I just wanted to direct your attention to Jana’s experience of the disciplinary council. She’s a tough woman, but I acknowledge that this has been difficult for her, so I hope you’ll treat her with civility and compassion. I’ll try to fill some of the gaps in her recounting (when I was brought into the [...]

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Bang…bang…bang…bang…bang…bang. Were those gunshots? Firecrackers? Was that screaming? If it was gunfire, there were so many shots–was someone on the rampage? I told CatGirl to get down and I locked the doors. I called the police but the dispatcher put me on hold. And kept me on hold. I finally hung up. It was obvious [...]

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Jana completed her 31+ mile race across the open water from Newport Beach to Avalon yesterday. I’m so proud of her! In one day, she had her first outrigger race over 10 miles, her first ride on the Pacific in a motor boat, first swims on the open water miles away from any shoreline, and [...]

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“On The Pier” (taken on 9/11/01) is Creative Commons licensed by *Hiro. July 2nd, 2001 is Mind on Fire’s birthday. The birthing process was painful, since I hand-coded the site and put much more effort into the design and scripty goodness than I do now. Here’s kind of what it looked like on July 23rd [...]

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The most common question aimed at me in the past day is why I’m bothering to go to this council at all. This query has come from the devout, from former mormons, from irreligious friends. It certainly would be easier on me, on Jana, on the men in that high council room if I didn’t [...]

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Jana and I had a great anniversary weekend. Thank you, everyone, for your well-wishes. We had dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant, fit in a Saturday afternoon beer and cheese tasting (serendipitously running into @clankyrobot and friends), lost a couple of hours in what may be the OC’s last great used bookseller (The Bookman in [...]

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One bright morning a childhood ago, Jana and I knelt across an altar, our right hands clasped in one of the secret grips of Melchizedek. A kind old man proclaimed that by God’s authority we were “sealed for time and all eternity.” With this ritual, we began our life journey together. We stripped the green [...]

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When I was a kid, on the first day of school (usually in the fall), I would wander the playground and find a leaf. It had to be a nice looking leaf, one that spoke to me, somehow. I would then turn it over (I’m not sure where I picked this habit up, presumably from [...]

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I have 5 sisters, plus a mother and an aunt. I will not likely get a chance to eulogize my father at his funeral. I also don’t believe in the “he was a great man who never made any mistakes” brand of eulogies. For myself and for him, I’d like a Speaker, to Speak the [...]

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I’m happy. This is a very strange feeling for me and one that was foreign. But I’d been noticing it of late: things don’t piss me off, my short fuse has gotten longer, and I generally approach things with equanimity. And people. I like people now. It was hard for me to identify this fact [...]

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