An eternal golden braid

Took my first final this morning. I'll be done by Thursday, and then it's off to Mexico till Christmas. More on that later. Tonight for FHE we made gingerbread houses, and I had grandiose schemes that collapsed because of a gaping lack of structural integrity. :) I consider myself somewhat of an engineer (my grandfather was an aerospace engineer for NASA and Boeing and other aerospace companies), but I guess tonight the more right-brain side took over, and my feat of engineering became a garbage heap. ~sigh~ :)

I've heard about Gödel, Escher, Bach for a while now but never got around to checking it out until tonight (strolled over to the public library a few blocks away, which was nice because the BYU library's copies of the 1999 edition were all checked out). It looks over my head, but that's good. :) I think I'm going to start volunteering at the library (Provo) next semester. It'll be good training for my future career.

I have too much stuff. I was thinking about it the other day -- the more I have, the more I have to worry about. It's not fun. Case in point: ever since I got my camcorder, I've had to worry about it getting stolen. I already have enough concern for my PowerBook and my iPod -- I don't need to add anything else to the list. Sure, some things are necessary (like my laptop, since I'm a programmer/techie/geek), but there's a lot that's not. I can imagine the freedom of not being tied down by so many material posessions, and it smells good -- like fresh air after you've been locked away inside a stale mechanically manufactured office all day. And so begins my quest to de-clutter my life. I think I'd be surprised at how much I don't really need. In fact, I remember people in Thailand who had little more than a mattress and a rice cooker. While poverty isn't something I'd wish on anyone, even my enemies, I think that less is more (especially for middle-class Americans who have way more than they need).