General update

Wow! We had a great turnout at the Northwest Arkansas Free Thought Society meet up last night! The group is really growing. Doc is working on a video and a play featuring our founding fathers and their sentiments regarding organized religion. I think it needs some work, but he gets the point across. The main characters are Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, George Washington and Ben Franklin. All of course were at best "deists" and some (notably Jefferson) could be regarded as atheist. Regardless of their personal beliefs, however, they all favored a secular state. Doc (and all of us) seek to dispel the notion that we were "founded as a Christian nation" and work to support separation of church and state (a phrase used by Jefferson).

IN other news... we are all starting the atkins diet. Of course to me its not really a "diet"; it's more of a way of eating that the human species was evolved to live by. So today we're rounding up all of our sugar, flower, starches, sauces.... anything with sugar, corn syrup, etc and we're tossing it all (or donating it). We have the book and Krystal is in charge of making the shopping list. Since I have lost 16 pounds in the last 2 months, and only have another 5 or so to go, I'm just going to start in the maintenance phase. I'm training for distance running and swimming, so I don't really need to go through induction I don't think. But that's exactly where Alice and Krystal are starting. So we'll have a cart load of meat, fish, eggs, cheese, and vegetables it sounds like. Fine with me.

I've managed to shave off a fair amount of time on my 2 mile run. My goal is to match my time in basic training of 13:47. I'm closing in on 15 minutes now, which is a huge improvement over my probably 18 minutes a few months ago. That's what swimming and running every day will do for ya though! A parallel goal is to do a 10k by the end of this fall. I guess I need to get to work and find one.