Flashback

Remember this?

I still think it's true. I'm just saying.

Golden Birthday!!!

Today is my favorite older brother's birthday!

30 on the 30th :)

Happy Birthday, golden boy! (now get yourself a wife!)

Quote of the Day

Once you realize life is hard, it gets easier.
- some guy who called into the Dennis Prager Show

Book Club Voting

So I am hypothetically part of a book club and today I am presenting books for the club to choose from for September's read. These are their options:

The Woman Warrior
Maxine Hong Kingston
Length: 209 pages
Probably best compared to The Joy Luck Club, although I was not fond of that at all, and I really love this book. It is fictionalized Chinese memoirs interspersed with the myth of Fa Mulan. Really, really great to read and to analyse. Some great prose and imagery.

Franny & Zooey
JD Salinger
Length: 202 pages
VERY different from Catcher in the Rye – actually reminds me very much of the Royal Tenenbaums in terms of tone/style. Lots of cursing (like Catcher in the Rye), but one of my favorite books. Quick read.

Quote of the Day

Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.
Marvin J. Ashton

My Nephew: Brady

LOLCAT of the day

Quote of the Day

Help us, O Lord, to remember thy love for us and help us to be fortified by thy strength when our eyes are blurred with tears of sorrow and our vision is limited.
Marvin J. Ashton

A Vision of Service by V. Dallas Merrell

Service is one evidence of Christ’s true and living Church, even His holy mark upon us as a people.

Charity is not just works or gift giving, but a condition of the soul, a quality of our character. The gift of charity flows from God as He reveals His love for us, and from our reciprocating—feeling love for God, His work, and His children.

We serve according to the circumstances and seasons of our lives, even as we speak well of others, teach a class, express gratitude, share good thoughts, bear testimony, refuse gossip, remember people’s names, and pray for others. These are the essence of authentic charity.

Devoted service and discipleship are the same.

Once we have the gift of charity, once we have received all ordinances, and once we have claim on all blessings and all things from the Father, our only possible work and glory is to serve and bless others. To serve is our ultimate and eternal destiny.

In speaking of Jesus Christ, President Gordon B. Hinckley focused on the quality of our own lives—what we who profess to follow the Savior should be: “As His followers, we cannot do a mean or shoddy or ungracious thing without tarnishing His image. Nor can we do a good and gracious and generous act without burnishing more brightly the symbol of Him whose name we have taken upon ourselves.

“Our lives must become a symbol of meaningful expression, the symbol of our declaration of our testimony of the living Christ, the Eternal Son of the living God.

“It is that simple, my brethren and sisters. It is that profound, and we should never forget it” (Ensign, Apr. 1994, 5).

Read the full talk here.

A Weekend for the Ages

This weekend was a very special one. One to always remember...

Allison isn't pictured here because she and Brady were having some qt down in lg. But I was surrounded by family and friends and it was a beautiful day.

Quote of the Day

Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe—rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance.
Neal A. Maxwell

1 Thessalonians 5:16-19, 21

^aRejoice evermore.

^aPray without ceasing.

In every thing give ^athanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

^aQuench not the ^bSpirit.

^aProve all things; hold fast that which is good.

James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

LOLCAT of the day

Quote of the Day

You do not need everything that you might wish. And the very struggle of your younger years will bring a sweetness and security to your later life.
Gordon B. Hinckley

Read the talk here.

Galations 5:22

But the ^afruit of the ^bSpirit is ^clove, ^djoy, ^epeace, ^flongsuffering, ^ggentleness, goodness, ^hfaith,

Doctrine & Covenants 42:61

If thou shalt ask, thou shalt receive ^arevelation upon revelation, ^bknowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the ^cmysteries and ^dpeaceable things—that which bringeth ^ejoy, that which bringeth life eternal.

Quote of the Day

The gift of the Holy Ghost . . . quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections; and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity. It develops beauty of person, form and features. It tends to health, vigor, animation, and social feeling. It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens, and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.
Parley P. Pratt

Isaiah 43:25-26

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
Put me in remembrance: let us plead together

LOLCAT of the day

each unhappy client is unhappy in its own way

And that's the quote of the day. I believe Tolstoy said "family" but client fits better...

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

This poem was quoted at the wedding I went to on Wednesday. I love the imagery of the cloths of heaven.

Touched by an Angel by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

iTunes Playlist

Pioneer to the Falls (Interpol)
RebellionLies (Arcade Fire)
Stolen (Dashboard Confessional)
I Feel it All (Feist)
Here (In Your Arms) (Hellogoodbye)
Starlight (Muse)
Sleep Lessons (The Shins)

1 Click Award (Japan)

My friend sent this to me today.

hehehe

To My Wife - with a Copy of My Poems by Oscar Wilde

I can write no stately proem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.