Odds and Ends

Welp, this post is basically odds and ends. Essentially it's me being bored...the stuff with actual stories is coming, as usual, on Sunday or if I'm especially tied up a couple of days late.

Odd

I'm making a list of things to do before I die. So far:

* One more season of soccer. I need to be somewhat in shape this year, so I'm thinking I'm going to go out for intramural next semester.
* Eat a Burgerville meal alone on a park bench. It's odd, and I'm pretty sure it's a basic concept I saw romanticized by the opening sequence to the old "Odd Couple" TV series, though I can't remember if the guy was eating his burger alone or not. At any rate, I'm going to do this one.
* Try cow tongue on purpose. I say on purpose because as some people know I once went to a more authentic Mexican place with my parents and accidentally got served the cow tongue instead of beef. My father ordered the cow tongue. Neither of us got the beef.
* Go clubbing in Portland. I want to see what it's like compared to where I've been in Mexico. Certain clubs will have to be avoided though, for various reasons.
* Stop being ashamed of my beliefs. As a Christian I sometimes find myself too afraid to offend someone to really speak my mind. This is more a lingering problem than a looming obstacle.
* Also, find a church I can live with and join it. I don't feel a Christian should drift between churches forever, which is sort of what I'm doing now.
* Dialogue with a Buddhist community. I want to do this because I want to be open to learning about other faiths and I feel this is an appropriate way to do it. I also want to learn more specifically about Buddhism because it seems to be a more naturally open/broad/accepting sort of faith. Note that I don't necessarily think all those terms in the theological sense are really that good, though I do with respect to people...Sometimes I hate nuance.
* Figure out what political party I belong with and why. I'm a Democrat right now but that's mostly if not completely family tradition. None of them really appeal to me much.
* See a non-American electronic music artist live. I'm an electronica fan. I'd love to see someone from Europe live or, heck, even someone from Mexico.

It might seem kind of morbid but I was bored on the bus one day. Number two is my favorite for humor so far. I know it's sort of a random list, sort of short, too. But I'm only 20 so I've got a bit more time to make and fulfill this list. Also, there's one or two things on there I don't really want to put on the internet, but I'd happily tell any of you my family people in person.

End

I'm also making a list of books to read. This is a complementary list to the first and falls under a more general life goal that's less specifically fulfilled, which is just to get more educated and read more stuff.

* The Cider House Rules. John Irving, apparently made a decent movie out of the book. I'll read it eventually.
* Los hijos de la luz (Children of the Light...no idea if it's orignally Spanish or not, but apparently the author was born in Madrid)
* Pilgrim's Progress. I'm not sure I'd feel complete as a Christian without reading it. Just kidding, but to a degree, speaking culturally, not really.
* The Harry Potter series. I read the first three. That'd leave me four more to go, assuming I don't care about remembering what the heck happened in the second and third books (I went back and re-read the first awhile back.)
* The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure I'd feel complete as someone who's lived in my wing of Christie Hall without at least having a goal of reading this.
* The Truth (part of the Discworld series, one of the same guys who did Good Omens). If it's anything like Mort it should be really funny.
* Dune. One of those books people tell me to read.
* Godel, Escher, Bach. It'll make me feel smarter.
* Living Buddha, Living Christ. I started it and haven't finished. Should finish this.
* The Lovely Bones. People have piqued my interest.
* Where is that in the Bible? A Catholic scriptural apologetic.

Odds and Ends

Pedestrians have, like, no rights in Morelia. If I could disbelieve my friends' stories about drivers actively speeding up, seemingly to try and hit them, this might not disturb me so much. But in a lot of ways I actually think the US system is better for protection of people overall than Morelia's system of organized chaos and opportunistic everyone-on-their-feet-or-in-a-car-or-existing. Oh, and bicyclists are just as annoying and probably breaking the law if not moreso than in Portland. There's a certain morality to the order in the chaos, somewhere, but it seems there's a good amount of people who can't be trusted to have it.

Did I mention Mexico, systematically, sucks at recycling? I know a few exceptions, and I've said this before, I think, but I'm not going to try in a country that isn't willing to make the effort to make the process sane. On that note, if anyone can point me to a recycling center within Morelia and in reasonable distance of where I live, I'll give it a shot. 20 minutes' travel time or less.

I'm going to be glad when I'm back in a country that has root beer. I'm also going to be glad to have more than twentysomething of my "American" songs to listen to (quotations because a good few of them are from other countries) and not to have to be at an internet cafe to listen to them.

I'm really looking forward to next semester at UP. It's going to rock socially and academically is looking up too, as I actually have people to study things with this year. If I can actually manage those two things while keeping in shape and not worrying about girls, this will be my best semester yet. Okay, those things probably won't all happen, but I'll drop the second (academics) only when it prevents me from breathing, okay? I still think it could be my best semester ever.

I'd love to do a survey and find out how much of the world in some fashion or another subscribes to universal reconcilation. I just don't see that happening probabilistically, if the Bible is to be taken as any sort of good authority on the issue.

Oh yeah, I'm learning things. For instance, the verb marear means "to make sick" and the verb "ensangrentar" means "to cover with blood," and lastly the verb "sumir" means "to plunge someone into." You can thank Jorge Luis Borges and the story of his I'm on now, "The Circular Ruins," for those. I still have pretty much no idea what's going on in the story, but it's good for my vocabulary.

The End of the Odds and Ends

There's a few odds and ends for you. As promised there weren't really any anecdotes unless you count the two or three minor event-like things I mentioned. Anecdotes are coming later, as in Sunday, assuming they're any good.