Familiarity and other thoughts

This last weekend I got an opportunity to go home to Algona. It was a nice weekend. Saw Mom and Dad and the dog (who was way excited to see me by the way), ate some homecooked meals and took a few back to mtown with me, watched the Hawkeyes win a big one on the road, and caught up with some hometown friends to see a movie. A pretty good weekend.

About my hometown: I made a bet with a high school friend once that we both remember and will continue to remember that before I'm 50 years old, I will live in Algona. If I lose, I take her and her husband on a cruise with me and my future wife. If I win, they do the same for me. I'm becoming more and more okay with the idea that I may lose this bet. I just get a different feeling and a different sense of myself when I go back home. I'm not saying I'm not happy where I'm at, but I get an easy feeling, one that is very confident when I'm at home. I know everyone and everyone knows me. My mom thought that she was with a movie star when I went to Hy-Vee with her for breakfast on Saturday morning. It is just my kind of place. I do have one goal for myself before I move back someday, actually two. First, have my guidance counseling license and secondly, be married. A-town is not the best place to move when you are single and find someone.

A couple other thoughts. The baseball playoffs are going on now and I'm disliking it. First, I don't have a lot of time with school and volleyball (which ends for me this week) but I also HATE the White Sox and the Cardinals. I know damn well too that those will be the two teams in the World Series together...GREAT! I won't do it tonight, but soon I need to do another picks and pans blog. Lots of new music/movies/fall tv shows to discuss. Finally, I just starting getting Newsweek, got it through a fundraiser from L-C that one of the senior girls sent me. I think I'm going to enjoy having this. A couple real good articles this time around. I was intrigued by the Cover article on Mormonism and its growth over the last several years. Most certainly an interesting religion. They have some very interesting points and I like how they dont mix in politics too much with their faith, but then I read something like the following quote: "LDS doctrine states 'as man is, God once was; as God is, man may be.'" They actually believe that we in the afterlife will become gods also? Huh? Also that Jesus made a visit to the Americas post resurrection? Makes you wonder that if Joseph Smith (the founder) were alive today and had started this new religion by single-handedly translating plates buried near his house from "reformed Egyptian" into English, how would he be treated? Would he have been another David Koresch and the Branch Divideans? The other article that intrigued me was George Will's "Last Word" column where he rips Bush (Will is a Conservative by the way) a new one for not even coming close to the normal Conservative ideals. I see where Will is coming from, but if Bush isn't living up to those ideals and most certainly isn't living up to the Democratic/Liberal ideals, who is Bush actually serving here? Him and his buddies is probably the correct answer here. Well, gotta go. Later all.