House Matters

Friday, 30 September 2011

Today we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. The establishment was very family-friendly: they gave out plastic fireman’s hats to the kids and there was free popcorn to snack on while we waited for our meals. Owen’s meal even came with a sundae (the kids’ menu said that all kids who clean their plate get a free dessert).

I’m pleased that we live so close to so many restaurants. In our previous dwelling, there were only four eating establishments within walking distance, and one of them was Burger King, which only barely qualifies as an ‘eating establishment’ and which we never stepped foot in the entire time we lived nearby.

Our current home has at least ten places to eat within six or seven blocks, and there might be more…we haven’t walked down every street yet.

Saturday, 01 October 2011

Today we had our first house guests (excluding people who came over solely to help us move). My sister and her husband came over for dinner.

My sister wanted to order pizza. She lives way out in god’s country (where ‘god’ is defined as ‘about an hour south of the cities’), and is to far away from any pizza place to get delivery. So, we ordered pizza. I guess it was a big deal for those country folk.

And though they didn’t come over to help with making our house more livable, my brother-in-law was able to figure out the built-in stereo. Yeah, our house came with a stereo built right into the walls. The problem was, there is a speaker outside, and I could not figure out how to shut off that speaker, and I had no desire to blast our music to the whole neighborhood (if we listened to hip-hop, of course, blasting our music for the whole neighborhood would be compulsory, but we don’t). I played around with the buttons both inside and outside for about a half hour yesterday and couldn’t get that stupid speaker to shut up. My brother-in-law figured it out in about one minute, which just confirms my theory that I have a laughably low level of common sense.

Sunday, 02 October 2011

Today I finally finished reading John Rawles’ book The Matter With Us. It took me over a month to read the book (come on, it’s been a busy month), but I polished off the last ten pages this morning.

This was an amazing book, and I’d be interested to talk with anyone else who’s read it.

Rawles subtitled his book A Materialistic Account of the Human Predicament, and that’s an apt subtitle. First, he spends several chapters detailing the matter (meaning ‘stuff’) we are made of. He explores the big bang, provides an overview of the evolution of life over the eons, and even addresses some of the problems with evolution. (Yes, there are problems with evolution.) He then points out some of the highlights of human history, and how we use metaphors to explain the world around us.

After establishing how we have arrived at this point in time, Rawles next turns his attention to the matter (meaning ‘problem’) at hand: the many ways in which human civilization could be headed for disaster. He explains why we have these problems, even using a recent British Prime Minister to demonstrate the foibles in our thinking. He ends with a chapter that he titles both “Epilogue” and “New Chapter?” to depict both of the ways the near future could play out. Summing up civilization’s biggest problems into nine interconnected issues, Rawles makes a deft case for why these are the most important issues facing us now and what we – on an individual basis – can do about them.

I received the book free with the condition I submit a book review. It’s going to be a good review, that’s for sure. It was an amazing book and, like I said, I’m curious to know if anyone else has read it.

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