I apologize, but this post became very random. But hey, it was sparked by an email I wrote to Dan Myers yesterday, coupled with a dream of old friends I had last night, so OF COURSE its gonna be random:

One more exam and this semester is finished. Unfortunately I'll be spending a significant portion of break writing two 50 page memorials for the Jessup International Law competition I somehow got duped into. Not only is it really complicated law, and far afield from my precious patents, but its also just different. I won't call the judges "Your Honor" but rather "Your Excellency"... Sometimes I feel like our country has too much pride, and that we need to change so badly, but things like this remind me of how lucky I am to be a citizen of the United States of America.

Again and again I take for granted that this nation was founded by noble men possessing honor, upon true principles of freedom and light. Our nation DOES deserve a high degree of reverence, especially when one considers the hollow, self-honored aristocracy of "excellency" that continues to hold sway in the outside world.

Only a few months ago I was in DC, and I felt so much awe and gratitude for the amazing country that God literally shaped with his own hands. And oh how fast those memories fade, being replaced so quickly with silly things like the laws of intellectual property or evidence. Alma and his progeny spoke truly in their counsel to remember, remember.

Anyhow, I had a dream last night of old friends, and I woke up this morning feeling all sorts of ways, happy for having such good friends in my life, sad for having not talked to so many of them for so long, anxious not only about all the grades I'm going to receive shortly but also about choices made very long ago, and not so long ago.

...I'm not describing this very well, because it sounds negative, when really its refreshing to feel strong emotion after weeks of just grinding away at the books. And although I haven't made sense of life as a whole, or the dream I had, I realized I just need to remember. I need to remember the morning I was vacuuming the Math Lab in the Talmadge building, when I felt the Spirit so strongly reassuring me of this course in life. I need to remember the brief, quite moments that I have had even in the last two weeks, when I have come home at 2AM and softly checked on my sleeping sons, and realized how precious a gift I have been given. I need to remember the moments in the temple when I made specific covenants with God, promising to obey his laws.

Honestly, this whole blog is premised on my desire to adventurize everything, because literally I desire to have real, exhausting, dirty adventures a THOUSAND times more than money or fame or fancy things. But when I properly contemplate life, adventure is silly when it stands next to the Kingdom of God. Or maybe more properly said, the adventure that is the Kingdom of God far exceeds any mountain or ocean that is there to enjoy. That is why this nation is so amazing, because it is the foundation upon which this kingdom is built. It was graced with the trailing clouds of glory of the restoration. I feel strongly that this nation is the mountain out of which the Church was cut without hands. And it is an adventure worthy to fill the whole earth.

God Lives, and those who know it have so much to be grateful for. Work hard, there is much to do. I hope that there are plenty of gritty adventures for me and my family to enjoy. Just remember.