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Showing posts from April, 2018

Finding Twenty One Pilots

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Twenty One Pilots' official band logo I stumbled across the band Twenty One Pilots a few months ago during one of our many afternoons of watching music videos on YouTube, one of Grace's favorite things to do. It was their hit song "Stressed Out" and I was immediately hooked. The video is fun but the music is smart and right up my alley. After watching the video a few times over a few weeks as it got requested by one of us, I decided to see what other videos they had put out. Next up was "Heathens" from the Suicide Squad movie soundtrack. As much as I liked "Stressed Out", I loved "Heathens" even more. This led me down a rabbit hole to watch every video and find every song they've put out. The band has been around since 2009 but in 2011, two of the three members left the band and drummer  Josh Dun  joined  Tyler Joseph  to become a duo. I'm not plugged into music as much as I was years ago in my teenage and early 20s year

Self Immolation: Some thoughts

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Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation during the Buddhist crisis  David Buckel, a prominent gay rights lawyer and environmental activist burned himself to death on Saturday in NYC. His reasoning for doing so was to bring attention to the destruction and death we're bringing to this planet through the use of fossil fuels. "Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result - my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves." This isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, case of self immolation by fire. I was already familiar with the most famous case of self-immolation where Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức , lit himself ablaze in Saigon. The picture at the top of this article is from that day. He was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. Rather than losing their way of life, Thích, and other Buddhist monks im

Learning to lower my expectations

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My 33rd birthday was Saturday and I learned a big lesson in lowering my expectations. I wasn't going to write about this originally because I've been complaining about what was going to happen this past weekend to anyone who would listen...and even to those who didn't want to hear it. You see, I don't normally look forward to my birthday. It's always fine, I get a few cards and gifts, some birthday wishes on social media, and usually a meal out with Christine. And I got all of those things again this year, but for this birthday I had planned out a whole day. One day. That's all I wanted. I don't think I was asking for a lot. The reason I have been looking forward to this specific birthday is because 33 is my favorite number. It sounds stupid when I write it or say it out loud, but I have been looking forward to this birthday for literally years. It wasn't going to be anything crazy, I just wanted to eat food I liked for breakfast and lunch, play boa

I'm Drowning

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I'm so tired. Can't catch up. Too much to do. Enough time to do it. But it's exhausting. Wake up. Start the day. Go to work. Come home. Make sure everyone else gets what they need. Be up until my eyes can no longer stay open. Because I feel like sleep is a waste. Could do more. Should do more. Why am I not doing more? Part of me feels unfulfilled. Don't take enough for myself. Put everyone else ahead of me. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? What I agreed to do? I'm so tired. I'm drowning. I need help. Help me.

New Year's Resolutions - March Update

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Three months down, nine to go! I'm back again with another  New Year's Resolutions  update.  February  went much better than March did, I'm hoping that it's not a sign of things to come. Some scheduling conflicts and just being generally busy hampered my progress a bit for a couple of these but one fell off the radar entirely. I don't know if that one just isn't that important to me or if it's me be lazy, well I'll get into it more in a moment. First up, bagels! 1) Bake more bread from scratch I mentioned at the end of this section last month that maybe I would make bagels. So I made bagels. I tried a new technique of rolling really tight balls of dough before shaping them in the hopes that they would come out smoother. I'm happy to report that doing that did help quite a bit. Some of them came out a little wrinkled still but I had a few that were getting closer to what you'd find at a bagel shop. Christine is a big fan of salt ba