Why I Don't Like Facebook Anymore

The title of this entry alone sounds arrogant and self-serving. I am telling you right from that start that you might get exactly that kind of an entry. This being the case, I am including the following disclaimer:

The following entry does not reflect the views of The Badger Family as a whole or any member of The Badger Family other than James.

Over the past year I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Facebook experience despite the fact that it is the only link I have to many of my friends and family members.

I joined Facebook back when I was single. In those days you could easily be left out of a party because you weren't on Facebook. I was very pleased to discover in my early days of facebooking that I could stay in contact with friends and family members who were far away without much effort on my part. It was a glorious thing and I loved it. It was clean and slick and wasn't covered in glitter and animated gifs like myspace was (I only joined myspace so my band could have another friend). I thought I had found a social networking utopia.

So why am I now bitter and curmudgeonly? Because my Facebook experience has turned into something I didn't want it to be. I used to look at my Facebook news feed and see things of interest and import, but now it's so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Please understand that I am not attacking you, my friends and family who read this blog. I genuinely want to know what you are doing in your lives. That's why I got onto Facebook in the first place. What follows is a list of reasons why I don't go on Facebook much anymore.

1. The non-friend Without looking I would guess that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 friends on Facebook. They can't possibly all be my friends. Studies have shown that human beings are really only capable of handling about 30 actual friends. There are really only about 10 friends of mine that have moved out of my life that I actually want to keep tabs on. Even taking family into account, there's no way I (or anyone else for that matter) should have even 100 friends on Facebook. In my group of Facebook friends I have people I don't even know, people I know but don't really like, people I know only vaguely, and people who would have naturally drifted out of my life were it not for social networking. My actual friends and family are probably the smallest piece of pie in the pie chart that represents my Facebook friends. It just isn't natural and it isn't the sort of thing a friend purge would fix because deep down I feel bad about it. So I have minutiae from people I don't really know or care about cluttering up my feed and keeping me from my intended purpose on Facebook.

2. The copy and paste I can't swing a nyan cat through my Facebook feed without hitting a dozen blowhard-ish statuses that feature the words "Copy and paste if you agree." These statuses are usually political or religious in nature. Here's the thing: I don't need a hallmark card to tell someone how I feel about my religion or my country. Should the need strike me, I can write my own feelings about such things with no help from anyone else. The statements that litter my feed are hackneyed, overwrought, and at times factually inaccurate. It boggles my mind that people won't use their own words to express how they feel. Copied and pasted statuses clog my news feed and actively deplete my faith in humanity.

3. The offensive political comment Facebook affords people the opportunity to say whatever is on their mind. Many people take advantage of the opportunity to throw their political views around a bit. I used to be a fan of talking politics until I realized a couple things: 1) Over the past decade, everyone has chosen one side or the other and nobody is really interested in what the other side has to say about anything. There is no true debate or discussion, only argument. We have effectively allowed punditry to destroy the ability to discuss politics calmly. Also, nobody seems to change their opinion one iota because of a political discussion. Everyone already has their minds made up, so you would literally be better off discussing politics with rocks. And yes, I am including myself in these sentiments. 2) The Internet is a horrible venue for the discussion of politics. It's so easy to misread someone's intent when you are looking at words on a screen and not their facial expressions. Not only that, it provides a screen of perceived anonymity and distance. People will readily say things online that they would never say to someone's face. On two separate occasions when discussing politics I have had friends say things to me that definitely crossed all lines of common decency. On both occasions they made it personal, and on both occasions I emailed the friends and asked them if they really meant what they said. When faced with the unnecessary sharpness of their own words, they both apologized and recanted. Like I said, the Internet is a horrible forum for political discussion. If I discussed politics face to face with either of the two aforementioned people, I don't think they would have attacked me personally. Anyway, with those two points made, I feel I need to say that I am looking forward to not logging into Facebook during an election year. I anticipate such a maelstrom of political offensiveness on both sides of the coin that I will be better served doing almost anything else.

4. The time-waster Facebook is set up in such a way that you can waste hours upon hours of time while accomplishing nothing. The sum total of useful things that I have learned or done on Facebook in the past year would account for less than an hour of my overall Facebook usage. I have wasted hours upon hours on Facebook doing practically nothing. And I don't even play farmville or any of the other horrible time-draining games people beg me to join. I have wasted hours that I could have spent reading books, watching sunsets, or playing with my adorable daughter. Forgive me for getting all high and mighty, but I have much better things to do.

5. The low-opinionator Facebook has rarely if ever improved my opinion of anyone. I feel like I get along a lot better with people if I don't know that they really like lady gaga. I have never looked up to someone because they had to guts to make insensitive political statements online. I have never seen pictures of someone's appendectomy and felt closer to them afterward. Facebook is a place without borders, and borders are what make us a society and not a random collection of primates throwing feces (an image apropos to political discussion on Facebook). Oftentimes Facebook simply provides too much information for me to respect people I would be otherwise inclined to respect.

I feel like I could go on and on, but it would just devolve into something more bitter than it already is. Once again, if you are a true friend or family, you are the reason I joined Facebook in the first place.

After all this, I will not be deleting my Facebook account. Why not? Because there are a few people that I will never hear from again if I delete my account. I still plan on logging in once every few months to see where life has taken them.

So where can you go if you want to know what I'm up to? You're looking at it. I'm not promising to suddenly become the world's most faithful blogger, but I do intend to write shorter blog entries that are a little more like status updates. I really do get winded when I undertake long, drawn-out and preachy entries such as this one. So there you have it: a system that might work better for everyone...or at least just me.

Badger Baby Blog

So we started a new blog that follows Leah and her antics. It will be much more interesting than this blog and probably be updated more often. Check it out:

http://badgerbabyblog.blogspot.com/

In the Time Between This Entry and the One Before it, We Had a Baby

Seriously, Megan wasn't even pregnant the last time I wrote in this thing. Now we have the most adorable baby in the world and neither of us has a job. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to take things back to the very beginning. Before I begin, I must say that I wish I had written this right after the baby was born. It's unfortunate when you have to look back on a monumental experience and try and capture it with the same emotions you felt at the time. Let that be a lesson: write about stuff while it's still fresh.

So it was October of 2009 when all this madness began. Megan and I had talked about getting pregnant before, and we knew that it wouldn't be too much longer when we would officially be trying, but nothing had really been said. Anyway, we had purchased some pregnancy tests and hadn't used one yet. On Friday night, Megan had a dream about being pregnant. On Saturday morning we were watching the first session of General Conference. Megan couldn't shake this idea of being pregnant, and between the morning and afternoon sessions, she decided to use one of the tests. She wasn't gone very long, but when she came back she seemed a little shaky. She dropped the test on my desk, and when I saw the plus sign, we embraced, laughed, and one of us cried some tears of joy though I won't say which. It was very hard to pay attention during the next session of conference, even though I was taking detailed notes for my seminary classes.

On Sunday we broke the news to Megan's family over dinner, and I called my family on the drive back. I must say it felt good to be telling people that we were going to have a baby. It feels like you've arrived. When you get married, it's like you've joined this awesome club of people who know exactly what you're talking about when you sit around and talk like boring married people do. When you have a baby, you just jumped up to a new level in that club. Also, as a stage of life thing, it feels much better to tell people I'm 30 when I have a wife and kid than it would if I was single. It just makes me feel like I've made some correct choices along the way.

With the news broken and everybody wishing us well, we had only to let that little mass of cells in Megan's belly divide again and again and turn into a fully-fledged baby. It seemed pretty simple, especially considering the fact that all Megan had to do was eat and metabolize. That just goes to show that neither of us knew exactly what to expect on the wild roller coaster known as pregnancy.

Megan soon found herself inflicted with all the horrible effects of morning sickness which were also accompanied (at varying times and degrees) by mid-morning sickness, elevensies sickness, high noon sickness, mid-afternoon sickness, the part of the day where no pair of sunglasses and car visor will ever block the fiery rays of an angry sun sickness, dusk sickness, night sickness, and I haven't slept at night so don't you dare tell me it's morning now sickness. To put it bluntly: she threw up a lot. Her record was 10 times in a single day. Beat it if you dare. It got to the point where seemingly inoffensive things like breathing and water were enough to make her sick. I kid you not. Breathing and water.

If any of you have ever been on the Pioneer Trek, you must know that I now understand why the women's pull is a necessary experience for the young men. Nothing else that I have ever experienced in my life prepared me as well for the experience of watching my wife be completely at the mercy of her own body. There wasn't a thing I could do, so I did what I could. And remember, we haven't even gotten to the birth yet. This is just the price of admission you pay to get to the birth. I couldn't be more proud of Megan. You would think I play for the San Antonio Spurs the way I whine when I have a simple cold. I couldn't imagine throwing up hundreds of times over the better part of a year. Much respect to women for enduring the things they have to endure.

So Megan's constant sickness made a few things difficult. First of all, she could only throw up certain foods once because afterward she found them completely repulsive. She would stay in the opposite end of the house if I was cooking something she had previously thrown up. And with the number of times she got sick, the list of acceptable foods shrunk to almost nothing. The second difficulty that came as a result of sickness was that when Megan isn't feeling well, she doesn't like to be touched, hugged, kissed, talked to etc. So I really had nothing in my bag of tricks to help her feel better. It was a tough time for both of us.

As Megan progressed in the pregnancy, she kept looking for the time when she would start feeling better, as did I. Over time she wasn't sick as often or as violently (she once burst a blood vessel in her eye from violent puking), but I don't think she had a single week during the whole pregnancy in which she didn't puke at least once. I'll bet she'll love all this stuff I'm writing about the puking, but it really was a major part of the pregnancy and affected all aspects of our lives.

When Megan finally started really showing, she was able to enjoy being pregnant a little more. She had always wanted to feel the sensation of having a tiny person living inside. Frankly, that's just the sort of thing I hope never happens to me, but Megan couldn't have been more thrilled when our little girl started kicking. If she turns out to be the next Mia Hamm it won't suprise me at all. Leah was very active in the womb. You could often see a little lump move all the way accross Megan's belly. It's like she was practicing bicycle kicks in there.

I should probably mention now that I had discussed with Megan that I wanted a boy. Megan was pregnant with the first Badger baby in our family thus far, as all my sisters have long since taken their husband's last names (shameful, I know). I wanted to make sure that our family name carries on. Anyway, when we had the ultrasound to find out the sex, the doctor pointed at three white specks on the ultrasound (I don't know how to figure those things out, by the way. I could hardly tell which things were baby and which were my wife's innards) and asked if we knew what it meant. We replied that with our limited medical training (I got whatever merit badge you get for knowing CPR and how to tie a tourniquet) we had no idea. He told us, "That's classic girl. You're going to have a little girl." While leaving the office that day, I felt perfectly happy knowing that we were having a daughter. Paul and Carrie can have a buncha boys.

As our daughter grew, we discussed possible names. Megan and I both have simple names and we both like simple names, especially Bible names. Megan had always been partial to Leah. The name does have a nice ring to it. We also talked about the middle name Marie, which we know is already the middle name of literally millions of girls and women across the globe. The high occurrence of Marie as a middle name notwithstanding, Megan and I loved the name Leah Marie, and we decided to keep it. It really changes things when you settle on a name. When you pray for the baby to be healthy, you aren't just calling it, "the baby" or even using the pronoun, "it." You get to say "Leah" and "she." It makes the whole thing a lot more real, even though one would think that your wife's puking problem and expanding belly would be proof enough of the reality. The name makes it real that there's a little person in there.

The days dragged on and as Leah's due date approached, the doctor would let Megan know that she wasn't dilating at all. It would appear that we would go past the due date, which was June 3rd. We had a Doctor's appointment right before the due date, and we asked about the possibility of inducing. He told us that they didn't like to do it until at least a week after the due date. So we were told that if Megan still hadn't had the baby on the Tuesday after the due date, they'd set up an appointment to induce on the Thursday. So at least we had a date for Leah to come. At least it would happen soon.

So that appointment was on a Tuesday, June 1st and our next appointment was on Tuesday, June 8th. At about 4:00 in the morning on Monday, June 7th I was awoken by Megan tapping my shoulder. She had the same sort of teary-eyed smiley-faced expression she had when she showed me the plus sign on the pregnancy test. This time she told me that her water had just broken. Having been prepared for this experience by a lot of book reading and speaking with Megan's Mom and Sisters, we both knew the delivery was probably at least 12 hours away. So we tried unsuccessfully to go back to bed. After a few minutes of futility, I decided to go shopping for the things we would need that we didn't yet have. This killed a little bit of the time.

The funny thing about early labor is that it isn't all that intense. Megan's water had broken and she was having contractions but they weren't that strong or close together. We had plenty of time to let the reality of the situation sink in. Seriously, a ridiculously long amount of time to let it sink in. Megan's Mom came over fairly early in the day and helped out quite a bit. Megan's Sister Kish came over a bit later, and was a great relief because she's a labor and delivery nurse.

After 12 hours had passed, we decided to go check into the hospital. It's a pretty funny thing to do when you've seen how it goes down on TV and in movies. Nobody rushes to your car with a wheelchair and takes your wife away. You waltz in there, she meets with a doctor for 15 minutes or so before you even get admitted, then you get admitted and your wife walks herself to the very room where she will experience excruciating pain in the process of bringing a child into the world. There's a lot less fanfare than you'd think, but it's still very exciting. You know that it's all a matter of time before you get to meet this adorable little person who's been elbowing your wife's backbone.

I must stop for a moment and tell you that I've always been terrified of hospitals. If I ever say the words, "Can you take me to the hospital," you can be assured that I am in a terrible amount of pain. I don't know why, but I've never been able to do hospitals. That being the case, it came as a terrific surprise to me that I wasn't trembling when they led us deep into the bowels of the hospital. I was perfectly at ease, and so was Megan. We even took a little video when we got into the birthing suite, and both Megan and I were laughing, smiling, and joking. There's proof of it on video.

As we settled in to the birthing suite, Megan's contractions began to be more intense and closer together. As they did, those of us who were there with her (Carol, Kish, Shannon, and I) would go to our battle stations holding her hands, pushing the pressure points on her thighs, breathing with her, etc. We settled into our positions and bunkered down for what would turn out to be quite a long night.

Megan was contracting more intensely and regularly, but every time the nurses would come in, they would tell us that she still wasn't dilated or hadn't dilated very far. Once again the women's pull came to my mind as Megan was experiencing intense pain and all I could do was hold her hand and tell her she was doing great.

As the night wore on, we all got tired. Kish and Shannon got a little rest and when they got up they told me to go to bed. Our nurse was kind enough to procure a bed for me, and although it was hardly comfortable, it was a place to lay down. I slept for a couple hours and felt a bit like the Apostles sleeping through the Atonement. When I woke back up, I didn't leave Megan's side again until Leah was out.

It was another few long, painful hours before Megan was even ready to begin pushing. The contractions were coming a couple minutes apart and would last up to a minute. After each contraction I would look up at the clock and the hands didn't seem to move at all. I should mention now that Megan had chosen natural childbirth. I can't even imagine how intense the pain was. We all got a little sleep, but Megan really hadn't had any until the nurse offered to give her stadol to help ease the pain of the contractions. After she was given stadol, Megan would be wide awake for her contractions, but would be snoring almost immediately after. She would get a quick 60 seconds of sleep and then go right back to contracting. It was a little funny to watch someone go from extreme pain to dead asleep in a matter of seconds, but I would never have told her that at the time.

Eventually Megan was fully dilated and the nurse called Dr. Holmes. What I didn't know is that the nurses do most of the work and the doctor shows up at the end for the exciting part. Dr. Holmes told the nurse he'd shower up and come over. What we didn't know was how long of a shower he was planning on taking or how far away he lived. We hoped the answer to both was, "not very" because Megan was ready to push and Leah was ready to make her grand debut.

The nurse suggested that Megan get in a few preliminary pushes to make sure she knew how it was to be done and generally get a feel for it. After a few pushes, Leah was crowning. Megan was pretty anxious to get Leah out, but Dr. Holmes wasn't there yet so the nurse had to show her how to not push.

After what seemed like an eternity, Dr. Holmes made an entrance and we got down to business. Once everything was set up, Megan started pushing and things just happened. It was only a few minutes and Leah was out. I thought for sure I would have passed out somewhere along the way, but I handled it surprisingly well. I even cut the cord. Obviously Megan handled it better than anyone. When she was pushing, her sisters said she had a determined look on her face. Here eyes were on the ceiling and as Kish and Shannon tell it, "Megan looked like she was staring the devil in the face." She was certainly determined and all the nurses couldn't help but tell her what an amazing job she did.

Once Leah was out and unattached, they handed her to Megan. They were both so beautiful. It was a sight words can hardly describe. After a minute on Megan's chest, they handed Leah to me. I couldn't believe how bright-eyed and curious she was. She was looking all around the room and taking it all in with wild-eyed wonder. I also noticed she could move her toes independently, just like her mother. If she doesn't someday learn to draw with her feet like her mother does, I'll be surprised. I held her for a minute before they nurses needed her back.

The nurses weighed and measured her and she was much bigger than any of us would have thought. She was 22.5 inches long and weighed 9 lbs. 2 oz. We couldn't believe how much hair she had or how dark it was. Megan and I thought for sure we'd have blonde-haired blue-eyed kids. At least we got the blue eyes right. Leah has beautiful blue eyes and is still as curious as ever.

It has been a truly amazing experience to be home for Leah's first days. Nothing can prepare you for how much you'll love your child. Megan and I sneak into her room every night just to see her sleeping. We absolutely adore our little girl and she definitely has me wrapped around her little finger even though she can only now barely wrap all of her little fingers around one of mine.

There is an expression that I use to describe certain life experiences that are supposed to be transcendent or otherworldly. The word is "lifey." What I mean by it is that so many of life's experience, especially the big ones feel exactly like life. There isn't as much fanfare and you certainly don't feel much different. Think about some of life's big experiences: turning 18 feels exactly like 17 did, only you get to eat cake. Going on a mission feels exactly like life, but it happens in a different place. Getting married feels exactly like life. All these experiences are very lifey. That is not to say that they are not wonderful, memorable, or important. Such experience are certainly all these things and more, but at the time it feels just like it feels at almost every other moment in life. It's life. You get older. You go through rites of passage, but a lot of time the growth or change inherent in these events takes time and hindsight to be apparent. Now that you understand the concept of things being lifey I will say this: having a baby is not lifey at all. It's indescribable. It's transcendent. It's otherworldly. It is absolutely unlike any other experience in the world.

Well, I should probably wrap this up. It's been a mammoth post and I've got a wife and a baby to go love. I will say this: I have no idea how often I'll be writing now that I've gotten back on here, but I'll at least try to hit the highlights. I couldn't go much longer without having recorded some of the experience of bringing Leah into the world. Anyway, I close this entry and turn it to my lovely wife who will add all the pictures.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Hey all,

I just heard that this blog got marked inactive. Sorry. You know how it is when it's crunch time for teaching and there's a baby on the way and every single facet of your life is going to be different in a few short months. I don't know when I'll have the time to post again, but I want this here blog to still be active when I do. So consider this entry filler.

It's Been a Million Years, So I Thought I'd Drop a Note

Hey everybody. I know it's been a million years or so since I last wrote in this blog. I think the last time I wrote I didn't know I was going to be student teaching yet. Yeah, it was a strange turn of events. I was #7 out of 6 student teachers I didn't think my phone would ring this summer, but fate intervened. Brother Barker, whom I have not met but I have every reason to believe is a fine upstanding teacher, had ASU up his credit requirement and he didn't graduate. Since you have to have a Bachelor's degree to teach, he got bumped and I got his spot. It's certainly a lot like being called up from the minor leagues in baseball: you don't get to come up unless someone else gets hurt. Anyway, I got my call from Brother Moon and he asked if I would like to teach and it took less than a millisecond to decide.

So I've been teaching for nearly a month now (yeah, I know I'm covering ground everybody is familiar with now, but I need to have a record of it so I can look back and remember) and it's been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. At first I had just two classes out in Queen Creek. The schools out in Queen Creek are on a modified year-round schedule, so I started teaching on the 19th of August. It was a bit weird because at first I was making the big commute out to Queen Creek bright and early to teach my first and second hour classes, coming back home to change into my work duds and working the last half of the day at the balloon store. Working at the balloon store got a little depressing because it was a job that paid the bills, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my life.

Fast forward to the point where I had been teaching at Queen Creek for a week and a half and we were having our last preservice inservice, and Brother Moon asked if anyone wanted to pick up another class. I told him I would pick up the extra class and he told me he would work on it for me. I was super excited because I thought I could quit my job at the balloon store and start focusing on just teaching. Brother Moon called me back and initially told me I would get the class, but he then called me back and told me that they wouldn't have the class for me after all. During this time I had put in my two week notice at the balloon store and had to retract it. Then I got another call from Brother Moon who offered me a class at Heritage Academy. Once I got that class I put my two week notice in again and I was off and rolling.

The fun thing about Heritage Academy is that Brady Bingham is the other teacher there. It's funny because they're the other people Paul and Carrie stay with when they're down here. So all the stars were aligning and it was hard to believe that this would be anything but a bed of roses.

Of course the truth of it is that it hasn't been a complete bed of roses. When I taught my two weeks at Mesa while I was taking the classes, I was working with a class that wasn't mine. They liked having a change of pace for two weeks, but they knew that in the end they would be going right back to Brother Dixon. I've found it a very different experience teaching a class that is mine and mine alone.

It's been an out of the frying pan into the fire type of experience. There are classroom management things that I'm having to take care of that I've never taken care of before. There are discipline issues that I'm taking care of that I've never taken care of before. I've even changed around my seating chart because two of my students went on a bad date and some feelings were hurt and they needed to not sit so close to each other.

Also, the strengths I have always fallen back on as a teacher don't seem to matter right now. I know I'm being pulled and stretched, but I have to admit that at times I go home and wonder if I'll ever learn to teach the way that seminary teachers are supposed to teach. My problem is that I talk too much and I don't let my students do enough. That has consistently been my weakness.

Not only that, but I had an evaluation this week and I didn't even get into the important part of the lesson because it was a shortened day and there was too much business to get through at the top of the class. So my evaluation came back really poor and I got a, "Why did you think they needed this lesson?" type question. It's been very hard to handle. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever grow up to be a good teacher.

Now that I've taken everything down, here's the up: every seminary teacher I've talked to has had experiences like the ones I've had. Brother Johnson, one of the other teachers at Queen Creek, told me that when people tell his wife they are thinking of going into CES she tells them, "Are you sure? Are you really really sure?" She asks because he felt a lot of the same things I've felt so far. The good thing is that Brother Moon is a very nice guy. Brother Woodbrey had a preservice director who used to say really mean things like, "I can't believe I thought it was a good idea to put you in the classroom" or my personal favorite: "Your students would have been better off if they had ditched today." Brother Moon is very good when he gives me criticism and I take it in the spirit in which it is intended.

Also, I understand that in order for me to become a good teacher, I have to rid myself of some bad habits and allow myself to be rebuilt from scratch in places. I am putting all my time and efforts into becoming the teacher I'm sure you all think I am. I know I can be a good teacher and I'm not giving up on the dream. There's still no reason to think that I couldn't turn this all around and become a very good seminary teacher. I just needed to make sure I record the fact that it hasn't been a bowl of cherries. It's hard to be a seminary teacher. It's harder work and more exhausting than you would think. I am only now beginning to understand why there is such a tough screening process. Not everyone is meant to do this for a living. Very few people get to do it. I just hope I get to be one of them.

Down From Four

Hey everybody. I've only got a couple spare minutes and then I need to head out to a stake priesthood meeting, but I wanted to drop a quick post because it's about time.

Megan and I took a bit of a quick trip to Pima this weekend. Megan wanted to go to Christine's baby shower, but didn't want to make the trip if I wasn't coming. So we worked it out for us to go spend the night at Kimberly's and then Megan, Kimberly, Kelly, and Carrie could go to the baby shower together and Emmett, Paul, and I could light stuff on fire and whatnot.

Anyway, we had a nice time at Kimberly's. They are the proud first recipients of the first batch of Badger Family Classics. As some of you may know, I'm working on making DVD's of movies we love that have never been released on DVD. Things like Pure Luck and One of Our Dinosaurs is missing. Anyway, since Kimberly and Emmett don't run on DVD's too much anyway, I ripped my copies of the DVD's to their Apple TV.

It's getting to the point where Megan and I have a little bit of a harder time leaving home because Gamera is getting almost too big to fit in his old terrarium. Actually, he's way to big to live in his old one, but we can let him spend the night in it. When Megan and I take some time off over the 4th of July (We're going back to St. Johns, so if anyone else thinks that might be a good time to go home, we'll be there. So if that isn't a reason to go, I don't know what is) we'll have to pay one of the neighbor kids to come feed him. There's no way we're going to take him with us because his new terrarium (that Megan and I built with our own bare hands) is too big to move around.

I got released from some callings today. I got a default release from my Elder's Quorum teaching gig because they got someone else to do it. I was also released from teaching Sunday School for the 14-15 year olds. It was funny because I had only taught them for a few weeks but they were really upset when I told them I wouldn't be teaching them anymore. They told me they had scared off a couple teachers before and they didn't want me to go. They can be a rowdy bunch, but I liked teaching them. It's funny because I can really feel myself settling into my Elder's Quorum calling. I would much rather teach, but I find myself concerned with home teaching and other such stuff, so I guess I'll stick with this calling for a while. They still haven't released me from being a clerk, but I guess that'll come with time. The ward clerk has been gone the last couple weeks, so I've actually gotten some clerk stuff done despite him telling me, "Don't even worry about clerk stuff. You have too much going on as it is."

Well, that's all my time for today. Megan and I are doing well. We'll miss you all at the reunion, but it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. We'll get 'em next year.