life

Welcome to Blacksburg

I’m writing to you now from my apartment in Blacksburg. Thanks to all those who sent me good wishes in my trip down – I had sunny and very cold weather, and no problems other than boredom, and the excitement of almost running out of gas at the New York border. There was a good visit with my friend Yuzi in Pittsburgh along (more…)

Leaving Rochester

A lot of you already know that I’ve gotten a job in Blacksburg, which is in southwestern Virginia. It’s a town of about 42,000 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and is home to Virginia Tech as well as increasing number of startup-type companies, and lots of outdoor activities. The job is at NewCity, a great little interactive agency with high standards for themselves and for their clients, and a great sense of (more…)

Staerkel Planetarium Art

In thinking about “Blue Boat Home” (and various other starry things…) I’ve been reminded of the really great art the planetarium at home has. My family spent a vast amount of time at Staerkel Planetarium when I was growing up, to the point that apparently we spent many Friday nights there, and Dave the planetarium guy knew us on sight. We went to the star shows, science lectures (more…)

Graduation Weekend II

Saturday of my brother’s graduation weekend was pretty much just get up, get ready, do the typical college graduation. Fortunately his school only has about 2,100 students total, so not too many were graduating compared to when I finished RIT. The ceremony seemed very similar though, just on a smaller and less prestigious (if RIT can be called such) scale. (more…)

Life Update

Life has been pretty reasonable lately. It fluctuates between periods of tedium and elation depending largely on whether I’m doing things with my friends, but as you can probably tell from the blog posts, the sunny side has been largely winning, and I’ve been getting a lot of mental stimulation to write about. (more…)

World Traveler

Talking with one of my friends about places we’d want to go, I realized that I have a lot of places that I want to go in my life. I may not have a lot of activities on my “bucket list,” but I have places I want to go and photograph in my lifetime. I’ve been saving a lot of them on my Pinterest, but these are the top places. (more…)

Hell & Forgiveness

I have some thoughts about the afterlife for those of us who aren’t saints. Or at least some opinions on the Christian view of this matter. For the moment, I’ll talk about the traditional monotheistic God who loves us all. I’ve talked some with Ariana about her beliefs as one of the most Christian people I know, and whenever we get into (more…)

Sources of Wisdom

I think a big part of being Unitarian Universalist is drawing wisdom from any source you can get your hands on. We have no holy book, and you can hardly call us organized, so each of us has to do his or her own thinking. Although it’s the very definition by most people’s standards, I find it incredibly hard to understand religions that dictate your philosophy in a neat little (more…)

Happiness

Since probably around October, I feel like I’ve been learning to be more happy overall. On a day-to-day basis, I may have plenty of grumpy days or be lonely or unhappy, but over longer periods of time I feel like I’m gradually getting better at living happily. Sort of like climate change making our planet warmer, though we may not notice it on a daily basis? (more…)

Commandments

In response to reading The Happiness Project, I decided to follow the author’s idea of writing down wise statements or commandments to herself. Since she is clear that these lists are very personal to your needs and style of living, I’ve been trying to gather some of my own in no particular order. Are there other guidelines (more…)