CRANBERRIES ARE GOOD FOR BLADDER INFECTIONS

This group has a great sound.  The lilt in the voice is haunting - speaks to me Irish, laddy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yam5uK6e-bQ


Ok - story time.  This is also my journal, you know....

The lead singer looks just like the gal I met in calculus class my freshman year at college when I made the biggest miscalculation of my life and went to WSU for my first year to cash in some scholarships they offered me.  Very Irish - probably cannot get more Irish than that gal.  I never did it before or since on meeting a girl for the first time - but I walked her back to her dorm room, gave her a hug and she poked her head out of her door and watched me leave.  I went around the corner and then told myself I had to go back.  I smooched her cute little mouth and walked off - telling her I would see her  in class the next day.  Very cocky - she liked brash.  I called her Calculus Woman.  And she was a calculating woman....  she was always trying to seduce me.  Even when I went over to her house to visit after I was engaged to my wife.

She had some serious problems where I remembered her missing class for extreme cramping at that time of the month.  I got my tuba playing buddy who marched with me in the football halftime show to dress up in a black raincoat, red tie and red speedo with black canvas hightops and black sunglasses and brim hat to basically flash her on the main campus on the drive outside her dorm.  He was sporting one of those Boston teddy bears that she liked and a card hoping she would get better.  I wanted to embarrass her and make her laugh.  It worked.  He jumped out from behind a sycamore tree next to the walk she was on and said, "Calculus Woman, I got somethin' for ya" and he opened his overcoat up showing the bright red speedos and the bear.  It worked - totally shocked her and made her laugh.  I was behind a tree snapping photos of that stunt.  It cost about fifty bucks for the bear, the chocolates and the outfit from the second hand store and I had to bribe him with twenty bucks - he was afraid he would get arrested for public indecency.  The twenty calmed his fears right down.  Starving college kids will do anything for a buck.........

Girls like the James Dean bad boys - even the good ones.  They know the alpha males brimming with testosterone will be able to kick some arse if needed while they are feathering their nests on the home fronts.  Nothing wrong with alpha - so long as all things are put in perspective - and allegiance and reverence is given to the God of this universe.  All things are subject to Him - including our wills.  Jesus is an alpha - but extremely well-rounded and the perfect embodiment of what a true man is.  How He is portrayed and projected by so many people is nothing short of ridiculous.  He was no weakling - he is strong, bold and yet completely submissive.  Complex, yet harmless as a dove.  Incredibly intelligent - yet not full of Himself nor His abilities.  As a real man should be.

So Jeanette and I did not last long.  She had been sexually active with a guy in high school - and I made it very clear that I was not into that.   I was going on a mission in a year.  She really tried hard to get that going - but I just went all the harder in the other direction - and almost had her coming to church - but her sorority sisters told her we sacrificed goats in our temples.... nice.....  Truth is, she felt the Spirit on several of our heart to hearts - but she did not want to give up her life including her family.  Drinking and social and focusing your life on the Savior.  Big changes....

Like all Irish, she also liked her drinking on Friday nights to start the weekend off.  So we never made it past November and it crashed - too many differences to overcome in spite of her darling Irish face and perky personality.  While I was in the MTC, I sent her a Book of Mormon and bore my testimony.  I could not stand the thought of anyone I cared for perishing.  Each girl I gave a part of my heart to, I still care for from an eternal perspective.  I really believe that we are sent down with a mission to meet people we had known - and rescue them - and in the process of rescuing them, we rescue ourselves.  Some are not capable of being loved or being rescued for the cares of the world and other reasons.