To a New Home

So on Saturday, 17 December 2011, I finally woke up at 1:30 PM. A good shower, a shave, and a few miscellaneous such tasks brought me to 2:30 PM, which is around when I finished reading Quodvultdeus of Carthage's Creedal Homilies. Then I sat down and began notes on the first seventy pages of Kurt Widmer's Mormonism and the Nature of God: A Theological Evolution, 1830-1915. While I did that, I listened to an episode of the Mormon Expression podcast that dealt with the subject of divorce in Mormon culture. Needless to say, since the ME folks have a hard time bringing on voices who come from neither a secular ex-Mormon or a somewhat liberal Mormon perspective, it was sadly a bit of an echo chamber of railing against how harmful traditional understandings of marriage are, and about how it should be easier to get a divorce than to get married in the first place. But, it served as fine background for my note-taking task. Also splurged on a delicious footlong buffalo chicken sub from Subway at 5:00 PM for a much-needed daily meal, and finished off the last of my bag of jalapeno-flavored potato chips.

When I finished taking notes, I drove down to my friend Meghan's house (which was nearly impossible to find in the dark, no matter how many times I've been there). While she cleaned a few things up and dealt with her nosy cat, she made the grave mistake of leaving me unsupervised with her open Facebook. Declining to do any real damage, I simply posted the status update, "Playing with my cats to prepare for the next sixty years of... playing with cats." After a few mutual friends began liking the status, she came over and added a comment mentioning that I'd hijacked her Facebook. She also made the minor mistake of tagging me.... so then when I was sitting there, her aunt messaged Meghan noting that I was the person they'd talked about earlier. Her aunt then clarified, "That is the one I thought you were in a relationship with." Heh.... well, that's an opportunity for mischief I could hardly pass up, so - as Meghan - I replied back, "He is awfully cute!" To which her aunt replied, "I really thought the way you two were hanging out that he WAS your boyfriend. Maybe that is a sign of the future?? You can never tell." At this point, laughing, I simply replied, "I can only hope", with a wink; and Meghan's aunt, still believing she was communicating to her niece, said, "I will hope with you." At that point, I decided not to dig the hole any deeper, and I shared it with Meghan and with Meghan's housemate, the latter of whom found it quite amusing. Later, Meghan messaged her aunt to explain that I'd intercepted the messages and made those replies on Meghan's behalf. The aunt's stunned reply ended with the statement, "I hope I didn't embarrass you, but I still think you two would be a good match." Many lulz were had by all. Of course, that's not all we did with the evening. Using Netflix, we also watched the 2009 film Gamer, starring Gerard Butler. Great movie; look it up if you aren't familiar with it.

Anyway, technically that lasted until early (e.g., 1:30 AM) the morning of Sunday, 18 December 2011. When I got back to my dorm, I read the introduction to Phil Stevenson's The Ripple Church: Multiply Your Ministry by Parenting New Churches and then read the preface, introduction, and first eight pages of the first chapter in D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and expanded edition. I also took notes on everything I read in Quinn. Finally, before bed, I wished a philosophically inclined friend a happy birthday with the following message: "Let T be today, H(t) be the degree of happiness you experience on a given day t, and x be H(v) where v is the typical day in your life. On the grounds that T is the occasion for a commemoration of your birth, my wish for you is that H(T) >> x." He appreciated it.

Anyway, I slept from 4 'til noon, unfortunately sleeping through my alarm and hence failing to make it to church as I'd hoped. When I did get up, I resigned myself to reading the remainder of the first chapter of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, which took me through page 29. After that, I took notes on not only that chapter, but also all of the pertinent endnotes (which, in any Quinn book, are exceedingly copious). Then I confirmed my flight reservation and printed my boarding passes. That took me to 3:00 PM, when I showered and then - at 4:00 PM, after sorting it - began doing my first load of laundry, consisting of towels. After putting it in the washer, I went to Subway to pick up a six-inch chicken breast sub with chipotle southwest sauce. By the time I got back and finished eating, it was about time to put my towels in the dryer and my clothes in the washer. Then I went back to my room, cleaned off my desk, cleaned off my spare bed, cleaned out my drawers, sorted my findings, shelved all my loose books, and packed up my backpack for my travels. Then at 5:30 PM, I went downstairs to put my clothes in a dryer and my bedding in a washer, and I took my towels back upstairs, folded them, and put them away. After that, I took seven empty gallon jugs down to recycling, and then consolidated my massive heap of assorted bags of trash into just a few extremely dense bags to go out to the dumpster.

When I returned, I chatted with my mother via Skype from about 6:09 to 6:20 PM, and then at 6:30 PM I turned my car keys over to my friend Andrew (so that he can run my engine once a week during my absence), and we went to the library so he could check the time schedule and I could drop off seven library books that were due back - including Prudentius and Quodvultdeus, neither of which I'd had time to take notes on, as well as Widmer's Mormonism and the Nature of God, thus leaving my notes on it incomplete. When I got back at 6:40 PM, I put my bedding in the dryer and took my clothes upstairs to fold. Then at 7:15 PM, I vacuumed the room (boy did it need it), and then at 7:30 PM went down to get the bedding, lug it back upstairs, fold it, and stow it on top of my bed. At 7:45 PM, I started an intense scrub-down of my mini-fridge, which had a great deal of spilled drinks caked onto the bottom along with some loose hairs. Yecch...

Anyway, at 8:00 PM I took a few extra notes on Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel - a portion or two I hadn't jotted down before - and then started relaxing. At 8:20 PM, I turned off the fridge and cleaned the bathroom, and then at 8:50 I joined Andrew in the lounge to watch a few episodes from the second season DVD of The Big Bang Theory. During that, I went to Subway and got a six-inch meatball sub with jalapeno-flavored potato chips and a Sprite to bring back. Then at 10:00 PM, my dear friend Lori arrived to pick me up, so I finished packing and departed. We went through the McDonald's drive-thru so she could get some food (as well as some extra fries and a drink for me), and we also got the movie Horrible Bosses from Redbox. After we got back to her place at 11:00 PM, we watched it, and then chatted for a while in the dark and watched a bunch of clips on YouTube. That technically carried us into the morning of Monday, 19 December 2011. Finally, at 3:10 AM we took a brief rest - it was supposed to be a nap, but we mostly kept talking to one another from our respective couches - and then at 4:00 AM we got up and she ran me to the airport.

I got to the airport at 4:30 AM and stood in an unnecessary line for twenty minutes until realizing that I didn't need to. So at 4:50 AM I went through security, which was quite fast and painless, really. Took maybe two minutes or so. At 5:00 AM, I reached Gate A1 and used my computer for about twenty minutes or so. Boarded at around 5:30 AM, and my flight departed at 5:50 as scheduled. I arrived in Chicago O'Hare at 6:00 AM in its time zone (7:00 in the one I'd just departed), and it took me a full half-hour to talk to Gate B22A, though I picked up a delicious soft pretzel from Auntie Anne's along the way. It then took me another fifteen minutes to backtrack and find an outlet in hopes of using my computer - but, alas, no free wi-fi there. So then I went to the gate and took a brief nap on the seats until my flight boarded at around 7:20 AM (8:20, Kentucky and Pennsylvania time). My flight departed twenty minutes later or so, and I arrived in Harrisburg at 10:12 AM. Of course, as with the preceding flight, the last twenty minutes was hell on earth, thanks to the intense pain in my ears from the pressure differentials. That may have actually been the most intense pain of my entire life, actually.

I met my mother swiftly, since she'd arrived at the same moment I did. We were out of there by 10:25 AM. It took us until 11:40 AM to reach my friend's house a bit further north, but after picking my friend up, we started the drive back down here. I'd guess that around 1:15 PM, we finally made it to my new trailer. My mother gave us both an extensive tour, and I greeted my cats warmly. After that, I was exhausted, so my friend and I caught a couple hours of a nap before a spaghetti dinner at 5:00 PM. Much of the rest of the evening was spent in a lengthy effort to get my TV, VCR, and RF modulator all hooked up to one another properly so that I could play my XBox 360 again. That attempt involved finding manuals online, going to K-mart to purchase a pair of coaxial cables, and finally having an old family friend swing by to help with the logistics. It was about 9:30 PM by the time that was done, and I refamiliarized myself with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood until 3:30 AM this morning. Now I'm sitting here, finishing up leftovers from last night and awaiting a turn in the shower.