A short return

Okay, I'm really trying very hard to get in the habit of blogging again, because I really think there are things I ought to say instead of letting them boil around inside? Question mark?

I'm not really sure, now that I think about it, why I want to do this. Maybe I just am trying to be in the habit of writing so that it's a little less intimidating.

Truth and Error

I had a unique experience last week. There's a small group on campus outside the student center that are preaching Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, their method of delivery seems to be "Mormonism is wrong, and we're going to tell you about why we think that."

Now, I have nothing against someone trying to share something that brings them joy, but... I think I'm a little bit biased in this regard. While I was a missionary in South Africa, there were so many times that I ran into people who belonged to a church that taught them 'from the Bible' and yet taught things that were totally in disharmony with what's in the Bible. I should probably consider that some of these teachers are just not aware of it, but sometimes I wonder (particularly when you see the leader of a congregation living among his 'flock' with the only satellite dish in town).

Anyway, when I stopped to speak with one of these guys on campus (which is a bad idea in the full sun when you're wearing all black, by the way), he raised some questions about the doctrine of my faith that I didn't have immediate answers for. Still, I know where the truth lies, and God has promised answers to those who diligently seek them, so I withheld agreement until I could do some studying of my own.

It took me about five minutes to find scripture in the Bible that was in complete disharmony with what he was preaching. Five minutes! Once again, you have to wonder. At best, it makes him appear to be teaching when he doesn't really know...

Which brings me to the real key of teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. None of us understand it in its fullness, and so we're going to inevitably run into a topic which we know little about. The only way to insure we're always teaching truth is to do what's necessary to be aware of and bring the presence of the Holy Ghost into our life. He can 'teach...all things and bring all things to [our] remembrance.'

I hope to speak to this man again, but I'm kind of worried about it too. I have a (maybe unfounded) suspicion that he's so focused on his corner stone that he's not really going to consider looking at the rest of the house.

"When you stumble a lot, you start looking at your feet." - John Sheridan

Stupid made up technology that I made up

Apparently the new and improved mormon.org allows you to create a profile to share your thoughts and feelings about being a member, why you're a member, who you are, etc.

So I created a profile!...which was promptly eaten by internet demons (not to be confused with daemons, which is something else entirely). So, instead of providing a link here, I'm left to try and recreate what I said. Oh, well. If I get it figured out again, I'll let the whole world know (or at least people who read my blog).

On a completely different note, physics is nuts. Combining standing sine waves allows you to reproduce music, quantum mechanics doesn't make sense but it fits basically all the evidence we currently have, and beach balls dropped in a classroom are noticeably susceptible to air resistance (as are humans wearing hats in a hurricane, for that matter).

"If you'ww take a wook at my resume, you'll see I have quite a bit of experience in many different rewated fiewds." - HR

Is anybody [still] there? Does anybody [still] care?

So, apparently a month turned into, um, five? If it's any consolation to anyone, I think about this blog about every other day. Usually something like, "I should write on my blog, because I actually had like three people that enjoy reading it." And then I would get distracted by my wife or something around the house, or school (more recently).

Speaking of school, I'm now a week into a new semester, and I'm really feeling the two years that I've been away from math and physics courses. Who knew that Introductory Quantum Physics wouldn't be like riding a bicycle? Okay, that's actually a new class this semester. Anyway, it's a little intimidating getting back into the swing of things, but I'm not dead yet, and I have high hopes and a very loving and supportive wife who's working so that I can focus on school. Yeah, she's pretty much amazing.

Maybe I should start writing more random short stories here. Hmmm. Well, I'd like to say that I'm going to post regularly again, but...no, you know what? I am going to post more regularly again. I'm going to post on here once a week from now on. So any of you that know me, feel free to get after me if I don't post after more than a week.

A short explanation of my lack of blogging this month...

Wow. It's been an eventful month. Mostly my marriage to Hannah at the beginning of the month.

April 1^st was cold and snowy. Seems the weather had decided to get in on the April Fools' tradition. We were a little worried that Sardine Canyon would be ugly and slick. Fortunately, the Lord seemed to determined to bless us in a multiplicity of ways this day. We drove through the canyon without incident and made it to the Salt Lake Temple safely and early. We parked almost exactly the same time as Hannah and her group, actually.

We met up just in front of the recommend desk, where Hannah gave me my recommend that she'd been holding on to. The really cool thing about this part is that I'd stressed myself out the day before trying to find a ring of some kind for Hannah to have (it's true. I still hadn't gotten one) and I spent too much time and even made dinner late trying to find one and I couldn't and I was distressed most of the evening as a result. Hannah's brothers, Nephi and Alma, fed me dinner and I got to see Hannah briefly, all of which made me feel a bit better, but I still really wanted to surprise Hannah the morning of the wedding with an actual ring. I mentioned my distress to Mom, who had figured out what I'd been stressing about, and she pulled off Great Grandma Bliss's ring that she'd been wearing around for months and gave it to me.

“I knew I'd been wearing this around for a reason!” she told me, noting that if she'd put it away instead of making an effort to wear it every day, she probably would have forgotten about it entirely. Anyway, as you can imagine, I thought this was really cool. When I met up with Hannah, I took her hand and slipped the ring on her finger while explaining to her its origin. She seemed to be quite taken with it. Mom also told me we could use the bits for whatever, so since Hannah's also got a diamond from her grandmother, we have quite the arrangment of materials to make a really neat ring with a lot of history. One more wonderful part of the day!

Then, we went inside and got things moving and that's when it finally truly started to sink in that this was actually happening. It was really nice, especially since, even though it was the Salt Lake Temple, which is traditionally very crowded with weddings, April 1^st on a Thursday didn't seem to be a real popular day, so it was actually rather quiet. That and the snow and the fact that it was the week of conference seemed to leave the temple pretty empty of people. (They were there, just not a ton.) It was wonderful to have some time to sit and ponder a number of times, and to just enjoy holding hands and anticipating what was coming.

Finally, we moved on to the sealing, where pretty much everyone we hoped for was there.

The sealer was great, and had a few good comments, both funny and instructive. He married Hannah and I and then we had the opportunity for congratulations with everyone before he married my brother Elijah and Ashley.

I think I haven't previously mentioned that they had decided to move up their wedding day to the same as ours. In fact, at the temple, we felt almost like local celebrities by the end of it. Everywhere we went, the temple workers escorting us from place to place would tell others they passed.

“He's getting married today! And so is his brother! It's a double wedding! It's really exciting!'

It was pretty much fantastic. I felt the Spirit of the Lord powerfully witness to me of the strength and power of the bond that had been made by authority between Hannah and I. I've never known more strongly of the rightness of a choice I had made then I did at the moment we were sealed. And so far, things have only gotten better between us every day!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We headed outside for pictures, where the snow that fell pretty much all day had decided to stop just about then. Dad's coworker and friend, Val, came down to do photos. We had a great shoot, though we were rather freezing out there. We were saved from the worst of it because Mom had generously made both brides a white fleece cloak to wear over their dress between pictures. Hannah was generous enough to share hers with me by wrapping her arms around me a number of times. ^large grin^

We finished the photos and got changed just in time to head over for the luncheon at Chuck A Rama. Good food and we had a number of additional friends and family join us there. It was exceptionally fantastic to see all of them! I loved the family and friends and aside from the sealing itself, those family and friends were the best part of the day for me!

The rest of the day was wonderful, too, but a bit more private. Suffice it to say we headed back up to Logan and proceeded to stay the night at the Anniversary Inn (our room had stars all over the ceiling, a black light, and a hilarious “rocket ship” bathroom, complete with blinking lights and gauges on one wall).

We headed home to our apartment the next day to relax a little and attend to a few last minute details for the reception. Hannah's family put it together for us, except the cake, which we bought, and they did a fantastic job! Everything looked great! We overbought just a little on cake (180ish pieces and we only had about 60 or 70 show up) but everyone that was most important ended up coming. I saw all my old close roommates and Hannah had a number of good friends there. Most everyone who'd been at the wedding and luncheon the day before made it to the reception as well and some other good friends that I'd been out of touch with made it! Once again, I couldn't have been happier with how things turned out, particularly since Hannah pulled me out to Waltz once during clean-up. We took home some amazing gifts, including one of the coolest pan sets I've ever seen, let alone owned, and a really fantastic, wonderful knife set!

I never thought I'd get so excited about kitchenwares, but these are absolutely fantastic!

Just when I thought this week couldn't get any better, it was time for General Conference! We watched from home and joined my family for Priesthood Session and crepes on Sunday. I heard some amazing and wonderful things and was inspired and directed for the next while by the Lord. I also received great hope that I will be able to hold onto the giddy excitement I feel when I think about Hannah and being with her because President Monson showed some of that giddy excitement about his wife at the beginning of Conference this year! I think I can consider myself deliriously happy!

Oh, and does anyone want some cake?

"Wanna go to the mall sometime?"

"Way to seal the deal, Casanova." - Johnny and Adam

Middle of Nowhere

Some mornings, when she woke up, she felt like she was the dumbest person on the planet.

Being the only person on the planet didn't make it any better. In fact, that just reminded her why she so often felt like the dumbest person on the planet lately. Then again, "planet" may be too strong a word for it. She could walk from one end to the other in just under two hours, even if she counted time for suiting up and stripping down.


She sighed. That was about as exciting as it got anymore. The monthly supply ship had been automated, the live crew victims of the same budget cuts that left her stranded on this miniature rock in Triton's L5, and the Triton lander had developed a fuel leak, leaving her without even the option of wandering the abandoned colony on the moon's surface.


Then again, with the solar collector starting to look like well-aged swiss cheese, she could hardly even run the air reprocessors down there, much less lights enough to see where she was walking and with the sun four and a half billion kilometers away, even the daylight didn't help much.


She sighed again and wondered for the thousandth time why she had volunteered for this. True, the idea of leading the way for the re-establishment of the farthest colony from Earth once the recession was over had seemed quite heroic at the time, and the promise of at least monthly contact with other people had made the loneliness into a bearable future challenge, AND being the only one with the necessary technical experience who didn't have a family at home or here with her had made her the most logical choice...


But five years had come and gone, and the only things that had changed were the crayon drawings on every available wall and ceiling space and the removal of any living people from her monthly contact with the rest of humanity. If only they'd left one of the standard, speed of light vid-comms! But the company's infinite wisdom (and massive cost cutting in every possible way while the minority struggled to leave open the option for resettlement) had stripped her of even an eight hour back and forth with friends back home, leaving her instead with the dry comfort of slow-scrolling text over the TangleTalk. And who's genius idea was that name anyway?


Bah. Maybe she could sabotage something vital and finally get shipped home. But every time she did the math on that, it turned out to be about ten times cheaper to ship spare parts on the resupply flight than it did to send a capsule with supplies enough to get her home.


She glanced at the status panel, then rolled back over to contemplate the other side of the pillow and look at the dismal prospect of another five years as the dumbest person on the planet.


(Opening line courtesy of Mandy and her fantastic Writing Creatively Every Day blog! Thanks Mandy!)

"Yes... yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land." - Wash

Night Train

I really need to stop staying up until 3 or later am to read a novel.