Did I mention I went to Korea? Oh, well, I did.

But now I’m back in Colorado Springs! It seems I left for a couple years only to come right back to where I false-started adulthood as a 22 year-old. Don’t do the math on those couple of years, though, because the last time I lived here I didn’t even stay a year, then I was gone for 2 years, and what-do-you-know I turn 26 this month. See, now that’s the kind of inconsistent subjectivity about math that made me turn English major.

So, what’s new with me? Not much. Just like the last time I was here, I’m just sitting around waiting to be able to substitute teach. In a way it feels like I’ve got nothing to show for those two years away. True, my job-hunting resume is a little beefier this time, for what it’s worth. But my other resume, which can be called the loser-rating resume, or also the chick’s-parents resume, is probably all the less impressive. Being 26 and not having truly begun a career does not make you look like a responsible adult. But that’s okay I guess. I’m glad I spent those two years the way I did and I don’t suppose the chick’s-parents resume is always the right standard to judge your life by.

And one more thing:  it’s been a long time since I knew the glamor of the Publix parking lots and check-out registers. But tomorrow, I am reporting for duty for my new calling until Christmas. That’s right, I have joined the ranks of the Salvation Army bell ringers this holiday season. I feel like that runs a close second to being Santa Claus. So, I think it’s high time I sheepishly return to blogging, as I expect I’ll have a lot to think about while guarding the storefront for 8 hours a day. But I will still be writing under the Baggervais name, because Bellringervais doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, and I would know.

Coming to you from the old library computers of yore, adios.

-Baggervais

Peterson loves me.  He also trusts me enough to eat anything I endorse by wagging my finger behind it.  That wasn’t always the case.  He’s come to love and trust me because he is needy, and he’s noticed a pattern of me meeting his needs.  Now, I’m of the belief that the physical world is full of metaphors (and not by accident) that help us to understand the spiritual.  I think pets provide a lot of these metaphors.  I also think human relationships provide a lot of metaphors.  I love my parents, but I don’t love them just because.  If it were not for them feeding me for all those years I could not feed myself, and continuing to support me even after I probably could have survived without them, it would be impossible for me to love them.  They were my introduction to human love, and without them certain aspects of it never would have become part of my schema.  I could not love them if they had not first shown me love.

If you weren’t on to me already, you know where this is headed now.  Anyone who dutifully attended his Awana club as a kid (I think I went once a week for a month) remembers 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.”  I can’t help but say it with a kid’s voice now.  I doubt I ever heard about “total depravity” from my Awana teachers, but I think that’s the lesson I took away from that verse.  I know it doesn’t go over too well with the modern mindset to say that humans are incapable of anything, especially when you start talking about God in the same conversation.  Nobody wants to hear about how people can’t love apart from God.  But I believe humans are incapable of anything original; it is all derived.  Much as it would make me seem noble and dignified to say I could love my parents no matter what they would have done to me, that’s not the case.  Nobody brought himself into the world, and nobody discovers love on his own.  Furthermore, the race of humanity did not genesis itself, and even all our creativity is manipulation of what we’ve already seen or been given.  I would never have expected Peterson to love me if I did not feed him.  And just as I could not love my parents if they had not been loving, we are all needy and could never love our Creator without Him first loving us.

By the way, I don’t see how anyone can be comfortable riding horses.  They are such big, powerful animals, and they don’t need anything from me.  They can eat grass just fine without me.  As I see it, I have nothing over them and there is no reason for them to love me.  All I do is sit on them and tell them to carry me here and there.  I’m pretty sure they’re plotting to revolt one of these days.

-Baggervais

-Baggervais

There have been stretches in the past where most of my thoughts consisted of imaginary Facebook status updates beginning with “Ryan is-.”  I think I’m about to go through a stretch where my thoughts center around perfect-mate-except scenarios.

Perfect mate except:

• subject has a sense of smell like a dog’s, and uses it like one.
• subject has nostril tongues.

I believe mankind has only scratched the surface of where this question can take us.  If you have a good one, do leave it as a comment.

-Baggervais

On the Phone

1.  Ten-minute June afternoon

-              hail.

Steep-walled Gunnison River

-             vale.                                             3.  Thought I’d phone

Rocky Mountain high                                          to laugh with you

-             Hinsdale.                                          But made you weep and

-                                                                                      wail

2.  Whole day spent on hospital                                            instead.

-             bed.

Bitter-pill taste of painkiller

-            med.

Breached baby faced feet before

-            head.

-

On Wayne Thiebaud’s  “Sunset Streets“

-  What casts upon the hillsides?

-  What taints the waning sky?

-          Smoke from the roofs has room to rise

-          The buildings aren’t that high

-                    But you need to step beyond their shadows

-                    Or you’ll never see the light.

-

-Baggervais

-Baggervais

Or you could probably have gone to beautiful Chicken, AK, where it is 52 below right now.

Also, my roommates and I have been trying our best to make icicles during this cold snap:

-Baggervais

Sat
Jan 9

4 am

32° F

Precip:
45%

5 am

30° F

Precip:
55%

6 am

26° F

Precip:
50%

7 am

25° F

Precip:
40%

8 am

26° F

Precip:
35%

9 am

29° F

Precip:
25%

Hopefully the next thing I report will speak of snow in the past tense.

-Baggervais

6 am

26° F

Precip:
55%

7 am

25° F

Precip:
45%

-Baggervais

Day	Night
Showers High 48°F Precip 40% Wind: From NW at 12 mph Max. Humidity: 70% UV Index: 3 Moderate Sunrise: 7:26 AM ET Avg. High: 67°F Record High: 80°F (1975)	Rain / Snow Showers Overnight Low 28°F Precip 40% Wind: From NNW at 7 mph Max. Humidity: 70% Sunset: 5:47 PM ET Avg. Low: 44°F Record Low: 21°F (1970)

-Baggervais