Starting Over. Sort of.

I’m not generally a huge fan of change. Lazy? Probably. Set in my ways? Definitely. Recalcitrant to a fault? That’s me to a tee.

I listen to the same music over and over. When I’m not listening to it on my iPod, it just plays on one long continual loop in my brain. Over and over. But don’t feel too badly for me; it’s pretty good stuff. Mendelssohn, for example. I can call up the intro to “Elijah” (including the blood-curdling first chorus) in a heartbeat.

I have the ability to watch the same movie about twenty times in a row and love every viewing, so long as it’s a good movie. Doesn’t matter if I have the dialog memorized, and could perhaps write the scripts of any one of about fifty or so films ([CAMERA PAN OUT TO STREET VIEW. SOUND OF DOOR SLAMMING IN DISTANCE...]). I just enjoy watching the craft.

I sit in the same spot on our loveseat every day. Ostensibly I sit here because it’s where I work most days. I have a bolster that keeps me sitting somewhat forward so I don’t get too uncomfortable working on my laptop. Ironically, I never understood that about Dad. When I was a kid and Dad did the same thing, ensconced on his throne every night watching his usual round of TV, I couldn’t figure out how or why he did that. I couldn’t sit still – ever – and moved around constantly. Now I get it. It’s a combination of being comfortable with routine and gravity. It’s gotten stronger the older I’ve gotten. The gravity, that is.

So it would surprise most who know me to find that our house is going through a kind of renaissance these days. We finally got motivated to have our yard and carport taken down to ground-zero. As of right now, the yard is literally a blank slate. A dirt canvas, just waiting for an artist to take it in hand and create a masterpiece. We inherited our front planter, for instance, with its two different-colored rose bushes. One red, and the other nearly white. Yellow-white, really. And, when regularly pruned back, they both produce spectacularly beautiful flowers. But the resident gardener has been less than diligent in keeping up with the demands of the yard, and things were badly overgrown. Including several species of weeds that I’m sure have been around since before the Native Americans found themselves roaming through the valley thousands of years ago.

All that remain, truly, are the rose bushes, and both are so severely pruned down now that I’m a little nervous about whether they will rise again from the sad-looking stumps that they are today. The rest of the yard is likewise a smoothed-over mass of potential energy, just waiting for the elements and some clever planting to sprout forth a wonderous garden of nearly European panache. Or at least some nice grass and a few rows of wild flowers in the planter. We’d settle for that.

Likewise the interior of Hacienda Woody is being rejuvenated. This last Monday I finally applied myself seriously to our school room. The Move From Hades turned it into our “staging area” for everything that had resided in our spare bedroom before it became Jelly’s room. It has continued to gain mass in much the same way that Congress seems to gain more density in session after session. On Monday, after several hours of reckless excavation, we discovered a long-lost couch. Strategically placed directly across the room from a TV that, until a couple of weeks ago, resided in Doodle’s room. I emptied several boxes’ worth of stuff, found homes for things that we wanted to keep, and filled a heavy-duty trash bag with an estimated fifty pounds of trash. (At least two Orange County phone books account for thirty of those pounds.)

So the Reclamation Project from the River Styx continues. The Berumda Triangle is now more of a Winchester Mystery House. Still has a couple of rows of boxes needing to be gone through, but there are wide swaths of floor now visible and available for the girls to play. The computers are now accessible without having to negotiate a winding and narrow passage filled with numerous obstacles invisible to the Woodyettes’ eyes whenever asked to “clean up” after themselves. Now even they can readily see what needs to be picked up and put away.

We’re getting there.

Jelly – Dungeon Mistress?

Whilst visiting family on our recent field trip weekend, elder Woodyette Jelly witnessed her first-ever game of Dungeons & Dragons. Our nephew was playing it in his room, and Jelly happened to listen in on some of the action. She was immediately intrigued.

This is not surprising to anyone who knows our daughter. Jelly has one of those magical imaginations that can create entire universes in minutes and have it populated and functioning within hours. The idea of a game that does exactly that while demonstrating some sense of purpose was instantly appealing to her. She asked Mommy about it, and Mommy began to wonder just how best to approach this idea.

Dungeons & Dragons, of course, has been a topic of controversy from its inception. However, much of that controversy is, I suspect, borne of hyperbole from those who consider any mention of fantasy and magic to be antithetical to anyone of Christian upbringing. Since we are, in this house, dedicated Harry Potter fans, you can see where we might not share that same philosophy.

However, the full version of D&D is probably more adult-oriented than we’d like to expose to our daughter, so we considered alternatives. Fortunately, the alternatives are legion.

Specifically, we found a Harry Potter-themed role playing game that is simply perfect for Jelly and even her younger sister, Doodle. Mrs. Woody and I both skimmed the internet looking for games that would be appropriate for our pre-teen girls, and this one floated to the top.

Jelly has, as expected, taken to it like the proverbial duck to water. As the “narrator” (their version of the Dungeon Master), she can control all activities of students and other characters belonging to the world of Hogwarts. It’s a perfect outlet for her unique talents.

Even better, she and Doodle have begun to play it together, without interference from Mom or Dad, and were having a wonderful time with it last night. They were having so much fun, in fact, that we were loathe to send them to bed. Ultimately, though, reason won us over and the girls are sleeping soundly.

I suspect it won’t be long before Mrs. Woody finds a way to incorporate this RPG into her overarching plan for Wonderwood Academy this year. Even if she doesn’t, however, I suspect this game will be one that keeps Jelly and Doodle playing together for some time to come.

Another prayer answered!

Autumn Around the Corner

It’s back-to-school time. Last Friday we were on our way out of town and were astonished to find our local high school abuzz with activity. Since our branch of the library resides nearly directly behind the school, it gets used as a pick-up point for parents waiting to drive their kids home. Both places were crowded, and we had to drop our books in the drive-up bin and leave. We felt… as though we were somehow trespassing on private property and expected the farmer to come crashing out of his house with salt-shot ablaze. Weird feeling.

In the meantime, we ponder the significance of kids heading back to school. Not so much for our family, of course. We’ve been in session for over three weeks now. The Woodyettes are having a blast, and we just finished one of our famous long weekend field trips, visiting four of our California missions from Lompoc to Ventura (working southward). We even took our twin niece and nephew with us to Ventura on Monday, since they didn’t report back to school until this Tuesday past.

My youngest sister, on the other hand, exults in this particular school year. This is for two reasons (probably in reverse order of importance to her): First, she doesn’t have to drive them to a school halfway across town this year. They were in transit from Texas last year, and the boys were enrolled in a school closer to the apartment where they lived at the time. Appropriately enough, it was the same school next to which we lived as youngsters for the better part of our childhoods. But not this year. This year they live about two blocks from the boys’ school. Bliss for Mommy!

The second reason for her exultation this year is the fact that ALL THREE BOYS ARE IN SCHOOL NOW. Tears for the empty-home mother? Don’t count on it. She plans to take advantage of their daily absence to, among other things, finish unpacking. Those of you with small children who cannot be persuaded to give up some moldy old blanket because it’s their ABSOLUTE FAVORITE IN THE WHOLE WORLD will understand.

About the only thing missing here is the smell of autumn. My childhood memory says that, any time now, the air will take on that smell of leaves beginning to fall on somewhat crisper breezes. This is, of course, a complete crock. My adult memory knows full well that we haven’t even begun to experience the full fury of the dreaded Santa Ana winds that keep temperatures unbearably hot right through Halloween. So my childhood memory must be deluded. I suspect there’s some sort of time warp that happens to a kid who begins each new school year wondering where the heck the summer went, then wishing that Christmas would hurry up and get here (two weeks off!). It’s just how a kid’s internal calendar runs, I guess.

One thing different this year: I’m having to work on my car. The Saturn hasn’t run in over a year because we haven’t really needed it. I have commuted to the office so infrequently of late that I’ve just never bothered to maneuver the cars into the proper pole position in our driveway. This is one of the joys of living in a manufactured home. We don’t have a garage. We have a carport. In that carport we keep three vehicles, one of which needs to be donated to whichever short-sighted charity thinks it really needs it. It occupies the innermost position of our driveway. Right behind it, kissing its bumper, is our Saturn. That has become my vehicle, even though I rarely drive it. But it’s not running at the moment, so it sits in that position day after day, accumulating countless “WASH ME” missives on the rear window. The business end of the drive is occupied by the van. It gets driven everywhere for every conceivable errand. It probably shouldn’t, since most of that driving is a solo effort.

But this year we need to smog the Saturn. That means I need to resurrect it, get it serviced, and inspected before September is up. I am, unfortunately, a notorious procrastinator who always leaves such things until about a month after the registration was due. Yet this afternoon found me yanking the old battery out of the car, huffing my way over to Manny, Moe, and Jack (who will never service another one of my cars again, though I’m not too proud to buy parts from them when they’re the only convenient parts store to my house) to buy a replacement. I had hoped to install the battery this evening so I could drive the kinks out of the atrophied engine, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I ran out of daylight before I could finish.

I could swear I smelled falling leaves while I was working on it, though.

Week in Review

A normal week at WriteWood, meaning we had no significant events arise during the course of it. I will say that Mrs. Woody and I have been dealing with a higher-than-normal level of arthritic pains and headaches; but such is the aging process, yes?

Yesterday was fun. Staples held a “Teacher Appreciation” sale from 9:00 to 12:00, so we went. We long ago registered for their Teacher Rewards program which gives us discounts on certain items. We got there a bit before 9:00 (which was a wrench for the Woodyettes, neither of whom is a graceful early riser) and waited for the clock to tick down to 9:00. As we hit 8:57 or so we noticed more cars showing up, so we hopped out of the car to be close to the front of the line. (Okay, okay… “hopping” may be overstating things a bit, but we moved with as much alacrity as was possible given the paragraph above.)

The impetus for this was the promise of a “goody bag” for the first 100 teachers to show up. We needn’t have worried. I’m guessing there were slightly more than a dozen waiting to enter when they opened the doors, and few more showed up whilst we were shopping.

However, the trip was useful. We picked up a few actual school supplies for the girls and their teacher (the janitor gets all his supplies from Vons or Wal-Mart). But we also picked up things like printer ink, an 8GB memory stick for Mrs. Woody’s school files, a new office chair that does double-duty in the kitchen, and a 1TB (that’s “terabyte”) external drive for our network.

So the janitor is geeked out now. First order of business is archiving our Wonderwood data files and our photos. Mrs. Woody has, over a course of many years, accumulated well over 60GB of stuff. Some of it she may never use, having acquired it from old news lists or Yahoo! groups with which she communicated. She does, however, utilize a fair amount of it, and our printer seems to be in constant use. I’m surprised we haven’t worn the poor thing out, but in our experience it’s hard to kill a good DeskJet.

On a somewhat related note: Mrs. Woody has been counselling her sister and her sister’s eldest daughter with regards to homeschool transcripts. The girl is on her way to Cal Berkeley (this surprised no one who is acquainted with the family), but they’re giving her some grief over records of her homeschool years. One would have thought that her transcripts from the local community colleges where she basically did her high school years would have sufficed. But the school is adamant and threatening to retract their acceptance if she doesn’t give them something. So Mrs. Woody helped them craft “something” by looking up what the requirements are for California high schoolers, and helping them translate their homeschool experience into something that fits. We shall see soon enough whether or how successful this plan was. But the episode has put Mrs. Woody on notice to be ready for something similar when the Woodyettes are ready to enroll in a few years. Every university is different, of course, and Mrs. Woody is no slacker when it comes to record-keeping. She’s been faithfully recording the girls’ progress every step of the way, and has logs and scores to back it up. Her sister has very little, if any, of that.

We’re also making progress on our school room. Readers of The Inner Dad may recall my missives related to “the Move From Hades,” which dealt with basically rearranging the entire house in order to give the girls their own rooms. Well, since then we’ve also had an influx of stuff from Robo-Mom, who passed away a couple of years ago, and whose stuff still resides in our school room, which has never been decluttered. So the Move From Hades is over, but now we have the Reclamation Project from the River Styx to enjoy. We’re doing this basically in small pieces. A shelf here, a box there. But we are making progress. My current goal is to clear the space from the wall unit we just recently moved into the room a couple of months ago to the end of the couch on the opposite wall. We can then move the TV/VCR out of the Doodle’s room and into the school room. The girls can then watch videos together on the couch. Having that setup in Doodle’s bedroom has made it altogether too easy to become little couch potatoettes, so this is a strategic move on our part.

Thus ends another significant week at Hacienda Woody.

Academy Quotables

Every weekday (and some weekends) we convert our expansive manor into Wonderwood Academy, home of the brightest minds in Orange County academia. The Woodyettes, despite their father’s efforts, are sweet, loveable geniuses-in-progress. Mrs. Woody has – by conservative count – deflected attempts to have the girls transfered to military school now some thirty-seven times since they were old enough to navigate under their own power. I guess we keep ‘em.

Things you don’t want to hear in your academy:

• Anything beginning with “Mooooooom!”

Things you love to hear at your academy:

• “We have the best school anywhere!” (Actual quote from a seventh grader currently enrolled at Wonderwood Academy. Name withheld to prevent blushing on the part of the staff.)

Thus, with all the new areas of focus and extra work required in this year’s course of study, the girls continue to (FLASH: Mrs. Woody’s favorite word coming up!) thrive.

Week in Review

First week of school here at the Academy. Not bad, considering how much more the girls are expected to do this year. Mrs. Woody is already making adjustments to the schedule so they don’t burn out in, say, October. But they’ve done well thus far.

Mrs. Woody has a unique style. She is a teacher by training and (at one point) avocation, and so the girls really do get the full benefits of unparalleled student-teacher ratio: 2 to 1. Can’t beat that, even in your finer charter schools. Plus, being Momma as well as The Teacher, she always finds ways to make it fun for the girls.

Yours truly, in the meantime, lost out on an opportunity to sing the National Anthem at Angel Stadium last Friday. It was Mormon Night there, and the Anaheim Mormon Chorale was tagged once again to sing for the opening of the game. What I was doing instead was sitting in the reading room here at Hacienda Woody, wondering whether I had suddenly contracted Swine Flu. Just a stomach bug of some sort, apparently, perhaps foisted upon me via some cuisine we ate on the hoof the day before. Ah, well.

We’re making plans  to head up north later this month. We’re still doing our tour of California missions, having visited everything south of us earlier this year. Now we get to visit San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara, along with La Purisima and whichever one is in Solvang (I can never remember that one). Ought to be a fun trip for a long weekend before the summer is out. I realize we’re skipping over San Gabriel and San Fernando, but we can catch those on day trips.

Since I’m the 2nd week instructor in Elders Quorum, today’s lesson on the Wentworth Letter was mine. Not sure how the guys in the quorum enjoyed it, but I loved this lesson. The Wentworth Letter is one of those gems we have from Joseph Smith that remind us how truly blessed we are to have the restored Gospel again on the earth. If not for the courage and faith of the Prophet and the early Saints, I shudder to think where I, personally, would be today.

Oh, one last piece of news: Jelly was asked to serve as Secretary in her Beehive class today. So happens her BFF is the President, so Jelly is thrilled. So am I, come to think of it.

Staff Meeting

Here at Wonderwood Academy (its actual name) we just finished our first random-annual staff meeting. I say “random-annual” becuase these meetings take place whenever Mrs. Woody can capture my attention for more than a few minutes.

At the top of our agenda was the amount of time we’ve been spending “in school” this week. Wonderwood starts school in the first full week of August, so we have one week under our belts already.

Mrs. Woody is, of course, our headmistress. She’s also the teacher. I have the title “administrator,” but I’m really an adjunct teacher and the janitor. But I’m staff.

Mrs. Woody was concerned that three of our days this week went until 5:00 pm or later. There are a few reasons for this, and we talked about each of them in turn.

First, the girls are older. Not unusual, of course; that happens every year. But Jelly is, technically, in the seventh grade this year, which places her firmly in junior high or middle school territory. Doodle, meanwhile, is in fifth grade. I remember fifth grade. I had a teacher with which I was less than enchanted (this happened frequently in my school career) and it was the year I got glasses for the first time. Came home from a movie with a whopping headache, and was off to the optometrist the next day. Had my first pair of soviet-style eyewear a couple of weeks later. Spent most of that year learning how many ways an active child can lose a pair of glasses.

But I digress. The point is, more is expected of our Woodyettes this year. Yet Mrs. Woody doesn’t really want the girls to be “in school” right up until dinner time. So we discussed the reasons why things seem to be taking longer:

• More subjects this year. Jelly in particular is working at higher levels than before and both girls are above grade level in several skills. This is especially true of their reading and spelling skills.
• Being a home school, we start much later than most schools. We’ve been trying to get the girls up faster in the mornings, but we still haven’t quite made it to our own self-imposed start time of 9:00. We’re close, but not there yet.
• Because the girls are older, there’s less curriculum that Mrs. Woody can safely leave out now. When Doodle was much smaller, things had to be left out that she simply couldn’t parse at her tender age. This is no longer the case. More facets of each subject are being added to each girl’s plan this year. There’s just a lot of stuff to go through.

All of these things are contributing factors, certainly. Yet Mrs. Woody truly fears losing educational momentum if she scales too far back on any one topic. That’s when the janitor had a brain flash: Math is the girls’ lynch-pin. If there’s any one topic that seems to take far longer to get through, it’s math. It’s also the one area where the girls are still catching up rather than excelling because, unfortunately, they are their father’s children.

We need, I suggested, to do more timed exercises with them. The primary issue for both of them is focus. Math is not one of those things they can just instinctively internalize, like reading comprehension. It’s a long, hard slog of memorization and application, and they both allow their young minds to wander freely (Doodle more so than Jelly) when confronted with a worksheet of math problems.

Understanding the issue in this manner was all Mrs. Woody needed. Sometimes when teaching every day, and handling multiple subjects as Mrs. Woody must, it’s easy to lose sight of those details that make up the totality of the schooling experience. As a somewhat more casual observer, I have the advantage of being able to see trends develop from a higher level. The 50,000 foot level, as it were.

From our discussion, Mrs. Woody was able to formulate a plan to address the math issue in this coming week. It also helped her with her own fears of trying to do too much with the girls, even as they necessarily take on more and more responsibilities as growing children must. She cemented her plans of buying another teaching aid for math, and formulated a plan for using timers in their math exercises.

Thus ended our staff meeting.

It all took place on a quiet Saturday morning, before any of us had even gotten dressed or breakfasted. We sat in our jammies and talked together about things of tremendous import to our family; all without any sort of conflict or hyperbole, and arriving together at a workable solution.

“If I were asked to name the world’s greatest need, I should say unhesitatingly wise mothers; and the second, exemplary fathers.” (Pres. David O. McKay, as quoted by Llewelyn McKay, Home Memories, p. 4)

Blueberries

Today we picked up our blueberries.

Frozen, of course. One of the homeschool moms in our group frequently contracts with bulk order food services as part of her preparedness calling in her ward. Since we’re on her mailing lists,  we get invited to order, and we’ve gotten some pretty neat stuff lately. Cans of powdered egg, butter, and assorted other goodies. Today it was frozen blueberries.

I have no idea what they really cost as Mrs. Woody handles those transactions. But I know what it required: about one and a half cubic feet in my freezer.

Hacienda Woody is not a storage-intensive operation. We simply don’t have anywhere to put an auxiliary freezer, so whatever we can jam into our Whirlpool 17 cubic ft. refigerator is it where perishables are concerned. Also, it meant that the box the berries were shipped in would not fit. Had to move them into separate freezer bags for storage.

Speaking of jam (it’s in the previous paragraph, really… go back and look!) that’s one of the promises of having frozen blueberries at our disposal. Momma and the girls will learn how to convert a goodly number of these dark purple fruits into some luscious jam with which we may adorn our waffles and pancakes. Not all of them, of course. Others are earmarked for such niceties as smoothies.

I’m certain there are other uses, but my brain can’t seem to get past the two listed above. I start salivating and get distracted.

And let it not be said that this enterprise was cheap and easy. I’ll grant you I didn’t spend hours in the fields picking the little buggers and fighting off the inevitable bears that always seem to accompany these adventures (at least according to our Wilderness Family DVD they do). No, but I did have to brave the wilds of central Anaheim with a flat tire this afternoon on our way over to the drop site.

I’d just gotten on the freeway and was blind-spotting the next lane in order to move over, when – WHAM! – I ran over one of the ubiquitous road lizards left behind by countless trucks. They sneak out into traffic lanes to take an occasional bite out of unsuspecting commuters, and today my number came up. After much phutzing with the car’s manual and the equipment (I despise scissor jacks), plus using auxiliary muscles that never see any action these days, I got the spare on and we sped off to our destination. Then I noticed the spare had no air. More than the original, certainly, but not enough to drive halfway across Orange County on our return trip. Off to a gas station (free air!) and then onward to our other errands for the day.

Was it all worth it? You tell me: how would you value 14 pounds of ripe blueberries sitting in your freezer?

About That Speaking Assignment

I mentioned my new speaking assignment yesterday. It comes at the end of the month, and it’s actually kind of a neat concept. Not the fact that I’m speaking, mind you, but the theme and format of that particular Sacrament meeting.

Our ward music chairperson had apparently seen this done elsewhere, and put a bug in the bishopric’s ear. The idea is to have a few ward members introduce their favorite hymns to the congregation. They get to say a few things about why that hymn is special to them, and then we get to sing the hymn. Think of it as several two minute talks, interspersed with an equal number of intermediate hymns. As the first speaker, I may (or may not – details are still fuzzy) get to pick the opening hymn for the day, then give a few thoughts about the music of the Church and (if I DO get to pick the opening hymn) why that hymn was special to me. Our ward music chairperson will be the other “bookend” for the meeting, and talk about the closing hymn.

I like this concept for several reasons. First of all, it’s always nice to hear people talk about the hymns. When the current hymnal came out in 1985 (has it been that long?) I greeted it enthusiastically. This was, in part, because I was myself a music chairman at the time and was pleased to see the church make several of the arrangements much easier to sing. Easier, at least, for those of us who prefer to sing our parts. Also, I looked forward to introducing some of the lesser-known hymns to members of the Church.

For example, when I was a missionary in the Language Training Mission, I was introduced to a song called “In Our Lovely Deseret.” I’d never heard it before, but one of our missionaries swore that he’d learned it in Primary as a boy. So we learned it and sang it as a quartet as part of our morning devotional. I loved it. The tune was snappy, and the lyrics spoke unabashedly of the unique character of Latter-day Saint culture.

Imagine my delight when it appeared in the new 1985 hymnal! Most unfortunately, music people rarely program it for our meetings, so whenever we get to sing it I find myself getting nearly giddy with anticipation. Silly, perhaps, but it’s a reflexive thing. If given the chance, I’ll probably ask for that to be our opening hymn on that Sunday.

The other reason I look forward to this assignment is that I can give voice to one my pet peeves with Church membership today. And I’m not one to carry peeves around where the Church is concerned. My complaint is this: I feel strongly that members of the Church, generically, don’t do enough to encourage their children to love and appreciate the hymns of the Church. Popular culture is a powerful draw for today’s youth, and our 341 hymns have a hard time competing with an innumerable host of hack musicians, most of whom would have no sound if not for the hordes of engineers and technicians who make them what they are.

Yet, show me a home where the hymns and music of the Church are given prominence, and I’ll show you a home that can be a refuge of spiritual comfort at any time. It’s so much easier to invite the Spirit to reside in a home where uplifting and edifying music is heard, rather than the noise that so much of the world produces.

I only get about five minutes at the pulpit, so I guess I’d better make those five minutes count for something. I love a good challenge.

Week in Review

So what, you may ask, do homeschoolers do with their summer break if they’ve already taken their vacation?

We watch NCIS on DVD, is what.

After growing old of the CSI format (every episode just gets darker and darker), we have fallen back on what has truly become our favorite TV show in the last couple of years. NCIS has a terrific cast, snappy story lines, and focus on the investigative aspects of the job. We love that. So, we’ve been availing ourselves of the DVD box sets for the first five seasons (Season 6 comes out in a few weeks!), and having mini-marathons in the evenings.

Of course, that’s “we” as in “Mom and  Dad.” The Woodyettes still aren’t old enough to pollute their minds with such nonsense, so they get to go read, play on the computer or DS, or watch family-safe videos on their TV.

Monday evening we did Family Home Evening with a couple of our friends in the ward. The host family are our home teachers, and they invited a couple of other families. One is a couple relatively new in the Church who weren’t, unfortunately, able to make it that night. The other family are our good friends who have frequently let us use their swimming pool during the warm months. It was a very enjoyable evening, and the girls got plenty of swim and trampoline time.

The rest of the week has been a blur of work and school planning. On Thursday I actually visited the office. The company has new rules in place that prevent us from loading new software on our machines ourselves. So we had to wait around for Dell techs to come and install the latest Adobe CS4 package. When they got there (at the end of the shift!) it was discovered that our machines hadn’t been upgraded to Windows XP SP3 (curse you, Bill Gates, and the horse you rode in on!), so we had to reschedule. This is why I hate going into the office. It kills my entire day and I get next to nothing accomplished.

Church was nice today. Lovely testimonies were shared, and a good lesson on family history in Priesthood. I didn’t, unfortunately, make it into Sunday School today. This was partly because I went into Primary to hear the Doodle Woodyette give the opening prayer (20 minutes late!), and then because I got cornered by one of the bishopric about a speaking assignment on the 30th. Should be fun, though.