...In Which Nathan Discovers an Unfortunate Reaction to Bagels

Quesadilla makers.  I can see no use for such a contraption, except in a situation much like our own.  For untold decades, quesadillas have been fried on a pan.  But now, a miniature griddle? Just for the cheese-n-tortilla loving college going crowd? Go get yourself a Foreman Grill, people.

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Bagels can kill.  If you don't believe me, rewind the clock back to 8:45 this morning.  Here, I'll retrieve the events as they occured from the UW Big Brother database:

SQL:QUERY> SELECT Time,Event FROM UW_BB_Student_Events_Sep_30_09 WHERE StudentName='Nathan Armstrong' AND Time>0845 AND Time<0900

0845 - Nathan Armstrong is leaving Lander Hall, heading towards Red Square
0852 - Nathan Armstrong has reached Red Square, heading towards Free Bagel tent on far side
0853 - Nathan Armstrong has reached Free Bagel tent and is picking up a cinnamon raisin bagel.
0853 - Nathan Armstrong is consuming a cinnamon raisin bagel.
0854 - Nathan Armstrong is leaving Red Square, heading back to Lander Hall while consuming bagel.
0854 - Nathan Armstrong is realizing that the bagel is dry without cream cheese or other similar toppings.
0856 - Nathan Armstrong is gagging on the bagel, having put too much in his mouth at once.
0859 - Nathan Armstrong is arriving at the dorm, with half the bagel gone.

The bagel industry is hazardous! We must bring it down before it wrecks our environment and destroys the local pigeon population.  My esophagus is at least five times the size of a pigeon's, and look what it did to me! This must END NOW!

But besides the choking, it was a very good bagel.

Classes all began relatively well.  This looks like it will actually be a relative light quarter, even though it's a 16-credit load, and Linear Analysis is going to be a royal pain.  But I kind of expected that.  And having met three people from OC today, I'm really quite happy.  Cameron Webster, who I mentioned earlier, is in the Linear Analysis class as well; I took Differential Equations, the prequel to Linear Analysis, with him as well, so we may end up working together on some projects.

Route planning... all went out the window.  On my way from the Fishery Sciences building to Mueller Hall, I had planned on crossing a bridge right in front of the Medical Center.  I got to the bridge, only to find out the only way to get there was to go into the hospital.  I didn't want to get more hopelessly lost than I was at the moment, so I glanced at the map.  I crossed the street at a nearby fork-intersection, ran down a couple dirt paths, and made it just as class starts.  Lesson learned: scope out bridges before crossing them.  You never know when one of those things will crumble on your head.

I decided to return to the beginning of Galatians, which I skipped last time due to over-excitement.  Paul makes a very interesting note right off the bat: he is an apostle, "not from men nor through man".  This seems a little vague, until we look at verse 11, which extends that claim: "For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel."  He's emphasizing the fact that the Gospel was not given by men; this wasn't an invention of the apostles.  He had received it directly from Christ: Acts 9 and Galatians 1:12 make this very clear.  He's trying to defend against those who claim that Paul invented the Gospel he's preaching, or that he is following a man.  This would match the 'different gospel' he mentions later, one that perhaps tries to downplay Christ as fully God, and tries to push the idea that Paul found the gospel through simple, deceitful men.  He certainly comes into this book with, if I may use this term, 'fists flying'.

The Storm is Coming...

Bring it on! Let the lightning flash; let the thunder roll; let the storm winds blow.
Bring it on! Let the trouble come; let the hard rain fall, let it make me strong.
Bring it on!   -Stephen Curtis Chapman

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And as a write, it has already come.  The black clouds stretching over the nearby buildings finally covered the rest of the sky as well, and with a single, dull roar of thunder, the rain began pouring.  The people with table-duty by Lander's front door were able to pack up and move out on time, but several meandering students found themselves running for cover.  I'm safe and sound in my room, however.  Which makes watching others get drenched slightly more... entertaining.

I've already started work on one of my classes.  Professor Pflughoeft assigned reading material for the Advanced Technical Writing and Oral Presentation class.  I can see why he's the one teaching this class: both his name and the class' title are mouthfuls.  Fortunately, I've already taken Technical Writing, so I'm very familiar with the formats of letters and memos and e-mails.  This made for a solid, quick review.  I must say, the supplementary book for the class, the Handbook of Technical Writing, actually seems to be a handy tool I might want to keep on hand for future reference.  Yet another actually useful textbook.  Shocking!

There was supposed to be a "Religious Community Info Fair".  I decided to look and see if there was any info on Campus Crusades for Christ, or for CBC's Arise college group, but neither were to be found.  I did, however, find one booth I'd seen yesterday at the tech fair, demonstrating an ITouch application for MyUW.  And a display by... Sprint? I can't remember, I'm pretty sure it was a phone company.  I never realized those two businesses had entered the "Religious Community"! I'll have to see what their doctrinal statements are.  Probably something about 6-month or yearly contracts, with limited messaging.

Now it's just about preparing for the first day of actual classes.  Looking outside, I can see that the water level's now creating mini-rivers down the side of the road.  Fall weather for Fall quarter.  How appropriate.

Bring it on.

Up and then Down

She exulted in the victory, spinning in the air above the wall walk.  Then she noticed something: several faint lines of blue disappearing into the distance.  Zane had pushed all of their coins away.  Disoriented, she hit the stone wall walk, tumbling amid her mistcloak until she came to a halt beside the wall's stone railing.

-Mistborn - The Well of Ascension

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Not much happened today.  A few good meals, an interesting technology fair (represented mostly by Microsoft, Google, and Apple, of course).  They did have a demo of Microsoft Surface.  Look it up.  It's cool.  Except they reaaallly need to work out some frame-rate issues.

They had free rock-climbing at the IMA center, so I went for a try.  I made it up the wall in... 5 minutes? Enough to get adrenaline pumping.  That was exciting.

And no, as much as I would have loved to go, I didn't attend the Queer Bingo session.  But there IS a Queer Social and Movie tomorrow night!
Sarcasm.End("now")

Of Saducees and ...Sarah? Susan? Susette? Suzello?...

"I'm... not certain what I think of this experience, Mistress," a voice whispered beside her.  Vin paused, looking down as she realized she had begun idly scratching OreSeur's ears.

She pulled her hand back with a start.  "Sorry," she said.

OreSeur shrugged, resting his head back on his paws.

Mistborn - The Well of Ascension

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I got my Mini-Wheats today! I got there at 10, and there was still a couple of mini milk cartons left.   That made me happy, and that's all I have to say about that.

As I munched, I listened to John MacArthur's message on an interesting 'final spar' in the gospel of Luke, chapter 20.  The last time Luke records of anyone trying to trick Jesus by posing a question, the Sadducees were on the offensive.  Since they believed more strongly in Moses and the Mosaic law than in God, and denied both the existence of angels and the eventual resurrection of the dead, they came up with a startlingly bizarre scenario: a woman gets married to the eldest of seven brothers.  Her husband dies before they have children, so the next oldest marries her, as Jewish law dictated.  He, too, died before she could bear children, and so the next married her, and so on until all the men were dead.  Then, she 'mercifully' died as well.

Here's the catch: they asked Jesus who would then be her husband in Heaven, since, after all, all seven brothers had been legally married to her.  Obviously, they were trying to disprove the Scripture's promise of resurrection by reducing it to absurdity.

Jesus, however, tactfully flips their argument on its head.  He points out that, as resurrected beings, we will be 'sons of the resurrection', meaning our life is defined by that pertaining to our resurrected bodies.  As such, he says, there will be no marriage, much as the angels are.  Since there will be no more death, there will be no more need for creation of life.  He also points out to them that the man who they followed had referred to God at the burning bush as 'the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'; all three long since dead.  He could not refer to God as being the God of a dead corpse; a corpse has no God, it has no soul, nothing to allow it to think.  God is a God of the living, and Moses referred to Him as the God of those who continued to live with Him as their God.  He basically set out undeniable evidence that the resurrection is, indeed, real as promised.  The Sadducees, after that, "no longer dared to ask him any questions", so good was His case.  Jesus had absolute knowledge of the Scriptures (He was, after all, the one who wrote them), and knew the meaning that was intended, instead of what the Pharisees and Sadducees tried to infuse into the words for their own purposes.

The main event of the afternoon was the Dawg Daze kickoff.  It was pretty much a giant social event that took place in the Husky Stadium field.  I never realized how cooshy football grass is until now.  Anyway, after running down a line of cheering first-year-program helpers, we got dragged around Kajabi-Can-Can style across the field and back.  Then we were shuffled into groups, broken up, shuffled again, and again, and again, and again...

Oh, and did I mention we met a whole bunch of people during that process that I won't EVER remember the names to after an hour? Honestly, how do you expect me to remember or make friends with people who I've only spoken to for all of ten seconds?  Aaaaanyway.  Finally, we did something really interesting.  We had broken up into groups of two, and we were told to start a rock-paper-scissors competition.  I lost my first round to... Lisa? Or was it Leia? I can't remember.  Then I followed her, cheering her on as she tackled another champion.  Having squarely beat him, he and his followers joined our entourage cheering for Liseia.  Leisa.  Bah.  And so on, and so forth.  Our group eventually got completely lost as our leaders were swallowed in the crowd.  Finally, after the champions realized they weren't getting much done when they couldn't even see each other, each got up on their group's shoulders, holding long-distance bouts with each other, leaving the crowd more confused about who to cheer for than before.

Soon, the remaining four champions were called up to the stage to hold the last four rounds.  Everyone picked sides.  I decided to cheer for Cameron Webster; I knew him from OC.  After all, I did take Physics all last year, with him as a lab partner in Spring! He finished in third, which was kind of a bummer, since the winner got an HDTV to put in their dorms.  Quite the prize! (I doubt we'd need nor want that in ours, though.)

To wrap it all up, we made the 'W' picture.  I'll see if I can get it up when it comes out on Thursday (or later, that's just the paper-date).

All-in-all, quite an interesting afternoon.  Tomorrow's when all the fun stuff starts, it seems.  If I'm feeling better, I could go to the 'Queer Bingo' session if I want to return to feeling nauseated.

A Morning's Meal

Samwise Gamgee was a veritable genius of the Third Age.  His commentaries on the necessity and various usages of rope were some of the most consequential pieces of literature in his time.  However, he neglected one very important tool in all his talks, which I feel must be mentioned: a good, sturdy rope should always be complemented by a heavy-duty, wide-handled pair of scissors.

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It's kind of hard to get sleep on your first night in a new place.  But having only gotten three hours of sleep, plus a couple small naps during the previous day, certainly helped me: I managed to pull off nine hours of solid snooze-time.  Until the sirens drove by, that is.  Those things are loud! They were going on and off all night, but when a few passed the street just outside, I doubt anyone in the building could stay asleep.  But hey, well-rested isn't all that bad.

I started morning devotions in I Timothy, for now.  However, I'm considering choosing Galatians instead; its content may be more applicable to me here.  Nonetheless, I Timothy had a very strong opening.  It starts with one of Paul's openings, similar to the one found in Romans.  But what caught my eye was the part after that.  Yes, I skipped ahead.  Bad study habits come back to bite, eh?

Paul warned Timothy, who was at Ephesus, to charge 'certain persons' not to teach different doctrine.  Obviously, as was the case in many of the early churches (not to mention our own), false teachers were spreading around false doctrine.  An interesting thing to note is Paul's wording: 'different' doctrine.  Is this implying that anything but the doctrine taught by Paul, the Apostles, and Christ himself is false, even if it adds some good ideas? Well, given the infallibility of the Bible, and the non-multiplicity of its interpretation, each passage has only one possible meaning, but multiple applications.  So any other ideas coming from man's 'wisdom' would, indeed, be false, unless backed up with Scripture itself.

Paul moves on to point out two specific areas that are bothering him: myths, and endless genealogies.  This sounds to me like trouble being stirred up by the Jewish peoples, as they paid very special and detailed attention as to their family lines.  They likely dragged out lists of family trees, simply to disprove or degrade Christ's claim to the line of David.  Similar attacks to Christ's credibility occur today.  I expect to be bombarded with them during school.  That's why this caught my eye pretty quickly, I think.

Physical nourishment was also a good idea, at that point.  I headed down to the food store, to see if they had any mini-wheats.  They had both boxes and little cups; however, there wasn't a spot of milk left.  I wasn't about to start drinking soy milk, so I got yogurt and a donut, and added yet another mental note: if you want the good stuff, get up EARLIER.  Not that I'm complaining: I mean, c'mon, I had a DONUT!!

...Well, at least I had one good meal this morning.

Making Connections

"You'll cry. You're gonna cry. You always cry, see? You're crying." - Jecht, FFX

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It's my biggest link to the outside world, to friends and family at home.

And I can't open the box.

The dorm rooms at Lander Hall (and the rest of the dorms at the University of Washington) don't have wireless internet; you have to bring it in using ethernet cables and a hub. Unfortunately for me, the scissors I bought yesterday are nowhere to be found, and both my room-mates are out to breakfast, meaning I have to pull the cable out of a clamshell with my bare hands. Whoohoo.

Seriously, these things should be banned! They're dangerous. After trying to weaken the plastic by bending the casing in several different directions, I tried filing at it with a dinner knife. Still no good -- wait, there's a chip in the top, now! I pulled at it, and it began to tear... in a small semicircle. So much for that.

I start looking around the edges, turning it over to see if there's any way to get this open. Then I see the label. "Perforated for easy opening".

As usual, I'm blind to the obvious.

Not that it was easy, but at least I didn't have to pull out the dreaded chainsaw. The plastic shredded and ripped, usually not with the perforation, but it eventually gave way. I came out of it with a little plastic cut on my right hand, and a lightly punctured thumb on the left.

Problem solved! Next one to solve: what on earth do I do for lunch?

-Nathan Armstrong