Cerebrate Good Times

If my car was hit... by the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol van bringing me a check for $10 million. If Hollywood sank into the ocean. If my

The preceding post is an article I wrote for the e-newsletter sent out by yourldsneighborhood.com. Back when I was on Blogger, I used a separate blog for that, but I'm just combining everything on here. If you don't like that, you're a terrible person.

By Joel Hiller Most people who know many latter-day saints would agree that members of the Church are, as a group, happy. In the media we are often portrayed as excessively cheerful and optimistic. Obviously, this mostly stems from the fact that living the gospel naturally brings us happiness—for me, the prospect of exaltation makes up for a lot of rainy days in this life, and the blessings that come through obedience are undeniable. But we are also specifically counseled in the scriptures to “be of good cheer,” and Church leaders have advised us that enduring to the end means more than simple survival. An eternal perspective also gives us insight into the need for trials, however. Few members of the Church would deny that great blessings can come to us through overcoming the tribulations we all face. None of us will escape trials in this life, and many of our most severe tests can bring about life’s greatest joys. Parenthood, for example, is one of the greatest responsibilities we can...

One day, when I was a teenager, some friends and I had several boxes of those snaps that you throw on the ground during fireworks season. For some reason, we decided to come up with a creative way to use them. In the end, one of us (possibly me; I have largely repressed my memory of the incident) suggested that we unwrap them all and combine their minuscule amounts of gunpowder to make a super snap. So, we got a paper towel and sat on my friend Krista’s porch, unwrapping the snaps and pouring their contents onto the paper towel. Star formation is very interesting, aside from all the math. It turns out that one way a star ignites is through gravitational collapse , which occurs when the mass of a dust cloud becomes so great that it collapses in on itself, heating up to the point that the fusion reaction begins. So anyway, there we were, sitting on the semi-enclosed porch, with our heads close together over the ever-growing pile of explosives . And then the pile reached the Jeans mass , ...

It was a weird Saturday. This morning I decided to take Sam so he and I could get our hair cut. But today was the Salt Lake Marathon, and our house is in the middle of the loop, so we can only go a few blocks east and west. When I explained the delay to Sam, he said, "We'll never get there, and my hair will grow the size of the moon!" We did eventually get our hair cut, and then I went for a run. It was nice to run 10 miles for the first time in a year. And I managed to get sunburned a bit, which was something I wasn't expecting this early in the year. After that, I took the kids to Cabela's, because we looked at their website and it looked like just a fun store to hang out at. I'd never been there, and I wanted to give Katie a break. so we went and looked at all the taxidermied animals. Allison wanted to touch all of them, and Sam kept trying to convince me that he needed a giant, stuffed shark pillow (we compromised on a less expensive toy gun). Then tonight...

So if I ever send a song to Katie, she is mainly concerned with the lyrics. She wants to know exactly what it's saying, regardless of how it sounds. A friend at work is the opposite. He doesn't really care what the lyrics are; it's the sound of the song that he cares about. So my question is, are most people like that? I personally care about the sound at first, and then if it's enjoyable I will look up the lyrics. Both parts have to come together for me. Is anybody out there primarily a music/lyrics person?