Walkenhorst Family

Walkenhorst Family

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Life's Little Joys

At dinner last night, at Emily's suggestion, we listed some of the little things in life that make us happy. Some of mine included 1) laying in bed just before sleep with the covers pulled up; 2) my youngest girl's angelic smile; and 3) cuddling with my wife and kids.

This morning, I thought of a few more.

Cooking with oregano - that is a fun spice! I cooked hash browns this morning and added oregano. My younger son asked why I was cooking spaghetti when he came into the kitchen. Tee hee.

Good movies - last night, we watched Cinderella III. Who knew Disney made so many cheap knockoffs of their classics? The second one was cute, but had a flimsy plot; the third one actually had a really good story. I may be immature (no surprises there), but I loved it! The basic plot is that the stepmother gets a hold of the fairy godmother's wand, turns back time, and tries to ruin Cinderella's chances with the Prince. I actually liked it better than the original.

Working as an engineer - in a meeting last week, a colleague asked me what percentage of my time I worked on technical problems. In recent weeks, the answer has been "very little." He asked because he's been facing the same frustration. I've been wondering why I got a degree if I'm not going to use it. :) I studied engineering because I love math and physics and I enjoy solving tough problems. Yesterday, I worked on a technical problem for several hours and made a lot of progress. It was very satisfying.

What are some of your favorite things?

3 comments:

  1. When I was in college I had the opportunity to take a class named Aesthetics. I don't think the class really talked about aesthetics so much, but the main purpose of the class was to explore concepts of truth. (This was a theatrical design grad class, not a philosophy class) It was one of my favorite classes I ever took. We talked a lot about the parallels between science and art and how essentially they are both seeking truth. We also discussed religion and its search for truth. This topic often led to a lot of cynicism from classmates and professors. Our entire class was based off of reading selected books, plays, etc and then writing letters to our professor about what we thought they were saying about truth and how they defined truth. One of my favorite quick reads that we discussed was "Einstien's Dreams" by Alan Lightman. It was short stories based off of Einstien's theories. Anyway, I think we could have kept that class going for years and never gotten bored. One semester was just not enough. I think I got an A-.

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  2. OK... this comment was meant for the previous article you posted, but as you can tell I don't often leave comments so hit the wrong button. Oh, well.

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  3. That sounds like a really cool class, Laura! Any field of study that seeks truth is well worth investigating. I'll have to check our "Einstein's Dreams" sometimes.

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