The Blog of Daniel

Just my place to write without any delusions of self-importance.

A year of changes.

Here are all things you really wanted to know (or perhaps really did not want to know) about my life over the past year.

First the icky stuff...  My chronic hives went away after almost a full year of having them.  Imagine a whole year of red circles, floating from place to place all over your entire body like the Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter.  It is the very definition of the word "sucks."

Just about the same time the hives went away, I became a member of the Shangrila Ranch, a clothing optional private resort in the desert outside Phoenix.  Most people there choose the unclothed option, though it is not required.  I've always hated clothes and this finally gave me the moral and legal opportunity to extend my hatred for them to the great outdoors.

This, of course, led me to integrating my new favorite state of physical being with my old weekend past time of hiking and rekindled interest in photography.  I'm not a professional photographer, just someone who came to the realization that if you take enough photos, at couple least a couple of them have to be good.  Now I spend my weekends hiking in the buff and taking pictures of anything that looks remotely interesting.  And because you maybe thinking it, there are only a few pictures of me in that state, but I always get at least one picture of my self to remind me that I was there.  I always did it when I was wearing clothes, so I see no need to stop just because I'm not wearing any.

The last paragraph is profound to me because as a person with a disability, I was always self-conscious about how people saw my body.  What I learned is that 99.9% of the people really don't give a shit.  Daniel walks funny.  Daniel is nude.  Can someone pass the crackers please?

Also interesting is how a book had an impact on my Christian faith.  Seeing how it (my faith) started with a book (a bible) I guess another book could steer it even more towards life's answers.  The book was "Things a computer scientist rarely talks about" by Donald Knuth.  Dr.  Knuth is kindly regarded as the father of computer science.  Though the book was not written with religious intent what-so-ever, the implications of what is presented helped me to understand more the awesome love and power of God, our creator, without all the standard "God as a Santa Clause" dogma that typically sits well with those who lack an investigative mind.

Next...  This was the year that my migraines became the worst ever.  Some day's I was just wishing for sudden death.  A crack team of doctors and a cabinet full of fancy new medications have brought them under control.

More recently, Laura and I broke up.  We were together for 5 years.  Since I already wrote what I had to say about that, I won't repeat it here.  The same goes for my recent plug for Zoloft.

The final big event of the year was getting this site online.  If you're reading this, it still works.

Happy Gnu Ear!

My New Years Resolution:  Learn the appropriate usage of past tense, present tense, and future tense, and perhaps punctuation.

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