My family doesn't usually say grace before meals. We reserve this practice for special holidays, usually Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then only if we have other extended family members present. If it's just the three of us, it never gets said. Saying grace is always a sticky subject for atheists, especially at family gatherings. What does ( Read more... )

This past week and a half has proven momentous. In one day I was reunited with three different people who I have not seen in a long time and who I have sorely missed. The first was Dr. Wolverton, for obvious reasons. I had a good session with him and have laid out an agenda of what we are going to focus on over the next few weeks. I will be ( Read more... )

Things have been kind of rough around here the last few days, so I'm going back to therapy. My mom is willing to let me go twice a month or so. I need it, quite badly. Dr. Wolverton had an opening tonight, but was full up for the next two weeks, so I'm going tonight, no sense in delaying it any longer. I haven't seen him since August, and there ( Read more... )

After we had WoW'd ourselves to death this evening, I asked Steve if he felt like grabbing a bite at Denny's tonight, around midnight. Midnight (or later) trips to our local Denny's were very common amongst Steve, Jason and I back in the good old days. It was always a place to hang out and share a lot of good conversation, and since the place ( Read more... )

Do you remember Kirk Cameron? He used to be on the 80s sitcom Growing Pains. I remember liking the show when I was a kid. Well, at some point between the end of Growing Pains and the end-of-the-world paranoia around the turn of the century, Cameron became a Christian fundamentalist spokesman. He starred in the two Left Behind movies and is ( Read more... )

I just found out that, according to IMDB, me and Kevin McKidd, who plays Vorenus on Rome, have the same birthday. Weird.

I went to see the new film Good Night, and Good Luck last night. It's about the CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow and his legendary clash with red scare-demagogue Joseph McCarthy in the mid 1950s. As a child of the 80s and 90s, I had never heard of Murrow until my more enlightened years in college, and even then he was just a name of some vague ( Read more... )

We all have bad memories, things we wish we could undo or delete from our lives. But most people manage to move on from their mistakes and secret pains and find some semblance of emotionally stability. Not me. Over the past few weeks I've been contemplating the ways in which my past haunts me to this day. Memories continually bubble up from ( Read more... )

I passed by a church on my way home this afternoon and saw one of those huge inflatable bounce rooms out in the parking lot and a gaggle of children running here and there. The church's marquee called it a "Harvest Festival." This is the second such "festival" I've seen around this area this week, the other being at another church down the road ( Read more... )

I got tagged to do this, and I haven't done a meme in ages upon ages, so here we go ( Read more... )