down from the Sierra Nevada mountains into the bowl-like valley. Without wind turbulance, the unique geography of the Central Valley prevents the dense fog from dispursing.


(image courtesy of the Web: Bakersfield, CA)

Underneath the Tule fog conditions are extremely low visibility, often less than 600 ft. ahead, and is an unavoidable hazard for motorists across the state. In fact, Tule fog is the leading weather related cause of fatalities in CA.


(photo by me, on my street this morning: Nov. 23, 2008)

So, right now the Valley is under a dense fog warning. If you can see in the photo above, the end of my street isn't really visible. But in my experience, the fog in my area is pretty light. It can be much, much worse! Growing up as a child I remember my father driving me early in the morning during my winter break, from my hometown, the Upper Boondocks, to visit my grandparents in the Boondocks, where I live today. The Tule fog was terrible every morning, and with the filitered early sunlight it made everything look blue. I felt as if I was living on the surface of another planet, like Neptune.

As an adult, I used to spend my evenings partying or just hanging out in the Upper Boondocks. In the evenings during the Tule fog season, as I stepped outside I felt as though zombies were about to step out of the fog. It was so thick, you couldn't view the other side of the street. It's very spooky stuff!


(photo courtesy of the Web, from Antioch, CA)

Underneath all that stuff are cities and farms, people, and ZOMBIES!


(photo by me, this morning, looking towards the sky-I could see the moon)

In this photo, you might be seeing snow, but that's an illusion. The air was so thick with moisture this morning, that when the flash of the camera went off, all the little beads of moisture that were hanging around lit up and appeared out of focus, creating the "snow" effect.

My SAT Test Results=Happiness

I have viewed my SAT Test results that arrived last evening. This was an important event because the University I am applying for has different categories for admission, and the primary factor in my case is due to the fact that I graduated from High School over 5 years ago. The benefit of falling into this category is that I am exempt from being scrutinized for any failed courses I took in HS, and in my case there were a few. This category is also exempt from having to pass the SAT or ACT test, and instead the school administers its own placement exams.

However, if a student scores 500 or better on the SAT Critical Reading and Reasoning test (and 500 on the math test, which I opted not to take because I stink at math) they may opt out of the University's placement exam. I believe my score on the SAT Reading test better reflects my abilities in that area, so that's why I took it. And so, here are the results:

Test Date	Test	Score	National Percentile
11/2008	SAT Reasoning Test
	Critical Reading	680	93%
	Math	330	5%
	Writing	530	62%
	Multiple Choice	56 (score range: 20-80)
	Essay	6 (score range: 2-12)

I beat my own expectations on the reading portion, I was predicting 75 to 85% of a National Percentile. I also expected a better score in the writing department, even though it passed (still, it's irrelevant to my admission) I guess it just proves that I am a lazy writer. As for the math, well, what can I say? As my You Tube profile reads, the practice of mathematics is not one of my interests, although I am interested in the history of math and mathematicians.

But the primary test, the TRUE GEM is that Reading score. I'm so proud of myself! It's so beautiful, I think I'll enjoy some Harvest Moon pumpkin ale! CHEERS!