Omega 13 Activated!

This is for Shinobi.

And Chaelomen and Berserk.

Phobia.

The only thing to fear is fear itself.

Oh, love. You tricky tricky concept, you.

I suppose this blog is political in nature, but I'm not doing that thing where we have a hundred comments between a couple of people who don't see eye to eye and are now arguing relentlessly with each other. I'm going to use my blog to say how I feel, and then everyone is welcome to comment and say how they feel. You're welcome to tell me that you disagree with my opinions, but you're not welcome to tell me I'm wrong or to start fighting. This isn't going to be flame war. I will resort to deleting comments if I must-- something I've never done before on my blog, and really, I don't want to have to start now.

Let's just be adults and accept each other's differences of opinions, and spare me from having to go comment-deleting. Though, honestly, with how many comments I've been getting recently, I'd be surprised to see this be a problem.


So I have a friend, and I was reading her blog, and I thought it was really beautiful. But it reminded me of something. In case this is news to anyone, I'm LDS.

On facebook, I'm friends with a lot of returned missionaries that used to serve in the branch. About 6 months ago, I was looking at one of their profiles, and I saw that his "religious views" were set as agnostic, which was a little strange. Since, you know, he used to be a missionary in the branch. I messaged him to ask when that happened, and he said, "It was months ago. Probably around six months now? It was around the time I also came out as gay to my family...I kinda hit them with everything at once, unfortunately! lol, I know it may be a shock to you, being a member, but I finally had the strength to be 100% true to myself. I've known I was gay since I was a little boy. And I'm totally open to any questions, etc...I'm a very open book."

Now, I was really actually not concerned at all with his sexual orientation. I was honestly more interested in why he decided he was agnostic, so that's where I steered the conversation. I was just curious, I wanted to know why the drastic change. I love the gospel very much, and though I believe it's true, I know that is not what everyone in the world thinks. But if they once believed it and now don't, I want to know why. I want to know what tripped them up. That way I can address it for myself and see what I think about their concerns. I don't go back and try to convince them, "No, man, the gospel is true, see? I solved your problems!" No one likes that kid haha. But it helps to strengthen myself, and I can go back to them and say, "I see what you're saying, but I guess that isn't a concern I have because A B and C," and then they can do what they want with that. They told me what they believe, I told them what I believe, we move on and continue being friends.

I did, however tell him congratulations for coming out and having the strength to be honest with himself and tell his friends and family, and wished him luck on his future endeavors with falling in love and adopting kids. It would be really difficult to hit your friends and family with something that you've been keeping a secret from everyone (and trying to deny yourself), and I am truly happy for him. He's happy now, I can feel it when I talk to him. I was so excited for his happiness, that I told a couple people back here, that way they could be happy for him, too.

Wow. I mostly didn't get the reactions I was anticipating. I've never really considered myself open-minded, but I guess I am? I don't know, it's news to me. Regardless, I told a couple of my friends that he came out, and some of them were happy for him, but many seemed disappointed in him. And I can't understand why, though I've tried to figure it out. The only explanation I can come up with is that they're afraid. They don't understand it, so they fear it, and they turn that fear into anger or annoyance or maybe simply disinterest. I used to be like that. But I'm not like that anymore, and I'm ashamed I ever was. But the fact that I've changed gives me hope that others can, as well.

Anyway, my friend's blog just made me want to share a few of my person beliefs: I don't believe homosexuality is a sin, nor do I believe it's a choice (except for those obnoxious middle schoolers who are like, "I'm bi!" just for the attention). I believe we all deserve the right to be married. I don't believe civil union is the same thing as marriage. I don't believe legalizing gay marriage will force my temples to adopt different standards than they currently have. I believe love is complex and simple at the same time. I believe someday the war on gay marriage will end the same way that the war on interracial marriage did. I believe God's love for you doesn't depend on your sexual orientation nor do I think it depends on your belief in him, side note.

And if you think differently than I do, if your beliefs don't coincide perfectly with mine, then that's fine. We don't all have to be clones of each other. But we do all have to be human beings. And we should all act like human beings and have some respect for each other.

If anyone has questions on what I believe or comments on what I believe, you are all more than welcome to ask/share below. Just remember kids, let's pretend like we like each other.

The flashing lights have got a hold on me.

Well I feel like a slacker. Or actually, no I don't. I feel productive. But my productivity is making me not very blog-ish. Sad. But I'm still alive! And planning on doing math soon to figure out what all of the new scores for all the restaurants we've rated are. And then we'll start up burger-rating adventures again. Mmm. I miss those...

But classes are going well!

I've got psychopharmacology, which is really interesting. Drugs are still awesome. I have to read up on the drug GHB (date rape drug) for a presentation and paper. If anyone has ideas for sources, that'd be fantastic.

I used to have intro to philosophy, but the teacher seemed to have one goal for the semester: to piss all of us off. Super lame. So I dropped it and picked up intro to music, which will fulfill the same gen ed requirement. It's really cool, I enjoy that class. It's a lot of classical music, which I don't usually listen to but it's interesting anyway.

ASL is also really cool. I quite like it. There's actually a new girl we just hired at work who has 2 deaf kids, so she knows sign language and we practice when we talk at work. So fun.

Analytical chem is pretty cool, too. It seems like a lot of review of things from gen chem, just in more detail, but that's a good thing, because I had no idea what was going on in gen chem two.

Intro to sociology is interesting? I really like the textbook and reading it. It's really interesting. But I'm not in love with the actual class. The teacher is kinda cool, but the textbook is waaay more interesting than the lecture material. Which is confusing, because shouldn't it be the same material?

And my last "class" is analytical chem lab, which is mostly waiting for things. Like, waiting for the crucibles to be heated (a process that takes several hours) and waiting in line to use the Atomic Absorption thing. It's not too bad, though, because there's some cool people in my class, and I like talking to them.

Work is also going really well. I've already been there for 6 months, which totally blows my mind. It's the longest I've ever held a job before, actually. And I plan to stay forever! We've been really busy this year. The beginning of the year is usually the busy season for rec centers/gyms because everyone has New Year's resolutions to go to the gym more, but my boss has actually shown me the numbers, and this is the busiest year we've had in like 5 years or something. It's been a little stressful, but in a good way. I love all the people I work with, too. They're all really cool and easy to talk to, which really makes the day go by much faster. And it's still way fun to teach the climbing classes I'm in charge of. I love it. Such a great job. :)

And climbing is going pretty well. I've finally persuaded one of my friends to come climbing with me 2-3 times a week, which has been really fun, and I can see that I've improved already. I can climb 2 of the 5.6's we have at work, and there's just this one spot where I get stuck on our last 5.6, but I'm working to get around it. I think when Ally (the friend I convinced to climb with me) and I go climbing tomorrow, I'll try one or two of our 5.7's (there's four of those, and one of them is on the same wall as the 5.6 that I'm getting stuck on, so I don't think it'll be the one I try).

That's about it for my exciting news. Still looking at moving out in May/June with a couple roommates. I turned 21? That's kinda exciting I guess. But yes, that's my life for the past couple months. Everything's well, just busy! I'll try to get up new restaurant ratings soon, possibly this weekend. My schedule doesn't look too ridiculously busy. Yet...

Are you ok?

Can I just say that I think this is probably the best music video that was ever made?

But I also think this is a close contender.

New phone!

I can't really remember if I mentioned that I bought a new phone on Thanksgiving, but I did! Ordered it online (I switched plans, so I'm not on the family plan anymore, I've got my own. It's like I'm an adult with a paying job or something :) ), and it came like ten days after that maybe?

It's really cool, my service is through Virgin Mobile, and I have unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 minutes for 35 a month. And now I have a smart phone! Very exciting. I have apps! And games! And the ability to check facebook on my phone! And check my email! And basically never need the computer again. Ha. Except to play Warlight, because my phone does not have adobe flash on it, which apparently I need. I'm not actually sure, btw, what I'm supposed to be doing on that game. So I'm just trying to take over Australia, Antarctica, and Canada. I've been mostly successful.

But I actually only just started playing Warlight sometime in the past 5 days, maybe. So for a month, there, I had no reason to get on the computer! Which means I haven't blogged. Clearly. (As a side note, with my phone I can actually convince myself that it's time to go to sleep when it's still a reasonable hour. Whenever I break out my computer, it's like I think I literally need to be on it all the time. I mean, here I am, really tired with nothing I need to do, yet refusing to get off the computer. Like I really need to check slowrobot one more time, because what if there's something new that I haven't seen in the past three minutes?)

So, Merry Christmas! It was lovely, I got some nice luggage, and a zen garden, and a necklace. And since I have a job this year, I could actually afford to get all my friends and coworkers nice stuff that I thought they would like. That's actually probably my favorite part of Christmas-- giving away presents. Chaelomen always tells me that when you give someone a present, you should make sure it's something that you like, because it's lame to give someone something you don't even like yourself. So it was cool to think about what my coworkers and friends might like, and how it compares with what I would like to get. It was lovely.

And Happy New Year! One of my friends is serving his mission in Belgium, and he's been asking everyone about their New Years Resolutions. Most of them reply by saying that they didn't make any since they don't reach them anyway. Haha. I love that. But I still made a resolution. I want to be able to climb a 5.9 by the end of the year (which also means that I'll be able to learn how to lead climb, which would be cool). I think probably the biggest challenge to that is going to be finding someone who will climb with me. I can't do this thing anymore where I switch between my friends, asking a different one to come climbing with me every couple weeks. I actually need one person who I can teach how to belay, and then we can go climbing together like twice a week. And then we'll get awesome at climbing and take the lead climbing class together.

The only other cool thing I've done in the past month is that Sara and I did another burger review-- we went to Carl's Jr-- and while we were there, we decided which categories would be rated on a 1-5 or 1-3 scale, and which would stay on a 1-10 scale. I put the pictures we took from my phone onto the computer, and I have both of our burger-rating-notebooks with me so that I can recalculate our new ratings. Then I'll tell everyone what the changes are. And post about Carl's Jr. All of this is something I intend to do before school starts on the 22nd. :) I think we're going to slow down a little with burger rating, though. Tuition and Christmas and birthdays have made money a little tight, so maybe we'll rate another burger in a week or two, and go once every 3 weeks from then on, instead of once every other week.

Oh, actually, there is another cool story I have. Unfortunately, I am allergic to Leonard the hedgehog. I get all sneezy around him and my eyes get all irritated and itchy. I also get a really ridiculous (and kinda funny) reaction whenever I pick him up and he actually touches my skin. I get all itchy wherever he touched me, and it looks like I suddenly get 30 mosquito bites all concentrated to where he had been resting on my arm.

This isn't actually news to me. I knew I was allergic to him. That why, while he's been in my bedroom, I've been sleeping in the next room on my couch. Since like, March. Maybe February. I just realized that he doesn't really have a super awesome life with me. He doesn't get attention like I want to give him, and he's stuck in his cage most of the time. So I gave him away to a friend who is not allergic as far as we know. But I still wanted to have a rodent. Around the time I took Leonard in, actually, I was considering getting another pet rat. I got my first one for Christmas in 5th grade, and between then and my 18th birthday, I had 6 rats (a couple at the same time). So now that I don't have Leonard, I decided to get a rat again! Number 7.

She's awesome, very shy and timid, but also very sweet. She's white with a brown hood, and I named her Billie Jean. :) Yes. I'm awesome.

Though, in hindsight, I should have named her Sally, that way I would have had Jack (my dog) and Sally!