A few weeks ago, I turned 30, and it occurred to me that, whether I want it or not, I'm a grown-up now.

At first, the idea really bugged me, because I have always associated the "grown-up" attitude with being boring. Perhaps this is because many of the grown-up people I know are pretty dull, or perhaps this is because I have always felt that being fully "grown-up" implies a life of toil and compromise where you rarely get to do the things you want to.

And yet, here I am, 30 years old and feeling like I'm just on the verge of a really amazing decade of my life. I have so much I want to accomplish, and so much I want to experience, that I really can't take the time to be dull. Some of my friends who have crossed the 30 threshold have chosen that lifestyle for themselves, but I, myself, have chosen to do things differently. I can't become dull because I, myself, would be too bored by it. And I'm just not content with being bored.

One of my greatest fears about adulthood is settling for the easy path. It's very easy to become complacent about life and to let every day come and go without really accomplishing anything. I've experienced this firsthand; I know how much more fulfilling it can seem to come home from a long day at work and to veg out with junk food in front of the TV for several hours. This is the life that many people settle for. But it's not the life I want.

There is a tremendous amount of freedom in being grown up; you can really do whatever you want (within the bounds of the law, of course) without much worry about being told "no". The problem is that many grown-ups choose the path of restriction. They live uninteresting lives that are characterized by small-minded pursuits. They live vicariously through their children. They focus on jobs that are not tremendously important, and they neglect personal growth and fulfillment. If you want to know why the divorce rate is so high, I would argue that much of it has to do with the spirit of adulthood; people find themselves unhappy and going nowhere, and they take it out on their spouses instead of simply making changes in their own lives.

I've always believed that we are the masters of our own destinies, and that while we cannot control circumstance, we can control our reaction to the things that happen around us. We can protest that life does not afford us the opportunities we desire, or we can grab onto life fully and embrace the fact that opportunities will only come our way if we put ourselves in their path and ready ourselves to take advantage.

In my own life, I have been trying to improve myself through various means: reading, exercising, conversing, and developing some self-discipline. I have failed at many of these things, but I have always had an eye towards improvement. And thus, I continue to get better at the things I do.

Perhaps that's the grown-up approach. But you know what? It's working for me.

I've got one week left of my twenties, and let me tell you friends ... they're shot. My twenties have been pretty tumultuous, with a lot of lessons learned and soul searching and all that. So, I've got a week to get my act together so I can have a butt-kicking decade when I turn 30 next week.

So, I thought it'd be a good idea to organize my thoughts in a list. These are the things I want to accomplish over the next ten years. How I'm going to do them all, I don't know. But writing them down in the first step to actually getting them accomplished! (Sharing them with you all is step 2, so I have some folks to keep me accountable when I'm 39 and haven't completed half this list.)

Here goes.

1) I want to publish 10 books during this period. And, just to set my difficulty higher, I'm not going to count my Army Ant titles that I'm publishing by myself. I'm going to line up other publishers to put out 10 novels and/or nonfiction books. This might sound difficult, but I've got a lot of ideas I need to get down on paper, and having a goal of publishing at least 1 book per year will keep me writing.

2) I want to get myself down under 200 pounds, and I want to stay there. What's more, I want to actually get in shape. My goal is 50 push-ups and sit-ups per day, as well as 20 minutes of cardio kickboxing and a mile of dog-walking. On either Saturdays or Sundays, I want to spend the morning hiking, running around a dog park or doing something generally healthy. I have really let myself go lately, and it's making me sad to realize that just a few years ago, I was on the road to getting in shape and then I let my bad habits take ahold of my life again.

3) I want to master at least one foreign language -- probably Spanish, and then maybe Russian or Chinese if I need a change. There's no excuse for me not to speak a foreign language.

4) I want to achieve a black belt in at least one martial art. I'm planning to start in January. I just don't know which art yet. (Probably one that's got classes close to home and that's not Tae Kwon Do!)

5) I want to become a millionaire. I don't mean some pie-in-the-sky thing here; I mean really getting my act together financially, making wise investments, and generating a million in assets. I plan to use this money to develop creative projects, so it's important that I generate it. But just so you know, I don't plan on spending it on frivolous items or loaning it out to friends. So don't ask. :-)

6) I want to go camping every year. I'd like for at least three of these trips to be at National Parks. I'd like to get good at some outdoor sports, too, like rock climbing. Each camping trip will also include some sort of wilderness adventure. I favor a kayaking adventure for 2010. Who's in?

7) I want to take at least three trips to foreign countries across one of the oceans. So far, I've only been to Canada and the Bahamas. England, Greece, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Egypt, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China and many others are on the list of places I'd like to go. I've got a lot of traveling left to do!

8) I want to get involved with at least two volunteer organizations: one to help animals, and one to help people. I'm thinking the Humane Society and Habitat For Humanity. But I'm open to suggestions!

9) I'm going to guess it's inevitable that Stacie and I will have children this decade, provided that nature allows. But I'd also like to either foster a child or two or look into a mentoring program. I think it's very important, and that it will probably be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Ideally, it will be rewarding for the child as well!

10) I want to master at least one non-percussion instrument. I'm leaning towards the banjo, since I have one and I like it. I just need to find the time to play it! (This should be much easier now that school is over.)

11) I want to get involved in educational reform. I'll do this by developing programs and books for teachers. I also want to compile a list of the 100 books that can provide anyone with the practical knowledge they need to operate in today's society. More on that in a year or two...

So, there you have it. Notice that many of my normal activities, such as "Playing the PS3" or "Goofing around on Facebook." I'm almost 30 now... it's time to grow up and be the awesome Sean I know I can be! :-)

Some might say I'm going "over the hill," but trust me -- my 30s are set to be the best decade of my life!

I haven't posted in awhile, and that's because I've been ridiculously busy with school. What little free time I've had I've spent playing my PS3 because, you know, I've needed to blow stuff up for awhile.

But yesterday, I gave my final presentation, and aside from two more class sessions (a short one on Monday and a half-day next Saturday), I am FINISHED.It's a strange feeling, because I have accomplished far more than I ever set out to do. Life has been good to me over the last three years.

As you all know, I originally went to the University of Illinois and dropped out three and a half years in. I never should have gone to college right out of high school; I was too immature, and not really cut out for the field I chose (journalism). I just made myself miserable by sticking with it, and when I dropped out (or actually, got KICKED out), due to low grades, I really had no idea of what to do with my life. I wound up working in a series of jobs that ultimately culminated with working at EB Games as a manager. The job was great for awhile, but eventually drained me to the point that I actually had a semi-breakdown one night in my store after hours. I needed to go home, but I was paralyzed, because there was just too much to do, and I couldn't get anyone to give me the help I needed.

Not long after that, I quit my job and went back to school at SIUE as a full-time student. When I was growing up, SIUE was where you went if you couldn't get in to another school. I was a little ashamed to be going there. The first semester (Spring 2007) was the hardest, because I had to re-adjust to being a student. I was taking classes with people seven or eight years younger than me, and I had forgotten a lot of the basic things I'd learned in high school and college, particularly math. I had to ask Katie (who was then in high school) to tutor me in algebra because I couldn't remember ANY of it.

That first semester was almost insulting. I was taking two business classes that I liked -- business math and accounting -- but I also had to take an introductory computer class and a class on giving speeches. Both classes were full of freshmen. It was really, really hard to take them seriously.

On the home front, Stacie and I had to learn to re-adjust to my new lifestyle. I was home more, but our relationship had soured due to all of the crap I'd dealt with at work, and we had to spend a lot of time repairing it. I think those first six months were the closest we'd ever come to seeing our marriage fail. Fortunately, we saw the warning signs and turned it around before any real problems came up.

By the summer of 2007, I started business school, and I was really happy about the course I'd chosen. I eagerly attended classes and applied myself, and I earned straight A's. When a professor recruited me for the graduate Master of Marketing Research program, I rose to the challenge. When I graduated at the end of last summer from business school, I spent a few days celebrating and then went right back to school. I started a fun internship and began one of the most challenging years of my life.

Grad school hasn't been easy, and it hasn't always been fun. But the reward is in knowing that I have done something that few people can do, and I've done it well. Some of my friends have noted that I'm a different person now than I was at EB Games; I'm a lot more laid back now, but a lot stronger and more confident. Before school, I could only really manage a business. Now, I'm equipped to actually consult for businesses and to give them some really powerful knowledge.

People have asked me if I want to get my Ph.D. down the road. In truth, I might. But it's going to be years before I consider it. Besides, it's Stacie's turn to go back to school, and she wants to work on her Ph.D. in history. I hope she does it -- going back to school really transformed me, and I'm sure it will do the same for her.... especially since she's drowning in her current job.

I have a great many thoughts to record about my college experience, and I am working on a book called "My 10-Year Degree: How NOT to Go To College." Hopefully, I can help college-bound teens avoid the mistakes I made... and make the most of their college life. I can't promise they'll be happier, but perhaps they will be smarter than I was... and get their lives off to a tremendous start instead of a desperate crawl over the finish line.

I've been pretty busy lately, and having trouble keeping any of my various web outlets updated. That'll be over in a few weeks as I finally finish grad school, but then I'm on to NaNoWriMo for all of November. So, things aren't bound to change too quickly on that front.

On the other hand, I need a break from work for a few minutes, so I thought I'd reflect on the topic of turning 30 in less than a month.

Of the three decades of my life, my 20s have had the biggest in the way of highs and lows. I began my 20s in a suicidal funk; I'm going to be leaving them relatively happy, content, and forward-looking. I've had some bad days, but I've had some incredible ones as well. The highlight, of course, is the day I married Stacie, which was pretty amazingly flawless. Being with Stacie in general has been a pretty cool experience, and even during our worst times, we've made the best of things. The various awards and honors I've won, the experience of being a comic book writer, and the fits-like-a-glove internship I've been involved in have all been great, too.

On the other hand, I have that nasty night I wound up on a suicide watch. I have the day I got kicked out of school for being a bad student. I also have the fire from December 23, 2004 that took away most of my writing and a lot of cool stuff I'd acquired.

I've talked to Stacie a lot about how being in your 30s is a chance to start over to some degree. You get to shake off everything that's happened before as being "experience" and really start working towards what you want to be remembered for. It helps if you don't have kids. I've noticed that a lot of people our age who have kids are severely hampered in their ability to think about their own futures; they're too busy worrying about the futures of their children. Stacie and I can think about the big picture still. We can get a fresh start.

The other night, we were hanging out with Kristin, and we heard the whole unfortunate story of her marriage. She got to hear all the fallout of my dumb decisions 10 years ago and some of the crazy things I've been up to. Kristin and I both realized that when we set the past aside, we're capable of being really good friends who go way back and who have a lot of shared experiences. That's awesome. She'll be 30 in a few months, and she's freshly divorced; she's ready for a change. We've agreed to stop being two people who used to be a couple and to instead refer to each other as "one of my closest and oldest friends." Personally, I'm glad; we've both grown so much that it's silly to stay chained to the baggage we acquired in high school and college.

I'm going to cease being an intern soon and become a full-time employee somewhere instead. I'm hoping it's here, at the Research & Planning Group, just because I like being here. It's comfortable, but a place where I can really grow. My boss doesn't care if I stop for a few minutes to update my livejournal. It's not that sort of job. He knows I need to give my mind a break. He supports that, and he's very good about giving me space to stay sane.

Stacie's thinking about grad school now - the Ph. D. program at Wash U., to be precise. I'm ecstatic. Stacie is so smart and so capable, but she's being wasted at her current job. I don't think she has a chance there, because she refuses to play the political games required. She's competing with people who have far less education than her. They have nowhere else to go. But she does, and I want to see her do something really big with her life. Not because it will make me happy, of course -- though it will. I want her to realize that all of this silly stuff in life that has been holding her back doesn't matter anymore; she is the master of her own destiny, and she's going to go places once she gets on the right road.

So, here's to fresh starts. I hope all of my friends get a chance to have one one day!

I can safely say that I was among the first public audiences who saw the original Toy Story in theaters in 1995. I was there on opening day, and I knew that the film was going to revolutionize animation. As it turns out, I was absolutely right. I also had a lot of faith in the second film, released in 1999, and it's good that I did -- it's often regarded as one of the best movie sequels ever produced.

Today, both films are modern classics. They are still the benchmark by which all Pixar films are judged, and Toy Story 2 is so hard to top that Toy Story 3 has gone through several different production cycles as the creative team tries to get things right. I respect that. The story is inventive enough that they could churn out direct-to-DVD sequels focusing on each toy and probably make a ton of money. Instead, Pixar has remained focused on quality. They want their films to retain that magical quality, and not to start showing the signs of being a worn-out toy.

I had the opportunity to go and see both films last night in 3D. It was nice to see the films in a slightly different light, and the 3D was really well done. But, like Up earlier this summer, the 3D was really just a novelty that took a backseat to the wonderful animation, story and voice acting. I never realized until last night how monumental the Toy Story films really are. These are films that are still relevant today, that can still hold up despite the fact that 3D animation has come a long way since. And unlike Shrek and its sequels, which have become fairly dated due to all the pop-culture references, Toy Story 1 and 2 have something of a timeless quality about them. I didn't think, "these movies were clearly made in the 1990s" when I was watching them -- they really could have been about life today. That's pretty amazing.

I've read that one of the reasons that Toy Story was so good was because John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and the other folks at Pixar knew that it had to be great, or the emerging medium of 3D animation would never be accepted in Hollywood. They knew the stakes were high, and they crafted a film that was immaculate. I'd forgotten how rapid-fire the jokes were, or how many magical scenes there were (like the little green army men doing a recon operation, or the wonderful craziness of Pizza Planet, or the scene at the end where the toys come after Sid). Nothing in the film feels out of place or gratuitous. Even the one weak scene in the film, where Buzz Lightyear realizes he can't fly as Randy Newman wails a terrible song in the background, serves the plot in an important way.

Pixar has created some amazing films since Toy Story. Some of them (Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo) have been really solid, while some (A Bug's Life, Cars) have been disappointing. And some (Ratatoullie, Wall-E and Up) have been groundbreaking. But I'd argue that none of them have been as accessible to all audiences as the Toy Story movies have been. There's just something about toys coming to life that inspires the child in all of us... and I think that's one of the reasons that the Toy Story films are so wildly successful, not just as commercial triumphs, but artistic endeavors as well.

Netlfix Instant Watcher has several episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" available to watch. I viewed a couple last night as I was relaxing after a grueling day of report-writing.

The premise of MST3K is that a guy named Joel (or later on, Mike) is orbiting the Earth in the "Satellite of Love" and being forced to watch some awful movies for the purposes of (mad) science. To keep his sanity, Joel builds some robot friends who can watch with him and make jokes about how awful the movies are. The show's theme song reminds you not to take things too seriously; the setup is there to give the characters an excuse to make fun of some of the worst films ever made.

MST3K first started airing in the late 1980s, when TV was a lot less sophisticated than it is today. I remember spending some of my Saturday afternoons watching horrible movies on local TV channels. When we had cable, we also used to spend our summer weekday mornings watching the monster movie marathons on the USA network. Today, you'd do that for the kitsch value. In those days, the bad movies were cheaper to run, so they'd be promoted as if they were as good as anything else. This is how I got exposed to movies like "The American Ninja," "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension." My brothers and I would sit there and watch these films with some amount of irony; between those movies and the Dr. Who reruns on PBS, I think our sensibilities were warped pretty badly.

I didn't catch MST3K until I was in junior high school, but it quickly became a favorite show. The creators of the show had a tendency to pick really awful sci-fi films from the 50s and 60s that time had forgotten, and watching Joel, Crow and Tom Servo's silhouettes bouncing around in front of the films made them much easier to watch. The jokes were delivered rapid-fire, and they avoided criticizing the films the way most of us would, though the occasional jibe about bad directing, editing or acting would surface every now and then.  Still, these comments were always cheerful; "I liked this movie better when it was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," one of the robots intoned once during a particularly bad Hercules film.

As much as MST3K is remembered for lampooning awful movies, there's a sense that the creators cherished these films as well. (You'd have to for MST3K to run for 198 episodes over 11 years.) Some films seemed to be sacred; the show never lampooned Ed Wood, Jr's masterpiece of suck, Plan 9 From Outer Space, though they did go through his almost-as-bad Bride of the Monster. MST3K did help bring Manos: Hand of Fate back into cult classic status, and it's a good thing, because Manos is a cautionary tale about how not to make a movie.

In a way, I miss the era in which a show like MST3K could be on the air and be funny. Part of the reason the show existed was because it was a cheap and amusing way to re-air awful films. In today's world, where they actually show good and popular movies on TV, MST3K would feel a little out of place. (That's probably one reason why the various creators have gone off to do RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic.) Who would sit for 2 hours and watch a horrendously bad movie when they can flip to one of dozens of other channels and watch something, well, good?

When MST3K was on cable, it aired on Comedy Central, back in the days when Penn Jillette was still the announcer, and before South Park really helped to legitimize the network as being something more than just a bunch of comedy re-runs. I remember watching "Candid Gamera" one weekend, an event where they aired all of the MST3K episodes dealing with Gamera, the Japanese turtle who fights monsters and loves children. I remember another weekend when Comedy Central aired, "Play MST for me," an event where they showed viewers' favorite episodes. Both weekends, I watched a lot more TV than usual.

I'm a little nostaglic for the simpler times when I could find bad movies on TV instead of having to seek them out for myself, I guess. But it's all right. You can get most MST3K films through Netflix, and I'm definitely going to make sure my own children see them down the road. I'd hate to think of a world where such an experience could be long-forgotten.

I was at Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday with Stacie, looking at some clearance items. I went walking around to look for someone to grab a ladder for us, and ran into a familiar face from my past... my high school sweetheart, Kristin.

For some context: Kristin and I were a comically-mismatched couple in high school. I was tall, and she was short. I was a drummer, and she was a flautist. I was goofy and weird, and she took everything super-seriously. We somehow lasted three and a half years together as a couple until I went and screwed things up badly in college. I can say without reservation that I loved her -- I truly did. But I can also say without reservation that we were not an ideal match, and I think that we were both too insecure at that time in our lives to be able to have a real relationship. What we had instead was a terrible co-dependency on each other, which made what I did in college all the worse.

In the store, we both did a double-take, and she spoke first. "This is the last place I'd ever expect to run into you!" she said. I laughed. She was right. The Sean she knew would have dreaded BB&B.

I really didn't know what to say, so I asked her, "How are you?"

"Well, I just signed my divorce papers this morning," she said.

"We should hang out sometime!" I blurted. "I'll hit you up on Facebook!"

And then, I guess I needed to brag. "I'm about to finish my master's degree, you know!" I felt lame saying it.

"Oh, I heard," she said. "I still keep in touch with your mom."

We parted amicably. I'm sure it wasn't fun for her to run into me the same day that she divorced her husband, but what can I say? Sometimes, these weird little coincidences happened. If Stacie hadn't wanted to look at items high up on the shelf, Kristin and I might not have ever even noticed each other in the store.

All of this got me reflecting a bit. I don't know if I've ever told the story of what happened between Kristin and I in this journal before, but since it was 10 years ago and the wounds have pretty much healed, I think it's OK to talk about it now.

My first girlfriend was a girl named Ali. I liked her a lot. We were fine during our freshman year of high school, but suddenly, things got weird. We went on a band trip and fought a lot. She started flirting with another drummer named Matt, and I started to realize that things were over. One day, not long after, she came to my house and broke up with me. It was a terrifying experience for me -- the first time I'd ever faced real rejection -- and I spent the next six months of my life trying to regain control of the relationship and mooning over my misfortune.

I've never been good at hiding my emotions, and apparently, I had a sad look to my eyes. Kristin moved back to O'Fallon the fall of my sophomore year. (I'd known her in grade school, and then her family was deployed to Germany for four years. That's life in a military community.) She noticed me in band class, got curious about why I seemed so sad, and asked one of her friends about me. Somehow, her friend wound up trying to get me to take Kristin to homecoming. I wasn't ready for that; I was still hoping things would work out with Ali.

Kristin was going through an incredibly gawky phase of her life. She had big, thick glasses, really bad acne, hair that wasn't quite doing what she wanted it to do, and really, really crooked teeth. She'd been living on a military base halfway across the world, which meant she was very shy. She was very close to her family, which was foreign to me; I couldn't stand mine at the time.

As it happened, I had two other girls ask me if I was interested in going to homecoming that year. One was another girl from band who seemed to like me, but who I thought was a little on the crazy side. The other was a somewhat popular girl who sat next to me in my computer class and who needed a date, any date. It's the only time in my life where I've been an object of such intense desire! (I would have killed for that charisma in college.)

Still, I decided to give Kristin a chance. She was living over on Ponderosa Ave, just a few blocks from my house. (Ironically, it would be the same street I'd be living on years later with Stacie where we'd have our apartment fire.) Kristin and I started out just taking walks around as friends. We talked a lot. She was really interesting, and very smart. She had a good sense of humor and was well-read. More than that, she'd been hurt, just like I had, and she understood the pain I was feeling. I could see incredible potential in her, and she could see the same in me. We connected deeply. It made perfect sense for us to become a couple, because we were both terribly insecure after being hut and both needed someone to be close to.

Now, I want to take a moment to point out that this is the absolute wrong reason to get involved in a relationship, and Kristin and I probably would not lasted if we hadn't connected so deeply. We were both very different people, and we both wanted different things in life. It probably would have been wisest for us to break it off the summer of our senior year and agree to rekindle things down the road when we were more grown up. But neither of us thought along those lines. By the time we graduated from high school, we'd been together two and a half years. Kristin had blossomed into a beautiful girl who was very smart and driven and who had overcome her shyness. I don't know what I brought to the table, but she clearly saw some value in me. It didn't make sense to let our relationship go.

The first problem was that we went to different schools. Even though UIUC and EIU were only 45 minutes apart, it seemed like a huge distance since neither of us had cars. Plus, we were in different worlds. Kristin was at a little school; I was at a big one. Her school wasn't very well-known; mine was. Her campus was dull; ours had all sorts of things going on. And so on. The distance made things harder. Kristin would call me every day and cry about how hard things were for her. I, on the other hand, was having the time of my life, and I grew to resent her inability to embrace how awesome college was for me. We started bickering a lot, and our relationship just got to be too much trouble given the completely different worlds we were in.

Had I been smart, I would have broken things off then and there. It would have sucked, but it would have been less heartbreaking than what I actually did.

I got into the swing dance scene and met a girl named Laura. We hit it off and became good friends. Kristin was already suspicious, but I assured her, truthfully, that we were just friends.

Except... Laura eventually made her intentions clear to me, and I was just miserable enough to think that having two girlfriends was a good idea. Oh, I intended to break things off with Kristin, but I was afraid to do it, because I didn't want to make her even more upset than she already was. So, logically, I assumed that I could live in both worlds. Makes sense, right?

The fallout was horrible. I don't want to get into specifics. My old roommate Ben can fill you in on the horrible weekend where everything came to light, and Kristin's parents had to drive 3 hours to come get her, and I was pretty much in trouble with everyone I knew. It was the beginning of YEARS of insecurity and self-loathing I'd feel as a result of my awful actions. I had hurt someone I loved because I was unhappy... and I had done it in the most selfish way possible.

After Laura broke up with me by, fittingly enough, cheating, I went into a downward spiral. Kristin and I saw each other occasionally, and toyed with the idea of getting back together. At first, she was eager, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that I was not worthy of her affections. She got strong, and she got over me. She actually told me one day to quit calling her, to quit trying to be friends with her, and to just move on. I'm incredibly proud of her for having the strength to do that. She was so much stronger than me.

It took me awhile to get back on course, and when I did, I met Stacie. Life got a lot better, and I vowed to never, EVER get myself in that situation again.

With all that history, it's easy to see why running into Kristin was a weird experience for me. Ten years ago, we were so closely entwined we knew every little thing about each other. Now, we're strangers meeting in a store, and yet still, the first thing that gets exchanged is a tragic personal detail.

Life is funny sometimes. And it often has a very dark sense of humor.

I realized today that I am no longer a "needy person." Nor have I been for the last seven years or so.

I cannot tell you how relieved I am to know that.

A year or two before I met Stacie, I had become something of a charity case for many of my friends. I had lost all my confidence, lost all my direction, and really had no idea what I was doing with my life. I kept looking for validation everywhere, and never seemed to find it. I remember being very bitter because I cared so much about so many things, but no one ever wanted to help me achieve them. Heck, most people only really tolerated me being around -- they didn't like me or feel sorry for me in the slightest. At the time, I thought they lacked sympathy. Later, I realized that I was way too needy, and stable people have a sort of weird aversion to neediness, because they have their own problems they're focused on, and needy people are just too draining.

My neediness came to an end when I realized that I needed to quit worrying so much, fill up my time as much as possible, and just generally work on being a better person. It was around that time that I met Stacie. She never perceived me as being needy because I never let on that I was. (She told me later on that if I had been, she would have avoided me too. Gotta love her honesty.) She thought of me as confident and in control. When I finally had to reveal to her that I had a weakness for paying bills, we were well into our relationship and she could accept my flaws. I didn't need to be validated by her, because I'd learned how to validate myself. Even to this day, I am enormously confident about everything that I do -- sometimes to a fault, but often, towards a positive result.

It's odd, because I know, deep down, that everyone is needy in some way, and we all need some sort of validation for what we do. I'll tell you now that I thrive on praise, and I often get discouraged when I am faced with the fact that I am overconfident in some areas. I don't like it when things aren't easy or pure, and I get annoyed when I fail repeatedly at something. In other words, I'm a normal human being. Neediness is hard-wired in me, even if I don't show it often.

What is nice, though, is that I have a handle on it now. I need validation less and less as I get older, and have learned to strive for self-satisfaction. As it stands, self-satisfaction is much, MUCH harder for me to achieve, but it makes things easier, because I know what the standards are. I think, ultimately, that's what we all want others to do, too -- not to be needy, but to be strong in themselves, and to keep their insecurities tucked away. I wish things weren't that way, but it seems to be the way our minds are wired.

What's interesting is that we don't feel this way towards pets or children. I think it's because we have power over them. My dogs are needy, and they live to hear my voice. (If you don't believe me, come over sometime and watch what happens when I get home!) But it's understood that they're going to be this way, and so I can enjoy their neediness. Kids work the same way... though parents have trouble switching roles and relinquishing control when their children no longer feel a need for parental guidance, but instead want validation.

Anyhow, it's always nice to realize how far I've come as a human being. Now, if I could just find the time to get out and HELP people instead of being so focused on school and work...

Over the last two weeks, I've acquired a Playstation 3 and a 47" HDTV. I've also replaced all of my shoes and many of my clothes.

In the meantime, I've sold well over a hundred games, DVDs and electronic items. I've also packed off lots of stuff to either give away or throw in the trash. I've even got more stuff to sell, give away or throw away.

I feel really GOOD right now, and not because of all the new stuff I'm getting. My goal here is to simplify. Stacie and I have acquired way too much junk, and our house is getting cluttered with all the stuff we have, but don't need. Seeing it going out the door is empowering, because it reminds us that we have more than we need, and that we can live without all these crazy possessions we've acquired over the years.

Some things we've bought, but don't use are going to stay. I'm keeping Stacie's nice piano keyboard just in case she ever wants to learn to play it. I'm also keeping my banjo, djembe and guitar despite the fact that I don't have time to play them. I will one day, when I am done with school.

But this box of old VHS cassettes? Why are we keeping them? And the piles of junky toys and knick-knacks I've got in my closet, like the Jack-in-the-Box bobblehead? Did I really spend money on that?

In the meantime, we've finally got our bills caught up, and we have a radical plan for the future. We're going to save 10% of every paycheck and put it into our depleted savings account. We're going to budget $250 for food every month, and keep that money in cash in an envelope. We can easily keep our grocery bill in that range due to the scaling back we've done to our dining habits, and any excess money we carry over can be used for eating out on special occasions. Finally, we each get $50 per month for spending money. That's the money we can use to buy things like books or video games, but also what we have to dip in to for fast food or sodas or whatnot. Believe me when I say we'll both be pretty careful about how we spend that money - a lot more careful than we are with our debit cards.

One other really neat thing I noticed today was that Stacie has REALLY slimmed down since she went off her seizure medicine. A year ago, many of the clothes in her closet were tight on her, and she couldn't wear some of them. Today, she was trying things on and they were fitting wonderfully. Stacie was dieting and exercising with no results, and nearly gave up. Going off the depakote resulted in her being less tired and having less trouble losing weight. That's pretty awesome for her ... I'd love her at any size, but I like it when she feels confident about looking good. Stacie's one of those women who looks stunning when she takes the time to dress herself up... it's good she doesn't do that every day, or I'd never get anything done. :-)

I spent the better part of today trying to repair our internet connection at work. It was a complete waste of time, which I knew it would be -- the DSL modem was clearly not working properly, and I had already told my boss it needed to be replaced. But because there was the possibility that it might NOT need to be replaced, we had to sit on the phone with AT&T and prove to ourselves that it was, indeed, our problem and not theirs.

As a result, I spent some time reflecting today on how crucial the Internet has become in the business world. I'm not exaggerating when I say that much of the business world will come grinding to a halt when the Internet goes down. Part of that has to do with the large number of functions that are ONLY available online right now. Another part has to do with the number of employees who spend their days wasting time online and pretending to work. Yet another part has to do with the fact that the telephone has been replaced by e-mail and other forms of electronic communication.

When I was a kid, the future wasn't about communication -- it was about technology and convenience. Watch Back to the Future 2 and you'll see a future where cars can fly, kids can whiz around on hoverboards, clothes can adjust themselves to any body type, and televisions come in panels rather than single screens. That was the future people in the 1980s envisioned for the 21st century. It's clear that they didn't envision the Internet very well, because the plot of that movie revolves around a sports almanac -- something you wouldn't think to buy in the Internet era.

But what's actually happened is that technology has changed the way we communicate and made it more convenient for us to be isolated. I can sit at home all day long and still feel connected to others through LJ, Facebook and Gmail. If I get lonely, I can find people to talk to. If I get bored, I can find things online to entertain me. I don't have a flying car, but I don't really need one; anything I want, I can get by ordering it online.

I've often wondered what would happen if a video game system or iPod from the present were to slip through a wormhole and appear in the past 25 years ago. I think people would be initially amazed, but that they would soon question whether or not it was really from the future, because neither device would be so revolutionary and different that it would seem entirely out of place. In fact, the people of the past might be surprised at how violent our video games are, how casually our music is laced with profanity, or how difficult our devices can be to use. They might lose respect for us for focusing on ways to keep ourselves busy instead of working to actually accomplish something.

I think it's time for me to say this: I am not a Christian... at least in the contemporary sense of the word.

Do I like Jesus? Sure. Follow his teachings? Most of them, yeah. Do I appreciate his sacrifice? As a symbol, yeah, though I really don't believe it actually happened.

Do I trust him as my lord and personal savior? Absolutely not.

What you have to understand here, friends, is that up until a few years ago, I was a Christian -- the fundamentalist, Bible-toting, scripture-quoting kind. I believed the Earth was 6,000 years old, and I scoffed -- I SCOFFED! -- at my father when he suggested that evolution might possibly make sense. (We are now on opposite ends of that debate. He denies evolution, and I accept it.)

But then, I started doing research. I began with the question of why Satan did not appear at all in the Old Testament (except as an accusatory spirit, but we'll get to that in a moment), and why he was suddenly a major player in the New Testament. The answer I was given by a seminary professor -- that god reveals things gradually -- did not satisfy me. Surely, if the Earth was 6,000 years old, it didn't make sense to keep humanity in the dark for 2/3 of that time about the nature of evil. It also didn't make sense to save the people in the last 2,000 years, but not those in the first 4,000.

The problem was that I believed the Bible was infallible -- that it was the inerrant word of god. I'd been raised with it, and I never had considered the possibility that it might not be true, accurate, or even good. But slowly, the more I researched, and the more I learned about the origins of Biblical scripture and the historical framework in which the Bible came to be... slowly, I found my faith in the Bible eroding, until finally, I started to see inconsistencies EVERYWHERE. And believe me, there are a lot!

But what's more, I also started to see some of the horrifying aspects of the book. There's a story in the book of Numbers where Aaron and Mirian, the brother and sister of Moses, get annoyed that Moses marries a Cushite woman, and they complain about the fact that Moses is getting too powerful. God gets angry and gives Miriam leprosy. When Aaron prays to god and apologizes, Miriam is forced to wait seven days, alone in the wilderness, before she can come back and be healed.

Then, the people grumble against Moses a couple of chapters later, so god makes sure they lose in battle... but only because Moses prays for mercy. A couple of chapters after that, a man named Korah raises a rabble among the Levite priests to complain about Moses's authority, and god gets so angry he causes an earthquake to swallow Korah, his entire family, and all of his followers.

Does that sound like a good and loving god to you? And by the way, in the book of Numbers, these people have SEEN manifestations of god... they're not just acting on faith alone. They know who god is, but they're questioning the leader who has led them around in the wilderness for decades on the outskirts of the promised land. God responds not with mercy and answers, but with judgment and destruction.

And that bit about Job? I don't know how anyone can read a book that opens in the heavenly courts as being literally true (who was there to record it?), but it's pretty clear that Job is a morality play, not a holy record of god. The story is horrifying, and god slaughters women and children senselessly to test Job's faith. Satan's role is minor, and his purpose is to test, not tempt. His very name is "the satan," which means, "the accuser." The capital "S" doesn't come until the New Testament. In the book of Job, Satan is not the destroyer. God is. And when Job finally gets the chance to ask why these bad things have happened, god appears in a whirlwind and tells him that he's god, and he doesn't have to answer to anyone.

I could go on with countless more examples of the Biblical god being a major jerk (and yes, they occur in the New Testament, too!), but I'm not going to bother. Because, you see, if you don't agree with me, I'm not going to persuade you. If you do agree with me, you don't need persuading. There's nothing to be gained by this course of conversation.

But there is something to be gained by asking a very important question -- is Christianity actually helping to make the world a better place? I think to some extent, it is. Christians sponsor ministries to help the poor, and they also assist people with other kinds of needs. Churches can improve communities, and they can help give communities a moral center.

But I think to some extent, it's holding humanity back. In parts of Africa and Asia, for example, people in Christianized nations are dying because of AIDS, STDs and dangerous pregnancies. All of these things could be prevented by condoms, but certain Christian institutions don't want people having premarital sex or having recreational (as opposed to procreational) sex, even in the context of marriage. So, a very simple health problem that could be greatly reduced continues on because of religious ideas.

Here in the US, Christianity is rapidly becoming a culture of attending a large church, singing poorly-written songs performed by giant musical acts, and sitting through sermons that use high-tech media to help drive points home. Some churches have credit card readers so parishoners can give their 10% without stopping by the ATM first. Countless hours and dollars are wasted on these inane, banal churches. If Christians really want to follow Christ, they should be outdoors, giving to the poor and sharing everything they own. They shouldn't be sitting in air-conditioned ampitheaters in their nice clothes watching a preacher in an expensive suit performing for them.

So, yeah, I'm not a Christian anymore, because being a Christian means nothing to me. I don't believe Jesus was the son of god (that would require my believing in god, which I don't), and I'm not even sure Jesus even existed, let alone died on a cross for my sins. I appreciate the mythology and the wisdom in the bible, but I much prefer it when I can question how valuable it is instead of finding myself accepting every word as true. I'm not crazy about organized religion, and I think the churches of today are a pale mockery of the rather communist-like churches described in the book of Acts. If the New Testament can be believed, those people actually had to suffer for their faith. They really believed Jesus was coming back for them, and soon. The whole notion meant something more to them than it does to the Christians of today.

I'm sorry if my strong words offend anyone, but honestly... I'm not sorry about anything I've said. I don't demand that anyone think what I think or do what I do. I just ask that people think for themselves and act according to their principles. My principles don't allow me to blindly accept anything. And as I said to god when he and I parted ways so many years ago...

"I asked you to show me that this was true, and I asked you to help me see the error of my ways. But all I have found during this time are more doubts, and more problems, and more certainty that you are not there. I will gladly revisit my conclusions when you are ready, god, but you seem to be strangely silent on the issue despite my passion and my repeated requests. And therefore, there is no longer a need to speak to you as if you are there, because I know now that you are not."

So, Stacie and I just sold off our big TV from downstairs. I listed it on Craigslist for $25. It was gone within 10 minutes. The guy who bought it got it for his daughter to have in college. Nice guy, and I'm glad it went to him!

This is just one of the many steps I'm taking to rid my house of JUNK. We're going through closets and baskets, getting rid of stupid junk we've acquired and carting stuff out to the curb. We have a TV stand that the spare TV was sitting on. I want to try to find some use for it, but Stacie's already yelled at me to get rid of it. And she's right! It's just taking up valuable space we could be using for the things we want. We don't need it any longer.

Something else we're doing is getting rid of DVDs and video games. We used to have hundreds of each. Now, we're going to have so few that they can all fit in a small cabinet we bought. The money we make from selling them is going towards my PS3 / new TV fund. It's going to be nice to scale back.

I realized awhile ago that a lot of the stuff we've bought over the last years we've bought "because it'd be nice to have it." Some of this stuff has barely been used. Stacie and I are both suckers for games, DVDs, toys and books, and we've also got quite a collection of household junk we don't need. The books we can keep, and the really cool tools we'll keep for the kids. Everything else can go. Anything new we buy will serve a purpose, and not simply be "nice to have." I'm even going to make a rule for myself that I'm not allowed to buy new video games - just used ones. I'll make an exception every now and then (Beatles Rock Band FTW!), but I don't need to be spending $60 on games when I can wait a year and spend $20-30 on them and get just as much utility. I have too many games anyhow.

Once we get rid of stuff, we can start focusing on the things we actually NEED, like new clothes, new shoes, tree-cutting services, home repairs, and maybe a better car for Stacie to drive. We can also start paying down our debt and investing more in our company.

Overall, I'm feeling very good about "the purge" we're going through... it's refreshing!

I was in St. Peters today, meeting with my client for my marketing research project. I've been out there before, but I don't think I've ever realized what a beautiful place it is. I mean, the town has its older shopping centers and such that clutter things a bit, but it's a thriving community with lots of nice-looking homes atop rolling hills and amid trees. St. Charles, which shares an almost indistinguishable border with St. Peters, looks really nice as well. I can see why the Mid Rivers area (which also includes O'Fallon, MO and some other nice towns) is growing so fast -- it's a LOT nicer than anything you'll find where I live in the metro east.

Stacie and I have talked a few times about how we'd like to get away from living in a neighborhood and get a place where we have a somewhat more secluded home with some nice land to buffer us from our neighbors. There are pluses and minuses to doing this, of course; the big minus is that you have a lot more mowing to do in the summer and a lot more shoveling to do in the winter. The plus is that we could set up a big, fenced-in enclosure for the boys to run around in and not have to worry about them yapping all day and annoying the neighbors. We could also set up that Go-Kart track and mini-golf course I've always wanted.

I don't know if we could find that in St. Peters, per se, but if we decided to go suburban, it'd be a community I'd at least consider. I'm sure it's not cheap to live there, but the schools seem really good, and, if the City Hall and RecPlex are any indication, the community has a lot of amenities. Stacie and I went cheap with our first house, and we really did get a good deal on it. But we both realize that for our next house, we're going to have to spend at least two hundred thousand if we want to live someplace that's nice and convenient. (We could move to St. Louis city, but it would only be convenient... unless we lived in the parts that are nice, but way too expensive, like Kirkwood or Webster Groves.)

Of course, all of this assumes that I will be staying in St. Louis for the long term. I'm not sure if I will or not. A lot of that depends on whether or not I continue to have a job. The economy is not good to my profession right now, and I wonder sometimes if what I've got lined up will hold long enough for me to actually take it.

Anyhow, I'm back in Belleville now, and realizing that unlike St. Peters:

1) Some of the parks are scary places where people get robbed
2) About half of Belleville is rapidly eroding due to businesses closing and housing prices dropping
3) We've got a mayor who sends jack-booted thugs in to close businesses that don't fit his vision
4) We've got no access to any major interstate
5) I have seen women whom I suspect are prostitutes hanging out around the laundromat two streets to the east of my house.

Yeah. We're going to have to move before we have kids. We can't raise them here.

My class went really well tonight. I was surprised. We were supposed to line up ten potential clients. I had eight, but they were really good ones. I thought we were presenting to the entire class, so I put together a document and a powerpoint presentation. My instructor decided to handle us one-by-one, so I was a little overprepared.

But maybe that's for the best. The first two students got absolutely reamed. One got angry and left once he was done. Another said she was going to have to start over.

I, on the other hand, walked into the room, sat down, and gave a strong presentation. My professor was so impressed with what I had to show him that he told me I could choose whatever project I wanted to work on, because they were all good. He was delighted with my report and said I'd impressed him.

Since this is an instructor I've had a rather adversarial relationship with (though I've never gotten into an argument with him -- he's got my future in his hands!), I was surprised how easy the whole thing was. Honestly, I think I was more than just prepared to talk to him. I was so prepared that it was obvious he didn't need to give me much guidance. He was thrilled that I'd taken the time to do it and told me that the quality of my work really was shining through.

So, that's the end of week 1! I hope weeks 2-10 go as well...

Monday begins my final semester at SIUE, probably ever. And wow, is it a biggie. This is it, guys -- my capstone class, the culmination of everything I've learned over the last year. In 11 weeks, I'm going to have completed an ENTIRE marketing research project by myself, from start to finish, with no budget and no assistance. My potential clients include NaNoWriMo.org, the City of St. Peters, Boemler Chevrolet, Mad Science of St. Louis, O'Fallon IL Parks District, O'Fallon District 90 schools, The Booksource and The Jewish Federation of St. Louis. One of these lucky organizations will be selected as my client and will get a free quantitative study. (I lined these all up myself, so hopefully, the other seven I can work with at a later date.)

If this all sounds like a pretty big deal, then well, it really is. This is where I get to show what I'm made of an how I'm going to function as a professional in my field.

In the meantime, I have GOT to stay disciplined. There was a time where I had a pretty easy life as an undergrad. Graduate school has been a different beast. I've spent a lot of time working hard, reading up and getting frustrated. I feel like I've only got half a handle on some things, and a cursory knowledge of others. I feel like I'm going to do my REAL learning when I finish school and start working full time.

But on the other hand, I am TOTALLY ready for this project. And Stacie is going to help me stay focused.

Here's my new routine: I get up at 6 AM and walk the boys. I come inside, get ready for work, and leave by 7 AM if I'm working or start working on house and school stuff if I'm not. I work from 8-4, every day. I from 5-10, I have dinner, get homework done, do my daily chores, and walk the boys again. By 10, I'm in bed, trying to sleep, and by 11, I'm hopefully conked out.

If this sounds GRUELING... well, it is. But it's got to happen. This is the only way I'm going to be able to stay on top of the massive amounts of work I have to do.

Saturday is my "event" day -- the day I go shopping, do my "recharge in nature" stuff and take care of any nagging duties around the house. Sunday is my "goof off" day -- the day I get to do whatever I want, for as long as I want, with no worries. Unless, that is, I get behind, in which case Sunday is my "catch up" day. And I'm even going to lose those days in October when my weekend class begins.

What's at the end of the gauntlet I'll be running? Freedom. Achievement. A job. Turning 30. Having a book published and available for sale. Basically, EVERYTHING I've been working towards over the last several years.

We're gonna have a party. I'll let you know now. It's going to be rockin', and you're all invited. It's going to be on November 14th. So be ready!

Last night's post really left me thinking... it's time.

I'll be turning 30 on November 15th. And by then:

1) I want to go through my house and get rid of anything that I own that is just "nice to have," but which has no real use. This include trinkets, old clothes, most of my video games, a bunch of my music CDs and DVDs, and a bunch of other assorted junk I don't need anymore. This will NOT include most of my books, objects that have some true meaning behind them, objects that I feel I would never be able to replace if I wanted them again, or things that I want to give to my kids to enjoy.

Believe it or not, I think I can clear out at least 50% of the clutter in my house just by getting rid of junk. There will be three categories: that which is of no use to anyone (trash), that which is able to be sold (ebay or craigslist), that which is useful, but probably not saleable (donation boxes).

2) Anything I want to keep, but have no intention of using will get boxed up and put away. I'm going to have to clean up by basement to accommodate all of the junk. Chances are good I'll look at it again whenever we want to move, take it to the trash pile or donation bin, and part with it forever. I haven't owned most of this stuff long enough to be sentimental about it.

3) I'm going to get the two dead trees (and the one annoying cedar tree) in my yard cut down. I'm also going to get my oak tree's branches trimmed. This needs to be done. It should have been done earlier in the year, with my tax return funds, as I'd originally planned.

4) I'm going to get organized and get my house under control. Here's my plan: I'm going to take my previous weekly schedule idea and modify it to include daily chores. (I want Stacie to do this too, but I'm not going to force her.) For example, Monday will be the day I mow and pay bills. Tuesday will be the day I gather all the trash and take it out. Wednesday will be the day I dust and vacuum. Thursday will be the day I tidy up the kitchen and clean out the refrigerator. Friday will be the day I deep clean a bathroom or one of the other rooms of the house. Every day will involve doing 1 load of laundry from start to finish (if needed).

5) I'm going to give myself one day of the week to goof off (Sunday) and one day of the week to recharge myself (Saturday). On recharge day, I'll get out of the house and go somewhere to do something, like the art museum or a nature trail or something. On goof-off day, I can eat junk food and sit around playing video games all day, if I want to. It's the day of the week when I am allowed to procrastinate... UNLESS I got behind on my chores, in which case I have to spend the day doing them first and cut into my goof-off time. (I am not allowed to trade goof-off time for other days, however, since I'm sure I'll run a deficit.)

6) I am going to lose this weight. Let me repeat that -- I am going to lose this weight. I will do it by eating healthier and by exercising more, because that is what does it. But whatever I do to lose the weight will be a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet. It's too easy to put weight back on, and too hard to lose it. I don't want it back. I don't have to be as skinny as I was in high school, but I am not comfortable with being a size 40 pant size and 250 pounds. I am also not comfortable with being out of shape and panting just because I'm walking up an incline. Screw that.

7) On that note, I am going to quit buying so much junk to eat. Stacie and I are constantly throwing out food we buy, but don't eat. We make more food than we need. We don't eat as much junk as we used to, but we still eat a lot of pre-packaged food. I'm tired of it. Last night, I got salad ingredients, baked some spicy lime chicken breasts that I made, and had a big salad. It was wonderful, and it didn't take me long to make it. I have salad for the rest of the week. I actually like salad as a meal, as long as it has some protein to go with it, and maybe some bread. If I want starch, I could even cook some diced hash browns to put on there, I suppose. I could make a salad at the beginning of the week, cook up some meat, tear off a piece of bread, and eat well every night.

8) I am going to start getting up at 6 AM again, which means I am going to be heading for bed by 11:00. This is the best time of the day to get chores done, and it allows me to get to work earlier, which in turn allows me to get home earlier. I'll stay up late on the weekends, but during the week, I need to have a normal person's schedule. I'm almost 30; it's time for me to grow up.

9) I am going to limit my access to entertainment to one hour per week day. This will primarily be during the time when I am settling down to go to bed. All of my entertainment options  are on demand now anyhow. There's no reason to watch a TV show when it airs anymore. David and I don't hang around the water cooler, nor do we talk about television.

Stacie and I have cut down our TV-viewing time (or subsequent online video watching) down considerably over the last year. This is a GOOD thing. There's nothing wrong with a little TV here and there, but we were watching way too much of it. We will not be getting cable or DirectTV again unless there's a need for it. It's just a waste of time and money, especially when you have Netflix and Hulu already.

10) I am going to make myself write or draw for one hour per week day. This needs to happen. I'm not doing enough creative work.

That's my plan. What do you all think?
 

I think if my wife had her way, we'd have a maid.

That's not a snarky comment, but rather, the truth -- Stacie hates to clean. For that matter, so do I. It'd be nice if we had someone else who was willing to come do it for us, but we don't. And what's more, even if we have the money to hire someone, we really shouldn't.

It's not as if we're doing such important things that we can't take care of the cleaning on our own.

One of the problems I'm noticing right now is that we have too much junk. I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating -- it's ridiculous how much junk we've acquired since our fire wiped out almost every worldly possession we had back in 2004. We've got a house full of stuff we don't need and never use, and to make matters worse, we keep acquiring more. Sure, we've slowed down quite a bit since our big spending days before I went back to college. But we've still got a lot that needs to be gotten rid of.

Take, for example, my various game consoles. There was a time in my life when having these consoles was really important to me. But now, I barely play them, partly because I don't have the time, and partly because they just don't keep my interest anymore. I could get rid of them; there's no shortage of games out there I can play on my laptop, and unless I want to play a SPECIFIC game, I really don't need to keep my consoles around. And yet, I'm reluctant to get rid of them because I'm afraid there will come a time when I'll regret not having them.

Think about how silly that statement is for just a moment. I don't use them, but I'll regret not having them. Dear god, I need to re-examine my priorities.

The simple truth is that if we were to get rid of a lot of this junk, housekeeping would be a breeze. We would have an appropriate place for everything, we'd have a lot less junk to have to move around when we really needed something, and we could enjoy what we actually had a lot better.

I think what's going to happen sometime this year is that I'm going to go through the house with three trash bags. The first is going to be for legitimate trash -- junk we've been holding on to for no good reason, and which isn't worth anything at all. The second will be for stuff we don't need, don't use, but can sell off. And the third will be for stuff that we want to donate to Goodwill or other charities so that someone else can get some use out of it.

In exchange for getting rid of stuff, we'll set a goal for what we really want. For example, I know Stacie really wants a new kitchen down the road. I know both of us want to take a vacation abroad. I'd really like a nice TV and a newer game console. (Maybe I'll get an old PS3 and run Linux on it so I can have a great home entertainment center.) Ramses and Oscar would really like a nicer bed to lay on.

More than that, I want to get us out of debt. I want to put more money into Army Ant projects. Stacie wants to get a new car. I want to fix up the yard and the house. These are all big things that we could be saving towards. But every time we buy junk (or have to spend money to maintain it), we chip away at our ability to meet those bigger goals.

In the meantime, there's no excuse not to get the dusting done. Or the vacuuming. Or the laundry. And as for all the crap we've got lying around the house... we just need to put it away until we have time to deal with it.

I'm sitting at work right now, working on our catalog and suffering through a really weird state of consciousness. It started out as a headache earlier today, but now that I've taken some Excedrin, my head's gotten all fuzzy and sluggish, like it's full of cotton. (I assure you that Excedrin is the ONLY drug I've taken today... at least to my knowledge!)

Every now and then, my brain gets fuzzy like this, and I have trouble focusing on things. I'd blame it on tiredness, except I've crashed hard the last two nights and gotten plenty of sleep. I might be able to blame it on the weather (since storm fronts often do give me headaches and lethargy), and I might be able to blame it on not having any soda today (since that's a daily routine). Maybe I just need to get up and exercise for a bit. I dunno.

I was hoping that writing an entry here would help me to focus, but honestly, it's doing me little good. I think I'm going to walk over to Borders and take a little break. Being outside for a few minutes will do me good.

Camping Adventure
Day 1

We left Belleville around 7:30 AM – me, Stacie and Alicia. Ramses wasn’t happy when we locked him in the kitchen. I think he thought he was coming along. He’d gotten up with me, watched me get all his stuff out, followed me down the stairs as I brought his crate down into the living room. That’s one of the drawbacks of having a smart, emotional, neurotic dog – he can draw conclusions from your behavior and then be disappointed when they don’t work out to his liking.

The first stop on our trip was Quik Trip, a local gas station. It’s a nice place, and generally active. This morning it was so busy I could barely find a place to park. Everyone seemed to be driving a giant pickup truck. “Why do so many people go to Quik Trip in the morning?” I asked Stacie. She hypothesized that they were construction workers on their way to work. This seems like a weird way to start your day to me – I can understand construction workers buying stuff at gas stations when they’re gassing up their vehicles, but for many of them, it appeared to be a daily ritual. I’m rarely up at 7:30 AM, and hardly ever stop in at Quik Trip, so I guess this is an element of society I miss.

We took off and headed for Johnson’s Shut-ins in Missouri. I call it the “Hillbilly water park,” because inevitably, a large family of hicks makes the place a little more dangerous for everyone else. If you’ve never been to Johnson’s Shut-ins, you should go; the Black River runs through a series of boulders down a hill, creating a sort of cascading waterfall that you can splash around in. At the bottom, there’s a spring that you can swim in that’s around 30 feet deep. Unlike a lot of the rivers and lakes in the Midwest, the shut-ins area has clean, pure water. It’s wonderful to sit at the top of a two foot waterfall and feel the water coursing over your body.

Of course, there are always people bound and determined to ruin the experience. Today’s idiot was a man who decided that he was going to fish in the cascade. There’s one part where the water goes about 10 feet deep, and you can jump in from the rocks above. It’s a popular spot for the kids, and a nice place to swim amidst the boulders. There are fish living up there, which is amazing, considering the fact that the pool is about midway up the cascade. The guy with the fishing pole decided that this prime spot would be a great place to fish. Of course, you’re not allowed to keep anything you catch there, so he had to throw all of the fish he caught back. His presence made it very hard to swim at that point, because you were worried about getting hooked. His kids were pretty unruly, too, and kept jumping off the rocks and scrambling back up so that the pool was a dangerous place to be. I secretly hoped one of them would fall on the fisherman.

We left around 1:30 PM to head for our campground. It was supposed to be an hour away. Alicia made it in an hour. I made it in two and a half, because I took a wrong turn, wound up in Potosi (which was considerably north of where we wanted to be), and had to head south to get back on track. Even then, I managed to get lost again. Missouri roads are barely labeled, and they often contain junctions of multiple roads for many stretches. You can be on 21/72/N and not even realize it. You can also get off one of these roads onto, say, NN, and see no sign indicating that you’ve actually done it. And, since I was relying on the GPS on my phone to guide me along, I didn’t expect to need a map, so I didn’t bring one. Unfortunately, Missouri has really poor cell phone coverage out in the Ozarks, so my phone was a poor solution.

We arrived at the campground around 4:00, set up our tents, and planned out the rest of our day. I started to realize that the insides of my thighs were really hurting, and it became painfully obvious that the briefs in my swimsuit had rubbed against my thighs so much that they’d actually burned my legs. I put some lotion on the burn, and it only made it sting worse. Alicia and I decided to go out into the St. Francis river to explore, and being in the water helped soothe the burn for a bit. But, since I was wearing my swimsuit again, I may have made things worse.

We had a cookout with kabobs and potato packets as the sun started going down. Our little fire struggled to stay lit, but we eventually got it going. My kabobs dripped down some liquid on the fire and… it almost went out. I guess I need to practice more with cooking over wood.

The food was good, and the smoke of the fires around the campground smelled lovely. The sky was very clear, and it was possible to see quite a few more stars than I’m used to seeing. Every now and then, we’d see a meteor streak across the sky – the remnants of this week’s meteor shower. I wrote this poem while I laid out on the grass, watching the sky:

A shooting star
scrapes the sky
shining silver
streaking by.

Day 2

We got up at 7 AM so we could go rent bikes at 8. We were supposed to go on a 14-mile canoe trip today, but the river’s too low, and all that was available was the 4-mile trip. It just didn’t seem worth it, so we rented bicycles instead so we could ride around the campground.

Unfortunately, the bikes we got were not ideal. They were single-speed and had horrible seats. Mine got a flat tire almost immediately. I had to walk it back about 2 miles to get a replacement. That wasn’t fun. While it was nice to have the bikes to ride, we’ll just bring our own next time… provided we own some by then.

Alicia and I decided to do some hiking, and we walked about 2 miles down to a beautiful spring that was full of people. We asked them how they got there, and they told us they’d take the same route as us. Apparently, people don’t mind hiking two miles in their swimsuits if the swimming is good enough!

We got back to camp and took it easy. I tried to hang up my hammock, a neat knitted one Jeremy brought me from Central America. Yesterday, I tried to do it with twine… with comic results. Today, I tried bungie cords. One of my neighbors took pity on me and set me up with some sweet rope. I’ll be sleeping in the hammock tonight, because our tent is simply too small for me and Stacie to comfortably share! And besides, I like looking up at the stars as I go to sleep. I think I’ll listen to my Astronomy audiobook as I do it.

Eventually, we decided to ride bikes again, and got so annoyed with them we just dropped them off at the store. Alicia and I took a tour of the other campground first – it was filled with float trippers and frat boys! – while Stacie went shopping at the camp store. She bought some trinkets, but somehow missed a cool Scottie dog stuffed animal, complete with a tartan kilt. (I saw it when Alicia and I were browsing so we could cool off in the air conditioning.) I drove her back up later to buy it.

We got our fire started early tonight, and had chicken tenders I’d soaked in olive oil and vinegar for a couple of days. I found a way to insert chocolate into my marshmallows for the s’mores we made later. Then, we walked back down to the other campground, gawked at all the hillbillies down there, and petted a few puppies before we came back up. One thing we’ve learned – campers tend to prefer small dogs to large ones. Our neighbor has two yorkies, a silky and a chihuahua. We saw a Shiba Inu yesterday that looked a lot like Ramses, and we say a miniature schnauzer puppy who looked a lot like Oscar.

Camping has been fun, and this is a nice park. I wish I was more up for hiking, but I’m REALLY out of shape. I’ve got to improve my stamina for next year. But for now, off to my hammock, where I’ll sleep outdoors for the first time in a long time!

Day 3

I really enjoyed sleeping in the hammock. I got fewer bug bites than I expected, and only my pillow really seemed to collect any moisture. I slept a LOT better than I would have in the tent, and Stacie slept a LOT better without me taking up precious tent space! (Mental note: We need a bigger tent for the next outing!)

Once again, I got up around 7 AM. I seem to get up earlier more naturally when I’m camping. At home, I would have been hitting the snooze button. Maybe I need to sleep outside more often… or keep my blinds open in my bedroom.

We had breakfast and decided on a plan for the day. It didn’t take long to get packed up – tents come down really easily!  -- and we didn’t have to wait for showers since we got up earlier than most of the other campers. I assume that many made a night of it last night, since I saw a lot of empty beer boxes near the dumpster.

Stacie blistered her feet by wearing sandals on a long walk, so I didn’t want to leave her by herself all morning. Alicia was ambitiously planning a 12-mile hike up a mountain. We decided that Stacie and I would go out to the shut-ins to swim and that Alicia would hike for a bit and then meet us there.

Yesterday, the shut-ins was packed. It’s a nice, deep spring that comes out into a deep pool, and it’s got a couple of rock faces right around it. It’s not at all like Johnson’s Shut-ins, but it’s still lovely. I was shocked that people would hike a mile in their swimsuits to get there, dragging along inflatable toys and other crap they don’t really need. Today, it was empty. Stacie, for whatever reason, didn’t bring her swimsuit, so I wound up swimming by myself for a couple of hours while she sat up on the beach and read. She finished her fourth (!) book for the weekend, got bored, and went back to the car. I stayed for a bit, but got bored myself and headed back. Alicia intercepted me along the way, told me that she was too tired to swim, and she, too, was ready to get going.

Stacie and I have decided we’re going to go camping at least three times next year. One of those trips will be to Johnson’s Shut-ins, since it should have its campground re-opened next year. One will be to a nice, big, fingered lake where we can canoe all day if we want to and not have to worry about the current as much. One will be to a nice, scenic place where we can ride bikes. For these trips, we need:

1)      A bigger tent

2)      Some sort of campfire stove

3)      A way to keep the dogs secured (because they’re coming, believe me!)

4)      Nice mountain bikes that can take some punishment

5)      Strong cable for my hammock

6)      Waterproof bags (so we can hike across water and take books up to scenic overlooks)

7)      Directions that are printed out, and not on my Blackberry’s wireless service

Let me close with some recipes for the food we brought along. Both of our dinners were awesome!

SEAN’S BEEF KABOBS (Serves 4)

4 beef steaks
1 bottle of A1 Chicago Steakhouse Marinade
Ground black pepper
Ground sea salt
1 green pepper
1 yellow, red or orange pepper
1 vidalia onion

Cut the beef steaks into bite-sized pieces with kitchen scissors, and marinate them in the A1 marinade for at least 30 minutes. Add ground black pepper and ground sea salt to taste. I’d just add a few cranks the first time (about a tablespoon or so), but you can add more later if you so desire.

While the steak is marinating, cut the peppers in half horizontally and slice the pepper into bite-sized pieces. Then, cut the stem and top off your onion, cut it in half horizontally, and cut each half like you’d cut a pie. You should have some nice, big chunks.

Take all of these chunks and put them on skewers. I usually do two pieces of meat, a piece of pepper, and a piece of onion. I prefer metal skewers, but bamboo skewers work as well. Put these on the campfire grill over glowing embers (NOT a flame!) for about 10-15 minutes, turning them occasionally. The meat does not take long to cook; if your peppers and onions start to wilt and scorch, chances are good the meat’s ready to come off.

The kabobs can be prepared before you travel and are an easy item to throw on the grill after a long day.

SEAN’S CAMPFIRE CHICKEN (serves 4)

4 chicken breasts or 20 chicken tenders
1 bottle Italian salad dressing
1 cup vinegar
¼ cup lime juice
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp oregano

Take boneless, skinless chicken tenders or slices of boneless, skinless breast and put them in a gallon-sized plastic bag. Add in the other ingredients and let them sit for several hours (preferably a day).The longer the vinegar has to soak into the chicken, the better it will taste when it’s done!

Put the chicken in foil or on skewers and cook over the campfire for around 15-20 minutes over glowing embers (NOT a flame!). Cooking with skewers will give the meat a crispier texture; cooking in the foil will keep it soft and tender, but may require more time for cooking. When you start to see white juice and fat appearing on the surface of the chicken, it’s done. Spot check a piece or two to make sure it’s fully cooked.

ALICIA’S POTATO PACKETS (Individual)

1 Potato
1/2 Zucchini or Squash
Bacon bits
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Seasoning

Take a piece of aluminum foil about the length of your wrist to your elbow, and then pull it out again the same length. Fold this in half and grease it. Take a potato, cut it into bite-sized cubes, and place them on the foil. Do the same with your Zucchini or Squash. Drizzle olive oil over the pieces, and then cover them with bacon bits, salt, pepper, and any other seasoning you like. Fold the foil in half again and crimp the edges – you should have a nice, sealed rectangle when you’re done. Put this on the campfire for about 20-30 minutes. (The longer you put them on, the more tender they’ll be.) Pull off the packet, let it cool for 10 minutes, and enjoy!