Fighting Entropy

11:07 pm - Guess who's going to seminary this fall!

I am writing this (about a month after-the-fact, as it happens) to announce that -- after many years of, as they say in the biz, "discerning a call" -- I have applied and been accepted to Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (http://www.austinseminary.edu for those interested). I will begin study this fall, as part of the grueling process of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister. Hooray for me! I'm psyched!

But don't take my word for it. Take the words of the admissions director himself, if you can figure out what they mean:

I am pleased to inform you that the Faculty committee on Admissions has acted favorably upon your request to be admitted into our Master of Divinity degree program for the fall 2008 term. Please accept my personal word of congratulations to you.

Current Mood: excited

02:00 pm - almost right on

entropyspring took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Pursues his objectives with intensity and does not..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

06:01 pm - welcome home

for the first time in nearly a decade, I know that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

11:03 am - On Campus pic-o-the-day

Really...what do you say to that?

08:19 am - Indian winter

for those of you with the impression that Austin is always a hot spot, I offer the corrective note that the temperature when I got to the car at 8 am was 45*F. But don't worry, the cold snap is over and it's back up to 60*F now!

11:50 pm

this weekend, after spending *months* trying to figure out how to cost-effectively replace my lost RAZR with a smartphone (ie, without paying the ripoff premium they charge if you aren't 'eligible for an upgrade'), I finally said "what the hell" and got the iPhone I've been wanting since I saw Steve Jobs' initial keynote on the things back in January. After all, they released the things on my birthday...I was just meant to have one.

Suffice it to say, I love it. In a way that I never quite loved my blackberry. The blackberry is, in a few select ways, more useful. But the iPhone is more *usable*, more elegant, and more thought-out in the way it fits the way I work than any device since the macintosh itself. Possibly even more than the macintosh...but don't tell anybody I said that.

A few of the little things I love that haven't made it into every iPhone review out there:
- iPhone is the first phone of any sort I have seen to date that has a stopwatch and a countdown timer. It is also the first smartphone I have encountered that allows you to set multiple alarms.
- Safari for iPhone is the first mobile web browser I have seen that supports any form of tabbed browsing...up to 8pages open at a time!
- Google Maps for iPhone is the first gMaps implementation that is continuously scalable rather than always zooming in or out by a factor of two.

10:16 am - thoughts on "home"

In the past few months and years, I have learned some things:

I have learned that no place is truly perfect -- there will always be people and experiences and landscapes and homescapes and workscapes and playscapes and even weather that I will miss from other places, no matter where I go.

I have "come home" to the place I grew up and learned that it no longer feels like home; that, in fact, it no longer feels like there is a place I can call home.

I have learned that the more places I live, the more I accumulate these people and experiences and places-to-be and things-to-do-and-see that cannot all be fit into one place called "home," and the less that any place can have enough of of the experiences that comprise *my* experience to *feel* like home.

When this happens, home becomes a concept too broad to be contained in any one place. James Michener, who had traveled the world and lived many more places than I, said it best in the title of his memoir: "The world is my home."

--

I have learned that the American Dream -- to find (nay, to aquire) a physical home and the things to equip it so that life is comfortable, full-featured, and secure -- is not quite my dream at all, and that I couldn't ever acheive it even if it was. I have learned that such places are not welcoming, for the people who live there are far too consumed by the task of maintaining their security, their comfort with acquaintances and surroundings, and their sense that their place, alone among places, is perfect for them.

I prefer what might be called the Texan Dream (or more broadly the Pioneer Dream): to find a place that is neither comfortable nor tamed nor secure in its civilized completeness, but is welcoming to any who bring the optimism and courage and persistence to make the wilderness home. For the people in such places know that their very survival depends on their neighbors, whether they be established or not; they know that they, too, were welcomed and aided in their struggle to make the place home, and they owe it to the next wave to pass the hand of friendship along.

Lastly, I have learned that home is not the place where you are happiest to retreat home to at night, but the place where you are happiest to get up and go out into come the morning.

Current Mood: thoughtful

04:08 pm - Brilliant.

The safety folks at my University admonish one, in the required online training, to use up older chemicals before opening new ones. Why?

if older chemicals are never used they will have to be disposed of as waste, which is expensive and wasteful

it costs about five times as much to dispose of a chemical as it does to purchase it, and, besides, storing the chemical would mean more chemical hazards in your work area

Current Mood: bored

09:51 am - [LJ2ME] Bragging rights

Today's morning commute: 57.2 mpg

Last tank of gas: 514 miles

It's good to drive a Prius.

09:10 am - [LJ2ME] Parenting 201B: practical application of si

Littleblur, can you show your brother how well you can do drop-off and give me a big hug and say good-bye?
Good-bye, Daddy [turns and goes]

Wiggly1, can you be a big boy like your brother and give me a hug and say good-bye?
Good-bye! [turns and goes]

Drop-off took like 3 mins. Usually takes at least 5 per child. grin

09:02 pm - [LJ2ME] Deep thoughts

I wonder if lesbians have a higher incidence of repetitive strain injuries?

10:15 am - Political Action

I just sent this comment to whoever reads John Cornyn's email. How sad to think that I doubt it will make one iota of difference to him.

Mr Cornyn: shame on you for wasting the Senate's precious time to condemn the MoveOn.org political action group. You claim on your website that you are "working hard every day, fighting for the issues that matter most" -- I cannot believe that this is true when you use your time to attack in legislation a group of American citizens who had the courage to express their dissent about this doomed war.

Thomas Jefferson once said that the highest act of patriotism is that of dissent (paraphrased). Use your time to listen to the people you claim to represent rather than condemning them for not toeing the party line. Being against the war is *not* being against the hard-working Americans (and other good people) who are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Instead, it is hoping that those people will get back home safely and that no more lives will be wasted on the cause of an Iraqi people who do not want us there.

Work for what is really important. Bring our troops home.

09:07 pm - "whirled peace"

According to my children's daycare, tomorrow is the International Day of Peace. To celebrate this day, and to make a statement about how important peace is to the future of these young people, the center is participating in a project to create peace pinwheels.



littleblur and wiggly1 brought home pinwheel templates to color with an image (such as a 2 or 4 year old can create) of what peace means to them. littleblur (age 4) is coloring adjacent blocks of color "getting along" and says he wants to take the pinwheel and show it to the grown-ups who are making the wars happen and when they see how the orange and red get along and the blue and green get along (etc) they will stop fighting with people from other countries.

I think children "get it" way more than us grown-ups do, sometimes...

Current Mood: hopeful

05:39 pm - [LJ2ME] "Nerdier" as a status symbol?

Seen on a t-shirt worn by a UT freshman:

"WE'RE NERDIER THAN YOU
- NHS"

11:18 pm - [LJ2ME] Published!

In one of those bizarre events that can only happen in academic publishing, the liver-oxygen paper I have been working to revise in my spare time for the last 4 months or so (the one based on my doctoral work of three summers ago) was assigned to an editor today at 3:57pm and accepted for publication at 3:59. Bizarre circumstances aside, however, this is really good news: my doctoral work is finally being published!

My blood-vessels-on-a-chip paper was accepted a few weeks ago, as well. This means that I will go from having a 2-paper (1 first-author) cv to a 4-paper (3 first-author) one in less than one month!

Hooray!

09:55 pm - [LJ2ME] Next stop, long division

Our preschooler, littleblur, has in the past taught himself (with a little help from mamasee) addition and multiplication. This, in itself, is rather remarkable.

However, just now, prompted solely by hearing the phrase "nine minus seven is two" in a story book, Ryan taught himself subtraction. Including figuring out 11 - 7 = 4, which is pretty neat b/c he doesn't have that many fingers and so had to do the computation in his head.

Really, what's next?

01:52 pm - 100 MPG plug-in-hybrid motorbike-type-thing

I gotta get me one of these!



(Maybe mamasee would even let me drive it...)

01:29 pm - [LJ2ME] Help - bike paint

From mamasee:
I need to repaint littleblur's bike for wiggly1. What paint should I use & where can I buy it? I don't have much $ to spend. Since we're painting it it needs to be appropriate paint but nothing fancy.

07:07 pm - Posted using TxtLJ

oops i meant to post that to mamasee!

07:06 pm - Posted using TxtLJ

Woohoo! It's e'spring and my 5 yr anniversary and we're going camping WITHOUT the kids!!!