KirstenL4W

Election season is upon is, and a huge theme for the candidates is religion.  I always have a hard time bringing religion into a governmental elections, and to government in general.  I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state, not because of any religious beliefs I may or may not have, but because that’s the way our constitution is written.  The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  Now, if I had been raised in a country that had different laws concerning this, I might have a different view on the matter.  Since this is the USA and that’s the way things are, I have a problem with religion as a political platform.

But this post is not about my political views regarding religion.  As this is a personal blog, I want to talk more about my faith, spiritual needs, and what it all means to me.  Readers who have been around for awhile may remember that I was a regular attendee at a local church, and blogged about the first day worshipping in the brand new building.  I no longer attend church regularly (at all, really), and I’ve spent some time thinking about what I need, what I believe, and how I want to express that.

I’ve always been uncomfortable with religion being in my face.  I hate prostyletizing, because to me it’s worse than a pushy salesperson trying to sell you something.  Prostyletizing is pushy believers trying to sell you an entire belief system, and I’ve noticed in recent years that it’s become almost like a MLM scheme - you become born again, then go out and try to convince others to become born again.  I just don’t think religion should be sold like that.

My religious upbringing has been inconsistent, at best.  My parents split when I was very young, and the Sunday visitation schedule was not conducive to church attendance.  I don’t really recall my mom bringing us to any faith-based activites, except for a bible study group for a few months when I was maybe 8 or so.  I didn’t really get it at all.  My stepmother was a bit moodier when it came to religion.  I remember short-lived stints at Jehovah’s Witness meetings and Saturday evening services at the local Catholic church (until my sister dropped a hymnal from the balcony during service).  I didn’t question why we were going because with my stepmother, you didn’t question anything.  As a result, I didn’t really understand what was going on and didn’t find much meaning in it.  The only desire I had as a child to participate in anything faith-based was the desire to go to either one of the Catholic schools in town, because their blue and green plaid uniforms were way better than the thrift store wardrobe that I had to wear that brought me much ridicule.  Yep, I wanted to go to Catholic school so that I could wear the uniforms.

Halfway through high school, I moved out of my dad’s house and in with my mom.  My mom is Lutheran and went to church on a fairly regular basis, the same church I was baptized in as a baby, so I started going.  I found a pretty decent youth group, made friends, and we served breakfast to the congregation once a month.  The rest of the month we’d go out to breakfast when we were supposed to be learning about the bible.  We took to calling ourselves “The Breakfast Club.”  If we did get much in the way of religious education, it didn’t really stick.  I’d also go to service with my mom, and while I can recite a lot of the liturgy from memory, a lot of what I remember was sitting or standing there wondering why things had to be recited in exactly the same way every week, what it meant overall, and what the heck it was supposed to mean to me.  The thing I got the most out of church was community.

I went through on/off phases over the next few years in regards to church attendance, but whether I was going regularly or not, I was always uncomfortable with overt displays of religion.  But, when I moved to Las Vegas, one of the first things I did was look up the local Lutheran churches.  My motivation was to start meeting some decent people and putting down roots, and to avoid getting in with the wrong kind of people.  I didn’t go to fulfill any spiritual needs, because I didn’t really have any at that point.  It took me a couple months to finally show up, but I found a welcoming community.  I got involved with the praise team (singing), decided I didn’t like being on display like that and quickly turned my attention to the understaffed A/V team.  I ran the powerpoint show at services for something like 2 years.  I met lots of cool people, and even met my old boss Mad Scientist there.  I’m convinced that had I not gone to church, I would not have found the same happiness here in Las Vegas and would have left long before I met Mister.

The church here in Vegas was different from the churches back home.  While my church back east is housed in a somewhat contemporary building, the services are very traditional, closely following the liturgy and format outlined in the Lutheran Book of Worship.  And while I question all the why’s of it and wonder what it’s supposed to mean to me, there’s a certain comfort in it, like a favorite old sweater.  I was reminded of that when I went back for Grandma’s memorial service.  Church here in Vegas is following a more modern, free-form format.  Sure, there are certain parts of the service you can count on being there nearly every week, but the language is more casual and modern.  And as time went on, I realized there was more evangelism there than I was comfortable with.  Back east, we didn’t get together on Saturdays to knock on doors in the neighborhood and invite people to services.  There is also way more focus on putting your faith in Jesus as the answer to pretty much everything, and that kind of blind faith I’m not comfortable with.  Back east, there is a quieter restraint to the worship.

Around the time I met Mister, I took the opportunity to take time off from going to church.  Basically, I pretty much stopped going.  I didn’t miss it, either.  Mister doesn’t attend church, not after 8 years of Catholic school.  I don’t even think I could get him to attend Christmas Eve candlelight service.  When we met, he was very upfront about his spiritual beliefs.  He did a lot of soul-searching and found that the Wiccan religion made the most sense and best met his spiritual needs.  We talk about it from time to time, and while I’m not necessarily considering adopting Wicca as the religion that I practice, knowing more about it and being exposed to it on a daily basis has made me question a lot of the Christian teachings and their place in my life.

There are a lot of other things that get me thinking.  Certain Eastern philosophies make a lot of sense to me.  For example, while I’m not a huge follower of the theories behind it, there’s quite a bit about feng shui that makes sense to me.  And as for reincarnation, I don’t think that idea is off base at all either.  I think that if I could find a way to explore that with some validity (as in, not the street-corner psychic), it could explain a lot about me and open some doors in the way of personal growth.  I think that’s what religion and faith is all about - fulfilling that deeper need within yourself, beyond the physical or emotional needs that everyone has.

I’ve done a lot of thinking on this topic, and I’m nowhere near done.  I’m still trying to figure out exactly what my spiritual needs are and what form they should take.  For awhile there, I wasn’t even sure that belief in God made sense to me, but over time I have realized that I do believe in God.  But a lot of other spiritual beliefs make sense to me too, so I’m trying to figure out how to make it all work for me.  There’s still a lot of thinking I need to do.  Maybe I’ll even write about it from time to time, but for now, right this minute, it’s time for me to stop agonizing over a nice, neat conclusionary sentence and wrap it up for the day.

Here’s another bullet point list on my life at the moment!

• I bought Mister the Six Feet Under box set for his birthday because he raved about how good that show is.  He’s right.  Now I’m the one begging him to watch an episode or four every night.  It’s that good - if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
• I don’t usually talk about work, and I won’t go into details, but I’m really starting to wonder why the heck this whole project was really necessary.  Because, um, yeah.  Just because.  It’s that much fun.
• I’m one of those people who cracks their neck and knuckles.  The other morning when I woke up, I cracked my neck and it was so loud that I was afraid it would wake Mister up.  Turns out he did hear it.  He keeps insisting that one of these days my head is going to fall of and roll away.
• I’m considering signing up for NaBloPoMo.  The only thing stopping me is that I’m not sure it will actually motivate me to blog with any more frequency past day 3.  I’ll think about it some more, and if I can perhaps future date some posts then it might be able to work for me.  I do feel like I need to make more of an effort here, but real life is so much fun too.
• Now that I’ve got the external hard drive hooked up and have lots and lots and lots of room for my music, I should probably get on with uploading the rest of my CD collection.  I’ve been listening to the same stuff at work for months, and while I like it and for the most part am not bored with it, some change would be nice.  Oh, and if anyone is wondering about the perfect token gift for me for Christmas, iTunes gift cards are always welcome.
• Shout-out to my peeps: Happy birthday to my little sis, who turned 29 again last Friday, and to Courtney, who turned 29 again on Saturday, and my aunt and uncle who are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary today.  Woohoo!

That’s it for now.  It’s time to go get dinner ready (crock pots rule!) and get on with my websurfing.

As you well know by now, Mister and I recently returned from our trip to New England, specifically the area north of Boston near the New Hampshire border, and into New Hampshire a bit.  The primary purpose of the trip was our honeymoon and to introduce Mister to my family members who did not come out to Vegas for our wedding (and I know better than to make them come when it’s well over 105°F outside).

After a lovely flight in which we got little, if any, sleep due to a whining child in the row behind us, we obtained our rental car at a much higher price than our online reservation said.  At 6:30am and as tired as we were, we didn’t push the issue, but after thinking it over, Mister was able to secure a car with another company at a much, much lower price, so it was worth it to us to get up at 4am the next day to go into Boston, return the first rental, pick up the second car, and be on our way.

So back to day 1.  It was too early to check into our hotel, so Mister tried his hand at driving in the Bay State.  It might have been a bit easier if he had an informative and educational book such as this one, but eventually he got the hang of rotaries and the overabundance of yield signs.  We drove to Gloucester, took some pictures of statues, then drove around Rockport and headed back towards Danvers for a roast beef sandwich.  Mister didn’t understand why I was craving one of these so badly, and he insisted that I was describing Arby’s.  Not so.  For those familiar with a Massachusetts-style roast beef sandwich, you know of what goodness I speak.  For those not familiar, let me enlighten you.  First, you take a bulkie roll (I prefer onion rolls), split it, butter the inside, and put it on the grill (flat grill, not a bbq type grill).  This gives the inside of your sandwich a nice, flavorful cruch.  Then you take warm, rare roast beef and slice it just a bit thinner than your deli slicer will handle.  Pile it high on the roll!  Add mayo or bbq sauce, and cheese if you desire.  That’s it.  Mister was impressed that the sandwich contained real roast beef and not that loaf stuff that’s used at a previously mentioned fast food chain, and by the end of the trip he was a convert.

After lunch, we decided to check in at the hotel because we needed some shuteye.  We only planned on sleeping for about an hour to make ourselves ready for the rest of the day without dooming ourselves to a night owl schedule in a part of the country that doesn’t have much nightlife to speak of, but that plan went horribly wrong.  I slept for around 4 hours.  Officer Friend called sometime during that nap, but I wasn’t coherent enough to talk to him and went back to sleep.  Mister finally woke me up in time to find some dinner, and we ended up going to downtown Newburyport to a landmark restaurant called The Grog, and took in the first of our fresh, New England seafood dinners.  Yummy!  I grew up on fresh seafood, and miss it so much.  A word to the wise: don’t even try to eat seafood in a landlocked state.  Just don’t.

After dinner we walked around Newburyport for a couple minutes, window shopping our way back to the car, and then headed back to the hotel.  We stayed up and watched tv for way too late since we were no longer tired, even though we had a 4am wake up call to go swap cars.  But we managed.  The next day, we swapped cars and since it was still way too early, I amazed Mister with my amazing Dunkin Donuts radar and then we went to Salisbury Beach to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic - a first for Mister.  A drive around the seacoast showed Mister the neighborhood I lived in right before moving to Vegas.  Then we drove to Salem, MA.  Mister was really eager to see Salem, so we made it our sightseeing priority.

Salem, MA in October is not a quiet place, as you can imagine.  Can you really expect it in a town where the police have a witch on a broomstick silhouetted on their cars?  No, it was a bit crowded, but being there on a weekday as opposed to the weekend helped give us a bit of breathing room.  We started with the Corwin Witch House, which is a wicked old house that belonged to a judge involved in the witch trials.  Then we walked down Essex Street to go towards the Witch Museum, stopping in some shops along the way.  When we got to the Witch Museum, we started walking towards the entrance when two busloads filled with elderly tourists stopped, emptied out and rushed the entrance.  Suddenly there was a line down the street, and since it was now after lunch and we were tired, we decided to plan our next trip to New England in the off season, and put the rest of the Salem attractions on that trip’s list.  We headed back to the car, taking a detour to a wicked old cemetary, and decided to drive to one more old thing: House of the Seven Gables.  Mister’s interested in history, and old houses feed into that interst, so it was a fun tour.

By that time it was getting late, and we had plans to have dinner with my dad and stepmom, so we headed up there.  I did a quick driving tour through my hometown, which Mister enjoyed because Methuen has a lot of cool history. We stopped at the local cemetary to visit my grandfather, then went to my dad’s house.  I think Mister enjoyed seeing the house I grew up in.  We chatted with my dad and stepmom until it was time to go pick up my nephew, Bubba, from his football game.  We all piled into the truck to head to the high school I attened in 9th and 10th grade and encountered a crowd of parents picking up all their kids from various sporting events.  With no cell signal, there was no way to get in touch with Bubba to tell him where exactly we were, so since I knew the school grounds I walked up the bus loop and quickly found Bubba waiting on the sidewalk.  I stood next to him for a few minutes before asking him if he was waiting for a ride.  He said yes.  I told him I knew where Papa was, then he finally realized his most favoritest Aunty in all the world was standing beside him.  “Oh, hi Aunty.”

At Bubba’s suggestion, Dad took us to a seafood joint near his house.  It’s mostly fried seafood, and trust me, we Bay Staters can fry seafood really good, but I had something else.  The Holy Grail of seafood.  Maine Lobster.  Yep, it was on the menu and I was having it.  But not just any Maine Lobster.  Twin Maine Lobster - that’s two whole lobsters.  For $19.99.  Oh yes, I was bibbed, my sleeves got rolled up, and I was in the zone.  So messy to eat and so worth every last morsel.

Saturday was the day of our par-tay, the one we planned so that we could get everyone together in one place and meet and greet and celebrate.  We started out in mid-morning by heading to my dad’s place of business.  Mister’s parents have a truck yard, my dad has The Garage.  Mister has heard so many stories that occur there, so I wanted to show him.  He liked it - he said it was a really nice little office, and a great yard.  There’s a brook out back and trees, so even though it’s on the main road through town, it feels rural and relaxing.  After visiting dad, we headed to a different Salem, this one in New Hampshire, to get lunch and do a tour since I spent way more time in Salem, NH than Salem, MA growing up.  We stopped at Newbury Comics for a wicked good time, then wound our way through town.  I showed Mister the house I lived in until I was 6, which is when Dad bought the house in Methuen.  We went to the church to see the memorial garden and visit my mom’s parents.  Grandma’s name was just carved on the headstone that week, so I’m glad I got to see that.  We continued to wind our way through Derry and Londonderry before arriving at the restaurant for our party.

The party was pretty good.  Kids got kinda loud, as kids do, but it was really nice to see everyone.  Dinner was great, and everyone got along, so it was a very nice night.  Except the part about my brother, which my mom wrote about.  But it was fine in the end.  Mister enjoyed meeting the rest of the family and some of my friends, and was finally able to put faces with the names.

The next day, Sunday, we planned on doing Boston.  But my not so great plans, which didn’t consider situations like Mister’s bad back preventing him from walking, meant we got into Boston, parked, got up to the Common, and walked back to the car.  We tried to drive to the USS Constitution, but Boston’s well-laid out roads had other plans and tried to shove us to the airport.  So we decided instead to go back to Newburyport, which is much more compact and more easily walked.  The Autumn Harvest Festival caused us to abort those plans, since heavy traffic meant that we would most surely not get a parking space anywhere near the downtown area.  We were starving by this point, so headed to Friendly’s for lunch and called my mom to announce that we were coming over.  Mommy was thrilled at the unexpected visit, and Mister got to see a bit more of New Hampshire since we had to drive nearly forever on a road to the middle of nowhere to get to my mom’s house.

For Monday, our last full day there, Mister suggested we call my Gram to visit with her.  I really liked this idea because I really like spending time with my Gram.  First we picked up Bubba and went bowling so that I could show Mister a form of bowling that is more challening because the ball is not as wide as the lane.  We had lunch at the bowling alley then headed to Gram’s.  Mister enjoyed talking to Gram and learning of how she earned her engineering degree in the 1940s and worked as an electrical engineer for a time.  Then we popped downstairs to visit my aunt and uncle for a bit, and I got to show Mister the house I spent every single Christmas in until I moved to Nevada.  Then we dropped Bubba off and headed back to the hotel.

On our last day, we had an evening flight, so we checked out of our hotel and did a driving tour.  Mister wanted to see more of New Hampshire and fall colors, so we did that before heading to the airport.  Overall, Mister really liked his first visit to Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  He loves the fact that there are 4 distinct seasons and would love to experience Christmas with snow.  He loves the old houses and the fact that newer homes are built in pretty much the same styles that were used since the Pilgrims first landed.  He loves the accent, even though he thought I was speaking a totally different language most of the time.  Most of all, I think he loves that I grew up there and was able to show him a part of the country he’d never been to before - a part of the country that is a huge part of who I am.

I’m home from my visit back home.  I’ll write more later, but in the meantime I have the rest of today to run some errands, unpack, and of course catch up on the hundreds of posts everyone wrote while I was gone.

Mister and I know that we still have some things to organize here - boxes to unpack, stuff to go through, things to donate, etc.  It’s happening, but on a painfully slow pace.  Not only do we have the things that will get the house closer to being done, but there are other little things.  Today I went through my computer and deleted the duplicate photos that managed to clone themselves when I moved stuff from my old computer to the new computer.  I still need to organize them, which has been a long time coming.  I’ve been so disorganized for so long now, and I want to be organized, but you know how it is when life gets in the way.  Plus, I’ve discovered that there is a definite time limit when it comes to that sort of thing.  I might start the day out organizing, but eventually I get to a point in the day when my brain can’t handle any more and I need to stop.  Then I have a bunch of half-done organizing projects around.

A couple weeks ago I was cleaning out all the files from when I wanted to be an organizer.  I threw pretty much all of it away except one thing: a list of questions to ask yourself when you are deciding whether or not to keep an item.  Mister likes the list, so whenever we get around to actually going through stuff (and who knows when that will be - we’re both great procrastinators) we will use this list.  I don’t remember where I got it.  I probably just culled the information from a number of sources and put what I liked into a word doc, which I didn’t save a digital copy of.  But I have the once piece of paper, and considering how excellent the information is, I’m going to list it here for you.  So, when you are going through stuff and deciding whether to get rid of it or not, ask yourself:

• Do I love it?
• Do I need it?
• Can I live without it?
• When did I last use it?
• What is the worst case scenario if I got rid of it?
• Is it damaged?
• Do I have duplicates?
• Would I buy it if I saw it in a store today?
• Is it expired?
• Is it out of style?
• Is it missing pieces or broken?

Mister and I are going to use this list when we get around to going through things, and hopefully we won’t let our vision get clouded by emotions or perceived usefulness.  In the meantime, I’ll continue reading blogs about organizing such as Monica Ricci’s and lusting after the pretty organizing tools that can be found at the Container Store.

I know I should write in my blog more often.  Sometimes I lack inspiration, but lately I keep thinking that I shouldn’t write anything until I have a topic to write about that I can impart a certain amount of insight and wisdom to all my readers.  I realized today, after another quiet week, that I’m just not so eloquent when it comes to writing about my experiences and observations.  I’m more simplistic than that in my writing; I just like to tell it like it is.  So, with that in mind, I give you BULLET POINTS!

• I’ve been wanting to tell you all for awhile about a new razor I’ve been using (I do not get compensated for telling you about this, but if anyone at Gillette is reading this, I won’t turn down a case of blade refills!).  The Venus Breeze is it.  Remember when I wrote about another razor with a similar concept that just didn’t quite do it for me? Well, I found one that does.  The Breeze is flexible like a regular razor, but it has those built in shave gel bars, which makes it just a tad bit bulkier than a regular razor.  It’s great at going over my knees, solves the shower head problem, and even the shave gel bars are flexible, so I don’t have any of the issues I had with the Intuition.  This is definitely one that I’ll be using regularly.
• Mister and I are leaving for Boston on Wednesday night!  I can’t wait to show him all the cool stuff that I grew up around.  We don’t want to totally stuff our itinerary, but we have plans for the Freedom Trail, the Salem Witch Museum, and of course a visit with my family in the form of dinner at a nice restaurant.  Usually when I go back for a visit, I’m by myself, but I want to show Mister some of the historical offerings, so we’re getting everyone together at a nice dinner.  That way we won’t spend the entire week visiting them one by one and not getting to see anything.
• I installed Photoshop Elements on my new computer, so I spent a bit of time playing around with it this afternoon.  I’d show you what I did, but the results are too good.  If I can get my butt in gear, mess with some more photos and get them printed out, I might even be able to sell them on Etsy, but please don’t hold your breath.  I am the queen of procrastination when it comes to project stuff like that.
• This won’t mean anything to most of you, but to my readers in Nevada, Arizona, and California - have you tried Fresh & Easy yet?  I was looking forward to it since it was first announced, and I must say that I really like shopping there.  The stores are smaller but they don’t lack anything that you really need.  Most of the stuff is their own brand, but they have name brand stuff too, though I like their own brand.  We got bbq sauce last week for some chicken, and it was probably the best bbq sauce I’ve ever had from a bottle.  Their meat department is excellent, their produce is the best I’ve seen since I moved here, and their desserts are to die for.  And the best part, especially with the economy the way it is - the prices are great!  Lately it’s my store of choice, and both Mister and myself have been very happy with it.
• I’ve been surfing the internet a lot lately, as I do when I am bored and don’t feel like taking on tasks that I should get done, or when I am getting tired during the week and am putting off going to bed so that I can spend a bit more time with Mister before I crash.  Anyway, I need to try and find a way to corrall the stuff I’m finding so that I can post about it, even if it’s just a couple of tidbits the way Jordon does at the end of every post.
• I’m having a teensy issue with either Vista or Firefox 3.  I’ve noticed that about once a week or every other week, I’ll get up on a Saturday morning and go to read all the usual message boards, and I’ll be logged out of all them.  Every single one.  Does anyone know of a setting I can change to prevent this?  I know it’s not with the boards themselves, because I’m set to stay logged in forever, and it’s just too weird that unrelated sites would all log me out on Friday Nights.  So if anyone knows the solution to this problem, please let me know.

So that’s about it for now.  I’ll try to post at least once more before we leave for Boston, but in the meantime, happy blogging!