I ran for twenty minutes straight today without stopping or walking or anything. Just a little bit short of two miles. I know that probably doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment, but I was proud of myself. I have always hated to run and I don't think I've ever run for more than ten or twelve minutes consecutively before, and certainly never more than the annual Presidential Fitness Test required. I still hate running. I guess I'm just learning to be a little more tolerant.
Sarah and I went out to dinner tonight in Portsmouth. I learned that I do not like sauces flavored with cilantro and capers. Sarah ate a delicious sandwich featuring feta cheese.
We're going to go to the beach tomorrow. I look forward to a horrendous sunburn and a host of new freckles.
We've been reading a lot lately. It's one of the few things that we can do without simultaneously seeing negative repercussions on the amount of money in our bank account. The library in Durham isn't much to look at. It's housed in a strip mall. But, they do have a pretty decent selection of books on hand and offer free downloads of audio books and things to their members. In the last two weeks, I've read:
Kurt Vonnegut - "Armageddon in Retrospect"
Kurt Vonnegut - "Slaughterhouse V"
Alan Bennett - "The Uncommon Reader"
Rodney Ratham - "Early Bird"
Al Franken - "The Truth (with Jokes)"
We need to go buy so more groceries.
I don't know. I don't have a lot to say right now. This has been a short list of some of the daily occurrences of our lives right now. Not too interesting, really, but we're enjoying ourselves.
Shrug. I think maybe I will go join my wife in bed, now.
Isaiah 66:15. A firestorm to purify.
I will write more about that tomorrow, perhaps.
Stay Gold,
MMK
Monday, July 7, 2008
Friday, July 4, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Mocha Chip.
I can't sleep. This is the first night I haven't been able to sleep in quite a while. Strange. I'm not sure if it's due to the excessive amount of sleep Marshall and I got last night ( a good 10 hours worth) or if it's because of the massive Mocha Chip ice cream cone I had from the local ice cream shop. Oh well, that sweet treat was worth every calorie!
I don't have any thought provoking or inspiring topics to write about. My mind is just kind of all over the place tonight...I might just sort of ramble...
Things I think I'll miss: laughing until I cry with my mom, witnessing my mom treating my cat like her second child, my dad's hugs, seeing my dad and Marshall go target shooting, the pond behind my parent's house, mother and daughter shopping trips, watching the corn grow, my mom's sloppy joes, detasseling, Midwest college football, Miss Ali Norton and her Canadian humor, the joy in my grandmother's face when she sees me, sprint car races, Buffalo Wild Wings, UNI, playing rock band with Justin and Carrie (my brother-in-law and his wife), running on country roads, going to the Red Rock Dam, having solid christian-based friendships, Orchard Hill Church, playing cribbage with Jacob, Family Video (the job I had, co-workers, annnnd the free movie rentals!), the Eagles, living in a smoke-free state, and I have to admit it... Arby's and Dairy Queen!
Things to look forward to: working for Americorps, attending grad school next year, Marshall continuing to develop as a professional, getting involved in a church, making new friends, visits back home, getting letters in the mail!, finding quality tattoo shops, saving money to actually get tattoos, paying off some loans, decorating a new apartment, having visitors!, exploring Boston, enjoying the beach/ocean, voting for the next president, Marshall and I celebrating our 1 year anniversary, getting to know Marshall's RA's and the students in our building, surviving an East Coast winter, making a trip to the Ben & Jerry's Factory in Vermont, traveling to New York City, attempting to hit up some hardcore (hopefully straightedge) shows, and...mostly...learning how to be a better wife.
Shrug, it's late. Really late. I should go to bed.
I miss all of you. Please, come visit!
Love to you all.
SLK
I don't have any thought provoking or inspiring topics to write about. My mind is just kind of all over the place tonight...I might just sort of ramble...
Things I think I'll miss: laughing until I cry with my mom, witnessing my mom treating my cat like her second child, my dad's hugs, seeing my dad and Marshall go target shooting, the pond behind my parent's house, mother and daughter shopping trips, watching the corn grow, my mom's sloppy joes, detasseling, Midwest college football, Miss Ali Norton and her Canadian humor, the joy in my grandmother's face when she sees me, sprint car races, Buffalo Wild Wings, UNI, playing rock band with Justin and Carrie (my brother-in-law and his wife), running on country roads, going to the Red Rock Dam, having solid christian-based friendships, Orchard Hill Church, playing cribbage with Jacob, Family Video (the job I had, co-workers, annnnd the free movie rentals!), the Eagles, living in a smoke-free state, and I have to admit it... Arby's and Dairy Queen!
Things to look forward to: working for Americorps, attending grad school next year, Marshall continuing to develop as a professional, getting involved in a church, making new friends, visits back home, getting letters in the mail!, finding quality tattoo shops, saving money to actually get tattoos, paying off some loans, decorating a new apartment, having visitors!, exploring Boston, enjoying the beach/ocean, voting for the next president, Marshall and I celebrating our 1 year anniversary, getting to know Marshall's RA's and the students in our building, surviving an East Coast winter, making a trip to the Ben & Jerry's Factory in Vermont, traveling to New York City, attempting to hit up some hardcore (hopefully straightedge) shows, and...mostly...learning how to be a better wife.
Shrug, it's late. Really late. I should go to bed.
I miss all of you. Please, come visit!
Love to you all.
SLK
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Dialectic
"The wreckers against the builders! That's the whole story of life."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect
There are those who build things up: systems, physical surroundings, ideas, legacies, and their fellow man. There are also those who make it their purpose to tear these things apart, and they've become quite adept at doing so in an efficient manner. They have also succeeded at marketing their tearing down of things in such a way as to convince a good number of the builders that they would be better off to defect from their business of creating. Destruction is, after all, far more palatable than construction. The fall is more entertaining than the climb.
This is the essence of man. It always has been and it always will be.
Choose.
Humanity has a way of engineering its own end more efficiently than any god or devil ever could. We build great and wonderful things only to drive them into the ground in the name of excess and progress. This plays out on a grand level, of course, with companies, communities, and complete civilizations inescapably falling in an ascending and subsequently descending line.
It is important to understand, however, that the building and wrecking dialectic is not only the worry of humanity, as a body, but more practically the worry of humans as individual aspects of the human whole. This rise and fall happens not only on obviously grand social levels, but also (and perhaps more importantly) on the level of the individual.
So, again, choose. But choose first in your own life how and what you'll build and wreck before you go and worry about which role you'll fill on any higher level of society.
Einstein once said that we "cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." Likewise, we cannot choose to both build and wreck and expect to be any good, or to have an impact, at either.
I, of course, would encourage you to try and be a better builder than you will be a wrecker. In the case that you absolutely must wreck something, however, please don't do anything too amazingly harmful. We're killing ourselves quickly enough, thank you. Speeding up the process any more would simply be excessive.
Stay Gold.
MMK
- Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect
There are those who build things up: systems, physical surroundings, ideas, legacies, and their fellow man. There are also those who make it their purpose to tear these things apart, and they've become quite adept at doing so in an efficient manner. They have also succeeded at marketing their tearing down of things in such a way as to convince a good number of the builders that they would be better off to defect from their business of creating. Destruction is, after all, far more palatable than construction. The fall is more entertaining than the climb.
This is the essence of man. It always has been and it always will be.
Choose.
Humanity has a way of engineering its own end more efficiently than any god or devil ever could. We build great and wonderful things only to drive them into the ground in the name of excess and progress. This plays out on a grand level, of course, with companies, communities, and complete civilizations inescapably falling in an ascending and subsequently descending line.
It is important to understand, however, that the building and wrecking dialectic is not only the worry of humanity, as a body, but more practically the worry of humans as individual aspects of the human whole. This rise and fall happens not only on obviously grand social levels, but also (and perhaps more importantly) on the level of the individual.
So, again, choose. But choose first in your own life how and what you'll build and wreck before you go and worry about which role you'll fill on any higher level of society.
Einstein once said that we "cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." Likewise, we cannot choose to both build and wreck and expect to be any good, or to have an impact, at either.
I, of course, would encourage you to try and be a better builder than you will be a wrecker. In the case that you absolutely must wreck something, however, please don't do anything too amazingly harmful. We're killing ourselves quickly enough, thank you. Speeding up the process any more would simply be excessive.
Stay Gold.
MMK
The DMV and Me
We stood in line at the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles for an hour and forty-five minutes yesterday so that I could get a state driver's license which took, once the process had begun, a total of about five minutes. I suppose I would be more upset about the wait we had to endure if we, being currently unemployed, had anything more pressing of which to be concerned.
There was a man in line behind us who was sixty-five years old and who was there that day to get his first ever driver's license. His wife had always been responsible for driving their car and, until she apparently kicked the ol' bucket, hadn't thought that he needed a license at all.
Thanks for letting me drive our car sometimes, Sarah. I do appreciate it.
Anyway, the long and short of this story is that I had to regretfully part with my lovely blue and pink Iowa driver's license yesterday in order to transfer my residency to New Hampshire. So it goes, I suppose. We also registered to vote now in the 'shire; a duty we both plan on faithfully carrying through with this coming November.
And, in case you were wondering, I am leaning left as always.
http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
That's all for now, I guess. The wife and I joined a new gym here in town today. We were planning on joining one in the coming moths after my insurance was put into place, anyway, so today was as good a day as any other. Joining now will hopefully help us to further establish some of the good habits we've been making a part of our daily routine during the past couple of weeks. I think we're going to go have our first work out there in a little bit, so I had better start getting ready. I have to grease every muscle before I go so that they ripple and gleam whilst I work for the deep burn.
Stay Gold, kids. Hope you're enjoying this so far, even if our posts mostly consist of fairly routine laundry lists of our daily schedules and errands.
I might write more later.
MMK
There was a man in line behind us who was sixty-five years old and who was there that day to get his first ever driver's license. His wife had always been responsible for driving their car and, until she apparently kicked the ol' bucket, hadn't thought that he needed a license at all.
Thanks for letting me drive our car sometimes, Sarah. I do appreciate it.
Anyway, the long and short of this story is that I had to regretfully part with my lovely blue and pink Iowa driver's license yesterday in order to transfer my residency to New Hampshire. So it goes, I suppose. We also registered to vote now in the 'shire; a duty we both plan on faithfully carrying through with this coming November.
And, in case you were wondering, I am leaning left as always.
http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
That's all for now, I guess. The wife and I joined a new gym here in town today. We were planning on joining one in the coming moths after my insurance was put into place, anyway, so today was as good a day as any other. Joining now will hopefully help us to further establish some of the good habits we've been making a part of our daily routine during the past couple of weeks. I think we're going to go have our first work out there in a little bit, so I had better start getting ready. I have to grease every muscle before I go so that they ripple and gleam whilst I work for the deep burn.
Stay Gold, kids. Hope you're enjoying this so far, even if our posts mostly consist of fairly routine laundry lists of our daily schedules and errands.
I might write more later.
MMK
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