Birth control

This infuriates me, that some men can just say, "Oh, I don't really like condoms, I refuse to use them." I understand that some people are allergic to latex or what have you, but there are other kinds of condoms. Do they have any fucking idea what women go through with birth control? I've been on three kinds: the pill (don't remember which one exactly, think it was Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo), NuvaRing, and now Mirena. The pill and NuvaRing didn't have really bad side effects for me, but remembering to do something at a specific time is a pain in the ass, and if you forget and take a pill even a couple hours later than normal, back to condoms. I'm so happy that my local Planned Parenthood has a free IUD month, so I only needed to pay about $250 for my Mirena, just the cost of the procedure if I remember correctly. Even that was almost out of my price range. Even though the Mirena is way more convenient, I've become incredibly moody and emotional while using it. I got in a huge fight with one of my closest friends because I hadn't realized what an asshole I'd been since I got it, and I cry all the damn time now, when I used to cry maybe twice a year. But some dude gets to refuse to use a condom because it's slightly uncomfortable for him. Fuck those guys.

I'm a woman who hasn't wanted to have kids since I was a teenager, and it is completely ridiculous that many places would hesitate to give me a tubal ligation or other form of permanent birth control. I guess since I'm still halfway young and don't have any kids, I couldn't possibly know my own mind well enough to know that I don't want children (because really, what kind of woman in her right mind doesn't want to spend the rest of her life raising children? Ugh). I did recently find out that one of the Planned Parenthoods in Des Moines does the Essure procedure, and I need to call and find out more about that. Permanent, non-hormone-based birth control sounds so wonderful to me.

And just as a side note, when I worked at a job that actually offered insurance (albeit shitty insurance), they wouldn't cover my yearly OB GYN visit. Apparently they'd rather I had undetected cervical cancer, which seems a little confusing to me...I mean, isn't it a whole lot cheaper to treat if it's caught early? Or maybe they were just hoping I'd die from it before it was noticed.

Oh my god, you deliver pizzas?!?!

So I was in my Spanish class the other day, and one of my classmates seemed incredibly, all-out-of-proportion excited when he found out I deliver pizzas. I found out the next class period why he was so excited when we had to work in pairs and he zeroed in on me.

"Tell me your crazy delivery stories!" was what he opened with.

"Sí, desayuno a las siete de la mañana," I loudly replied as our professor passed near us.

I didn't realize that my job was so exciting. I mean, I really only have a few stories, and most of them have to do with me being an idiot.

The winner of the awkward moment prize was when a mom ordered a pizza and assumed it would get there after she got home from work. It didn't. Apparently in her world, half an hour is equivalent to nearly an hour. I had to wait around her house for almost half an hour with her 12-year-old son, who was dressed only in boxers, and apparently didn't have a problem with hanging out with a stranger in his underwear. It might not have been weird if he just sat on the couch with a blanket or something (and if their house wasn't covered in Bible verses), but he was all over the place, bending over to play with the dog, talking to me, trying to see if he could find his mom's checkbook so he could forge a check so I wouldn't have to wait. I'm just imagining his mom coming home and finding a 27-year-old woman hanging out with her nearly-nude 12-year-old son and somehow thinking I encouraged this. Luckily, right before his mom got home, he went back and put some clothes on.

There was one time I surely startled a man with my grace by nearly face-planting off his stoop. We exchanged pizza and money, and for some reason I thought his stoop was much bigger than it was, so when I turned around to go, I unexpectedly stepped down and performed some crazy hop and twirl to avoid falling, then landed safely on his sidewalk. I looked up at him, still standing in the doorway with a shocked look on his face, and just grinned, gave him a thumbs up, and shouted, "I'm okay!" and scurried back to my car.

Weather is a big problem when you drive for a living. There was one time I was at a house that I'm pretty sure hadn't shoveled their driveway all winter, so it was just a huge sheet of ice. It was getting to be springtime, so on top of this sheet of ice was about an inch of water. I managed to make it to their door, but on the way back, after I'd already opened my car door and was almost to safety, my foot betrayed me and I ended up half sitting in a gigantic puddle. I got to work the rest of the day with soaking wet pants.

They make us drive no matter how bad the weather is, and one day there was a terrible storm, and everything was covered with smooth, clear ice. Driving on that was like trying to drive on oiled glass. I would park my car and it would just immediately slide into the nearest curb. I slid up a curb into a snow bank at the bottom of a hill (thankfully it was a T intersection and I didn't just slide out into traffic), and nearly took out someone's mail box because my car started sliding sideways into the curb as I was going ten miles an hour down a residential street.

The worst weather-related incident though was when I thought that I was going to freeze to death. There was a blizzard going on, and I was trying to find a street that wasn't on our map, because it was just recently added. As such, it was right on the outskirts of town, where there was no wind break and the snow was so thick I couldn't see anything but white. I was blindly driving down the street, when I suddenly stopped. I tried to reverse, no luck. I could hear my tires spinning. I got out to see that there was a huge snowdrift across the entire road and which was almost 3o feet long. I had driven right into it. I put on my gloves and scarf and pulled up my hood. I didn't have a shovel in my car (something I'm going to invest in before this winter), so I got down on my knees and started scooping away snow with my hands. After about a minute, I had to get back into my car to warm up. I had snow frozen all over my face, and as I sat in the heat, everything thawed and I was soaking wet. I called the store and let them know I wasn't going to get the pizza to the customer any time soon, and told them I'd probably need to call a tow truck. Then I went back outside to try to clear my wheels, and my pants immediately froze to my legs. The blowing snow had mostly filled in what I had managed to scoop out on my first try. I think I made about another minute before I got back into my car to thaw out again. I thought I saw something through my windshield, and oh thank goodness, there was a snow plow! I got out and talked to the driver, and he said he would call a tow truck for me. After about half an hour, I started to doubt that the tow truck was going to show up, and that was when a few men came out of one of the houses, all carrying snow shovels and helped me dig around my car. Even with the tires cleared and with people pushing on the front, I couldn't back out. I had hit the drift hard enough to be stuck on top of the snow, so my tires couldn't get any purchase. I eventually managed to communicate to the men (none of whom spoke a word of English) that help was coming for me, so they didn't have to stay outside. They returned to their house, and I sat in my car and cried, because I actually thought that I might freeze to death or die from a shortage of oxygen (I didn't know if anything was blocked up with snow, so I wasn't sure if I should run my car and fill it up with fumes). Luckily, the snow plow came back and plowed away all around my car, but I still couldn't move because I was perched on snow! Another driver showed up and took my pizza so he could deliver it (I'm sure very cold at this point) free of charge to the unlucky customer. At that point, the men from the house came back out and shoveled as much as they could out from under my car, and it was just enough that, with them pushing, I got my car moving. I jumped out and yelled thank you to the men and made some sort of hooray/hugging gesture (yeah, I don't know how well it communicated "Holy shit, I love you guys so much and you are the best!" but that's how I meant it). I eventually made it back to the store and immediately took off my shoes and wet socks and wrapped my feet in paper towels (I didn't know what else to do) for a while. Luckily my shift was close enough to over that they just let me go home. Plus there was no way in hell I was going back out there.

Completely non-weather related, into the realm of crazy people: I showed up at an apartment with a free pizza for someone who had a credit on their account, though they still owed the $2 delivery fee. I was 10 or 15 minutes late since the other driver was late for his shift. I went up to the apartment and they were waiting for me with the door open. The man took the pizza out of my hand and immediately said, "You're an hour late, I don't owe you nothing," and tried to shut the door in my face. I still had my foot holding the door open though (I usually hold the door open with my foot since the person I'm delivering to and I both have our hands full) and I said, "Wait, you still owe the $2 delivery fee!" The man once again said, "You're over an hour late, we don't owe you nothing, and we never heard about no delivery fee," to which I replied, "My manager specifically told me before I left that she told you about the fee," which she had. Then he told me that he was going to call the cops because I wouldn't let him shut his door, and I, slightly bewildered and getting outraged, said, "If you want to call the cops, go ahead. You just stole a pizza from me." Then there was more of him talking over me as I tried to explain that we don't have a policy to give you free things if we're late, to which he responded, "Are you testing me? Are you testing me?!" and I finally let him shut the door because I could see I wasn't getting anywhere. We no longer deliver to that address.

I don't have any stories about people answering the door naked or anything (though on football game days where everyone is drinking, I've been offered a beer more than a few times, and not just by young people), but it's an eventful job, to say the least.

Fall and school and faire!

So I was going to try to be all adult and responsible and not volunteer at the Des Moines Renaissance Faire this fall, and instead stay home and work and do homework. That resolution lasted until the day before faire started and I saw all my rennie friends on Facebook getting ready to head to either the Kansas City or Des Moines faires. So I shot off a last-minute email to the guy who runs the thing, asking if I could just stop by and work whenever I have time, and he said that was cool, so hooray! I won't be able to be there every day or anything, but I'll be there for two or three days, so that will give me my faire fix for a while at least. And I'm hoping to be able to go to KC the final weekend (Oct 16th & maybe 17th, depending on how I'm feeling), but I don't exactly have anyone to go with. E maybe kinda wants to go, but it's expensive, and he's cheap. I totally want to dress him up as a gypsy though. He would make an excellent one. I'm sure there will be people there who I know, but it's nice to have someone to drive down with, and to share a hotel or tent with.

School's going all right so far. Spanish class is kicking my ass. It seems like we just have so much homework. In fact, I should be working on that right now. I need to finish an assignment then study for a test I have to take tomorrow. I'm absolutely loving my new major though. I'm going to sound like a nerd here (uh, when don't I?), but holy crap I love linguistics. I'm so happy I switched from English. Even just two weeks in, I'm looking at language completely differently. It's so neat!

But back to what's actually on my mind these days. Fall is really the time I start jonesin' for faire. The smell of campfires and when it starts to get a little cooler at night just drives me crazy. It's bizarre, and I don't know that anyone who isn't really into faire could understand it. Or want to. They probably look at it like I look at people obsessed with sports.

Sad little girls

At work yesterday, I rang a doorbell and was greeted by a young girl who looked up at me in surprise and exclaimed, "I didn't know girls could work for (national pizza chain)!" Her dad pushed her back and said, "Of course they can," and proceeded to pay me and take his pizza. As I was walking to my car, I turned around and there she was, face pressed up against the glass staring at me, so I smiled and waved, and she grinned and waved back.

This kind of broke my heart. Even in this time, little girls aren't aware that they can have any job a boy can. And it's not as if this were a four-year-old, she was at least seven or eight, so she's had some time in school.

I'm starting to wonder if the majority of people in the U.S. are getting too complacent about feminism and sexism. We figure we're in a pretty good place. I'm guilty of it myself. Earlier this year as I was watching one of Obama's speeches, he mentioned we need to get women's pay equal to men's, and my first reaction was, "Huh? You mean we haven't yet?" For some reason, I thought that we'd already cleared that hurdle. It really woke me up to the fact that I hadn't been paying attention.

So many people believe that we can't backslide; that since we've come this far, we can never go back to outlandish, cruel oppression of women. One needs only to look at Iran to see that it's quite possible, and with the ultra-conservative religious right trying to grab all the power they can, I don't think it's completely out of the question in the U.S.

It's a really small thing, but I'm happy that I have a job which is traditionally male-dominated, especially if it'll remind a few little girls that they can have any job they want; that they're every bit as important as little boys.

Iowa Secularists Conference 2010!

Yesterday (July 17th) I made the short trek to Des Moines to attend the 5th annual Iowa Secularists Conference. It was the first time I'd ever been to any sort of organized godless meeting, and I was super excited. I met up with my friend Rachel beforehand to have lunch (yum, Chinese!), then we were off to the Ramada Tropics Resort.

As we were checking in, I noticed that the list of people who had pre-registered for the conference was disappointingly short. Over the afternoon and evening, the numbers fluctuated between around 20-25. Not a great turnout, but at least everyone I talked to was pretty great.

Things started off with a secular parenting talk, which was I guess a little weird, because only about four people there were parents, and most of the rest of us didn't want to have kids. Also, it was supposed to be a panel discussion, but somehow the panel didn't work out, so it was just led by Mike, the executive director of IS. Once it got going and people started really talking things picked up, and I thought the discussion went fairly well. People made some interesting points about how parents should expose their kids to religion when they're young, so they're not blindsided when they run into someone at daycare or school who starts talking about Jesus, and how you should teach your kids to question the reasoning and logic behind what they're told. How saying, "Cause I'm dad and I said so," isn't a good enough reason. That just trains kids to blindly follow authority figures.

Next up was Athan Petridis, a physics professor at Drake. His discussion was about countering intolerance with tolerance, but frankly, I couldn't hear a chunk of what he said, because he spoke very quietly and with an accent. He did ask some open-ended questions, such as, how do you respond to someone who consistently believes you're below them, less than them, because you're an atheist and they're religious? The audience was sort of quiet though. I'm not sure if it's because other people were also having problems understanding him, or if it was just because we seemed to be kind of a quiet group in general, except for a few outspoken folks. Honestly, I don't remember much of what was said during this part. I should've taken notes.

Randy Henderson spoke next. I tried finding a website for him, but came up empty-handed. He is an ex-pastor and spoke about Biblical prophesies and credibility problems. He gave us a couple of handouts: Biblical Prophecies/Analysis of Problem Areas, or More Precisely Debunking Biblical Prophesy, and one titled simply Credibility Problems. I thought the Credibility Problems part was more interesting, but that could be because I already knew a decent amount about how prophesies are bullshit. The list on that handout was:

1. Do not have the originals of any of the books in the Bible
2. Many of the authors of the books are unknown
3. Dating the actual writing is impossible but the compiling and writing we can only estimate
4. Authorship has been assigned by tradition in many cases--but unreliable since it was done in the ancient world to use some famous person and attach it to a work to get attention or credibility
5. Time delay--in most cases in the OT there are hundreds of years between an event and the writing of a book
6. Further time delay in that the originals are gone and copies were made and there were probably several copies made--manuscripts that are dated even later than the originals or first copies
7. Manuscript issues--variances between the manuscripts--use Ehrman's book
8. Translations from the Bible languages of Aramaic and Hebrew in the OT and Greek in the NT--to Greek texts, Latin and eventually English and other languages
9. The intent of the authors of the various books has to be assessed for bias and theological beliefs that explain WHY they wrote and to whom

His talk overall seemed pretty good, and when questions were asked, he gave very thorough (sometimes verging on rambling) replies, but I didn't really like his speaking style. He still retains that pastor cadence and tone, if you know what I mean.

Hemant Mehta's flight had been delayed, but I don't think he was actually late for his first talk, which was about how various campus secular/atheist/freethinker groups are getting recognition and getting their message out. I had a tiny bit of an, "Oooh, famous atheist! Awesome!" moment when I first saw him, since he's the first really well-known atheist I've ever seen in person. He talked about Boobquake and students chalking Mohammed on campus, and mentioned a time a reporter had done a story on Chicago-area student secular groups simply because they existed, without them doing any media-attracting deeds. Unfortunately we had technical problems trying to hook up Hemant's laptop to the projector in the room, so we had to do without pictures.

Cocktail hour! I just had one bloody mary, but it was pretty good, and not as overpriced as I thought it would be. The bar was in the same big room as the water park, so it was really humid in there and I was sweating my ass off as I talked to a lovely older woman named Ruth, who had a kickass purse with a Darwin fish and a Roxanne Conlin sticker on it. At 6:30 we headed to dinner and I was really happy to see they were serving iced tea instead of soda.

After our dessert, Hemant spoke again, this time on encouraging critical thinking in public schools. It was really interesting, especially since I'm now planning to teach, even though I don't plan on teaching children. He gave us a few exercises in critical creative thinking and problem solving which were fun to work out with the people at our table. He was asked if his atheism had ever been a problem at his job (since he teaches in a public school), and he said that one church group complained once, but since he doesn't talk about it in the classroom, his school backed him completely. That is so awesome. I've heard lately of teachers being fired for saying online that they didn't believe in god, so it's really nice to hear of school administrators actually taking a rational stance.

By this time it was around 9pm, and the conference was over. We posed for a few pictures and then headed out. For some reason I was really tired (apparently sitting around listening to people for 8 hours is exhausting), so I went straight home instead of going to see Inception, as Rachel and I had talked about doing earlier.

Overall I had a lot of fun talking to fellow atheists, hearing other people's points of view, and learning lots of new things. I've already decided I'm definitely going again next year. And guess what? The American Atheists Convention may be in Des Moines in 2011! Exciting!

Oh Ben Stein, I used to like you.

Yeah, before I found out that he was a ridiculous creationist.

I finally got around to watching Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed the other day. Luckily it was on Netflix instant viewing, so I didn't have to pay to rent it or anything. Here are the notes I jotted down as I was watching:

You're not being shut down because of some Darwinist/Evolutionist conspiracy. You're being shut down because intelligent design is not science. If you started alleging that fairies existed and nudged biological development one way or the other, no one would question you being fired. It's the same damn thing.

Idiotic cutaways comparing someone getting fired over propagating ID with beheadings by guillotine, the separation of Berlin, etc

Moronic segues with Stein speaking like he hasn't already concluded that ID is a good thing. Playing stupid while asking leading questions, so he can say, Oh, look, I'm skeptical, I'm not just engaging in ID masturbation.

Chose the most crazy sounding atheist to interview at length, the one with the brain tumor.

Oh no, the Nazis exploited Darwin's ideas to perpetrate horrible crimes, it must be evil! Oh wait, the church and religious ideas have been used way more often to perpetrate terrible acts, I wonder why *that* hasn't fallen under suspicion...

So yeah, needless to say, I found this film to be absurd and worthy of all the ridicule which has been directed toward it.

Back from a long trip

So I didn't make it to any spring renaissance faires, but I did take a big road trip with my boyfriend. We drove up to Sioux Falls, stayed with a friend for the night, then drove through to Sheridan, WY, then to Missoula, MT, and finally arrived in Seattle.

We stayed there for five nights (camping in a super rainy area is not that fun, especially when you're using a cheap tent) and did most of the touristy stuff (Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Science Fiction Museum/Experience Music Project, Aquarium, Science Center, International District). The FolkLike Festival happened to be going on that weekend, so we walked around that for a while too, but it seemed kind of lame. Unless of course you were looking for handmade/recycled clothing or jewelry. Or terrible music. Though to be fair, we were there during the day, and they probably had the better bands playing at night. At one point we sat down to eat lunch and some guy sat down near us and starting setting up to play some music, which he described as a mix between "Gregorian chants and Christian rock." We snarfed down the rest of our food and left as quickly as possible as soon as he starting "singing" about Jesus.

We also met up one night with one of my old neighbors from back home who now lives in one of Seattle's suburbs and had dinner. We spent a lot of time going out to eat, which is great when you're in a town that has a ton of choices that accommodate vegetarians. I'm not a vegetarian, but my boyfriend is. It was really difficult finding food he could eat when driving through Wyoming and Nebraska on the way home.

Since we were so close, we decided to head up to Vancouver for a night, as neither of us had been to Canada since we were little kids. We were pulled off to the side while crossing the border (I assume because E (which I will now use to refer to my boyfriend, because I'm tired of typing that out, and he has an unusual name, so I don't want to ID him by using it) looks like a damn hippie) and had to wait for a few minutes while they looked at my car and I guess background checked us or something, I don't know. It took forever to find a hotel in Vancouver, but we eventually found a fairly cheap one that was close to a lot of stuff, and spent the evening wandering around Broadway. That night I discovered that in Canada, they don't drink bloody marys, they drink Caesars, which use Clamato juice instead of tomato. They taste pretty much the same though.

The next morning we headed back south. We had decided to take Highway 101 down the coast for a little while before cutting back across to Iowa, and made it to Ilwaco, WA, before deciding to stop for the night. The next morning we stopped back in Long Beach so we could see the ocean. Despite the fact that it was cold, drizzly and windy, it was still good to see the Pacific again after about ten years. I also had some delicious seafood stew for lunch, which I was pretty excited about, since I hadn't had any seafood since we'd been on the coast (unless you count sushi, which I guess you should, heh). We continued on down the coast, taking in the beautiful scenery and pissing off the local drivers by going under the speed limit to gawk at it all.

I wish we could have spent more time on the coast, but we did have to be back home in time for me to go to work. We camped just west of Eugene that night, then cut across Oregon using highway 20, which was a mistake. That is the most boring road I've ever seen. I don't even remember which town we stayed in that night, somewhere in Idaho is all I can recall. The next day we drove the rest of the way through Idaho, part of Utah, and into Wyoming. We stayed in Laramie that night, and hightailed it across Nebraska (which takes friggin forever to drive through the long way) and back into Iowa, just in time to miss my ten-year high school reunion, which was fine with me.