Books, Books, and more Books!

On June 6th I went in with my mother to help her out at her job. I'm not getting paid either but it's fun either way. The stuff I do is just boring no-need-to-think tasks which are kind of refreshing after having a year of school in which I probably wrote well up to twenty essays. It felt like it at least. Helping her was my way of getting to the books store after receiving my graduation money.

I initially went to the store to buy the Batman Encyclopedia because he is the coolest hero ever, and the DC Encyclopedia. Needless to say, I didn't buy either of those books. Barnes N' Nobles didn't have the Batman one, much to my disappointment and the DC one just didn't look as cool as I thought it would. So I walked out with about $100 dollars worth of books that didn't have anything to do with comic book heroes.

I'm gonna save the best for last. The first one I bought was Critical Thinking: An Introduction by Alec Fisher

I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn how to analyze and interpret things in a critical way. Critical thinking is one of those life skill I think everyone should have. It would make ignorance a think of the past as well as propel our society forward if people thought about the information they were receiving as well as the source of the information instead of taking things at face value. I admit I do that a lot. I didn't realize I did it until my AP Bio teacher introduced a unit on Critical Thinking which inspired my to buy this book. Hopefully it helps if even a little bit.

Second on my books list is the Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism.

I obviously got this one because I'm an atheist. I decided getting a book on it wouldn't hurt. It might introduce me to new ideas. I'm trying not to be narrow-minded about this whole religion thing though so I got another book that is the polar opposite to this one.

It's called The World's Religions and goes over all of the basic religions and their beliefs such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and so forth. I'm also going to try to read the Bible again. I tried the first time and only got maybe 200 pages in before I quit. All I was reading was who was the descendant of who and how old they lived and yeah, real boring. I'm going to try to read the whole thing this time since it wouldn't really be fair to shun Christianity without first understanding it.

However, for a fun read I went ahead and bought God's Lunatics: Lost Souls, False Prophets, Martyred Saints, Murderous Cults, Demonic Nuns, and Other Victims of Man's Eternal Search for the Divine. That's a mouthful. Basically it just covers the extremists of religion. It's not saying that all religion is bad, because it's not.

Last but not least, I finally bought a book that I have been wanting for ages out of curiosity. The media condemns it, people fear it, and the movie industry thrives off of it. I bought...The Satanic Bible.

Now, this in no way means I'm a satanist, because I'm not. As previously mentioned, I am a solid atheist as of right now. Since I'm going on a journey to learn about all religions, Satanism is on the list as well. I'm going for both sides of the spectrum here. Besides, reading the first page it didn't sound like they were into the whole burning children and having human sacrifices. That's all just cinema stuff, I think. You can't really put all of your trust into what super religious people say about it because, let's face it, the hate it. And we all know that most people do not speak the truth about something they hate. They exaggerate or flat out lie. So I'm going to find out for myself. I'm just thankful my parents aren't religious. You know, for a famous book that is supposed to be rife with satanic rituals and what not, the cover is awfully bland. I expected more. Maybe they're just into the simple stuff.

I lied when I said that was the last book. I also bought another at the recommendation of a friend. That famous comic book called The Watchmen.  I finished it in about two days. It was pretty good. The overall moral/philosophy of the book has been something that I have been thinking about for a few years now. It lends itself a lot to Existentialist belief which I just learned about in my English class. I guess I would be considered an existentialist myself since I do concur with most of its "beliefs". There weren't any characters I downright hated except maybe The Comedian, Edward Blake. That was just because he tried to rape someone though. My favorite characters would have to be Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach. They caught my interest the moment they came on the scene. Dr. Manhattan for his existentialist way of thinking and Rorschach for his radical justice. Anyways, it was a great book. The only thing that slowed me down was the novel like pages at the end of each chapter.

Graduation of 2011

So, on June 3rd at 7:00 or somewhere around there I officially graduated. Kind of. I only received the diploma cover really. Anyways, this graduation was pretty sweet despite the fact that we had gray clouds hovering over us the entire duration of the event. It really pissed me off when it started to sprinkle at the beginning. 

I have to say that this graduation ceremony was pretty cool compared to most others. First, I go to a small school and the graduating class came in at only around 100 students. I didn't have to stand there and wait for 500 or a 1000 students to get their diploma cover. We had very few staff speeches, thankfully. The Valedictorian speeches were the best though. We had four Valedictorians and they were all girls. The speeches all had an interconnected theme: the Four Horsewomen instead of the Four Horsemen. It was sweet. XD

After the ceremony and the hectic Take-Pictures-With-All-of-Your-Friends episode, we had Sober Grad. That was cool, too. A free dinner coupled with a two-hour bus ride. The bus had comfy seats much to my relief. Tried to get some sleep on the way down to the "Mystery Location" but everybody kept singing. Yeah, they didn't exactly tell us where Sober Grad was going to be, they just told us it was going to be awesome and everyone should go. I am so glad I did. Hopefully, no underclassmen from the school is reading this cause I would hate to spoil the surprise if they repeated this for next year.

Basically, Sober Grad took place on a party train... yes, a full out party train with a dance floor, gambling corner, free food, a magician (who would certainly Blow your Mind), a caricaturist (person who does caricatures), and more free food. I think pretty much everybody got a caricature of themselves since it was "free". Actually it wasn't since you had to pay for sober grad but whatever. I'll upload that soon since I love it so much. I actually spent most of my time in the gambling hall learning how the play Texas Hold'em. Poker is a new hobby now. YAY! Took me about three rounds to catch on to how the game was played. After that I just took off....and lost. It was still super fun though. That dealer made my night. I will, hopefully, always remember him. 

After about 5-6 hours of partying until 4:00 in the morning, we all had to get back on the bus for another 2-hour drive back home. I think it is safe to say that Everyone went to sleep on our bus, since we had two of them. We got free blanket's too. I love free stuff. $-$ Once I got home I went to sleep for about ten hours, woke up, went to dinner and bowling, and then went to sleep for another nine hours. Life was good.

A Fishing Trip ... In the Rain

So yesterday on May 29th, a Sunday, my dad decides it would be bundles of fun to go fishing with gray clouds littering the sky and a forecast of rain. This just spells trouble. Since I don't have a whole lot of time left with my family until I set off for college and a job I decide to tag along despite the gloomy forecast.

It turns out that since there was so much snow in the mountains, we couldn't take the short drive up to Loon Lake which is located at the top of the snowy mountains. We have to take a detour through Placerville. After a nice (it seemed like an hour long) drive we arrive at Loon only to find it completely frozen over. COMPLETELY!

The frozen lake water at Loon Lake.

Another pic of the frozen wasteland. That's a lot of snow.

You get my point.

Anyways, we stayed here for about five minutes which is how long it took to freeze my butt off. Next we went lake hopping trying to scope out good FREE campsites. Checked out Yellowjacket and some Strawberry Fields lake. We eventually settled down at Icehouse, which could hardly be called a lake with the state it was in. It looked like a puddle that some kid jumped around in until there was nothing left. The tide was so low you could see dead tree stumps all over the place. Despite the sorry state the lake was in, the decreased water volume meant there was more fish in a smaller area. The fishing was Off the Hook!!

The lake shore.

We caught about 12 fish in about an hour or two. Despite the great fishing we hightailed it out of there cause it was COLD!! I was wearing two heavy jackets, a beanie over my face, and a pair of sweats and I still froze my face off.

Yeah, that's me being cold. All that dirt in the background should be under water right now. That's how low the tide was.

Anyways, to kill time since I wasn't in the mood to fish my sister and I built a little shelter because we watch too many survival shows. It turned out to be pretty cool. All we used was a tree stump, some tree branches dead/alive and pine needles. There were a lot of dead tree branches lying around because of the recent storm anyways.

The little hut/shack/shelter that my sister (currently inside) and I built.

That's me inside the tiny little shelter. It was very cramped.

After successfully building that we just stood around until my dad managed to catch the first fish. After that it was one right after the other. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the 12 fish we caught because that was on another camera that I am too lazy to go a fetch right now. On with the story.....

We caught the fish, "processed" them, and then planned to go back home. However, my dad being the adventurous/nosy person that he is decided we should take a look at some river that flowed into the lake. It was pretty, to say the least.

The river that flows into Icehouse Lake.

After all of that we head home only to see a *gasp* Double Rainbow. First one in my entire life. It was pretty cool. I've learned about rainbows maybe five times and I still don't remember how they work. Something about light and water. Whatever, it was pretty B-E-A-utiful.

The rainbow, the double rainbow is really hard to see in this picture.

Another rainbow shot.

Then I went home and fell asleep. 

The end.

Content

This will just be were I update about my life. I tend to have short term memory so writing down what happens day to day might be a good thing. This will be my territory to brag and complain at will. The internet is a lovely place sometimes.