Les Cuisses de Grenouille

I just finished reading Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, and like the Foundation series it focuses on how one event can shape history/destiny. Adding to that UNLV has had its best season in basketball since Tark the Shark left amid scandal in the early '90's. And thinking of UNLV and the books that I've recently read have gotten me to thinking about many of the events that have helped shaped my life, several of which had UNLV as their backdrop.

I'd say my first real defining moment took about 2 years. Everything that happened up to that point really feels like a wonderful prelude to my life. The friends that I had growing up and through high school helped me survive as a teenager must, and gave me the positive enforcement I needed not to do anything incredibly stupid. The BoB will forever be the best friends I could have ever hoped for.

My mission, when I look back at it, feels like my beginning. I am was longer, the wild zit faced scrawny white boy of the '90's. I calmed down considerably, my faced cleared up and I got a farmers tan. France shaped me. I suppose that's why I hated it for so long. I didn't love it like I should have.

I now think of it as home, and I love the people of my mission. I wonder what I would be like now if I had felt the same way while I was there.

I'm sure I'll write about other events of my life that have helped shape me (nursing school is one of them), but for now I'll leave it with the first big one.

By the way, UNLV beat BYU in the MWC Championship game. I love it when BYU loses (I also like it when U of U loses).

P.S. I may love the Bordelais and the Bayonnais, but Parisians are still assholes.