February 2016 - Blind Date

Emily:

In February I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a while, I went on a blind date. The person setting me up didn’t know me that well but luckily gave me some information about my options. There was one Gothic Horror option (no thanks) and one memoir about a girl from Afghanistan (I was worried about a Kite Runner repeat), and some other options I can’t remember (perhaps there’s a reason I didn’t choose them). Ultimately, I went with a mystery because a good mystery novel is like my homemade apple pie, I can’t say no.

“A Blind Date with a Book” was a cute display at our favorite store Bookman’s and I was totally sold. I spent forever looking at all of the options, wondering excitingly what each held. I know everyone says don’t judge a book by it’s cover, but I do. I also judge them heavily by the synopsis on the back. All of the books eager to on a blind date were beautifully wrapped and only had their genre, setting, and year published and a short tagline listed on the front. I think I would give a lot more books a chance if I had less information to make a decision on.

Unwrapping my mystery choice felt like a mildly exciting roller coaster ride--nothing too crazy, but still enough to make you want to ride it again. I do have to give my blind date book props though. The cover was interesting and the synopsis wasn’t bad, but I still don’t think I would have bought it on my own.

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly balked mystery traditions by making it obvious from the beginning ‘who dunnit’. The problem is we don’t know what he did. That’s the mystery that Kelly craftly unfolds throughout the book--why our protagonist's husband is being let out of prison and why that makes the protagonist even more paranoid and neurotic. The suspense of the past and the present day kept me wholly engaged in the book. But, ultimately Kelly’s main character---whose perspective you see it all through was a major let down that ruin an interesting story.

I guess the downfall of this book is the main character. In the end, the book is about a girl who having never rebelled in her life decides to throw away her talents to hang with a crowd that fascinates her (that’s it, they have no other redeeming qualities--they’re just “interesting”). Maybe if there had been more substance behind her fascination, her decisions would have been more understandable. Instead, you painfully watch her throw her life away.

But despite the book being less than stellar, I would totally go on another blind date with a book. Maybe it’s the thrill of not knowing what kind of gem I’ll find or maybe that I’m expanding my horizons or maybe I just trust my local Bookman’s employees enough to trust they’ll put an amazing book in my hands one day.  

So, thank you mysterious date-setter for providing me with a wonderful experience despite my mediocre date. No many people can say that for a blind date.

Dallin:

Pictures from the month:

We played a game called Konexi which is basically a mix between scrabble and jenga.

We received an Oreganos gift card from my brother and sister in law. We got the stuffed crust pizza or something. It was a hefty pizza. We made it through about one and a half slices before we said uncle and then had leftovers for the rest of the week! Worried that we would exercise moderation, we proceeded to eat a pizookie, which is the glorious symbiosis of cookies and ice cream. 

I fell asleep on the patio

This felt like the longest February in years! 

I liked it.

Republicans and Democrats: What are your principles?

During the Bush administration, I am ashamed to admit that yes, I was sympathetic to the Patriot Act. I was accepting of the fact that the government was given the authority to gather foreign intelligence information from both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens.

Under Obama, however, I changed my mind completely and realized this was a terrible (and unconstitutional) idea. What changed? Simply put - the party. Consider this my official confession of my impervious, unprincipled partisan politics. Please don't be like me.

Those who have principles act in accordance with a predetermined set of rules even when doing so goes against your immediate self interest. They will just as readily admit to wrongdoing of their own side as well as their opponents because their bedrock isn't in the person or party.

When George Washington stepped down from office he shocked the world by voluntarily relinquishing power when absolute power was his for the taking. This world changing abdication set in place a historically anomalous precedent that was rooted in principle.

German Philosopher Immanuel Kant introduced the idea of universal law. "Morality must be a moral law conceived so abstractly that it is capable of guiding us to the right action in application to every possible set of circumstances." In other words, we should ask ourselves whether we can make our decisions universal law. If I lie, can I then say it's ok for everyone to lie?

The political climate in the United States has turned into one big game of "the ends justify the means". Obama has not only shown, but boasted, that he is willing and ready to go around Congress, and the principles of American governance, because his noble cause justifies the means.

Should the President be able to modify an existing law, such as Obamacare, for his political convenience? Should the IRS and EPA be used to attack political opponents. Those who support the President should ask themselves, should Donald Trump be allowed to justify his means this way?
We shouldn't care how worthy a politician's cause is, if they don't go about seeking change the correct way then they show an ambivalence, even antipathy, for democracy when democracy proves inconvenient.

Recent analysis at Pew Research Center indicates that 40 percent of millennials believe that the government should be able to stop citizens from making public statements that are offensive to minorities. The problem is this can't be turned into a principle because that requires that we define every little thing that is or isn't offensive. Who determines what is or isn't offensive? Should we just institute an authoritarian who will decree these things for us, or should we all just agree that the Founders of our nation were on to something when they added the First Amendment to the Constitution, thereby allowing everyone the right to say offensive things?

Today's political climate is increasingly turning into an exhibition of "what's in it for me?". Politicians have learned that by promising the moon, they can buy votes with the possibility of being in charge of deciding who are the beneficiaries because ss Thomas Sowell states "from a political standpoint, it makes perfect sense to gain the support of two different sets of voters, especially since most of them do not understand the full economic implications of the policies."

If the idea of taxing the rich was only a matter of giving to the poor, why not simply institute a flat tax at, let's just say, 80 percent? That's highly unlikely given that politicians benefit from a complicated tax code because it allows them to grant arbitrary favors and buy off constituencies. Adding layers of government inevitably leads to adding layers of corruption.

Those who sing the praises of socialism and centrally planned economies are merely advocating the shifting present corruption to a central entity which has no recourse or accountability. Do you think the government is going to put themselves in jail?

I'm about as anti-Trump as it gets, but I understand the rise of Donald Trump is a reaction to people feeling like they have their backs up against the wall. They see that those in power aren't willing to play by the rules anymore. If people no longer willing to abide, then compliance to our predetermined set of rules and founding principles becomes a losing strategy. This is why it feels like we're living in Bizarro Opposite Day World where "conservatives" who claim to support limited government are throwing their support behind a strongman whose solution to every problem is more government.

Personally, I would rather lose elections and retain my principles than become a political whore in the name of winning. The outcome does not excuse any wrong committed to attain it. Dystopias are a popular fiction, but I have to wonder if we were to see what the transition from now to Dystopia if it didn't look a little like what we're seeing now.

Our Founders pledged their lives to one another, vowing to fight and die to protect each other’s rights against a government that sought to control them. As Glenn Beck recently affirmed in his closing remarks at CPAC:

"Loyalty oaths should never be made to parties. This is far beyond Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, Tea Party, Evangelical or atheist. You don’t owe loyalty or an oath to any party that fails to defend these principles. And it definitely isn’t an oath to the Government. No, our loyalty and our dedication are owed to the Original Principals, to our God, and to each other.

Let me reiterate some of our Founding principles:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

No matter what comes our way we have nobody to blame (or commend), but ourselves.

Why I want Sanders vs. Cruz in the General Election

What do the three most popular candidates so far in this election cycle have in common? They’re all Progressives.

The Progressive movement started in the early 1900’s with well known historical figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt as part of the fold.

In short the Progressivism movement’s goal is to transform America’s principles of government, from a government dedicated to securing of individual liberty to one which takes on any form of economic and social ills,

Progressives have argued that the founders wanted limited government based on their experience with King George III, but that people of their own time want a much more activist government. Because the constitution exists to limit government, constitutional and Progressive ideals are at odds with each other.

President Woodrow Wilson believed the separation of powers and checks and balances made the government inefficient and was an obstacle in the way of Progressives to accomplish all that they had in mind. He wanted the presidency to be more than just chief of one of the branches of government, but instead sought to be “the popular leader of the whole of national politics”.

The early Progressive movement started a pattern that would continue for the next century, which is a pattern of disregarding the constitutional limits government in favor of government solutions for every conceivable problem.

The early Progressives envisioned a vast number of bureaucratic agencies and broad laws passed by congress for supervising the American economy and society.

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York is a Progressive. He pushed for a law that was passed in order to ban all restaurants, fast-food establishments, delis, movie theaters, sports stadiums and food carts from selling sugar-sweetened drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces. This may seem relatively benign, but it’s a great example. Progressives believe in using government for the good of the people, even if the people don’t always know what’s good for them.

The Democrat party has typically seen the most Progressives, but Progressivism is alive and well in the Republican party as well. Donald Trump supports eminent domain and has leveraged the government to take property from private citizens. He also recently reaffirmed his support for “universal health coverage”. In the mind of the progressive, the government giveth and the government taketh away.

Although Obamacare barely survived the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision because the administration argued that the penalty that people would have to pay was a tax, not a fine. The fact that the Obama administration had to make this argument in order to circumvent the limits that the constitution imposes shows once again that the constitution Provides a constraint that Progressives want to break free of.

Our current political landscape should not be viewed through the lens of “Republican vs. Democrat”. Instead, the real battle is constitutionalism vs. Progressivism.

The movement that was started in the early 1900’s is starting to accelerate at a faster and faster rate. Once the majority puts a greater value in what the government should provide instead of individual liberty, then the constitution will then be viewed as an burden and inconvenience.

In the upcoming election, I want to see Bernie Sanders against Ted Cruz. Both of these candidates will be honest about who they are, and will allow America to make a clear choice: socialism and government control, or the constitutional and individual liberty.

January of the 2016 variety

I don't play a lot of video games because time is valuable and I like to be judicious about how I use my free time. Sometimes I do play video games and Emily likes to watch for some reason (that's honestly the only reason I still play every now and then). That's all just a long winded preamble to say that we played the final saga of Starcraft II and the story and dialogue were HORRIBLE. The game itself was really fun but the dialogue was BAD. However, later in the month we played an old 90's point and click adventure type game called Grim Fandango and the dialogue and story was AMAZING. Isn't that ironic? Video games are awesome because you can temporarily feel like you accomplished something without actually having to do anything! I'm going to start playing video games every chance I get.

We went to go check out places to live in Tempe to see if there was anything good..and long story short we're not sure what we want to do with our lives. We hate moving but we want to move except we don't want to and we should rent a condo instead of an apartment.

There was a couple days this month where it rained non-stop. It was really weird. I took a picture but that's not even remotely interesting but hey I worked hard on that so I'm putting it on here. El Nino is spanish for....the Nino.

We had a game night with our friends who are moving to New York soon. We happened to notice they had "butt" written on their light fixture. They had lived there for two years and had never noticed. That's what we're here for.

What just came in the mail? Oh look, a mattress in a box.

Look, I'm taking pictures instead of helping!

One particular Sunday this month, there was a big marathon taking place on the street our church building is on, so we had only one hour of church and then had to go home. It was...kind of glorious. If you're not LDS, that probably means nothing to you, but that's ok!!!!!!

We went on a hike with the cub scouts on a beautiful Saturday morning. I hope Emily likes that I'm posting pictures of her!!!!!!!!!!!

Driftless: Part 1

I like to sing Tenor, but I only have the courage to do it when I'm singing in a loud group or someone next to me is also singing Tenor. Otherwise I stick with the safe option: Bass.

I consider the Lord of the Rings movies to be some of the greatest films ever. However, I hated the first two Hobbit movies and refuse to see the third one.

Every time a recipe calls for Worstershire sauce, I get very nervous.

I can't stand it it when people talk about politics in church, even when I agree.

"If you reveal TMI, it can make people fell a little less alone." - Justin Hall

I don't care if we have turkey on Thanksgiving and I don't care about Christmas trees.

I'm 28 years old and have never owned a smartphone.

I think I would like to go back to college and get a degree purely for the purposes of education rather than trying to get a job.

The King James version of the Bible makes pretty much no sense to me, I usually read the NLT.

When I'm programming, I love to have the lights off.

I like oatmeal, but I don't cook it. I just pour milk on and eat it raw.

December 2015

December 2015, what a month. The most important thing that happened this month is that..drum roll please.......................

We're debt freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
That's right, we are completely free from any and every form of debt. We feel lighter and happier and....yep, we feel free-er....I mean...more free.

When you get out of debt you have to celebrate. You have to go and buy things because - well, your money belongs to you now, you can do whatever you want.

In this spirit we went to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate. We chose Texas Roadhouse because you can eat peanuts and throw them on the floor. They also have good food.

After you get out of debt, you have to go and get ice cream too so we made a visit to an ice cream place a couple minutes away from where we live called Sweet Republic. They make all their ice cream from scratch with locally produced ingredients and it's just downright delicious. Some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

In becoming debt free, we completed step two of a six step process to get rich slowly. Step one was to save a thousand dollars as an emergency fund. That part was easy for us, we already had 4,000 dollars sitting in the bank.

Step two was to take all our debts and list them smallest to largest, and attack the smallest debt with a vengeance. We only had student loans so there wasn't a lot to list out but we started a 12 month process that made us learn patience, persistence, and delaying of gratification. Twelve months later, we had paid off over 18,000 dollars and completely debt free!

Don't get into debt kids.

We're now in step 3, which is to save an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses. We're going for the three month emergency fund because if I lose my job as a software developer I'm confident I can find another job fairly quickly. Our aim is to have 7,500 dollars in the bank and we're more than halfway there already!

Step four will be to start contributing 15 percent of our income to retirement. Step five will be to start saving in order to put our kids through college. Of course we would need a kid to put through college in the first place (we know you want us to have kids ASAP).

Step 6 is to attack your mortgage with a fury and vengeance and get that thing paid off. Of course we don't have a mortgage, so either we save to pay cash for a cheap place and gradually move up, or we get a 15 year mortgage and pay it off as fast as humanly possible. I can tell you we're not too stoked about getting BACK into debt, so I don't know if we'll do the second option.

*I forgot to write in my journal, so here's what I can remember:

We watched a documentary about Elephants. People stalked elephants using dung cams. That's a weird thing to remember.

We went to Bookmans to get some gifts for people. Bookmans is a wonderful land of books and lots of other goodies. And of course we got a calendar full of communist/socialist propaganda!

We flew to Utah and there was A LOT of snow. We wanted to watch Star Wars and ended up celebrating Christmas too! We had Christmas on the 20th or something like that, because really, why does it matter what day you actually celebrate Christmas on? So Star Wars...I really liked it at first, but the more I think about it, the more I realize they were just pandering to the fans without doing anything original. I still think it's a good movie though, Emily REALLY liked it.

We flew back  home, then 24 hours later we flew off to Oregon to spend Christmas with the mom side of the family. That was the first time in my life that I had been in Oregon. It's very green and it rained the whole time we were there. Algae was spontaneously growing on the driveway. Thankfully we didn't have to sleep outside because we were in a nice house within walking distance from the beach! It also happened to have a theater (for reals) and a game room. We totally indoctrinated some kids with the board gaming gospel and it was awesome.

I'm VERY excited about the upcoming year. It's gonna be AWESOME.

Bye,

Yesvember 2015

Wasssssuuup?!

That was rhetorical.

Wow, all the amazing things that happened in November 2015!

Great, I overhyped it for no reason. We're off to a great start.

(I'm kind of hyper right now)

Once upon a time, on the eve of November 1, I was drifting off to sleep when the whole frickin' apartment building started shaking. In my stupor, I thought our neighbors had slammed their door really, really hard but after a couple of seconds it was obvious that was an incorrect guess. My next thought was that something exploded and I wondered if we should be fleeing our apartment. Then I thought, could that have been an earthquake? In Arizona? I promptly checked twitter and confirmed my suspicion. That was the most exciting moment of my life!

Emily flew to Utah to welcome Keaton home from his mission in New Zealand.

Emily: We spent the morning making signs and generally walking around in a state of high anticipation. Then when it was time to go the airport those of us were busy rescuing a big black dog running loose in the neighbor and se we left a little late. Genet was very concerned about our arrival time and kept calling for updates. Despite her worry, we made it with a couple of minutes to spare.

Once Elder Davis disembarked all convened for treats (some delicious New Zealand chocolate among other goodies) and stories. I loved hearing all of Keaton's stories in person. We also got some Time's Up in (dynamic duo Keaton & Dad won).

Keaton's report to the stake president was amazing. President Strong had Keaton walkthrough each of his areas and companions and talk about what he learned during each area. I loved hearing about the insights he gained from each experience (good or bad). My mom, dad and Keaton all bore wonderful, pure testimony that ended the meeting on a love-filled note. All in all a spectacular weekend!

Sidenote: We did find the big black dog's owner; although I was all for bringing him home with me.

We had a dinner with a bunch of our friends. We had Hatian beans and rice and had some rounds of Resistance, a game in which you're trying to determine who the dirty lying spy is, then we tried a popular French trick-taking card game called Tarot.

Our ward (congregation) has been designated as the gathering place of the French speaker in the Phoenix area so we have a several French speaking missionaries in our ward. Thankfully nobody was effected by the attacks in Paris, although statistically speaking that would have been highly improbable.

This part may be a little confusing so I want you to pay very close attention.

Emily started training a new person to replace her who they found out didn't know computers very well but she was working really hard so they thought it may work out. Until....

one of the guys she was working for decided he was moving to work for some investment company (which manages a couple billion dollars of assets) and make lots of money (pffffff lame). This meant that replacement chick would have to go part time instead of full time, which she didn't want to do so she said SAYONARA SUCKERS. Anyway, Emily was offered an amazing raise AND the ability to work from home. So now Emily codes for most of the day and does financial planning stuff a little too.

 My co-worker didn't show up for work for an entire week. They put him on probation. He didn't show up the following monday. He no longer works there. I'm going to be involved in interviewing the new person to make sure they know how to program computers (or something?).

Yeah, yeah, but what did we do for Thanksgiving? Millions of you are asking.

Well, we flew to Utah, because why not? And Emily's family lives there.

We found a skeleton (fake) and snuck them in people's beds and closets and various locations!

We played many a game. This is Tragedy Looper - a game of time traveling and solving mysteries!

We gave thanks and ate food! Salivate over pictures of this delicious meal. 

We annoyed Morgan the dog!

We also took family pictures in the snow. We don't have pictures of the picture taking or the actual pictures. It was cold. 

We were excited to come back to some warmness, but the Phoenix area was going through some kind of cold spell. Our heater doesn't operate correctly. It warms you right up but then it doesn't stop, it just keeps going. Instead of trying to fix it, we piled on the blankets and waited for it to get warm. A couples days later, the weather is back to it's normal self. Crisis averted. 

I have a feeling things are going to happen in December.