Choir of angels.

As you may have noticed from the numerous photos I have posted depicting the place outside my bedroom window, my house in a swamp area. I think this is why there are not many houses around ours. Our house is set up a little bit, to avoid flooding, as the road does, when it rains.
Starting about a month ago, in the evenings, when the weather is warm, we have been serenaded by a choir of frogs. There must be several thousand frogs who live across the street from me. And every night they express their love for me via a symphony of croaks.

Birthday.

It was my birthday a few days ago. Marissa and I went camping at the beach and then I didn't even check my email till yesterday. Lately, whenever circumstances leads me to not check my email one day, I find myself then putting it off for one, maybe two or three more days, knowing I will have an overwhelming amount of emails to respond to. Even though I know that putting it off even more just increases the pile up.
I started a new blog. If you click on my profile, you can get the link.
Here are some birthday photos:



At the Dollar store ($) Marissa came across and purchased two kites. They worked a little better than I imagined, but despite the perfect weather for kite flying, we weren't able to get them above 5 feet in the air.


Even though I don't typically like to support businesses like Burger King, nor do I generally enjoy the food they offer, the BK VEGGIE is one of the best, possibly the best veggie burger I have had. I try not to eat them too often. I think of them as sort of a guilty pleasure. But on special days, such as my birthday, I love to eat one. Marissa had one as well. It was her first. She enjoyed it, even though she got it without the toppings, which, in my mind, is what makes it so good. She also got it with a slice of Swiss cheese on BOTH sides of the patty.


This wasn't on my birthday. But it IS a photograph. We are playing Magic the Gathering in Priest Point Park. A stunningly beautiful park in Olympia. Marissa as talking on the phone a while ago to one of her friends and mentioned that we had been playing the card game 'Magic the Gathering' her friend asked if it was a cult. I found and find this so so funny. What would it mean for a game to be a cult?



We came across this jealous jelly fish on the beach. It was the first Jelly fish I have seen with my own eyes.



We decided to hop in the water and see if we could find more jelly fish.

At Bk still.


Curious about the texture and durability of the jelly fish, I poked it and pushed it with my foot until it kind of broke apart. I ended up kicking it really hard to see how it would withstand. I felt kind of gross while I was doing it. I am not sure if the jelly fish was alive and I am not sure if Jelly fish have an advanced enough nervous system that it could feel any pain, but I felt bad destroying, with my foot, a living Jell-o dish.

.

To wrap everything up, I would like to which everyone a happy 420. I would like to wish everyone a sober and sad Hitler's birthday and Columbine anniversary. But, if it is getting you too down to think about it, you should get high on Marijuana.

Ganesh drinking milk.

Ruth was over at my house the other day and was talking about Ganesh Statues drinking milk. Marissa looked it up online and found this video: http://www.milkmiracle.com/
The 'miracle' involves placing a spoonful of milk at the mouth of a Ganesh statue and watching it 'drink' the milk. I recommend watching the video. One day, in a spiritual pandemic, this miracle spread across India, causing thousands of people to spoon feed statues of Ganesh with milk.

I suppose if I were from India I might not have found this so strange and humorous. I can imagine to a foreigner our 'miracles' of crying statues or representational stains take on a similar quality.

I told her it didn't seem particularly miraculous for a statue to be able to draw moisture out of spoon. Fired clay and stone, when not covered with glaze is fairly absorbent and tends to 'suck' moisture into it like a paper towel would if only one corner of it were placed in a spoon filled wit milk. This is a well understood phenomenon called capillary action.

We tried it with my Ganesh statue which is covered with a glaze and it didn't drink the milk. I then tried it with myself, and another miracle occurred, the milk went from the spoon into my open mouth and into my stomach where it turned into a beautiful bird which then flew out of my mouth and continued upward until it reached heaven.

Things like this remind me a lot of when I was manic and small things would happen that were sort of unusual and I didn't entirely understand which I would normally have not thought much of, but because of my intensified state of mind I saw as having great significance.

It is not that I think these people who believe in the Ganesh miracle are necessarily dumb or deluded. I can understand the desire to believe and how that desire can make one see more into things than they may be. Or not look as critically at some things as we should. We all do it a fair amount of time. Ever since I learned about the study which compared the minds of theists and atheists, I tend to see situations like this in terms of one's brain chemistry. Some people seem to, because of the particular way their brain chemistry is, see more into certain things then are really there (while others see less into things). Having been manic where I did that about almost everything, I very much understand what this feels like and am sympathetic towards those who do. (I wonder how much one can be conditioned to perceive one way or the other. For example, if a person were raised in a culture that placed a high emphasis on sign seeking, would a lifetime of that alter their dopamine levels making it then easier to see signs where there are none? )

I think for historically recorded miracles, the one I most impressed and mystified by is the Miracle of the Sun related Our lady Fatima.

grad

Since I am not too far off from graduation, I occasionally get emails about graduation related things from evergreen. Today I got one about speaking at the graduation ceremony. Yes, I WAS BEING INVITED TO SPEAK AT GRADUATION! And it wasn't just I, every student who would be graduating was invited to try out to be the graduation speaker. Since Evergreen doesn't give grades, I guess they would have no way to decide who is best suited to speak at graduation.
I thought it seems like a good idea. Graduations tend to be pretty boring. Because a person is good at earning grades doesn't mean they are good at public speaking. But this way, the graduation speaker is instead chosen by there ability to give a good talk. I briefly considered auditioning, but I don't have anything interesting to say to the graduating Evergreeners.

Return to stuff

I haven't written much in this blog lately. I have hardly been online much lately.
One reason I haven't written much in this blog is, i think, it is locked.
I realized that when I know exactly who is able to read my blog, I feel less inclined to write. When writing for a set list of people, it then feels more as if I am sending a mass email.
When I write, as I imagine most others do, I picture the audience I am writing for, and when write something to be read by many people, I tend to write towards the audience of one person specifically. It helps me clarify my thoughts, being able to imagine the response the hypothetical person might have. Rarely do I think of any actual person, but rather an imaginary audience member who is inclined to disagree with and look for loopholes in what I write. When my blog is free for anyone to read, it is easy to imagine that such a hypothetical audience member may actually be reading my blog, but when it is locked, and I am familiar with all of my audience I find that more difficult and thus, feel less inclination to write.
This isn't all of it, but I think this is most of it. Because of this, I am going to start a new blog that won't be locked, but will be a tad more secret than this blog. Mostly more secret to the paolacci family.

In other news, I have been so lazy the past couple weeks. Though I have been reading lots of good books. I read a really well written and insightful book on Mormonism which caused me to, for a couple days, consider going back to Church. It isn't that this book caused me to believe in Mormonism again, but it reminded me of the advantages that came from being apart of such an organization. (Marissa and I have also been watching Big Love, which I think played a role in my thinking about the Church often.)
Over the next several days I immersed myself in reading Mormon related material in a way I have not for a while now. Over the course of about a week I went through a miniature conversion to apostasy. It reminded me of the latter days of being a Church member when I wanted to belief so bad, but the more I learned the less I believed. But rather than spread over a couple years it was compressed into several days.

Sometime within the next few days I will create my new, unlocked blog. As soon as I have, I will type the letters comprising the url into this blog.
I didn't read through this entry, so please correct the type-os and stuff in your mind/brain.

Internet buddies

Hello internet buddies.

sf

I haven't written in here for a while because I have been too busy reading SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS!!!!!

This is kind of true. I am reading a Science Fiction book right now. And I haven't written in my blog for a while. Are the two related? I dunno. (I do know. They are not related).

I've been sick for the past few days, but now I am doing mostly better. I haven't even checked my email for several days. Welcome back C. Allman.

Weather

Since my last post the sky entirely cleared up, and is now entirely cloudy and rainy again.
chrisalmond.blotspot.com: the world's best resource for olympia weather information.

Weather

Every state I have been in I have heard people say, in speaking of the weather: 'You know what they say about_____(name of state), if you don't like weather, just wait 5 minutes.'
Marissa confirmed this is also true in Arizona.
The only state I have lived in where I haven't heard this is also the only state where it has been true, which is olympia. Since 11:30 Am it has gone from raining, to clear skies, to raining, to sunny clear skies, to now 1:55 pm, it is snowing.
Dave Bottom, I trust you have found this post to be funny and enlightening.

net

The internet at my house has been down for a few days. And may be down for a few more days. I'm in a computer lab now but only have 3 more minutes on this computer. On sunday Marissa's mom is coming. I go through moments of intense dread to moments of feeling unconcerned. It isn't as if I have anything to hide or am ashamed of anything. It is just uncomfortable having someone over to your has that has only criticized you. And the criticisms are frequent. It is strange to be so frequently put down. 56 seconds left. Got to go! marissa and I made a pizza yesterday and it was delicious!

Space Race.

I remember when I learned about the space race, both in elementary school and in secondary school, it was taught in such a way that felt as if we, as a country, were still patting ourselves on our back over our collective victory against the Russians.

It is humorous and strange to me that adults would teach this sense of group superiority to children. Not only that they would teach it at all, but especially teaching it decades after the event.

As a child I played sports and other team activities and I can understand the fun and excitement of getting wrapped up in feeling a part of a group that has succeeded.

I also understand that on an evolutionary level, groups and tribes were very important to our survival. One part of being a good member of the group is taking pride in the group's victories, but also, in an earlier time the groups victories had a strong correlation to our survival. If the group was strong and victorious, as an individual our likelihood of survival would be much greater, so it would be to our advantage as individuals to feel a sense of emotional investement in our tribe or teams victories.

But like so much of modern life, things that were useful to us in the savannas of Africa no longer serve the same function, yet because they are so deeply ingrained both biologically and culturally many hold on to them just as tightly.

I also realize that the struggle between the U.S.A's space program, and that of the USSR was more than just a struggle of national super powers, it was a test of idealogies. People saw the success of the space program as being anolog to the success of Capitalisim or Communism. If they were to show that Capitalism was superior to Communism being able to be the first to the moon could supposedly do it.

While I can understand the childhood pleasure of, and the biological factors for, I can not relate to the feeling of group pride. Particularly having the feeling on such a level that I would want to pass it on to young children on an institutional level.

I feel about as much attachment to the Russian engineers working in the space program of the 1950's and 60's as I do to the American engineers at Nasa of that time.(not much). Both groups of people I have never met, nor do I even know their names. Nor does either of their achievements have any correlation to my ablity to achieve. As good as they may be at engineering, I can take just as much personal pride from the achievements of Nasa as I can from from the Sun's ability at being very hot.
The Nasa engineers and the Russian engineers do come from the same species as me, which is something inherent in our nature, but our national identities are totally arbitrary. We should feel the same satisfaction at one countries success, particularly in scientific areas, as we do ours. It would be nice if we could be more concerned about the progression of the human race than particular countries.

One part of growing up and maturity, I feel, is being able to be happy for other people's achievements. As a child I was not able to do this at all. As a young adult I still cannot always do this, but have come much further along than I was before. The more comfortable and confident I am with myself, the less I need external factors confirming to me my own sense of well being, and the less I see the success of others as somehow taking away from me in any way. It is not as if we are in a competition. We are all in this together trying to be happy and figure out what in the world is going on. Our culture is very much about competition and being the best, which I see as emotionally immature, particularly when we as a country and people are still teaching in schools our children to think of our group as better than others.