I started dating a girl named Brittany on November 13, 2006.  We were "officially engaged" (meaning I had to buy a damn ring for it) last September, and are still together (17 months now...many people thought this an impossible feat for me).  We look to get married in the future.  Don't ask when because it fluctuates.

As for my school life, I'm still majoring in Psychology and am currently working on my senior thesis, which is about the cognitive psychology aspects of bluffing in Texas Hold'em poker.  It was from a conversation with a professor about my project that my last blog grew.  You see, I'm doing a linear regression study (meaning I'm looking for certain factors that will predict a certain outcome from two possible outcomes) where I'm looking at the age, gender, perceived level of experience, level of poker-specific probabilities, perceived chances of winning a hand, and egocentrism as predictors of bluffing behavior.  It's a fun paper, but it's been hard to play poker lately because I'm, frankly, a little burned out.

I left First Baptist Church, Cookeville officially last spring and started attending First Christian Church of Sparta, a Disciples of Christ church where Brittany was a member.  I became a member there last fall.  Right now, I am involved in the newly developed video program and am helping with the development of a future contemporary service.  Unfortunately, I'll most likely be leaving this area for a good portion of the summer, and will be leaving for good next May or June (2009), so if a service does formulate, we'll have to get other people in leadership positions because I'll be leaving soon (and the pastor may or may not be retiring in another year or two).

As for current future plans, I intend to apply to grad schools in the fall with an intent to get into Ph.D programs focusing on cognitive psychology.  I want to be a professor, but we'll see.  Things don't always work out the way we plan them, so I'm making sure that my plans are fluid.  Depending on what grad programs I and Brit are admitted to, we may get married in the summer of 2009, or it might be later.  We don't know.  Just that it will happen.  I'll be graduating next spring with my B.S. in psychology, which basically means I went to school for 4 years and took more psych courses than anything else.  With a grad degree, I can get a job.

As for an interesting story about something that happened to me, I was propositioned by a girl last summer.  I told her no.  She renewed her offer last fall, and again, I told her no.  Afterwards, I thought the situation was over.  I encouraged her to get involved in different campus activities and helped a few of my friends (one of whom she also propositioned and Brittany, who was pissed that this girl asked me to have sex with her) to forgive her and we actually were forming a good friendship.  I thought.  Then in January, I found out that she was claiming I had sexually harassed her and that the roles from before were actually reversed.  So here are my options: I'm either a schizo nympho, or she's a lying whore.  Since I'm not a nympho and don't think I'm a schizo, my best option is the latter.  The thing eventually ended when I had more conclusive evidence than she did, but because she had made the original claim, there were no negative repercussions for her and my reputation with a large part of the TTU Honors Program has been irrevocably tarnished.  On the plus side, I can make her life hell quite easily, since I have friends in the proverbial "high places" we hear so much about.  It's more or less a question of when.  ;)

Things are good; I'm writing more songs now (just about got one entire one down today), so that's good.

8 days until I head back to Cookeville for a few months.  I can't wait!

Peace, shalom, pace, paz, pacem, etc.-

Jonathan