Uchiko, originally uploaded by jsupes.

From our anniversary dinner at Uchiko. One of many delicious entrees that night.

I love Craigslist. It's such a convenient way to get rid of things that you don't need. Every once in a while I'll go through our stuff and look for things that are unused, outdated, or just altogether not needed. A quick posting on Craigslist or eBay with a few detailed pictures and descriptions are all that is needed to get people emailing you to see if the item is still available.

Things that don't sell on Craigslist usually end up going to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Sure all of this takes a little more work than just leaving the thing in a closet, or on a shelf, but a nice little benefit is that you also get some extra cash (or at least a nice tax deduction) out of it.

The biggest benefit though for me is that we clear our house of things that would just clutter it up. At the end of the day, you can rest assured that you are not a Hoarder. CNN.com today reported on this phenomenon of people being unable to part with their possessions. Earlier this year, a fire broke out in an El Paso woman's house, but because of the massive amount of stuff in her house she was unable to exit her house, nor were first responders able to get in her house to free her.

Dr. James L. Abelson says that "People who collect papers, newspapers, bills, magazines believe there might be some piece of information that someday might be useful to have." I think like that sometimes, but for me if I haven't used something in a few years, chances are I never will. This was the case with Carolyn's old Kriss Kross CD I recently threw out. I recently sold Carolyn's old Dell laptop on Craigslist for $100. Sure it was still working, but we already have two modern computers in our house, and another slightly older laptop. In the end, the stuff goes to someone else who might need it more than us, our house becomes a bit less cluttered, and we also get a little bit of cash out of it.

*Apologies to Kriss Kross for throwing out their album, "Totally Krossed Out".

Last weekend, Carolyn saw on her Facebook news feed that one of her friends was involved in an "anti-protest protest" against the Westboro Baptist Church. She asked me, "What's the Westboro Baptist Church?" That began an entire morning of looking up Google images and YouTube videos for all the things that Westboro Baptist is involved with.

Yup, this the church that you see in the news a lot. They protest at soldier funerals, Billy Graham conventions, Comic-Con, and pretty much anywhere there's a crowd. You can read their wikipedia entry, but in short, they really hate everyone. It's amusing to say the least to watch people try to interview the church members, because in many cases, you see reporters trying to be amicable and peaceful in speaking to the church members, but they're met with hostility and condescension. In one video that I watched, the church member is trying to compare their theology to other mainstream Baptist churches saying that WBC teaches "Doctrines of grace". When probed further as to what that entails, she answers, "Well, you know what TULIP stands for, right?" To which the reporter says no, and asks her to explain what that is. Her response, "Well... it's uh... doctrines of grace! That's exactly what it is."

Now, I'm certain that no one I know is involved in a church like this, or perverts the Word of God to justify hating other people who are different from them. But many of us may answer similarly when asked about what our convictions or beliefs are. The Apostle Peter says, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have". Its for this reason that we should not only know what we believe, but WHY we believe it. Far too often I find myself very adamant about something, but when asked deeper about it I realize that I really don't know why I think that way. In these situations I realize that either I need to tone down my feelings, OR I need to read up more on the topic. If I don't, then I end up looking foolish, and no one likes to look foolish. Well, almost no one.

On a daily basis, I have a handful of tasks to work on in the lab. These days it seems like only a small fraction of these tasks have anything to do with my dissertation. I'm currently doing all these side projects which really interest me, but have little to do with my actual dissertation research. On some level that's okay, but eventually I'm gonna have to cut that out. Most of the time I get involved with these things because they're interesting, or they're a direct progression from my research. For example, I was in a meeting with the licensing office regarding some patent applications that I'm on. The patent office wanted us to put together a Powerpoint presentation for potential investors. I'm having to take off my science hat, and put on my salesman hat instead. Though these patents don't really add anything to my dissertation, it's an interesting side-branch of research: commercialization.

I'm also in the middle of writing a paper these days. Hopefully in a week or so I'll be back in the lab doing experiments again.