Have to know about the Sunny Skeptic???

Hello!  I am a militant atheist, although you would never guess that by my sunny disposition.   (Hence the name Sunny Skeptic)  I am literally happy every single day, and nothing much gets me down.

That being said, although I’m very happy, I’m also very happy to take on any argument or debate, and I will have a lot of fun with you if you present yourself to me for the verbal slaughter.

If you’re a religionut or fundagelical and are trying to promote your own blog, I won’t ever click on your link.  Other people from my page might, but I won’t.

I run the Minnesota Atheists’ MySpace page and have proven to be a pretty fine cat herder.  (A members’ words, not mine.)  It’s fun anyway.  We have more than 1,500 friends, almost all from Minnesota.  (I have added a few ‘reference’ friends that  may be of interest to our members.)

I am also the assistant organizer of the Southern Minnesota Atheists Meet Up Group, which August, Vic, and myself invented while eating pizza after a Minnesota Atheists Blood Drive.

I also have a column now for Minnesota Atheists, called, appropriately, The Sunny Skeptic.  It is mostly about Atheist Dating and Relating right now, but I have plans for it in the future.  (evil laughter)

Update:  After the column, I was asked to be on the Editorial Board for Minnesota Atheists.  After that, I was nominated to be on the Board of Directors as a Director at Large, and everyone ran uncontested, so everyone was elected.  Go us!    lol.

It's me, as a Boticelli. So fun!

Want to know about my horrible, angry, tortured life?  Here it goes!

I was brought up by my two loving, secular parents, who are still married after 35 years, and have only ever been married to each other.  Go mom and dad!  I have one little sister, and a small extended family that I sometimes get to see for the holidays if we can get together.

I live with my best friend and fiance, and we have two furry kittens who we love very much.  We live very close to his brother and wife and their two sons, our nephews, who we love with all of our hearts.  We spoil the nephews like crazy since we do not have any children of our own.

We read, play on our computers, watch documentaries and cartoons, hunt for fossils, go for bike rides and walks, and we like going to lectures, conferences and informative talks/debates, etc.  Awe is in our hearts at this amazing world and universe, and the beauty of what’s around us is never lost on us.

We are thankful every day for what we have, and feel we are lucky to have so much good in our lives.  We are not rich, but do our best to give back to others every chance we get, which includes lots of time, effort, and money, but it makes us feel good to know we’re making the world a better place.

Once in a while, we drive through the graveyard near our house because neighborhood kids have been vandalizing it, and the police don’t have time to patrol it.  We don’t even know anyone buried there, but I feel like it’s something small we can do to help.

I laugh so much, it’s sick, and I laugh really long and loud.  I laugh at almost anything, and sometimes am just driving down the road thinking of nothing and I start laughing.  Sometimes I do things to make myself laugh, like dressing my car up like a reindeer for the holidays.  Every time I see the car, or it’s shadow, or someone pointing or laughing at me, I start laughing.  I did see Genghis Blues, and there seemed to be a Tuvan throat singer in that doc who laughed almost as much as me, which was great.

I don’t like people who are hateful, intolerant or violent.  I don’t like people who are consistently negative.  I keep close friends who are tolerant, loving, and fun, and they keep me because of the same.  The only thing I’m intolerant of is hate, intolerance and violence.

I like to scrapbook and am working on some of our mini-vacations.  We have never had enough money to take a big vacation, but I’m lucky for what I’ve done so far in life.  I also lived in Manhattan for 3 years, and I consider that to be a pretty big adventure.  Bright lights, big city, and lots of fun and trouble for an 18 year old to get into, but I still think it was all for the best!

I’m fatter now than I was in high school and when I started college, but I’m still happy with how I look.  I just got my hair cut short, and it makes me feel great because I think it’s really cute.  I don’t even feel like I need to wear make-up anymore because I love my hair so much.  I still wear make-up most days though, because I LOVE to wear make-up.

I have infinite forgiveness in my heart and have forgiven a great many people for a great many things.

I also have infinite patience.  Not on my blog, but in real life.  (You can only get attacked so much before you stop coddling people and just tell it like you see it.)  In real life, I have more than infinite patience, and can make it through anything and everything.

I always say thank you to people when they do something for me, because I think it’s important to remember everyone’s feelings and I am very grateful to them.  Gratitude is important.  I have a wall in my office at work of all of the thank you’s I’ve received, and I love to look at it.  It feels good.

I bought a pillow top mattress pad for our bed after sleeping on one in a hotel.  It feels good, but it kept sliding around, so we bought some fabric velcro that you can iron on, and we attached it with velcro to a regular mattress pad, and now it works great.  That has been my latest triumph.  Update:  It’s not working so great now, but it was good while it lasted.  Next we’re going to try to sew snaps on it.  (I was just trying to get out of sewing, okay??) 

One of our hobbies is going around trying to find the best burger in our area.  We vote for Sportsman’s Grill in Owatonna, Minnesota as the number one burger, and their homemade chips are delicious.  (No wonder I’m fatter now!)    lol.

I like to wear pajamas pretty much the whole time I’m home, but I NEVER wear pajamas in public.  Ewww.

I started being more involved in Minnesota Atheists after some people we thought we could trust got freaked out by our atheism.  I don’t tell people that I don’t know that I’m an atheist, except on this blog of course, so I don’t have a lot of practice in people getting pissed about it…  I have told some people I trust, and most of them have been pretty nice.  I do get a huge share of hate mail and letters saying how I’m going to burn in hell.  The burn in hell ones don’t hurt, because I don’t believe in hell, and actually, the other ones don’t hurt either, because I’m so happy every day I don’t care! 

I don’t like to touch newspaper, rocks, chalk, or yarn.

I have devoted my life to working with adults with disabilities.  It’s work I truly love and feel passionate about, I’m good at it, and I have the job I’ve wanted for some time now.  I’m almost done with school, so then it will be even better for me at work, so that’s great.

I really like philosophy, sociology, quantum physics, astronomy, anthropology, and geology a LOT.  I wish I had been more focused when I was in college and had known better what I wanted in life!  It’s hard to know when you’re young.

So, that’s me so far. I’ll add and subtract as more things add and subtract from my life.  What do you think?  Pretty angry and awful, huh?  lol.

Update: My fiance received a letter in the regular US post from a christian threatening us. We went through the reasons such a letter could be sent, and all we could think of was intimidation. (You know, they KNOW where we live.) We are not scared, but I would like to say it’s not very kind to send a letter to someone’s home telling them to die, or threatening them in any way.

I would say most of all, it solidifies my idea that religious people are absolute crack heads who need to stay far away from me.

And I’m sorry, but even ‘nice’ religious people… You are only paving the way for this hatred by having these beliefs. Some religions tell people they don’t need to be accountable (atone for your sin later, all will be forgiven), they allow people to dehumanize others to the point of hatred and bigotry (those other people aren’t like us!), and they allow people to feel a sense of entitlement to their actions, no matter how heinous (god wants me to do this!). This gives them all license through imagination to burn down our house with us in it… Not okay. NOT okay! Get it? Please think about how your beliefs may influence others, especially those who are already a twinge ‘not right’. They need therapy and supervision, not religion.