This is the last post that I’m putting up on this blog. The reasons are varied, and I thought that since there are actually people that read it, I would do them the respect of explaining.

• The purpose of this blog was to keep friends apprised of what I was up to en masse. Well, a good number of those friends are unaware of this blog’s existence, and now that I’m in the habit of writing letters, I can achieve the same result on a more personal level and sparing them the minutia of the day-to-day.
• I also used this as an outlet for other things that I wanted to write – musings on politics, religion, relationships, etc. – probably because tackling those kinds of topics is a big part of who I am. But this isn’t the right format. When I do that, I like to write, research, draft, link, and be specific. I’ve started creating artificial deadlines for myself with this blog, which makes me rush and decreases quality.
• I’ve gotten some input that this might be a little… intense? I have a very odd division between what I consider private information and what I consider public information, and I am very willing to talk frankly about things that most people would consider very personal in the hopes that this openness will touch someone’s life and influence them positively. But I don’t think that a blog is the right format for that – perhaps something where I can explain this idea a little more clearly and deliberately, and where I will take more time before posting something “personal” to make sure that it is appropriate.
• I love commentary and constructive criticism, don’t get me wrong. But there seems to be a habit here of people writing big, negative responses in reply to opinions that I didn’t espouse, which seems to suggest that I did. For the most part, I’ve ignored these, but the one time recently that I did stick up for myself, I got chewed out by multiple people both publicly and privately, mostly for things that I did not say. Sure, I could definitely be more specific or careful with my words, but I am tired of fighting a desire to defend myself.
• My Pursuing Perfection project will cover all my blogging needs quite thoroughly.

I think that’s mostly it. The blog will stay up until the end of the year so that I can harvest what I’ve written off it, then I’ll clean up after myself. I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up a website, which I think might fit the format of long-winded essays, random poems, interesting pictures, a cappella arrangements, and other things that I would like to do with it, but that’s nowhere near now.

So thanks for reading, and I hope that it was interesting at the very least. I’ll close with the basic gist of two posts that I never got to flesh out, and a final set of interesting search terms that found my little corner of the web.

• Health Care Reform – I am opposed to government-run health care for so many reasons it’s not even funny. (1) The government never does anything cost-effectively. If we started letting the government run health care, I fully believe that costs would continue their current increase, and probably accelerate, because there’s no incentive to bring them down. (2) People should be responsible for their own health care. I am not responsible for anyone else’s health care but mine, and eventually my children’s – I will freely choose to take responsibility for my wife’s, but no one else has any claim to the money that I earned to take care of their health problems. (3) Under a government plan, there is no incentive to take care of yourself. The government does not discriminate based on smoking, drinking, obesity, or anything else that is a health risk factor. That’s a bad business plan. I could go on, but I’m trying to keep this short – those are the highlights.
• Wives and Careers – Recently, I have been forced to face in a number of ways that my vision for my family and the kind of wife that I am looking for requires a woman that makes her family and nurturing desire for children her priority over her career. In fact, at the level of achievement that most talented, educated women that I know operate, they couldn’t have a career. This really bothers me. Not to the point that I’m willing to give up that desire in my future wife – I still think that women are blessed with the gift of nurturing, and I want that for my children – but I hate that I will be asking someone to give up what they love to achieve at in the very years that are most essential to that success. I plan to bend over backwards to compensate for that, by taking the children off her hands when I get home, taking care of as many chores around the house as I can, but I’ll never be able to compensate for the lack of eight or more dedicated hours a day to give to a craft. To all the mothers in the world who gave up their best years to nurture the children who spit up on them, screamed at them, yelled at them, ignored them, and finally came out all right in the end, thank you.

Fun search terms: carter crenshaw pastor, church hunting family not greeted at church, government roll top desk

A thought occurred to me the other day – what is it that makes good good?

Yes, I’m over-thinking things again, but the answer to this question has some very practical ramifications. When it comes to specific moral issues like abortion or gay marriage or premarital sex, you can find a lot of variation in terms of what most people find to be “good.” However, most if not all humans can agree that life is good, stealing is bad, peace in one form or another is something worth pursuing, and love is excellent. Even many people who have broken society’s basic rules have needed to justify their evil with some higher “good.” At some level, society has agreed on a common moral code that nearly everyone can identify as “good.”

However, what is it that makes this good? As far as I can tell, humanity is the only species on this planet that has developed a moral code that causes us to go against our base instincts. In the animal kingdom, might makes right, bullying is the way that things get done and the group survives, and every individual is concerned primarily with their own self-interest. Humans, on the other hand, create laws to regulate behavior, establish religions that condemn many of the most advantageous actions of Darwinism, and give to others based on charity, often with no benefit to themselves other than the satisfaction of doing a “good deed.” We have emotions of guilt and remorse, which clearly have no evolutionary benefit, and indicate some deeper sense of right and wrong than the conscious mind. Where does this moral compass come from? As something that is common to most people groups, and yet something that opposes most human nature, I would argue that it has to come from outside of man. In my mind, this would leave either society as a whole or a higher power, God, to be the source of this morality.

Let us first take the case that good is defined by society as a group. Presumably this would occur as a majority of people defined a set of values, consciously or unconsciously, that secure the maximum benefit for all people involved. Of course, benefit is another value judgment, so to truly devolve this, we would have to begin with securing the livelihood of the most people involved. To come from within the people group, it would have to fulfill two requirements. First, it would have to satisfy a basic selfish desire to live. In the animal kingdom, animals are primarily concerned with their own life and the life of their offspring. Although this also presupposes a value to existence and life, we will fiat this just not to get too petty. Groups of animals work together for their common survival, often at the cost of others, and are generally willing to sacrifice the one or the few so that the many may survive. Similarly, we can see that in human society we create laws that protect the rights of individuals against those that would prey on them, presumably with the intention that the same laws that protect my neighbor from my exploitation if I am stronger will protect me from my neighbor’s exploitation when my neighbor is stronger than me. The other requirement that it would have to fulfill is that it would collectively eschew any injection of new ideas from within that would diminish the benefit to the group. Again looking at the example of the animal kingdom, which certainly acts upon its own basic values, those that harm the fitness of the group as a whole are sacrificed. Old or weak animals are left behind to predators, babies that cannot get going quickly enough are left behind, and those that violate the codes of the herd can find themselves violently expelled or even killed. We find this also in human society. Murderers, thieves, and swindlers are jailed, fined, or otherwise punished for violating the collective code of ethics. Capitalism is a cut-throat system, and in its purest form, our economic system leaves those who do not perform unrewarded and unable to provide for themselves.

However, this model breaks down as we look more closely. First, we value many things that make no sense for our survival. We have hobbies that are nothing more than fun, and sink tremendous amounts of time and money into them. We travel, go camping, go dancing, and these are considered valuable things. Why? Second, and in my mind more importantly, we have values that are completely inconsistent with group survival. Many people give privately to help those in need – the weak, the infirm, the old, the needy, and the unable. Our own government has institutionalized this practice in the form of Medicare, welfare, Social Security, and countless other social welfare programs that collectively drain billions of dollars annually from coffers that could otherwise go to the people that earned the money in the first place and are clearly more productive with it. Religion emphasizes principles like sacrifice, denial of one’s desires, and even more formalized codes of morality that range from placing the needs of others above your own to (if God does not exist) completely meaningless rituals of adoration. Clearly, one can argue that religion keeps large groups of people in line, that social programs exist for the security of those currently productive who may fall on hard times, or that hobbies provide needed mental balance to our lives, but I don’t buy it from a purely scientific standpoint. Most animals spend all day doing nothing but eating, fighting, fleeing, and sleeping. What makes us value any more than that?

If we are to approach the idea of shared values objectively, it is necessary that we consider the possibility that common moral values were not created by men, but rather given to him innately, namely by God. For the purposes of this discussion, I am not speaking exclusively of any one religion, but as I am a Christian that bias will likely shine through in the examples that I make. This would explain the inconsistencies mentioned above, as well as the inherent guilt that many people feel over particular actions (though many attribute this to a learned behavior, I find that to not be universal), the fact that most values are shared even between isolated people groups, and a basic understanding that even children have of right and wrong – i.e. the need for things to be fair, the desire for love, etc. In fact, it would make for an amazingly consistent universe. We live in a physical universe governed by laws and rules that hold planets together, keep the stars in motion, and support everything around us. It makes sense that, behind that order, there is a law-giver. It would make no sense that the universe would create itself – we see from the Second Law of Thermodynamics that nature left to itself breeds ever-increasing chaos, not order. Similarly, if we live in a world that appears to have at least somewhat consistent moral laws (or perhaps, more loosely, guidelines), then again, it would make sense that there is a moral law-giver.

Now if we accept for a moment the possibility that there is a God who defines “good,” then we see that there are two possible conclusions that fall out of that. Either good is good because God defines it by the standard of Himself to be so, or good is a universal good outside of God, and God becomes the ultimate expression of that good. Of course, here I have assumed that God is good, which is not entirely consistent with all religions. But if God is not good, then why should I follow Him, and do what He Himself is not willing to do? A man would not knowingly marry a woman who wishes him evil; so too I would not follow a God who is not Himself good. In the first case, where good is good because God is the definition of good, we consider that which we value and see that He is the full personification of all our best efforts. Everything we have tried to do or become He is, was, and will be. He is love, mercy, justice, grace, charity, and everything else that we can all agree on in principle but not in practice. On the other hand, if there is a more fundamental standard than even God that He has met in order to be our law-giver, then it makes His holiness all the more awesome.

These are just some thoughts that have been floating around in my head since yesterday morning, and I am aware that the clarity of my thought kind of petered out at the end. It’s an interesting brain-dump, though.

I’ve gotten in the habit recently of posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. I know I didn’t make any kind of commitment to do it to anyone, but I still feel kind of bad for missing yesterday. Although I must say – I have a good excuse.

Behold what remained of my fruit tart after consumption by a horde of ravenous Bible Study patrons. Actually, I don’t think that a whole lot of people ate it. I feel like I out to be a little offended after I put so much work into it, but I’m having difficulty with that considering that I get to eat the rest myself. There’s a short pastry crust, pastry cream filling, and strawberries, kiwi, blackberries, and raspberries, all brushed with melted apricot jelly as a glaze. It’s delightful.

As a side note, I’ve been eating really well recently. Copious amounts of vegetables and fruit inhabit my fridge, forcing me to eat them all before they spoil, and then I re-stock and repeat the process. It’s delicious. On Monday I made Risotto Milanese, which is more or less Arborio rice and onion cooked with chicken stock and saffron. I’ve been making a lot of steak, playing around with seasonings and marinades, trying to find something good. I think that I need to find better sources for meat – Sam’s doesn’t match Costco for quality. Two weeks ago I made chocolate chip cookies on a whim, adding Jack Daniel’s to the batter knowing the alcohol would cook off. The result was excellent. And last weekend, while having some friends over for wine, inspiration struck. I laid out slices of white bread on a cookie sheet, preheated the oven to 350, and brushed the bread with a slurry of olive oil, Parmesan cheese, oregano, thyme, and garlic. Ten minutes in the oven, and I had some great toast.

The other big thing recently was that on Monday, I changed my residence by registering my car in Florida. My goodness was it expensive. Over five hundred dollars gets me through January 2011, which was only $70 more than getting to this January. The fees are frightening. But I have my plates, I’m registered to vote, and I am a legal citizen of this state. Here’s the plate design I chose: I was pleasantly surprised to find that Florida has a standard-issue state license plate that says “In God We Trust” along the bottom. I know that a number of my friends are rolling their eyes and groaning at me at the moment, perhaps even saying something about separation of church and state under their breath. Oh well – it makes me happy, and that’s a debate for another day.

And the blog has a new feature, which will probably most often be used when I am shorter on time than I would like to be. Like tonight. The way this works is that I see something that stuns me, and not in a good way. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I can be a little bit… willful, and there are certain things that really get me going. These will be some of those things.

The honor of kicking this off goes to Latisse, and the “medical condition” that it treats.

This is actually one of many similar things that I will combine into one big rant. Why is it that everything is a medical condition these days. If your kid doesn’t focus well, it’s not that you need to teach him self-control, it’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Can’t sit still? It’s not that you need to control yourself, you are a victim of Restless Leg Syndrome. If your kid misbehaves, it’s not that you need to step in and discipline them, they suffer from Oppositional Defiance Disorder. If you drink too much, it’s not your fault, because alcoholism is a disease. And suddenly, having short eyelashes is a big enough problem that we need to diagnose it as a medical condition (hypotrichosis)? I’m sorry people, but this has got to stop.

Whatever the medical or drug community might want to define it as, I define a disease as something that you have no direct control over. While you may do things that increase or decrease your susceptibility to bacteria or viruses, in the end you have no control over whether that bacteria or virus decides to infect you. But you do have control over your own focus – I have friends who have defeated ADHD by force of will and diligence, and I have some suspicions that I’ve done the same, though I was never diagnosed. You can stop your legs from shaking, just like you can shake them when they aren’t doing it naturally. You have control over whether you obey your parents, and as a parent you have control over whether you teach your child well. You have control over whether you drink alcohol to extreme or not – last I checked, bars weren’t strapping people down against their will and pouring grain alcohol down their throats.

Hypotrichosis is in a class all its own, which is probably why it set off this post. I don’t know whether to point a finger at our victim-obsessed culture or the patient-obsessed drug companies, but this just looks like grasping at straws to me. I have no problem with people wanting longer eyelashes – I don’t get it, but whatever floats your boat. But creating a medical condition for it just makes it sound like a necessity rather than the cosmetic vanity that it is. Let’s be honest with ourselves here – something is wrong when this is where our disease research priorities lie.

Time to defuse potential issues. I’m not saying that it’s not hard to deal with these examples. I certainly believe that some people have more trouble focusing than others, that some people naturally twitch while others don’t, that some children are more hard to control than others, that some people are more prone to alcohol addiction than others, and that some people have shorter eyelashes. Again, I’m not trying to diminish the fact that it’s hard to overcome these things. But don’t act like you’re the victim of some terrible disease. Cancer is a disease, AIDS is a disease, the flu is a disease. If you choose to start drinking to excess, it’s not a disease when you develop an addiction. You chose that path. If drugs help you and you want to take them, more power to you, but don’t ask me to excuse or ignore your lack of productivity, obnoxious movement, unruly child, drunken slobbery, or short eyelashes because you’re some helpless victim. Deal with your shortcomings like the rest of us, suck it up, and move on.

* Please excuse the preceding blog post. The author suffers from an acute case of hyperopinionation, characterized by the formation and vehement defense of a single world-view. Symptoms include the belief in absolute truth, the construction of and attempts to adhere to a moral code, and rants which may offend the more open-minded. The author is currently undergoing treatment with a regimen of Relativ, recently approved by the FDA and shown to increase moral relativism in eight and a half out of ten test subjects. Side effects include dry mouth, constipation, headaches, trouble swallowing, deviation from a linear space-time continuum, blindness, irrational fear of ostriches, and death. Ask your doctor if Relativ is right for you! (Paid for by Phizerck)

Change of plans. I will tackle the “health care overhaul” soon, but due to a twelve-hour day at work and getting stranded on the boat in the middle of the bay, I simply don’t have it in me today. Instead, I’ll be talking about my search for a church thus far, because that will be easier.

When I lived in Nashville, I attended West End Community Church, and it’s probably the church where I felt the most at home. I liked that we had a Sunday school where I could engage in a more interactive way with a smaller group. I liked that the music program regularly included newer songs and old hymns without being a big production. I liked my Men’s Fraternity group that met at 6 AM on Thursday mornings and really worked to be open with each other. I liked volunteering with the children’s ministry and taking care of the kids. And most of all, I liked the teaching, that would weekly stretch my understanding of the Word, delve into its meaning and relevance in my life, and challenge me to live differently. Carter Crenshaw was some kind of pastor.

Since I’ve gotten to Panama City, I’ve visited a lot of different churches, and they’ve really run the gamut. Not knowing anyone here, I didn’t really have any recommendations to work with, so I’ve basically been trying places blind. I found a church that is very contemporary and laid-back. The worship is too loud for me and the teaching not very deep in my humble opinion, though I was told that was by design. I found a traditional Presbyterian church that was all hymns, highly formal, and full of people decades my senior. I’ve found several Southern Baptist churches, with fire-and-brimstone preachers and large gospel choirs. I found a Methodist church that has two very traditional services with hymns, and a very relaxed service in between with loud contemporary worship music. This past Sunday, I found myself at a church that talked a lot about the benefits of serving God, and struck me very much as a “prosperity Gospel” church, focusing on what you can get out of a relationship with God.

Perhaps the most unusual part of my church search has been the recruitment aspect. I have never felt recruited before to join a church, but suddenly I’m getting it all the time. I have received calls from churches that I have visited, handwritten letters, emails, a Starbucks gift card, and most recently a personal visit from a contingent of three members three weeks after I attended. I honestly don’t know whether to feel invited and welcome or stalked. And this is coming from the perspective of someone who can understand that this can come from a desire to love people and bring them into your fellowship. What if I wasn’t a Christian? This would feel very much to me like a bunch of people desperate to confirm their own beliefs by recruiting others to believe them, too. I can see why some people compare Christians to “Kool-Aid cultists.”

So here’s a question. I know that there are at least a few people who read my blog that are not Christians. One thing that I hear very often is that it’s not Christ that turns people off to Christianity, but Christians. To those willing to share, have you ever been interested in my God? Whether you have or not, what is it that turns you off about Christianity? How could someone approach you that would make them welcome to share something with you – not manipulate you, judge you, recruit you, convince you, or debate you? Maybe you have a story of a time that I really offended you with my beliefs. What was it that I did?

Here’s my thing: God is all about love. Now, I don’t think that means that He’s always going to make you comfortable. If you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be, I think He’ll do the exact opposite. But Jesus never browbeat anyone, told them they were going to hell, or insulted them for not believing in Him. He loved them, and I want to do the same. It’s been interesting feeling a bit like a warm body that someone wants to put into a pew. These churches don’t even know me – why are they so excited to have me at their church? I’d like to turn it into a learning experience for how I approach others with the Gospel.

Recently, I finished reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and I found the quote that I have reproduced below in the former. Ayn Rand, to me, is one of those authors who gives more eloquent words and clarity to my thoughts than I have previously been able to, and this quote in particular seems to embody the reason that I identify as a fiscal conservative.

“I think it’s a worthy undertaking – to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents, and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole. That’s what’s happening in New York. Nobody can afford a modern apartment – except the very rich and the paupers. Have you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple has to live? Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They’re forced to live like that – because they’re not incompetent enough. They make forty dollars a week and wouldn’t be allowed into a housing project. But they’re the ones who provide the money for the [darn] project. They pay the taxes. And the taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat. I’d have no desire to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I’ll be [darned] if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized – and penalized in favor of the one who’s less competent.” – Howard Roark, from The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

The situation Roark mentions is particular to the book, but it’s a direction that I can see our own society heading, and one that trouble me greatly. Barack Obama campaigned, among other things, on a platform of “redistribution of wealth,” cutting taxes for many people who make less money at the expense of those who make more. Now, for all the anecdotes that one can come up with for people who cheat their way to the top or don’t deserve their wealth, I believe that for the most part we live in a country in which you can be responsible for your own success or failure. The point that Rand makes very clearly is that it is use of one’s intellect and creativity that gives his work greater value than others, and that is just. A lot of people that I discuss economic justice with like to bring up Bill Gates and say that he doesn’t deserve the untold billions of dollars that he has made – I would challenge that. Because you see, Bill Gates invented and marketed an operating system that is now used all over the world and that millions of people are willing to pay for, not because they are forced to, but because with their dollars they are agreeing that his invention is worth that price. Bill Gates could take a job as a mailman – I am certain that he could handle driving a mail truck all day and putting mail in people’s mailboxes. But your average mailman could not invent an operating system that changes the way people interface with computers, and that is why Bill Gates makes more money than a mailman.

It’s supply and demand. It’s harsh, it’s unequal, it’s ruthless, and it’s tough on many, but it’s just. Yes, it is easy for me to say this sitting on a middle-class salary, but I worked hard to gain the qualifications for my job, and I can do things that most people can’t. I have spent time as a farmhand, as a restaurant server, as an office worker, and I was good at all of those jobs – I could go back to any of them if I need to. But I cannot so easily step into the role of a doctor, which is why I will pay him through the nose for his expertise in that field. The economic benefits of those jobs are part of what make people willing to take on debt, go to school for years, and work harder than many others to attain their skills, and I firmly believe that they should be rewarded with whatever they can get away with charging. I believe that a free market will provide the right balance, keeping enough competition to stave off price gouging, and providing a drive for innovation to beat that competition and make the best profit possible.

Morally, I am a conservative as well. I believe that the traditional family is the best place to raise a child, that parents should have ultimate authority over their children, that abortion is clearly murder, and that people’s freedoms should be protected until they interfere with those of another. Religion has nothing to do with my political stances, and it never will – it’s too easy to keep them separate and yet not be in conflict. There are dozens of secular studies that clearly demonstrate the benefits of having both a male and female influence in a child’s life. Parents, as those closest to a child and most invested in them, are in a much better position to know what is good for them than a giant, impersonal government. Abortion is, biologically, the destruction of another human life. It’s not the mother’s own body, because it is genetically independent and human. As someone who believes that people should be responsible for their own lives, I believe that we don’t need a reason to give people freedom, but rather a darn good set of them to take even one away.

That’s what it comes down to for me – people should be responsible for their own lives, and no other. John Galt puts it this way in Atlas Shrugged: “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” I don’t know if I would hold to the first part of that, due to the concepts of love and self-sacrifice that I have espoused before, but I believe in the second part, and I expect it from others as well. Each person is his own responsibility to a conservative. If you screw up your business, it should fail; if you do not keep your job, you should have to find another; if you make a bad investment and it goes awry, you should lose it. You set your own priorities with your money, your time, and your efforts, and it is on you to bear the consequences of those choice.

That is why I am a conservative. On Thursday, I’ll tackle the health care thing. It’s been too long since I had some good political ranting.

I’m not sure how many people reading this blog might know it, but I have not always had the name that I have today. I was recently asked to share the story of how that change occurred because it might be useful to someone else, I liked the way it turned out, and I decided that it would probably make for an informative blog post.

It’s nice to meet you, my name is Andrew Theodore Bouchard.

Until the age of eighteen, my name was Gregory Andrew Keyser. I go back and see people from high school and most of them still know me as such. The journey to get there started long enough back that the whole story would be supremely boring, but most definitively began the summer before my freshman year of high school, when I was living in Lexington, Kentucky. That was the summer that my biological father initiated divorce proceedings against my mother.

I call him my biological father because he was never really a “dad” to me. He spent the vast majority of his time at work, and whenever he was home all he seemed to care about was getting work done. He was a civil attorney, and frequently brought work home to fit in between cleaning gutters and mowing the lawn. I don’t think that I would call him actively neglectful – we had a nice house, two cars, plenty of food, and good schools to go to – but he never really put in the effort to have a relationship with his three children that I ever noticed. I’ve done Bible studies since on what it means to be a real man, a real husband, and a real father, and I can understand now all the things that I didn’t even know that I was missing growing up. The good thing about it is that I at least have a bad example to work from and improve with.

The active part was the abuse. Now, when that word gets brought up, I think people are conditioned to think of a burly man in a wife beater with a beer bottle in one hand and his dominant hand free for action. It didn’t start out as anything nearly that bad. But the neglect became emotional abuse far too easily. I remember he yelled me into a corner, crying, for not correctly distributing the silverware in the dishwasher. As the divorce progressed, it turned physical.

I’m a Christian, and opposed to divorce. Despite his failures, despite his affair, and despite his decision to leave, my family invited him back to the house to ask him to find another way to work it out. He refused. My brother, sister, and I started having to go to visitation, which we were not happy about for obvious reasons. He thought that somehow he could ignore the past and that suddenly, simply because of the blood we shared, we were obligated to have a good relationship with him. When his expectations were not met, the results were violent. We were ordered by the court to have cell phones in case of emergency. The first time I brought one to visitation, he pried it from my hands with his knee on my chest. Out of habit, my eight-year-old little brother made the mistake of absent-mindedly putting his feet on the car console one afternoon, and found himself collared and shaken in the grocery store moments after we got out of the car until my sister and I pried the hands from his coat. The worst to me was the time we were supposed to spend ten days with him over Christmas, and on the first day he accused us of trying to run away, slammed my head against a tree, bodily threw my little brother around an office, pulled my sister’s hair, and slapped me across the face for getting between him and her.

I can find no other reason than his professional relationship with the judge to explain how he kept custody of us, meaning that until I turned eighteen I would have needed his permission to change my name. You see, his name was also Gregory Keyser, and I think that the reasons are obvious for why I would want to remove myself from that connection. The Bible says that “A good name is to be more desired than great wealth” (Proverbs 22:1), and as far as I was concerned, I did not have a good name. So once I turned eighteen, I changed it.

Fortunately, I was not a Junior and had always gone by Andrew, so I simply made that my first name. My mother’s maiden name was Bouchard, and she had changed it during the divorce. I’ve always been closer to my mother’s side of the family than my biological father’s, so it was an easy decision. Theodore was chosen for Teddy Roosevelt, who I admire greatly for his courage, tenacity, effort, and effect. It’s worth mentioning here that I almost changed my name to Andrew Theodore Danger Bouchard, so that Danger really would have been my middle name, but only when I wanted to mention it. There’s still a small part of me that regrets that maturity got the better of me.

So that’s my story. In my mind, a name is the first part of you that you present to the world, the one thing before all others that people will identify you by, connect to your reputation, and measure you with. It’s worth having a name worth living up to, and it’s worth having a name that you can call good.

Search Term of the Day: “religion in job interviews”

So, I’ve been writing letters like crazy all month. Well, perhaps it just feels like I’ve been writing a lot of them – two a day really isn’t all that bad. Plus, it’s cool to think that I can stick a few pieces of paper in the mail with adhesive stamps on them and they can travel halfway around the world to my friend from grad school in Germany, to my old Olin friends in Boston, fellow dancers and singers in Nashville, and other places all over the country. I’ve been having trouble coming up with things to ask for, which is part of my one letter a day deal with Mel for the month. Then, as I checked my mail the other day, it occurred to me that I would really like to get mail, so that day’s letter went to someone that I had been wanting to write but hadn’t anything to ask them for, and I asked them for a letter.

Well, that letter undoubtedly has not yet gotten to its recipient, but mail was the biggest source of awesome for what turned out to be a pretty excellent day. It started when I got to work. I was running a little bit late, but not too much, and it was okay. The reason that I was running late was that I had taken the extra time to shave, make coffee from fresh-ground beans, have a read from Jeremiah, and pick up my apartment. So despite the delay, I got to work in a good mood with a coffee cup full of dark French roast coffee that had turned out just right somehow (I’m usually bad – it typically comes out bitter). Then, I found the guy in charge of all the robots, reported to him on some debugging we did yesterday, and we immediately went downstairs to work on it. Everyone else gradually trickled in, and I got to spend the entire morning sipping coffee and debugging robots and buoys.

Lunch was leftover pork tenderloin with Madeira sauce (really like the recipe and had to finish off the sauce), which was delicious, carrots and broccoli on the side, and plums for dessert. I’m doing a good job recently of having meat, vegetables, and fruit at every meal, though it seems to make my stomach mildly unhappy from time to time. I’ll adjust. The afternoon was less scintillating. I took a break from debugging to work on bureaucratic hoop-jumping. I have to take a course to learn all about the ins and outs of acquisitions in the Federal government. Too much detail and puts me to sleep. However, this was greatly off-set by the fact that I got a call accepting my offer on a beautiful 120-year-old antique roll-top desk (below), and they’re even throwing in a gorgeous leather-bound illustrated New Testament for my old book collection.

I got home in the afternoon and found a lot of mail. Before today, I had gotten only two personal letters and two shipments of things that I had ordered, one being real silverware. Today, I received a personal letter, a housewarming gift, a shipment of things I had ordered, and this week’s paycheck. The personal letter was from Maria Firstenberg, a good friend and former neighbor from Olin. Some time ago, she made me a dozen beautiful origami roses, and I had asked her for a replacement, as one of the blooms had gotten lost during my move. Though she does not currently have the matching paper with her, carefully folded inside her reply was a pegasus, which more than made up for it. The housewarming present was an entirely unexpected gift from Chris Carrick, another friend from Olin, fellow PaperBike teammate, and resident of House Chua last summer. He sent me an Arduino Duemilanove, one in a series of awesome microcontroller boards that I have been dying to play with, and as soon as I saw it in the package and read the note confirming that it was for me, I may have started hopping around the room with gusto and joy. The shipment of ordered items was two new pairs of dance shoes, one with leather soles and one with suede soles. Now I can go dancing in Pensacola tomorrow without fretting about my footwear for the first time in months.

All in all, a very good day.

On Friday, September 4, I left work at noon, spent 2.5 of my saved credit hours to not come back that afternoon, and instead drove 7.5 hours back to my mother’s house in Franklin, Tennessee. I stopped once for gas before I left Florida, and didn’t stop for the entire rest of the drive. I ate two meals in the car, both consisting of lunchmeat sandwiches, lots of okra, Sunchips, and RC Cola, which I have developed a taste for. I was rather proud of my stamina when I finally pulled into the driveway, walked around to the back porch that I spent a summer building, and entered to the welcoming of my mother, sister, and two frantic dogs.

I don’t believe that I have introduced the dogs before. Sammy, a beautiful English Springer Spaniel, and Miss Faye, a purebreed mutt, are the Bouchard family dogs, and they love me. I mean, they love the whole family, especially Sammy, but they seem to have a special affinity for m, according to my mother. I tend to ascribe it to respect – the dogs will obey me better than they will anyone else in the house, and I like to think it’s because I love on them when we’re on good terms but they know I don’t tolerate misbehavior. Here’s a picture of the two of them on my bed:

The next morning, I woke up early, dressed in work clothes, grabbed a quick breakfast, and headed outside, where I spent the next several hours trimming all the foliage for winter. For those of you who may not have had the pleasure of this chose, preparing hedges for winter means cutting them way back so that they will generate new growth in the spring to fill in to the same level, only thicker. So I was taking inches off of long lines of thick, bushy plants, tall, prickly holly trees, and all sorts of things. It was quite a job, but very satisfying. One thing that I miss in a robotics job is the exertion. There’s something immensely satisfying to me about spending my physical energy in something that produces a visible effect, and coming back from it exhausted, but triumphant. Down here, I don’t even have a yard to work in, so as much trouble as it was, it was great.

A quick shower later and I was on my way to pick up my friend Erin Jones and go to downtown Nashville. We stopped into Jack’s Bar-B-Que for some dinner and then made our way over to an art crawl. This is an interesting phenomenon in which a bunch of art galleries will simply open their doors and invite people in to look, talk, collaborate, etc. I saw everything from child-inspired art to impressionistic portraiture to hyper-modern paintings using blood as a medium (the effect was actually pretty cool). What I love about art is its ability to express that which is beyond the means of just our eyes to perceive. Anyone can look at a person and see that person. But see a painting of that person, and the brush strokes and interpretation of the image can tell another story altogether. I saw some of that. What I hate about art is the people who exploit it, whether just for the money or to make themselves seem important or “deep,” and as far as I can tell add nothing. I saw a series of images in which the artists had taken a YouTube clip, frozen it on a single frame, and reproduced that image with the hit count and YouTube logo in colored pencil in a small square in the middle of a large piece of paper, and these were priced at $600. What of meaning or substance had they added? Ladies and gentlemen, let me encourage you to invest in the work of Erin Jones, because in light of that experience, the prices on her work ought to be going up very soon.

It was funny – I felt like I should have felt very erudite going to that crawl. Here I was, looking at modern art, surrounded by people dressed in the latest fashions sipping wine and discussing art, politics, and the stock market, wandering around a large, open gallery with the latest of what was hip in art. But I felt like a poseur surrounded by these people, trying to seem as if I belonged. I had no appreciation for the critique on society that someone was making by turning a ceramic dog into a pincushion of crayons and calling it by a vulgar name, but I thought the concept was clever (well, not the name). I did not concern myself with the larger implications of the painting of a serene stream with reflected forest on a base of rusted steel, but I liked the effect that the choice of materials created. Essays flanked these paintings, explaining the artist’s purpose in creating their piece, but I only cared for the one that needed no explanation – beauty. Perhaps it makes me a boor to care solely for the beauty in art. Okay.

After the art crawl, we headed to the real purpose of my trip back to Nashville – Ryanhood. My favorite band of all time, and they were coming to Nashville for the second time ever. I simply had to be there – I had gotten a personal email from the lead guitarist asking me to be there (he didn’t know I had moved). You know you follow a band too closely when they not only know you by name and face, but think of you when they are coming to your home city and write you a personal email. But their music is fun, clean, peaceful, and inspiring. They are not a Christian band, but I knew that they were Christians by their music the first time I saw them. Here, have some videos:

LOVE THIS BAND. So yeah, went and saw the show, talked to the guys a bit, found out that they were playing at a church the next morning, got the name and time, and called it a night. I suppose that I could go into the details of the show, but I won’t for a few reasons. First, it was unfortunately only a thirty minute set, which was a particular bummer since I wasn’t blown away by the band that followed them, yet they got an hour. Second, I’m not sure what to say. Sure, I could say that it was great, and it was, but that doesn’t really tell you a whole lot. It was great to see them in concert, to watch their excellent stage presence, and to hear them live, which is how I like them best. Third, I need to get to bed.

Sunday morning found me back at West End Community Church for the early service. It was good to hear Carter Crenshaw again – he’s a great teacher, passionate about the Word, and a kind man. In a congregation of well over a thousand, he knew me by name and several times spent over an hour walking with me and talking over things I was having trouble with. After church, I leapt in my car and drove across town, followed by my friend Jeana Simpson, to the church where Ryanhood was playing. We made it in plenty of time, sat down, and found a warning in our church bulletins that we were attending a service where they believed in faith healings, speaking in tongues, and other such manifestations of the Holy Spirit. It didn’t turn out to be anything so dramatic as I had seen before, but still a change of pace. Ryanhood’s set was awesome. It was just two songs, but they were “Divides,” which speaks against the divisions that the world tries to create, and “Feels Like Grace,” which is my new favorite Ryanhood song and talks about the peace of God washing over us like rain. It’s an image I’ve always relished, and I love the song.

Jeana and I were fortunate to get to have lunch with the band afterward, which lasted for about three hours and encompassed topics of music (obviously), politics, religion, and philosophy. I can’t honestly tell if they are really committed to fan service, they felt obligated, or they are just that nice – I can’t imagine that their top choice of things to do that day was hang out with some fan who really likes their music.

On Monday before I headed back to Panama City, my sister took me shopping for clothing. She introduced me to new colors, new fabrics, and told me what colors went with what. I spent what I consider a rather obscene amount of money on new clothes, but they are all good quality and create a plethora of new wardrobe options, which I was badly in need of. It was an experience – thank you, Page.

I am instituting a new feature to blog posts. Whenever WordPress shows me an interesting search term that brought someone to my blog, I will share it. Today’s is: “are we but a simulation”

So, I’m willing to admit that maybe I’ve been a little remiss in posting. I guess it’s not a huge loss. According to the statistics that WordPress so generously keeps on this blog, except for an outlandish spike of 79 hits on the seventh of September, I don’t think that anyone really checks this all that regularly, which is fine by me. The purpose was to update people en masse when I had an update on my life. Okay, sure, I had some illusions about taking time to write well-thought-out posts on politics and religion, informing people of what I think and why I think it’s the right way to think and all that other self-important narcissistic crap. One of these days, I’d still like to use this as an informative outlet for things like that, when I decide to take the time to research health care “reform” and immigration policy and the tax code. But for now, I’m doing well to keep up with my own life, and no one wants to hear me get preachy anyway. Some of you might think you do now, that it might be interesting, informative, or humorous in some way. I promise you – you don’t.

As for me, life marches on eternally. I am beginning to establish a routine that I am quite happy with. On weekdays, I get up at 5 in the morning, which gives me ample time to shower, eat breakfast, have a quiet time and Bible study, and pack a lunch before I’m off to work. I’m working on getting there by 6, but I’m pretty consistent with 6:30 at the moment. I spend the day doing whatever it is that I have to do there. It looks like I’ll be getting real productive work to do soon, but there are still lots of stupid little bureaucratic hoops to jump through. I despise bureaucracy. I generally get home around 3:45, when I will take care of things that I need to get done around the apartment. This regularly includes writing letters to friends, cooking dinner, cleaning, reading, exercising, and another quiet time/Bible study. Bedtime currently hovers around 10ish, though it often works out to more like 11 because I’m easily distracted. Weekends are more fluid. I trade off chores on weekends – every other weekend I either do laundry or clean the apartment. Sunday mornings are for visiting churches. I have yet to find a church home down here, and it’s weighing on me heavily. Soon, I will start going to Pensacola for swing dancing, which will be Friday nights, and I will have to factor in two hours each way for driving. Ouch. Weekends will also be for personal projects, which I am trying to get off the ground because then they will be easier to pick up in spare time.

In case anyone was wondering, this was a cleaning weekend. I just got finished with the project, and this is the first time that I was able to do it right. Early this afternoon, I went to Sam’s and bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner. I spent the rest of the day scrubbing both bathrooms top to bottom, mopping floors, wiping down mirrors, vacuuming the carpet, and even using the handheld vacuum on the furniture. Heck, I took the stove apart and scrubbed all four burners and reflector plates with steel wool. This apartment has not been so clean since it became my apartment. Sure, they supposedly had a cleaning crew in before I got here, but they did a really poor job. Now it is pristine, and I am happy.

A note on exercise. If you ever really want to disappoint yourself, work out seriously and regularly for at least a full summer. Get yourself in good shape, gain about ten pounds of muscle, and get to where you are satisfied with the way you are progressing. Then drop that routine for a few years. Excuses are easy to come by. You’re in college and busy, you’ll start a new routine next week, or the catch-all of higher priorities. Then try to get back into it. In case you haven’t guessed, that’s where I am now. I’m trying to get into the Navy Seal workout for my Pursuing Perfection project, and I tried to do the first week last week. Not happening. I used to be able to knock out 100 sit-ups and 75 push-ups cold with a struggle, but now I can’t even finish all the reps. It’s okay – I’ve got a few months until the new year and I will get up to speed.

Life is good. I was praying the other day, and I follow this P.R.A.Y. method. What can I say, structure helps me focus. The idea is that first you spend some time Praising God, thanking Him for all He has blessed you with and glorifying Him for being God. He does kind of deserve it. Then you Repent of your sins. Next, you Ask things on behalf of others, putting their needs before your own. Finally, you get to ask for Yourself. Well, I got all the way to the “Y” and I started asking for wisdom to handle my new income, for wisdom to be a good friend, especially to those far from me, for wisdom to deal with my spare time, and then I stopped and thought. I realized that everything that I was asking for was an add-on to a blessing that I had already asked for and received. I asked for a job, and He gave me a job. I asked for friends and He blessed me with some awesome friends. I asked for time and money to work on my own projects, and He gave me a job with flex-time. All I was asking for was for wisdom to handle all the blessings that He was giving. It was a humbling realization.

So that’s the update from Panama City. Still no visitors, which is bittersweet. Bitter because there are so many folks that I would love to host down here. Sweet because I would feel a little embarrassed at this point. I’m still rather lacking in the furniture department, though I do have real plates and silverware coming next week. No more plastic! My next post will recount my awesome Labor Day weekend, and should hopefully come before next weekend. No promises.