I have a cold.

It makes it so hard to eat. I can’t breath through my mouth because I
am chewing, and you can’t open your mouth when you chew. Even if I did,
I would likely inhaled crumbs of food into my lungs, which would burn.
But I can’t breath through my nose either, because it is stuffed up.
What ensues then is a big inhale right before I take a bite. Then I
hold my breath while I chew, which is an interesting sensation. If I’ve
taken too big of a bite, then I end up chewing longer, and I start
running out of air. That gives me this frantic gasp when I’m done
chewing, and so I try to chew really fast. The whole process is really
quite funny. I sound like a starving kid scarfing between gasps of air.
Hppp. Bhaaaa. Hppp. Bhaaa.

I don’t like eating with a cold.

  I am so glad I was taught that the soul of man existed before birth and
will continue after death.  To me, that is a significant belief that
provides hope, accountability, self worth, and a desire to seek greater
things.  Knowing that you existed before you were born gives meaning to this life.  There must be a purpose to this earthly existence if your soul is bigger than this mortal span.  Why else would we come here?  Latter-day Saints acknowledge individual purposes to existence, as well as collective purpose.  We are to be tested, to see if we will seek God and follow His will.  For me, this illustrates why there is such a need for religion and spirituality.  It is because we do seek God and His will.  We have a longing to know Him based in the instincts and residual recollections of a pre-birth, eternal existence.  Knowing that we existed before we were born also elevates the status of man, giving him importance and significance.  While the teaching is not unique to Mormonism, the Church is
certainly one of the few Christian sects to emphasize and teach the
idea of a pre-mortal existence.

Knowing that we will continue to exist after we die also makes this time in mortality significant.  It makes us feel accountable because it makes us concerned about what our state will be like in the next life.  It also gives us hope that death is not the end and that we can be reunited with those who have already passed on.  A belief in the continuation of the soul is perhaps the most fundamental longing of all people in all cultures and across all religions.

Teachings pertaining to post-mortal life are more specific than on pre-mortal life.  I am grateful for the LDS notion of the spirit world.  This teaching indicates that there is a space of time between death and resurrection.  When we die, our spirits continue on with the same knowledge and experience and memory as when we died.  We have the opportunity to continue to interact with others (other spirits), and to grow and develop.  Our happiness in that state will depend on what did when we were alive–how comfortable we are with ourselves.  Those who know they did wrong or who don’t know what is going on will be fearful.  Those who know they did right will be assured of their future.  I like this idea.

Oh my goodness, I had so much fun last night.

I went up to Salt Lake City with Laura German and Sharla Carlson from my mission to go to an informal mission reunion.  It was really good to talk with them, and I felt very comfortable with them.  Sister German and I are tight–we have an understanding.  When we got the restaurant, I’ll confess to feeling really weird.  I didn’t expect it at all.  I felt . . . ok, when I started my mission, I was very afraid of rejection.  After a few months I had overcome it and was feeling very confident.  I had become a person that was well liked by the missionaries, and I was successful, so I wasn’t rejected.  Since I have come home, though, I have changed so much and have become more authentic, and therefore more vulnerable.  So when I walked in to the restaurant and saw all of these former missionaries who know me as Elder Embree, I was  suddenly filled with that fear of rejection all over again.  I felt like they didn’t know me at all, and this time rejection would be of the real me, not the version of myself I had created for the mission.  I am grateful for Laura and Drew Dayton, who do know the real me and still embrace me with fervor.  Without them, the reunion would have been very unfun.  Instead, I had a great time.

After the reunion I met up with some friends elsewhere in Salt Lake City, and we had a General Conference party that was so much fun.  So much fun.  So much fun.  More fun than I’ve had in a very long time.

You must go and see The Great Debaters.  I just saw it at the dollar theater, and it really moved me.  I don’t even know what to say about it.  You just have to go and see it.

You know, things like that make me so . . . activisty.  It just makes me want to go and advocate my cause.  To stand up for what I know to be right.  Sometimes I wish I had the guts to match this zeal despite logic and reason.

I’ve had an amazing weekend.  I’ll blog more about it later.  Meanwhile, I thought I’d share the cake I made for Easter.  I invented it myself.

Coconut Lime Cake
 
Cake:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
3 cups sifted flour
4 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Lime zest to taste
Lime Juice to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans.

To make the cake: Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream well for 6 to 8 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour with baking powder and salt.  Add flour mixture and milk alternately to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla and continue to beat until just mixed. Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Level batter in each pan by holding pan 3 or 4-inches above counter, then dropping flat onto counter. Do this several times to release air bubbles and assure you of a more level cake. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto cooling racks. Cool completely.
 
Filling:
1 heaping cupful of coconut
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup granulated sugar
Zest and juice of 1 Lime

Let mixture come to a boil. Boil slowly and stir until sugar is dissolved. Set for a few minutes, then spoon filling onto the first cake.  Place the second layer on top.  Top again with coconut filling, letting the liquid seep into the cake.  Place the third layer on top.
 
Frosting:
2 cups heavy whipping cream that is ultra pasteurized
2 tablespoons granulated white sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp. lime zest
 
In a large mixing bowl place the whipping cream, lime zest/juice, and sugar and stir to combine.  Cover and chill the bowl and beaters in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.  When chilled, beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.

Add the lime juice and zest, and whip until evenly distributed.  Frost entire cake, and then coat the cake evenly with coconut.
 

I have put my artwork online at dbebg1.deviantart.com.  Check it out!

I have been photographing my artwork to apply for the BFA in april.  Now I am going over the 30 images with my professors to pick the best 15 to use in my application.  The images that I am using for the portfolio weren’t in a format I could put up online, so I had to redo the images so you could see them.  Sorry some of the colors are off.

Also, I put a maturity content filter on the figure studies.  I promise they are not inappropriate images, but just as a precaution for anyone who may be freaked out by artistic nudity, I put them on there.  That means that you have to login to deviantart.com to see them, but it is really easy to get a login name.  They are actually really strong oil paintings, maybe my best work of all 30.

Anyway, hope you like the artwork. 

I just wrote a five paragraph essay for my Sociology 111 class.  I am ashamed and embarrassed to have resorted to third grade writing techniques in a college level course, however it did seem like what the Professor wanted.  It was the best way to respond to the prompt.  I am so ready to be done with my generals it’s not even funny.  100 level classes are insulting.

For the record, it was a damn good five paragraph essay.

I went to the Matchbox Twenty/Alanis Morissette concert last night.  Soooo much fun!  It kind of brought me back– Matchbox Twenty was the first concert I ever went to way back in May of 2003.  Unlike that concert at the United Center, though, this one didn’t make me smell like pot.  It was a pretty fun atmosphere, though significantly smaller venue than the United Center.

I am mad at Alanis Morissette for not singing Hands Clean, but she did make up for it with a joke in her performance of Ironic.  Instead of singing, “It’s like meeting the man of your dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife” she sang, “It’s like meeting the man of your dreams, and then meeting his [dramatic pause] husband.”  I was laughing.  She does a pretty good performance.

I’m glad that Matchbox Twenty is back together.  Rob Thomas was no good on his own.  Their new stuff is a lot better than their last album, although they don’t have very much new stuff.  We’ll see if this tour gives them enough energy to bounce back.

I am so excited about life.  Some recent art projects are going really well.  I am getting ready to apply to the BFA program in the Visual Arts department at BYU.  That means I’ll have to take pictures of all my artwork.  When I do, I will post the images online somewhere for you to see.  I just get so into these projects.  It’s like they consume me.

I don’t really know why I’m posting right now.  I think I started with a point and forgot what it was.