Lafayette was everything I'd hoped it'd be and more, which isn't saying much since I expected a po-dunk Louisiana town. The hotel was more of a disappointment than I'd expected, looking like something out of a horror movie, but with all the friendliness and charm of middle America.

I enjoyed an early dinner thanks to the generosity of my boss sending me in early to enjoy the Cajun cuisine, and I wasn't disappointed there. Blue Dog cafe had mediocre art for which it's apparently locally famous, but also featured decent cajun inspired food, whatever that means. I think around here the concept of Cajun is held in high regard, much as East Texans revere their own heritage as such. I don't discount it, I just clearly don't understand it. They love Community Coffee, believe Abitas beer to be something special in the world of brewing, and extol the values of Cajun music, which as described to me is Blue Grass sung in French. We each need our own identity.

I think homebrew is God's gift to man-kind, Miatas represent a masterpiece of automotive engineering, and that dogs are not just man's best friend, but are in many ways superior to man. Understand that my sarcasm does not equal a sense of superiority, I'm an odd-duck too.

I think all of us are completely bizarre, and it makes humanity all the more amazing. I think I underestimate the beauty and complexity of people I don't understand too often. I mentally cut down people who don't drive the way I think they should, or grow up in cities bigger or smaller than my own, and it's wrong. I'm probably suffering a bout of post-business trip introspection, combined with a lack of writing, which for me is a creative outlet, no matter how base or unimaginative it may be. There's a whole host of people I disagree with and seek to debate with, hoping to prove my way of thinking, and I think part of that is a healthy search to define myself, while I also think I need to seek to understand how others see the world.

I'm simultaneously re-engaging Orthodoxy and trying to understand that perspective, while reading through Velvet Elvis, what has been described as a Post-Modern treatise on Christiantiy (or at least nearly aledged to be). I feel in many ways I'm coming to see Post-Modernism as being simply a dose of common sense, while perhaps taken to extremes by people as many good things are. I've always felt that absolute truth, while it exists, is in many cases un-provable, which nearly equates to unknowable. The next step for the post-Modernist might be unbelief, whereas for me the next step is to have faith in what I can't necessarily prove.

What I don't see is a serious affront to Christianity, as some of my fellow Christians see, in the belief that there's truth in nearly everything. Even the most effective lies of the devil wrap truth in them, and I don't think we should be scared to pick anything apart and accept what aligns with what we see to be true. While I treat very positively the thing I hear from those I "trust", nothing should escape scrutiny because of its source, and everything I believe is, and should be I think, open to question. It may sound like I hold nothing sacred, but I don't think that's the same thing. I think child-like faith is open to all possibilities, not blind in it's lack of critical thought. A child still questions, he just doesn't have the history of being burned to make him overly skeptical of things which may very well end up being the truth.