Cultural Adventist

I've been meaning to write about being a "cultural adventist" and thought the concept was pretty unique. Turns out there is a damn blog with the same name. And a timeline of the term. I want to say that I was using the term before 2001, when the timeline starts. But I can't be sure, and couldn't prove it either way. Unless Eric remembers me saying something along those lines. I remember first thinking about cultural adventism (although I don't know for sure if I used that term at the time) in Boston in 1998 when we met this gay uncle who still had vegetarian food in his pantry. He had learned a new use for Big Franks, perhaps, but the food item still united us.

Unlike some of the so-called cultural adventists I've found online, I don't consider church attendance a part of cultural adventism (although it can be). There have been times in my life when I returned to the bosom of the church not because I believe it to be true, but because it felt comfortable during uncomfortable times. When living in Washington DC, I recall going to an adventist church to get a good vegetarian meal at the potluck dinner afterwards. Living in Ireland, I went to the church to meet people and managed to get a job from one of them. Even now, if I became ill, I'd want to go to an Adventist hospital. Not just because of the food, but because it would feel like home.

Cultural adventism goes beyond food and comfort, of course. It is an essential part of the nurture side of your personality. The inability to dance or play card games. A love for nature and the outdoors that comes from going to places like Jump Creek every Sabbath afternoon. These things linger -- even if you slowly become a lesbian neo-feminist poet living in a commune. Even that person, deep down inside, will pause and take notice if a news story makes it sound like a Sunday Law could be coming. And yes, even she knows where the local ABC is and goes there -- piercings and all -- every few months to stock up on Fri Chick.

Change?

Should I convert this to a porn blog in order to boost traffic and/or interest?

Reformat

A geek post . . .

I have been intending to reformat my desktop for about a year. It just gets harder and harder, though, because I bought the system in 2004. So the system restore brings me back to 2004 and I spend a weekend updating it. But it became necessary.

I had restarted the computer and was informed that some system file was missing or corrupt. It was quite a dark feeling for about two hours because I had not backed up my pictures, music, and such for a few months. With my (scratched) system restore DVD, though, I managed to get in and get a prompt. The fixboot command looked good and that must have worked, because I was able to get in upon restart to backup all my crap.

Did I mention that my DVD was not only scratched, but the DVD drive is about to die? It makes really loud noises and seems to go slower than it should (can't watch movies on it anymore). Despite this obvious difficulty, I popped in the system restore DVD and reformatted the muther. Slow and noisy, it managed to reinstall everything. Literally about 100 Windows Updates later, I'm up and running better than ever. Or at least as good as in 2004.

While doing all this, I kept thinking about a long term solution. There has to be something better than my 2004 PC, right? After all, I'm on video card 2.5 (replaced the fan on the first one, then the first one went out . . .and now this one's fan is about to need replacement). The only CD/DVD drive is shot. The hard drive is hanging in there, but does a lot of work and could go out any day (I use the computer as a DVR to record tv shows and watch them later). Time for a new computer! Except I couldn't find anything better. But that will be the subject of a future post.

Avawatz Climb

I've decided that desert peaks are more interesting than your standard mountain peak with trees. The views are just better and they tend to be less crowded (or downright abandoned). Of course, you have to get these during the winter months when the temperatures are down -- although winter mornings can be downright cold. Another downside of climbing in the winter is that the days get short -- you need an early start unless you want to be on the mountain when it is dark (which I would actually like to do someday -- the view at night must be even more spectacular).

Most recently, I climbed the high point in the Avawatz Mountains in Southern California's high desert. The range is just to the south and east of Death Valley and to the north and west of the Fort Irwin military base. I followed the climb as outlined here. It took about four hours up. I parked sooner than I should have. But the advice about parking before you get to the communications tower is good. You'll end up in the canyon below because the road is washed out if you go too far. Or you'll have to go back down the hill along the ridge in reverse -- a tough task in itself.

I did almost burn down the whole damn range when I started a little fire that morning before the hike up. A spark or something got some dry grass and it was out of control. Burned about a 10-foot area when it was all done, and I sacrificed nearly all of my water.


I also found a cool abandoned mine site on the way back down. It was better preserved than most, and had a pit mine into the ground that was covered by a few boards. I had this fantasy of coming back with a five gallon can of gasoline, dropping it down there, and then throwing a Molotov cocktail down there. Whoosh! Then throwing a bunch of other crap down there to burn. But after having already nearly burned the whole range down, that is probably not a good idea.

The first picture is from the summit looking toward Fort Irwin. The second picture is looking toward Death Valley. Neither do the view justice, particularly because I had a crappy camera and not my good one. But the day was clear with very little wind or haze and a high temperature of about 60 degrees. Perfect.

The third picture is of the mine site (see the little pan still there and the boards covering the pit). The fourth picture is down the pit.