Quantum Theology

Tonight I am getting some immense satisfaction out of some MxPx music, just-out-of-the-oven pumpkin pie, and my own milk/chai tea beverage. I just KNOW you want to be me!

Ok, so now it decided to snow. We’ve already gotten at least 6 inches and we might get as much as 10. I think I’ll finish off that bottle of wine now.

Yeah, no blizzard here (Manitou Springs). Apparently the whole city is shut down. My company declared a snow day (meaning I get paid to not go to work!), and yet it didn’t even start to snow until about 6:30am. Hardly a blizzard at that. What a difference 20 or so miles makes. Apparently it’s very blizzardly on the north end of town.

Which brings me to my dilemma. I really can’t go snowboarding today due to the amount of snow on the roads. Not with my summer tires at least. Driving 140 miles on snow chains is NOT going to be an option. It’s obvious that I should at a minimum plan on getting some better tread, and perhaps I should look into getting a 4WD vehicle. Perhaps the Subaru Outback.

That dork is me. This dork still has not bought all season tires for his car (still using high performance tread). Last Sunday, this dork was attempting to make his way to Arapahoe Basin for some early season snowboarding. The roads were rather slushy on this particular mountain road, and this intrepid Cali-fornian slipping and sliding all over the mountain road. Finally, this brave dork was forced to pull over and apply chains. Our adventurer cannot help but notice that the line of cars behind him were going up the pass with nary a problem.

Typically, this snow savy Cali-fornian (giggle) places the chains in the snow in front of the tires and drives onto the chains before attaching them. Only this time the car was in 4 inches of packed powder, and on an incline. The wretched tread could not even get enought traction to move forward a foot. Our Cali-fornian notices that a truck has pulled over on the other side of the road, perhaps watching to see his fate?
Not to be defeated, our sly guy decides to place the chains behind the front tires and back onto them! In a few minutes the chains are applied, but not before two more cars pull over to check on his fate. Before anyone can question him personally, he speeds off toward the mountain.

The parking lot for A-Basin was covered in about a foot of slushy snow - and yet our virgin Coloradian notices that his car is the only car in the whole parking lot - with chains. What a dork.

The weather forecast calls for blizzard conditions tonight and tommorow morning. The weatherman seems pretty certain and the company just passed out the inclement weather policy. Only, it was sunny and in the mid 60’s today and there are still no clouds to be seen. Right now it’s about 45 degrees, so the temp would have to drop a lot for it to start snowing, even if there were clouds. Wind? Can you have a blizzard without wind? It’s not windy in the least.

I have heard that the weather here can change pretty quickly, we will see when I wake up tommorow! Arapahoe Basin is expecting 6-10 inches, so perhaps tommorow I will take off work and check out the fresh pow pow!

This one nearly snuck passed me. I view the Google News aggregator page daily, and I don’t know if this even showed up on the main page. I only found out about this through reading one of my favorite blogs.

Apparently our corrupt, presidential lapdog of a congress has decided to pass a last-minute law that suspends the right of Habeas Corpus for non-US Citizens as well as pardon Bush and company retroactively for violations of the Geneva Convention, aka war crimes.

To be honest, I didn’t know at first what the hell this Habeas Corpus thing was. In a nutshell it is the right of anyone imprisoned to demand that the government supply a reason for that imprisonment. If the government cannot produce evidence than the prisoner must go free. This is to prevent the government from holding people for political reasons. This might well be one of the worst laws ever to pass congress.

We know that Bush has secret prisons overseas, and that prison on Cuba. We know that he felt he needed a pardon for violations of the Geneva Convention. We know that he can now hold non-citizens indefinatly without evidence. This reminds me of the prisons operated by dictatorships, not prisons operated by a free society.

It distrubs me how something of this magnitude can slip by with hardly a mention. Gotta go snowboard now. Check out this site for a rather impasioned assault on the passage of this bil (its a you tube video).

I decided last week to go to a retreat with the college/20 something group at New Live Church. This was my first really significant church thing in, well, a long time. A couple of years ago, an event happened that really rocked my Christian world. That event changed who I am in a radical way, and I won’t be explaining that here and now. Perhaps in a few more years. A consequence of this was a rather huge amount of cynicism regarding the operation of the Church. There was some other consequences as well. I don’t think any single person has been reading my blog long enought, but the number of religous postings plumeted. Poof. I guess my point here is that this trip represents a suspension of much cynicism.

In the last few years, I had to confront the negative aspects of the Church in my own mind. Now that I have been working through those issues, I am now able to operate in the Church with both the positive AND negative issues in my mind.

Anyways, the camp. The church rented a Young Life camp somewhere near Winter Park. It was a very beautiful area. This would be a fantasic camp to go to in the summer! This being fall, it was rather cold, rainy, and snowy. Regardless, the facilities were fantastic.

There were 600 or so folks that went. Thats a LOT of people. I didn’t know a single soul. Haha, that’s a funny quirk of my personality. I am highly introverted, so large groups of people get on my nerves and I also don’t exactly meet people all that easily. So why do I do things like this? The experience is something not to miss, and stepping out of your comfort zone is something that makes you grow as a person.

I was making some random small talk while on the tour bus on the way to the camp. One guy asked me what I looked forward to for the weekend. I could only answer that I didn’t really look forward to anything,  but I was going to try to meet some people. He didn’t quite know how to take that. Still, he took that better than the golf pro I met later that night at the opening service. He asked me what I hoped to get out of the weekend. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I wanted to get some phone numbers. He was visibly taken aback, and it amused me a bit. I think he was expecting some sort of christianese answer, not some direct and in-your-face honesty. I think he also assumed that I ment girls phone numbers only.

This was the first Christian camp where I was honestly not expecting to get anything spiritual or practical out of the weekend. See, the cynicism is still there! I was mostly correct. Besides the sermons, there were two ‘breakout’ sessions. There were three topics for these breakout sessions: personal finance, dating and relationships, and finding your calling. Turns out that I am remarkably a well rounded and mature individual! I probably knew more economics than the people who spoke on personal finance, I already knew all of the things talked about in the relationships talk, and I didn’t even bother going to the calling session because I am pretty well decided on that subject.

I couldn’t miss the irony in going to that dating and relationships talk. I have a lot of head knowledge about relationships, but I have had remarkably few of my own. Part of that is the simple reason that I have not bothered entering into relationships that were either a bad idea, or wouldn’t work in the long term. Another big part is the simple fact that I repel most women. I have a few ideas on why this is, but the bottom line is that I’m not going to change a thing right now.

Women, ah yes, women. My commitment to maintaing a righteous and holy life is not without sacrifice. I highly expect not to make it all that far in the corporate world with a sense of integrity intact. My soul isn’t for sale right now. One thing I didn’t expect was the problem it brings to me finding a woman. It seems to me that the more Christian girls get to know me, the less they are attracted to me. In a strange twist of fate, it seems that non-christian girls actually get to like me a little after knowing me for a while. I have not idea why this is, but it is an observation on the way things have gone over the last 8 years. This is even more interesting when you throw in the fact that I have known more christian girls than not. It’s sad, but the quickest way into a relationship for me would be to ditch my convictions. Well, my convictions aren’t for sale either. I hope this situation changes soon.

I would wait 13 years to drive this one.

An email from my Dad:

Mike,

This was taken at my bother’s house in NY Labor day ‘85.  This is the first time I knew we were in trouble.  You weren’t quite 5 yet, but were fearless on the ATV.  I put you on my lap and let you squeeze the throttle. 

We headed down the trail and you squeezed it wide open and would not let go.  I thought we were going to eat it right there.  As I remenber you got a big kick out of riding this.

Love,

Dad

Hehe … muahahaha.