Gay Guy in Seminary Day 145 (Shroom Walk)

I realized recently that the area I live in is inundated with mushrooms. They're everywhere, and they come in all different shapes, sizes and colors. Every since I was little, I have been obsessed with mushrooms. I think it's 'cuz they can be so weird. Anyway, it has been a lifelong dream of mine to pick wild mushrooms and cook and eat them. While I was on a walk 2 days ago, I noticed some purplish mushrooms that looked like one of the edible mushrooms I have seen in mushroom guide books.

I did some research, and it turns out that they were probably blewitt mushrooms, one of the most common edible mushrooms in the Bay Area. Blewitt means "blue hat". Because of their unusual coloring, it is basically impossible to misidentify them with any other mushroom that grows in the area. To be on the safe side, I took a spore print by placing one of the caps on a dark piece of paper overnight. If they were indeed blewitt mushrooms, they would have a white or light beige spore print.

Sure enough, the spore print was white!

This big one was infested with fly larvae, so I had to throw it away :-(

I'm gonna cook the other two tomorrow and eat a little bit to see if I have any kind of negative reaction. The websites say that some people can have an allergic reaction, even if the mushrooms are normally safe for most people to eat. If nothing happens after a week, I'll eat the rest of it. If something bad happens to me... you know why...

Because of my fascination with mushrooms, I took my camera on my walks yesterday and today to digitally capture some of the more interesting varieties. These are some of the mushrooms growing around the campus and surrounding neighborhoods:

This one felt like a deflated balloon.

This one kind of looks like one of the pictures I've seen of oyster mushrooms, but it is growing out of the ground, so I can't be sure. It could be growing from wood buried beneath the ground, but I don't feel like digging to find out.

These button mushroom looking things grow everywhere. I wish there was some way to know for sure that they were safe to eat, 'cuz that would mean free food everywhere popping out of the ground!

This guy was growing out of a cliff from the root of a eucalyptus. The whole scene was very "natury/fantasy" looking.

My first banana slug! I didn't realize until today that they lived here. This guy was HUGE!!! He was sitting on top of a big yellow mushroom... kind of Alice in Wonderlandy.

These one's take the prize for weirdest mushroom I have ever seen in my entire life! They had this weird greenish gray slime inside that smelled pretty bad.

I think they start out as these white clusters and then the red ball thing bursts out of it.

When the mushroom dies, it looks like a bag of exploded guts.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of mushroom land!

Gay Guy in Seminary Day 100 (100th Post!!!)

In honor of the 100th blog entry for Jesus High for the Gay Guy, I offer 100 things I have learned so far while in seminary.

In no particular order...

1. Seminary is hard.

2. Making new friends is always cool.

3. If you cook it, they will come.

4. The Bible may not be exactly what you think it is.

5. The Bible is exactly what you think it is.

6. Magic: The Gathering is still one of the best games ever invented.

7. It's easy to be away from home when you are too busy to think about it.

8. Procrastination is part of who I am; there doesn't seem to be any sense in fighting it.

9. As much as I would like one, I may need to accept the fact that I do not have a green thumb.

10. SFTS is one of the most liberal places on the planet.

11. San Francisco Presbytery is not.

12. While it seems like I am able to drink large quantities of alcohol, all it takes is one glass of wine for me to feel tipsy.

13. In certain instances, you can substitute apples for onions.

14. Mace is essentially nutmeg on crack.

15. If you don't do laundry on a regular basis, you have to start wearing clothes that you don't usually want people to see you wearing.

16. If you put off refilling your prescription for too long, you come dangerously close to not being able to take your pills.

17. Just because you can ditch class, doesn't mean that you should.

18. Straight A's are not worth the trouble.

19. God is not as much of a stickler as I thought he was.

20. The Holy Spirit just might be female... what that means in "divine" terms, I have no idea.

21. Living next to a bell tower that goes off at 8:00 in the morning sometimes sucks.

22. Living next to the dumpster when the garbage truck come by at 6:00 in the morning sucks even more.

23. Service at a cafe will be less than stellar if the cook does not show up for work.

24. Grocery store bakeries suck.

25. A good burger is a wonderful thing.

26. Everyone worships a different way. God is still God.

27. Baptists are not as scary as people would have you believe.

28. Neither are pagans.

29. A light saber should be nowhere near a pagan ritual.

30. Neither should fake candles.

31. If there is a ghost at SFTS, it is most likely benign.

32. It is physically impossible for me to read 300 textbook pages a week and still be able to do everything else.

33. Chicken fat makes the best chicken soup.

34. Sometimes, when people are telling you their problems, the best thing to do is just listen.

35. People have issues and you just need to accept that.

36. The kitchens at Oxtoby may be small, but you can still cook wonderful food in them.

37. If someone drinks a bottle of wine or more a day, they probably have a multitude of wine corks lying around waiting for someone crafty to use them.

38. You can never predict when the mail will come in San Anselmo.

39. People in Northern California are "idiosyncratic" drivers.

40. Mt. Tamalpais only looks like a sleeping woman if you are looking at it from the right angle.

41. The Bay Area is one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever seen in my life.

42. The ferries from Larkspur to San Francisco are slower on the weekends because they use the older ferries.

43. Taking the bus is not any faster or cheaper than the ferry, or so I've heard.

44. Pawpaws taste like mango.

45. $30.00 chocolate doesn't really taste much different from $10.00 chocolate.

46. A 5 second video really can be one of the funniest things you've every seen. (I'm talking to you "dramatic groundhog.")

47. People say they will visit you, but they won't.

48. People visiting is fun, but it totally kills your study time.

49. Living on the 4th floor gives you a really great view of your surroundings.

50. Living on the 4th floor makes it hard to do laundry.

51. If you leave rice in a rice cooker for 2 weeks, it will become dry, brown and hard.

52. That stuff that cleans mildew off of grout actually works!

53. Compost buckets smell really, really, really bad.

54. Just because you think something is really cool/fun/beautiful doesn't mean that other people will think the same.

55. Decaf still has caffeine in it.

56. If you really focus, you can write a 5 page paper in 2 or 3 hours.

57. If you don't, it will take the whole day.

58. Driving in San Francisco sucks.

59. Parking in San Francisco sucks.

60. The public transportation is supposedly good, but I haven't really tried it yet except for the ferries.

61. facebook can and will take over your life. (This means you farmville, even though I've never played you.)

62. So will Magic: The Gathering. O_o

63. The longer you put off doing the dishes, the harder it is to start them.

64. A dryer sheet in the bottom of a trash can will only help so much.

65. You will not get a ticket for smoking marijuana in Marin County. (Disclaimer: I do not know this from personal experience.)

66. Bigotry is alive and well.

67. Large corporations are by and large evil incarnate. If anyone has proof to the contrary, please let me know.

68. Even when you think there is a slight possibility you may run into someone you know when you go somewhere, it is still shocking when it happens.

69. The only way to get comfortable speaking in front of people is to just do it.

70. When you need to print something to turn in 5 minutes before class, the printer will not work.

71. Just because someone calls themselves or is referred to as a bishop/priest/father/pastor does not necessarily mean that they are.

72. When someone says that Disneyland is not the happiest place on earth, this has no effect on its actual status as the happiest place on earth.

73. Just because a guy wears a certain type of shoe, it doesn't mean that he's gay... or does it???

74. Tickets for the Winchester Mansion are WAYYYYYY overpriced.

75. Price matters, even if someone else is paying for you.

76. If a place offers free food to veterans on Veterans' Day, then that place will probably be busy on Veteran's Day.

77. Just because a person is old, that does not give them an excuse to be rude.

78. Learning is easier when it's fun.

79. You really can relate bunnies to most things.

80. If store employees see an underage person touch your wine bottles, they will not sell the wine to you.

81. But, you can always go back to buy them later.

82. Books/articles will not read themselves.

83. If a person's beliefs are strong enough, they will often be incapable of hearing anything contrary to those beliefs.

84. They will also think you are stupid/unreasonable/crazy.

85. Just because a church body is in California does not mean that it will be liberal.

86. Just because people are from the South does not mean they will be conservative.

87. Niacin will make you sweat profusely.

88. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a cheap and quick breakfast.

89. If a group of people is of any kind of decent size, you will find people that like Firefly.

90. A dot is a lot more significant in Hebrew than it is in English.

91. People thought EXTREMELY differently about things 100/500/1,000/5,000 years ago than we do now.

92. Drugs have as much to do with the context within which they are used as their chemical component.

93. Icons are not as strange as protestantism would have you believe.

94. You cannot plagiarize yourself.

95. If you study long enough, you will get a study high. (Thank you ketones.)

96. A new wool rug will shed like crazy. (I have yet to figure out when it will stop shedding.)

97. If the wind blows something off of your balcony once, chances are it will do so again.

98. Although $5.00 for lunch isn't that bad, it's a lot of money when the food isn't that good.

99. Real falafel is green.

100. It's called "breaking the seal" for a reason.

LOL, when I started this post I was totally prepared for going back and changing the title because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to think of 100 things. I could probably make the list longer, but I won't torture you all. On the bright side, you don't even have to go to seminary to learn any of this, now! So far, this seminary thing has been an amazing ride. Let's see what the next 100 days bring!

Gay Guy in Seminary: Day 7 (Luke Winchester)

My parents and I went to Winchester Mansion today. That place is as crazy as the lady who built it. Please see the "door to nowhere" in the above picture. All the posts in the house are installed upside down, there is a staircase that leads to the ceiling and a chimney that stops 4 inches short. One room has a window in the floor. The lady thought she had to keep building lest she be haunted by all of the people killed by Winchester firearms. I know for sure that one couple I saw was gay, my gaydar totally pinged when I heard one of them talk, and there were to other pairs of men that could have been.

We went for Korean food after, which was actually really disappointing considering we were in the Bay Area.

I already have an assignment for school, even though classes don't start until September 8. I have to read the Book of Luke twice. We were waiting at my aunt's house for her to get back from shopping, so I was able to get one read through done in "The Message" version. I plan to do the second reading in the "Good News" version. I know, I know, I need to get a "grown-up" version of the Bible, but I really don't understand what the big deal is. One of my professors for the Lay Leader Training Program even said the "Good News" version is a very good translation. Oh well, I plan on getting a "New International Version" in the very near future.

I was surprised at how emotional I got reading certain parts, especially the part where Peter denies that he knows Jesus three times. I just felt so bad for him!

I move in tomorrow! Woo hooooooo!!!!!! My friend Amber just texted me and said she wasn't coming to help. BOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Now: Eating Chinese food and watching my dad and my aunt watch Chinese TV