Random Thoughts & Religious Beliefs

Last week on Saturday we got our cement curb put in around our flower beds.  It looks good but we still need a lot of work done on our yard.  We still have to dig out our current flower beds that are full of rocks, weeds and the plants that we let die.  I'll have to take a picture when we're done.  Right now our yard is full of dandelions.  It looks horrible.  Later that night we went over to Chris' sister Shalise's house for dinner to celebrate mothers day.  We had a lot of good food and I made a raspberry angel food cake which was a sort of experiment for me since I've never made one before and it seemed like fun.  It turned out alright.  Chris' niece Javian is so cute she is a little younger than Kalia by a week or so.  She is a chubby little baby that likes to smile a lot.  It was cute, she didn't even fuss when the other little kids fought to hold her.  I asked Chris' nephew Karson if he was going to babysit our kids because he was doing such a good job with the baby and he said maybe when he was 5 or 7.  He's 4.  I asked him if his little sister Lily would help and he said "She's only 2!".  He's a clever little kid.  Sunday I made another angel food cake since the first one was a success and then went over to mom's house.  We had dinner and hung out.  Nephi, Steffanie, Teo, Kalia, and Rachel were there.  Teo was funny telling his stories about their trip to Wyoming and how there was a bear in the house on the bed (I guess it was a bear skin on the bed at Fort Bridger)  At first I thought he was talking about the bear tracks at moms house.  He thought that the marks on the carpet left by furniture were bear tracks.  He kept saying "Where's the bears?"  By the way, if you let ice melt on the indented carpet, it makes the carpet go back to normal.  It's a trick I learned at work. Here's the link to the angel food cake recipe.  The only thing I didn't like was squeezing the raspberries for juice.  I wonder if you could just use raspberry preserves or something.  I also served it with raspberry sherbet.  It was pretty good, not to mention it was fat free.  I tried posting a picture and it didn't work, but there is one on the link.

Raspberry Swirl Angel Food Cake

This week at work, we had inventory on Tuesday.  It was not as bad as in my days at Kmart.  I went in at about 6:30 pm and left at about 4:30 am.  They do a majority of the counting after the store closes at 10.  Usually they do inventories on Sundays because we close at 7.  I had yesterday off so that I could relax and lay in bed most of the day and read.  Today was a crazy day.  We had several people not come to work.  One kid was in Texas and was supposed to be back on Tuesday but called and said he wouldn't be back until today because he was too somber to fly.  What's up with that.  I was talking to the assistant manager about it today and she said she thought he was too sunburned to fly.  Maybe I heard the other manager wrong when she told me on Tuesday.  She's Australian and has an accent, but I think I heard her right because we were making fun.  Sunburned or somber, either way, the guy is an idiot.  Some people now just don't have a sense of responsibility.  I finished the day with a trip to Costco and Smiths since we were running out of food to eat.  I really need to plan dinner better so we don't end up eating frozen or fast food.  Even though I don't believe in diets anymore, I have been a little curious about the volumetrics diet and also a book called Eat This Not That.  Volumetrics apparently teaches you what foods to eat to get more for your calories.  Like popcorn, you can eat quite a bit more in volume that other alternatives like chips or crackers.  Sounds like good tips for someone like me that loves to eat a lot and can pack it in.  Eat This Not That just shows you the difference in calories of similar foods like a quarter pounder with cheese at Mcdonalds has 200 calories less than a whopper with cheese from Burger King.  Sounds not too difficult to me.  I don't like to be restricted on what I can eat.  Like bread, it can't be banned completely because I am an addict.

  

At work we have growing polygamy section because of the raid in Texas of the FLDS compound.  I've read a few reviews and found some of them pretty sad.  Some of them not getting the fact that the FLDS and the LDS church are different and don't practice the same things.  Some reviews called the LDS church a cult.  I consider myself a very liberal person and don't have any problems with other people's beliefs.  Who am I to tell someone that something they believed in their whole life is wrong and criticize them for it.  When religion starts to break the law by forcing children into arranged marriages with people 3 times their age and calls murder a "blood sacrifice", that's where the line should be drawn.  I have never felt like I was "brainwashed" growing up, or forced to do something in the church that I felt was utterly wrong.  Nobody should be force fed any religion, and people should be free to practice the religion of their choice regardless of if others agree with it.  It is convenient how people turn a blind eye to the atrocities that were committed in the history of their own religions and then point the finger at mistakes made in the early history of the LDS church.  The Popes haven't always been the example of piety the leaders of the Catholic church should have been.  They were plagued with corruption, greed, murders, and also fornicated and had illegitimate children.  How many years has there been killing over the Holy Land?  The other day I found several copies of The Book of Mormon that a customer had moved to the Fiction section.  I can't believe someone would be that offended by a religion that it would drive them to do stuff like that.  Why not move books about Buddhism, or Islam into the fiction section?  How about Christianity?  All are different religions which others don't believe in or agree with.  People can be so ignorant.  If it's not hurting anyone, then leave them alone.  What I found interesting when I read Escape was that when Carolyn escaped polygamy, the only way she was able to pay her bills at first was because she miraculously got a job sewing FLDS style clothes for the series Big Love on HBO.  I know some people protested this series when it first came out, and I have never seen it so I can't say that it is a bad reflection on the LDS church.  I only found it ironic that a show that people were angry about, helped a woman and her 8 children survive after they escaped polygamy.  God works in mysterious ways I suppose.  I would love to hear other people's thoughts about this topic!