Learning

The best thing about learning is that it occupies your mind and your time in a simultaneously pleasant and beneficial way. Learning has the unique ability to satiate and then offer more. There are few activities that can serve as both entertainment and as improvement to your person. If you expand the horizons of your thinking you increase your choices. Possibilities that were once hidden become slowly revealed and more easily accessible. Thought can be more easily summed together offering a result that is useful. As you develop your person, you want to be able to expand your thought boundaries.---Renee

Evolution is counterintuitive

Who would have thought that life would originate at the bottom and then aggregate in complexity upward as time went by? There is this very common form of thinking that so many of us have that things are ordered from the top down. Our understanding of evolution takes this kind of simple, common-sensical thinking and flips it. Common sense is not a very reliable guide in science. Common sense, for instance, doesn't bring us to this notion that on a quantum level, there is this exorbitant amount of open space in a dense object such as lead. We have a very limited threshold of perception and we make comparisons. We filter everything through our constrained threshold.

I find evolution to be a thrilling idea. There is this grand unification, this beautiful nexus between all DNA expressions.

My Dad's AWESOME photography!

My Father is an avid backpacker and hikes to many remote lakes in the Northwest. He has hiked the Cascades (Mt. Rainier) the Olympics, The Enchantments and of course, the ever lovely Eagle Cap Wilderness in Eastern Oregon near Joseph. Here are some beautiful pics of his more recent adventures. He owns a very cheap camera as he is a complete tightwad but he still manages to take amazing photos. He is so talented.

Reality loops

If anything, it is a splendid thought, that through countless epochs of time, generation after generation after generation; from time past to time present, we are finally here! We have arrived. The universe gave birth to mind; for through us, it can better know itself. We are sentient and able to take part in this glorious universe and experience it like no other life-form has ever been able to.

Our journey to the present has been treacherous one, filled with significant and subtle twists and turns, death and survival and triumph. We have defied the insurmountable odds of us being here at all—and this is what makes our current existence so precious, so incredibly exhilarating to the senses…when you understand this journey.

You rewind time further, back to the supernovae, to where the organic compounds of all life-forms have their emergence. Further still, to the beginning of the universe, and ultimately to that supremely dense, primeval seed from which our universe unfurled. Our value is inescapable if we measure the probability of us being here vs. the odds.

I find this view to be far more replete with splendor and glory than your garden variety supernatural view. I find ideologies that mark upon the young, formative brain “you’re worthless, wretched and sinful” to be the bad ones because they teach a hatred of self that radiates outward and infects others.

Learning to Sew!

Here are a few of my amateur sewing creations over the past year. I have fumbled around with my machine and consider my attempts decent considering I don't use patterns and just "look at clothes in my closet". I never took a domestic class in high school, didn't attend 4-H and my Mother didn't teach me how to sew. The internet offers a surfeit of ideas and helpful tips. Anyone can learn how to sew. I plan to attempt more challenging projects this coming Fall.

Apron I made while looking at another one! The pocket is so cute and fun!!

This little mini-skirt was a bit more challenging. There is a zipper in the back and it had to fit just perfectly. It does! I wear it all the time! I made a kitchen apron out of the remaining material.

Cute little coin purse with Velcro closure.

Quilted coin purse with zipper closure.

Lemon and Orange Slice placemats! Adorable!

Chair cushion with piping border :)

Baby changing pad and baby burp cloths with terry cloth interior, cute firework pattern for baby boy. I once would sell these on ebay as they are extremely simple to sew.