Jefflog

Last week, my little girl turned three. The so-called “terrible twos” have passed, and quite frankly I don’t see where that moniker comes from because she has been largely wonderful for the past year. I suspect that I will learn about that phrase when Oliver hits that age next year.

She also attended preschool for the first time last week. We have her enrolled in a school for gifted students, as her testing has her placed above the 99th percentile in ability. It’s questionable whether sending her to a gifted school at such a young age will make any difference, especially when tuition runs about $6000 for attending three mornings a week, but at the very least it means she’ll have teachers who know how to deal with her.

The preschool is nearly a half-hour commute away. Hong drops her off on the way to work in the morning but it’s my responsibility to pick her up. Driving for three hours a week also has me questioning whether it’s worth it at her young age. The coming months and years should prove me right or wrong.

During my vacation two weeks ago, I had the time to go give blood, something that the local blood bank has been hounding me to do for the last 8 months. I stopped in, dropped off a pint of my A positive, ate some cookies and left.

One effect of the donation process is that an automated hotline can tell you your cholesterol level a week after your donation. When I last checked a few years ago, it was very good, maybe 160. I was getting out and riding my bike at least a couple times a week back then. I also ate a lot of authentic Chinese cooking that contained a lot of vegetables, very different from the “Americanized” Chinese food such as gooey chunks of sweet-and-sour fried meat and crab rangoons.

Once Oliver was born, my healthy lifestyle took a nosedive. He was a difficult beast from day 1 (and still is from time to time!), so instead of riding my bike on the weekend, I’m more likely to be taking a nap or watching the kids while Hong takes a nap. Work has been difficult too, so instead of using my lunch break to ride, I’m more likely to be coding inbetween bites. As for eating habits, Hong has gravitated towards liking more American food, so when we eat out we’re more likely to end up at Steak & Shake than Mandarin House. We don’t eat crab rangoons – those things are nasty – but a double steakburger with cheese is always enjoyable.

That diet doesn’t seem to faze her, and to be honest I’ve only put on a few pounds of weight in the past year, but my cholesterol now stands at 214. A level of below 200 is desirable, so naturally I’m inclined to work that number down. Biking will be part of that regimen, as well trying to eat more healthy. With some effort, I should have more favorable results by the next time I donate blood.

Indianapolis tops ‘Forbes’ list of most affordable housing markets.

We’ve calculated that, in the six years we’ve owned our home here, the value on our home has only gone up by a total of 15-20%. In some markets, that’s the appreciation they’ve seen every year.

It also makes us “stuck” in Indianapolis in a way. While I’d love to move the family out to Seattle, an equivalent home out there would cost four times as much or else be located so far away in the exurbs that you really aren’t living in Seattle.
So, we’ve decided to stick our stakes in the ground a bit longer and move into a new house in the area. We started construction about six weeks ago, and the home should be finished in December.

The main impetus for moving was to move closer to Hong’s office and Maggie’s new school, which she starts attending in two weeks. We only ended up shaving a few minutes off of the commute in each direction, but that can add up over time.

Can you believe my little girl is going to be attending school?? I’m so excited for her! She’s going to soak it up.

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been to church, “dropping out” as it were due to the stresses of dealing with a child and then children. As a result, my mind hasn’t been wandering into spiritual matters very often, until a few weeks ago as I was trying to go to sleep, and reflecting on sin and it’s nature. Far too often we learn that such and such is sinful, and that everything is black and white, but in my wiser age I have realized that it’s all gray.

In particular, I came upon the thesis that actions in and of themselves are not sinful; only the motives behind them can be. Is murder sinful? Absolutely, since I can’t imagine a murder made in love, unless you’re talking about assisted suicide, which can be performed completely out of love. Is abortion sinful? In most cases, but perhaps not all.

Drugs, alcohol, and smoking? As long as they don’t hinder your relationships with your family, loved ones, and Christ, then why not? These things may not be good for you but neither is eating ice cream, and when was the last time you heard a preacher rally against frozen confections?

Are homosexual acts sinful? Under the current assumption, I have to conclude that they are no more sinful than heterosexual acts when performed out of love. The same can be said for sex outside of marriage; once a taboo of the church, sex outside of marriage between two loving people may be no different than sex inside of marriage.

One point I should add is that the love must be for all people, not just a few. If a married man has sex with another woman, that sex act may very well be performed out of love for the other woman, but he is hating his wife in the process.

The allure of pointing at particular things and labeling them as sinful is that it makes identifying sin easy. “That person is gay, so he is sinning” is an easy label. It also makes it easy to judge, which we are told in the Bible several times not to do. By letting go of the attachment of particular actions as being sinful, we are also freeing ourselves from the sin of judgment.

Another advantage is that is it makes instruction easy. It is much easier to teach “Don’t smoke” than it is to teach “Don’t perform actions not out of love.” After all, what is love? That’s a question that takes longer than a lifetime to answer in its entirety.

Actually, “don’t perform actions not out of love” may be a little too strict. There are certainly many actions that don’t involve love at all. Choosing what clothes you want to wear in the morning, for instance. There may also be times where it may be impossible for an action to be loving toward all involved parties. A man who steals bread to feed his children is doing it out of love for his children but is disrespecting the storekeeper. Does that make it moral? That’s a tough one that I’ll leave up to the armchair philosophers, although my gut feeling is that there is an order of who we are supposed to love, which would be something like:

1. Love God.
2. Love your family.
3. Love your friends.
4. Love all other people.

I know there are Bible verses that contradict some of this, although I’m pretty sure love of God comes first.

Clearly I’ve opened up a can of worms that can’t be summarized in a single blog post. I’ll continue this line of thought in a future post.

Last week’s adventure with the kids went just fine. We all had fun together, even through the trials of trying to get them both fed and in bed. However, the kids missed Mom terribly and we were all happy to welcome her back home on Wednesday.

Last week also marked the end of a trying deadline at my place of employment. In the last few months, we’ve all been working overtime trying to meet a July 31st deadline. We met that deadline, and as a reward we all get a week of paid vacation. Thus, for the next week, instead of working on computer programming at home, I’ll be taking care of all of the little chores that have accumulated over the past three months: painting the trim on the house, pulling weeds, and fixing odds and ends.

I should also have a lot of free time to do things that I want to do but usually don’t have the time to do. Updating my blog. Writing e-mail. Riding my bike. Reading Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, which I bought almost a year ago but have only managed to get through the first 50 pages until now. Watching Hill Street Blues on DVD.

On Friday, Hong may take the day off and we’ll go catch a movie together. The last movie we saw in the theater was Star Wars Episode III. That’s largely because there really aren’t many movies that would be worth paying $8.00 x 2 + babysitter.

This is better than a normal vacation because on a normal vacation day, you may get the day off of work but you still have to watch the kids. This is going to be a real vacation.