Young Women in Excellence

Work is starting to get too political for me. This stuff I'm working on, I'm only working on because of these strange politics. Right now, in production, I have added everything that is needed, and still because they think they will have a separation of one company from the other, they want to go through this third party. In reality, there will still be no separation, only an appearance of such. Oh well, it all goes on.

It snowed last night. It didn't lay anything down really, but with the cold, the roads were icy and hard to travel. I come into work early enough that there weren't any problems for me to get there. When I arrived home, I started to shovel walks, until I had to take my kids to their piano lessons, and then came home and finished shoveling those walks. I then went to pick the kids up, and then went with my wife to the church to help set up a few things for this Young Women in Excellence program. I finally got home and had just enough time to gobble down some food before running over to the church for the program.

I didn't have Scouts tonight because tomorrow night we are all going over to the Happy Factory for Justins Eagle project. I finally found out tonight where it is we are supposed to meet.

My son went to a merit badge class (even though he already has that merit badge) and I and my daughter met my wife for the program. They had a quick introduction into what they were doing and then had each of the girls tell about the coat of arms they had made for themselves as it pertains to the Young Women program. They were all in PJ's, as it was something about Arising (I can't remember it all that well). All the decorations that were there were my wife's decorations. Of course, they had the continental breakfast tonight along with this program. It turned out pretty well, and I thought my wife did a good summation of what happened tonight. It does a father and husband proud to hear his daughter and his wife with all this stuff.

When I arrived home, we found that there was a message from my mother-in-law wanting to talk to me. She went on and on. Brandon has received some papers form his ex-wife's lawyer that he must respond to within 20 days. Some of it is just the standard stuff, but she says that because she is taking on the upside down car loan ($18K) and her schooling in massage therapy (which is done in December sometime - $11K) that her husband has to take on all the responsibility of the taxes they owe as well as all the credit cards that they have, and then she has said that the house is worth $30K in equity which she deserves $21K of. She hasn't even taken into consideration the penalty if the house is refinanced before October. Also, on the daughter, they are supposed to come to agreement on religion as well as education, but if they can't come to an agreement, she always has the final say (sounds good for her, eh?). It also states that they have already equally split some of their goods, and that if there is anything she missed, she gets half of it (say what? - she has already taken everything). Maybe that's why she left him two forks, two spoons etc., she knew she would be getting one back (do I sound cynical?). Oh, and I forgot to mention, she states that the car her husband has is paid for (I guess she conveniently forgot who it is they were making payments to and stopped doing - their grandma - my mother-in-law). What a piece of work. Anyway, I still had to run to the video store so the DVD's I had would not be late. I told her that I had to run some errands to get off the phone (the conversation I had was just over an hour).

Well, that about does it for today. I probably shouldn't write when this kind of stuff is on my mind.

Odds and Ends

Nothing much happened on Saturday. My wife had to go to Sams Club to pick up a few things. We shopped for some goodies for the girls at Young Women for their Young Women in Excellence this Wednesday night. We also got a bunch of stuff that we felt we needed. Of course, you never come out of that place without having spent a fortune, and this was the case with us.

We got home from that, and found that everybody at my in-laws house was going to go to Aunt Gladys' house. This didn't sit well with my wife because we really weren't invited. Our kids would go there, but it looks like we wouldn't. We stayed home and cleaned up because they would be dropping our kids off after all of this, and Steve had not seen our place in awhile.

Finally, our kids got home. They only stayed for a minute and then left. I decided to watch a DVD. It was Mr. And Mrs. Smith. I knew they had watched it over at my in-laws and asked if it had the 'F' word in it. My son informed me that it did (one time). We don't really like our children hearing that so readily, but what can you do. My son recognized this, and informed us that it was no worse than hearing Steve say it out of the blue. We have wondered if he has some form of Tourettes syndrome. Anyway, that's all water under the bridge.

Sunday came along, and we started to roast a turkey while we went to church. I had to go home for a minute to check on a few things about it, and then went back to church. After arriving home, we were called by the in-laws to invite us over for a roast beef dinner. We said that we would be there when the turkey finished cooking. It did finish, and we put it in the garage (covered of course) so we could go over. Looking back, my wife wishes she would've put a thermometer in the Turkey to make sure it was done. It was a little bit pink.

We had a good visit with Steve, and wished him well as he would be on his way back home on Monday. It was good for my wife to have this time with him. My daughter went with Pam and her grandma to a Christmas program that Anne was doing at a community church that Pam and Anne used to go to. It was one of those interfaith groups that included the LDS church. I didn't go, because I had no real desire to go there. We had a discussion on what the word cult means when they arrived home.

Monday, at work, I had a meeting to meet Doug (who came here from Portland). He is the one that we are working with on this project that is on again and off again. In the meeting, I kept on thinking, "What a whiney cry baby!". He had a huge chip on his shoulder that we were having a hard time shaking. He was so bad that two of his bosses got upset with him for being that way. He did improve for today. Now that we have broken the ice, maybe we can start to get things done. He has been afraid to ask us for any help on anything that he has been doing. We have a lot of different alternatives for him, and still don't think he knows a lot about what he is doing. I think we can get things moving in a positive manner now.

Not much happened today. I went to Sams club with my wife again tonight to finish getting some things for the Young Women event tomorrow. Our kids didn't even destroy our house while we were gone.

Black Friday

We got up a little bit early this morning, but not real early. We had agreed to meet Pam over at the Wachs house so we could go up to Kimball Junction to the outlet stores. We met over there at 8:00 AM. I had filled up our SUV because I was sure that was what we would go up in. Steve was there, and all ready to go. We only had to wait a little while before Pam showed up with our kids. I thought it would be crowded there, but it really wasn't all that bad.

When my wife and I went there on our anniversary, I had seen a Levi jacket that I wanted with lining. It was $90, and they had told us that it would be marked down to $40. It's one that I wanted, and if we weren't with family, I wouldn't have gone to get it, but I really couldn't pass it up at that price. The cheapest I have seen it for is $70. Anyway, I was pretty pleased with the purchase. My old Levi jacket has been wearing out for years. It had an old plaid lining that I don't think they do anymore.

As we did some more shopping, we found that Pam had gotten a 30% off coupon at Eddie Bauer. There was already 20% marked off on their leather jackets, so my wife and I each bought one. We got jackets that were marked at $199 for about $112 each. That will be our Christmas present to each other.

Steve was sick of shopping, so we decided it was now time for breakfast. We couldn't find a place that we really liked right in the area, so decided to go to Chicks over in Heber City. We filled up with a great breakfast.

Steve hadn't been up to the family cabin for quite some time, so we went for a drive up into Midway for that. We showed them where we had stayed for our anniversary, and then got to the cabin. We found a car at the cabin, and then out came Barbara, Jeffs girlfriend. She was a bit embarrassed, and was kind of crying. She was moving all of her stuff out of the cabin and into her car. Jeff wasn't there, as he was in Wendover. She also told us that she didn't have a key, but Jeff had left it open since he has been living there. We were under the impression that Jeff was living at Barbaras, mothers house. She told us that he had been living up at the cabin for awhile now, and he has spent a lot of time in Wendover since he isn't working. It was a bit uncomfortable there, and we left.

While we were driving, Steve got on the phone and called Jeff. He used some language that we had to tell him to tone down because we really didn't want our kids to hear that. At least he stopped using the 'F' word. There was all other kind of language though, and he was asking Jeff if he was only drunk, or if he was also on any drugs. Jeff had a lot of the excuses, that really don't amount to much. Steve told Jeff he needed to come home so they could talk. We had to call back to make sure he would sober up first. We drove to Park City, and then decided that we had better go back to the cabin to make sure it was all locked up. It was. It was also cleaned up a bit from when Barbara was taking her stuff out. That made us feel better about it. Jeff didn't want any of this information to be told to his parents (using the excuse of the mental attitude of his mother).

We finally arrived back at my in-laws home. The next part of the soap opera happened there. Brandon called over after he had arrived home from work. He talked to Margaret, and she came and got me. His wife had come into the house, and taken almost everything in the house. She left him a bed, a TV, his computer, an old couch and X-Box and that's about it. She took all the kitchen furniture, all the family room furniture, the washer and dryer, and all the pictures from off the walls. This doesn't make a lot of sense because she is living at her moms house at the moment. She doesn't really even have anywhere to store all the stuff. When I talked to Brandon he was crying. I got him to calm down a little bit and told him that it is only stuff. I asked if it was all paid for, and he informed me that it was, but he had worked his ass off for it. I told him that I understood that, but it is only stuff. Don't worry about it. I told him not to just figure it is lost either, and to list absolutely everything that she took so he can turn it over to a lawyer. I talked with him for awhile about things he needs to do, and that he needs to be ready for some kind of fight (whether he wants it or not, it seems it is going to happen). He is also concerned about their little daughter (under one year of age) who is at his mother-in-laws house, who is a heavy smoker. I also told him I would find out what I could about who to talk to next. The poor kid is broke already, and this is going to put him in even greater financial difficulties.

Well, my kids wanted to stay over at grandma's house tonight, so my wife and I left, and will have to find a way to get the kids tomorrow.

Thanksgiving

Today was Thanksgiving Day. There wasn't too much going on at my house this morning. My wife had cooked the Marie Calendars pumpkin pies that we were asked to take to my parents house last night. My mom told us that she would have Cool Whip, but that isn't good enough for us. There must be real whipped cream.

The time finally came that we headed over the river and through the woods (oh wait, that was out onto the smog filled streets) to grandma's house. As usual, most of the family was there, and it is a big crowd. Some final touches happened, and then we were ready for the dinner.

While we were eating dinner, Kevin called (from prison) to talk to his wife. He said that they had a good turkey dinner on this day. He has been complaining about not having enough food to eat on most days, but today was nice. We all yelled hi to him (when you have over 40 people yelling it makes quite a noise).

There was some general cleanup after dinner, and my wife headed to her mothers house briefly to visit with them. That didn't last very long because she didn't feel comfortable there with her mother getting mad at her. In the meantime, I headed over to the park to play Ultimate Frisbee.

Everybody had a good time playing this game, but some of us older people thought we should shorten up how far the goal posts were. Since I was one of the two oldest, I was called as team captain. My oldest brother played despite his scleroderma, and I had to stop to catch my breath a couple of times. Asthma got in the way a little bit, but not too much. I also had the Frisbee thrown into my mouth (when I was about 2 feet away) from Derek. It drew a little bit of blood, and hurt a bit, but the game must go on. Larry told me that I wasn't a dog and shouldn't try to catch the Frisbee in that way.

After all of that, we came on home and had some of that pie. My mom was trying to get that cool whip from it's frozen state with a beater. It was a good thing we brought our own whipping cream.

The kids played for awhile with their cousins and then we headed out. We went over to my in-laws house to spend the rest of the day. We just visited with them, and my son got hungry again. My kids ended up going home with Pam and Anne, and my wife and I headed home on our own again.

City Council

Yesterday, we had a meeting at work to help us come up with a game plan to talk with Doug Kiser when he comes in all of next week. Since it seems we are going to be going with him, it was thought that there has to be some kind of timeline that we can come too rather than the time line that Teresa is pulling out of nowhere. I mean, she gave us a deadline (who knows how many deadlines she has given us since her first deadline in June of this year). The problem is, we have a deadline with no kind of roadmap of how to get there. It may be interesting having Doug here next week, and we are pretty certain he will be a bit nervous. He knows we are not comfortable with his abilities already, and yet he is somebody that we have to work with.

Monday evening, we got my son to call around to some of my family to see how many commitments he can get for coming to the Happy Factory. Now, if I can only get him to the computer to come up with a flyer on it (I tried to do that today, but failed).

Well, after arriving home from work today, I talked with my son for a bit and then prepared some sloppy joes for dinner. Soon after eating, I got my son into the car to go to a city council meeting (he was supposed to go with his Teachers quorum, but they were meeting at 6:30 while the meeting starts at 6:00. We arrived just in time for it to start.

The city council meeting started out with Bingham High School being recognized as State champions in football. The whole team was there, and it was fun to see them being recognized. Then they got down to some of the business. We were there because of an appeal that was being done about the Daybreak community that is right behind my community. Some things there that we don't agree with. All of the business that the city had to take care of before this was mind numbing. We sat there until around 8:40 going through the agenda, and hadn't gotten to our part yet. At this time, they called for a 10 minute break (it lasted 20 minutes). Of course, we were next on the agenda. We had a lot of people there. I even met one of our newer neighbors at this time. He is Indian, and I talked to him about his religion (he is a member of the Sikh sect). He told me that the Sikhs are similar to Hindus, but they only believe in one God. He also told me that they don't drink alcohol... Oh wait, I better amend that, we aren't supposed to drink alcohol. I thought, how true is that. There are so many things that we aren't supposed to do, that we do, despite it all.

Back to the meeting. The teachers quorum did finally get to the city council meeting around 7:00. They left at around 8:30. I told my son to see if he could get a ride home with them, but he didn't want too. He said that they wouldn't have room for him anyway. He also did not want to be at the meeting. Well, now it's about 9:00 and they are ready to talk about the Daybreak community. Greg Nelson was the name on the appeal and he gave a nice speech about the problems we are having with Kennecott Land, and some of the problems we see in our neighborhood based on what's going on on the hill behind us (they are actually tearing it down). Vibrations of our homes is currently happening. We are also worried about the influx of traffic, an alley that is a nice place for crime, verbal promises being broken, etc. He did a wonderful job talking about all of this. I think the city council was impressed with what he said. Since time was running long, they only wanted people to speak that had other concerns besides what Greg had given. There were a couple of other people that stood up and spoke. One man is really angry with Kennecott Lands, and the fact (his own opinion) that the City of South Jordan is in bed with them (I think there is some truth to this, although not to the extent that he believes). Since Kennecott was there, they pulled them up to talk to them about some of these concerns. Leona Winger, got onto a soap box and lectured them about trying to get along with their neighbors (us). She gave it to them fairly hard, and got some clapping by us out in the audience (we of course were told not to applaud by the Mayor). They did basically say that they hadn't been listening to us (even though there was a meeting) because things were too far advanced by the time they held the meeting with us.

As these discussions are taking place, we pretty well had the city council on our side, but they also have their hands tied. It is up to Kennecott Lands on how they accomplish things, and they don't need to consider our wants or needs. They can do whatever they choose. Mayor Money did strongly suggest that they meet with us, and try to come to some compromises because there is a major problem right now between us. In the long run, the appeal was denied, but they did tell the Daybreak community that they had to come to the city council for final approval of their plans to creating this particular plat. This all ended at 10:15. My son let me know that it was a dang long time to be sitting in a meeting.

Anyway, although the appeal was denied, we fell that we did win, because we feel that Kennecott would be foolish not to have some dialogue with us, and change their plans a little bit on this plot of land. Time will tell if it has done any good or not. Here is an article that was in the paper the following morning.

City asks developer to alter plan for subdivision

South Jordan: Kennecott Land agrees to hold talks on establishing buffer

By Rosemary Winters The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated:11/22/2006 10:12:41 AM MST

SOUTH JORDAN - The City Council on Tuesday asked its largest development partner, Kennecott Land, to "tweak" one 74-acre parcel in its mammoth 4,100-acre Daybreak development. At the same time, it denied an appeal lodged by more than 100 neighbors of the parcel near 4400 West and 10200 South, asking the council to rescind preliminary approval for the site. But they still felt victorious. "We basically won," said Teresa Goodner after the City Council meeting. Goodner and her neighbors, residents of Oquirrh Park and Ascot Downs subdivisions, say they were misled by Daybreak advertising that indicated - up until last month - a 300-foot swath of open space would buffer their homes from Daybreak housing. They also say plans for upscale homes on the parcel have been replaced with higher-density housing, including quadplexes. They worry an influx of people will bring increased traffic and lower property values to their area. Homes in Oquirrh Park cost around a half-million dollars. "The vast majority of the people in Oquirrh Park bought their homes counting on that space being an open space based on information told to them by Daybreak," Oquirrh Park resident Greg Nelson said in an interview. "We've been trying to work a compromise so that Daybreak gets what they need and we get what we need." At the meeting, Mayor Kent Money said he agreed that plans for a 20-foot, gravel-covered alley between the developments could detract from the neighborhood and even invite crime. Council members unanimously voted to have final approval for the Daybreak parcel be up to them, instead of city staff. Kennecott Land executive Bruce Snyder said at the meeting he would be happy to consider an alternative buffer between Daybreak and neighboring subdivisions and arrange a meeting with neighbors. Vicki Varela, the company's vice president of public policy, said in an interview the open space shown in its earlier master plan was moved inside to create neighborhood parks - where all neighbors are welcome - and to integrate Daybreak with surrounding subdivisions. "That's consistent with the way the City of South Jordan asked us to build this community in the first place," Varela said in an interview. "The idea was that Daybreak should not be a gated community that either holds people in or excludes people, but it should be highly integrated with the neighborhoods around it. As a whole, we think this evolution of the land plan achieves that purpose." South Jordan created a new zoning category for the entire Daybreak development called "planned community," which allows a mixture of commercial and housing development. Thirty percent of the land in Daybreak has to be reserved as open space. rwinters@sltrib.com

17th Anniversary

Thursday was my wifes and my anniversary. It's hard to believe we have been together for 17 years as husband and wife, yet it is so. She thought it has already been an eternity (at least it seems that way). Seriously, she thought it was the 18th anniversary, but when you count, it does come out to 17. I'm just glad that she has stuck it out with me for all these years.

I went to work as usual on Thursday. My wife had a bunch of people that she was doing their hair as well. Soon after I arrived home, my son and I had to go over to a guy in our Pony Express District (for the BSA) to get his Eagle Project signed. The guy liked it, but told us that we had the wrong signature in one of the spots. We were told that we really should have the signature before he signed it, but if my son promised to get to him as soon as possible, that he would go ahead and sign it. He also wanted to have the title of the guy written down.

We called up Brother Cheney and he told us to come on out. We went out and he was talking to another Scout on the whole process for his Eagle Project. He signed it, and when I told him we needed a title, he looked at us funny. He just said that he is a volunteer. That's what I had told the District guy but he wanted a title there. I told him to write down that he was the Eagle Project Manager (which is what he wrote). He thinks our district is making things too difficult (I have to agree to a point). If only he knew the rest of what my son had gone through. He also was aware that our ward had put a nix on at least one more boy who wants to do the same project, and they weren't too pleased with that.

Anyway, good times were ahead for my wife and I. I got up with the kids and got them off to school. My wife and I started to get ready to leave for Midway. We finally got out of the Salt Lake Valley at around 1:00 PM. We had to get our dog and bird over to her mothers house so that we were all set. We got off the freeway at the Park City exit. We looked at a couple of places and in an outdoor mall chose to eat at the Red Rock Brewing company. After that, we headed into Midway and the Johnson Mill Bed and Breakfast. We got into our room and it was kind of a small room. The bed practically filled the room. My wife said that if it wasn't for the ceiling being about 20 feet up, she would feel claustrophobic. It also had a ladder going up to what I would call a reading room. It had a chair, an ottoman, and a twin bed built in. Anyway, we liked this room. We met one lady who was there with some angel network group. Something about meeting with 7 different people. I never did quite get the gist of this. The lady was from England with that English accent. When my wife went to talk back to her, about a book, she said the word in a way that it rhymes with Luke. I teased her about that for a lot of the time that we were away. The lady thought it was cute that she would pronounce the word in the same way that she did. We did go down to Heber City to hit a taco time to get me something to eat.

We woke up in time for breakfast on Saturday morning. We had asked that they bring up the breakfast, but it was a long time in coming, so I went down and talked to them, and give a nudge. They finally came up with our breakfast. It was wonderful. There was some stuffed french toast, bacon and fruit. We thoroughly enjoyed that. We talked to the lady who had prepared it and asked about how they make it. One of the ingredients of course, is sugar. The Mexican lady pronounced it Sue gar. My wife asked what Sue gar was, and gave me another word to tease her about. I'm lucky she didn't divorce me on the spot!

We headed back to the Park City Exit where some outlet stores are (I don't know the name of the town there). We ended up purchasing quite a bit of stuff and filling our car up with it. Things such as Levis, shoes, purse, and knick knacks for Christmas things. We probably over spent, but it was fun for us to do. We ate lunch at a little Mexican restaurant. That was quite enjoyable as well. After a full day out, we went back to the bed and breakfast. We just kind of hung out there for the rest of the evening, enjoying the scenery that was all about us. We saw a couple of swans as well as some deer. It was nice with the waterfall underneath our room where you could hear that water running (don't drink too much if you want to stay in this room).

This morning, once again, we woke up in time for breakfast. This time we decided to go down to breakfast and possibly socialize with the others who stayed the night. One of the tables was full of young people who weren't doing any talking. Each of those was either looking at each other, or in one case avoiding each other, and silent. That felt uncomfortable to us. We sat in the other room where we were the only ones there. Another couple came and sat down with us. We talked with them for a bit rather than have the non-comfortable silence that was going on at the other table. It was just small talk, but it was talk. We had to be out by 11:00, so we went and looked at some of the rooms that we hadn't seen, and felt that we had the nicest room (out of the ones we looked at). I have since looked at the honeymoon suite, and it also sounds nice (although I'm not sure it has a view of the mountains).

We headed home. We decided that we had better stop into my in laws house to pick up the animals. That ended up being a mistake because my mother-in-law ended up unloading some things on my wife about our nephew who is now getting a divorce. My wife didn't want to come back to reality so fast, and this was upsetting to her. We did leave and came home. A little later in the day, we called out to Pams house to see when we should pick up or kids. They told us to come over for a potato bar at 5:30. We did this. We picked up the kids and then came back home.

On the way home, the kids were telling us about something that they had gone too with Pam and Anne. They told us that the people kept on doing some chanting, and dancing and singing. It was a repeat after me type of thing. They also told us that they kept on referring to goddesses (even for the males). We called Anne up and asked about this, and it was a Hindu type of ceremony that the kids had gone too on Friday evening. I kind of wish I could've seen it too.

My wife got a little more upset when she was talking to Anne about Brandons and Ashleys divorce. All Anne said, was that there is two sides to the story. To my wife and I, it seems that Ashley would be a little bit more at fault for reasons I won't go into here, but Anne will take Ashleys side of the situation. They get along really well. Anyway, reality hit too hard for my wife, and she needed some space. I tried hard to give it to her for the rest of the evening.

Eagle Projects

There's not too much going on. I have been coming into work, and then going home. Of course there are some politics going on at work now. The project that I was working on, I was taken off of briefly and now put back on it since I am almost done. We have a guy at my work who is learning the Riskmaster system, so we know exactly what is going on, and we are going to make it difficult for this other team to be successful. It's all stuff they should be doing that we were fixing anyway, but now, all that help goes away, and they must get it all to us correctly. I will no longer fix their stuff. That should make it interesting (if it's existent).

Tuesday, I got my son to call Brother Petit to find out who to talk to about his Eagle project. After a few hours, he was finally given the information that he needed. He called that guy and was told to come over on Thursday. My kids went back into my sons room and watched RV, and we just sat out in the family room watching such shows as "House". I don't know what it is, but I love that show. My wife also had a hair appointment cancel.

After arriving home today, like most Wednesdays, I took the kids to Piano lessons. After picking them back up, we headed to Apollo Burger to get their Junior Cheeseburgers (we find that is really about all we need rather than the mega meal crap they are all trying to feed us). We barely made it home in time to eat and get to Young Men/Young Women. My son went to his leaders house and watched "Johnny Lingo". My daughter and wife were in doing some kind of craft thing and making a huge mess. For Scouts, we had Matt Potts getting ready for his Eagle Project. We made posters for the blood drive being done at his church (I think it is a Lutheran church but can't remember). The thing is, though, the blood drive and a lot of the work that has to be done at that time by the Scouts will have to be split. His drive date is December 7th, and that is the date that another of our Scouts is doing his at the Happy Factory (yes, the same one my son is doing). There will be three weeks in a row that the Happy Factory will be benefiting from the scouts of our troop (beginning on November 30 to December 14th when my son does his). It seems that when people latch onto these things, they really latch on.

Eagle Project - Happy Factory

Soon after arriving home last Thursday evening, we headed out to "The Happy Factory". This is a place that my wife had gone too with the Young Women, and thought it would make a great Eagle Scout Service Project for my son. He still has three merit badges to get (Personal Fitness, Personal Finance, and Communications) but he can get this out of the way. On the merit badges, he has worked on each of them and has done the time on the two. He could get his Eagle quickly if he would just try.

Anyway, we met with a guy at "The Happy Factory" and set up a date to come and do the Eagle Project on December 14th. He has to put out two hundred cars with the people he brings in to be successful in this project. They are hoping for about 25-35 people to do this in a few hours.

We went out to dinner at Wendys. Unfortunately, Wendys did not have chili ready when we got there, which threw out what my wife wanted to eat. She couldn't think of anything else for awhile, but finally came up with one of the sandwiches which they gave to us for nothing since they did not have the chili ready for her.

When we arrived home, we sent our son into the office to start typing his project up on the computer. I helped him out a little bit on it. He then went and called up Brother Wood (his scout master) and set up an appointment to see him on Saturday Morning. It is good to get my son to actually do something like this.

I was off from work on Friday, and my wife and I went to a concert (during school) that my son had. It was a Veterans Day celebration that was being done by the school. There was a speaker there who is in the military and lost his son in the war in Iraq. It was a very touching concert with the band, orchestra, and choir all participating. One of my scouts did the flag ceremony, and it was done well. After the concert, my wife and I went out to lunch at Cafe Rio, and then went to Roberts to get a couple of things. My daughter slept over at her Melinas house.

Saturday morning, we got up and ready and then went to Brother Woods house so my son could get his signature on the Eagle Project. He was told that he is close to lettering in the Venture Scouts and that he is also close to getting the Denali award. All of this is good. Now, we just had to get an appointment with Brother Taylor. I knew that this would be a harder appointment.

In the evening on Saturday, my daughter and Melina made us a spaghetti dinner. We then went out to pick up some things at Roberts (again) for them to be able to make some ornaments for Christmas.

Sunday, came along, and of course church. There really isn't anything for me to tell about going to church this week. After church we went to get my son set apart as the Teachers quorum president. His two counselors were also set apart, but Tanner (the secretary) forgot to show up for this. We then headed over to Brother Taylors home for another signature. He was classic Brother Taylor and was hard on my son. Not too hard, just hard. I could see that my son was quite stressed out and didn't know what he was being asked. Knowing that this may be causing a migraine, I tried to help my son understand the questions. I was told by Brother Taylor to sit back. He didn't want me doing that at all. I did sit back, and my son did get a migraine. We were sent home without the signature because my son had to write it out better. I completely agree with that decision. We were told to come back that night. The project is good, but it needs to be planned better.

My son layed down for a bit to try to get a handle on his migraine. He got up after a couple of hours to get written out what he needs for this project. I helped him with his wording. He also made up a calendar of events that needs to take place for the project. After that was all done he told us he still had his migraine and he went to his room to get away from any light. We don't know if he actually had a migraine or if he was avoiding going to the fireside on this night.

The fireside tonight, for the youth, was on Patriarchal blessings. One of the sisters in our ward has a grandfather who is a Patriarch and had him come. He is also one of the workers at the Happy Factory. I speculated to my wife that her grandfather was probably younger than our fathers are. During his talk he mentioned that he was born in 1931, so I was right. He is 5 years younger than both of our fathers. Anyway, we learned a bit about what Patriarchs do (and I came to some new understanding of what my father does) in their calling. There was questions and answers. It was a spiritual meeting. My daughter enjoyed it immensely and there were some things said that I wish my son would've been there for. There's not much we can do about that now.

After I got home, I grabbed my son and we went back to Brother Taylors house. This one went a lot better, and my son was better prepared. He then told us that we needed to get a religious leaders signature as well as the District signature. He had my son call both Brother Russell as well as Brother Dehaun for that. Brother Russell was home, but Brother Dehaun wasn't. We got to Brother Russell and got his signature.

There wasn't too much going on today at work. I was told of some immediate things I needed to get into the data warehouse, and then that got put on hold. Of course at the end of the day, I was told that I needed to get it all in place. I hustled to do that.

In the meantime, my wife got a call from Brother Dehauns daughter telling her that he would be out of town this entire week. We tried to call Brother Taylor all evening so we could find the next person in the District that can sign this Eagle Project. There was no luck. Of course, I couldn't get my son to call Brother Petit to see who else to call either because for some reason, he really doesn't like Brother Petit too much.

We watched a movie tonight, and that was it.

Little Missionaries

I am finally getting the details of what I need at work to be able to start working against what I have been doing for quite awhile. It has taken quite a long time to get this information, but at least it's here, and I need to try to get it all in before Thanksgiving. If I can do that, maybe we can stop the nonsense that is going on with all the other stuff.

Soon after arriving home, I had to get the kids over to piano lessons. While I was driving over there my son was telling us about the YM/YW combined activity tonight. He told us that the full time missionaries were coming to the church to teach them how to teach, then we were breaking into groups and going to a few members homes to do the teaching. I told my kids of one experience on my mission where I was teaching an ex-communicated member the discussions so he could be rebaptized. This man and his wife had had the missionaries living with them for awhile so pretty well knew the discussions. That was the only time I slipped up and called the man Mr. Brown. They laughed about this, and through my embarrassment, I also laughed. Of course my kids thought this was funny once my daughter understood that it wasn't his name.

While my kids were at piano lessons, I went to Target with the one problem with the tree we bought from there. The top set of lights didn't work on it, and when we bought it, it was their last one. They told me that they had other ones in now, and I could just change the top out. I told them that my wife had already decorated the tree, and didn't want to take it down to take care of this problem, and that I had temporarily fixed it. What they did was give me three new strands of 100 lights each. They also told me to call in about two weeks before Christmas and if they had the tree still at that time that they would give me the top to one of the trees. My wife doesn't think they will have the trees in stock. I will wait and see.

I picked up my kids, and my wife was gone over to the church by the time I arrived home. I took the kids over about 45 minutes later. My wife and I changed keys, since she wasn't staying for the combined activity (and I needed the SUV to carry more people). As I mentioned, the missionaries gave us a lesson on how to teach somebody the first discussion. Of course, it has changed since the day I did it, and is completely free form rather than a memorized discussion. There were a couple of role plays and then we were ready to go out. My son came over to me, after he got his assignment. He told me that he was going to teach Mr. Brown. That's the one that I was going to be driving too. The assignments came by marking the hands of the kids with different colors of markers. I joked that the reds were browns (not that good of a joke, so you don't need to laugh).

Each person in the group was to pick one of the six principles in the first discussion and talk about that. We only had five, so one had to do two of them. Tanner volunteered to do that. We headed out, and went to the Browns home. Nobody came to the door. I borrowed Tanners cell phone and gave them a call. There was no answer on the phone (we even heard it ringing in there). I told them that this was a good experience, as this really happens when you are out there. What did they want to do now. Tanner said he could call his mom and see if they could teach her. She was more than happy to oblige. The discussion went well, and the young men and women did well.

We arrived back at the church, and then I had to get to key scouters meeting. What to do with the kids after mutual came up. I mentioned the problem that I had a couple of weeks ago with three boys, and one of the ladies there said that I should go to each of their parents. Of course, I'm not going to do that. She was pretty huffy about it all. I just had to let it go.

One other thing that irritated me was that Brother Petit took credit for helping to get my son on track for his eagle project. We had been after him to do so, and nothing ever was done. We will probably be going tomorrow night to see about one possible Eagle Project. I had talked to Brother Petit about this on Sunday. Anyway, I can't let the small stuff get to me, and once again, just let it go.

After key scouters I was in the hall when a police officer came over to the church. He was there because somebody had called 911 from the church phone. It looks like it was a prank of one of the kids. Probably the reason that we are going to not allow kids to be around in the church building if no adult leaders are there. That one pisses me off. To call 911 as a prank is something that is absolutely and completely wrong. If I find out who did that one, I will take appropriate measures to make sure it will not happen again. As it is, I think we need to talk to the youth about not dialing 911 unless there is an emergency. I think I will bring it up next week in Young Men/ Young Women.

Vote!

On my way into work this morning, I heard that there were already people in line to vote. The polls don't open until 7:00, and I am into my office by 6:00. I couldn't believe that people would be at the voting locations so early. I don't know why somebody would want to stand around for an hour to avoid a long line. Oh well, I am not going to go that early.

There really isn't too much going on at work now that I am over my emergency stuff. When it rains it pours, but then there is the time when there really isn't much to do.

At work, they were giving us flu shots. I absolutely hate shots, but my wife thinks I should get this one, especially since it is free through my place of employment. I went down and got the shot. The needle was small, and the actual shot didn't hurt, but I felt a little bit of pain a little bit later.

I took off from work at lunch time to go vote. I had a bit of a difficult time getting to my voting location. I did finally find it. It was in the Daybreak community center. They have the elementary school attached to the community center. I don't really like the way they have done that, but then, it isn't my call, and my kids never had to go to school there.

Voting, for me went smoothly. I got in there, got my card, went to a machine, and voted. There were a lot of empty machines, and there was absolutely no waiting. I liked the new touch screens and being able to vote electronically. One of the problems that a few people had was that in Utah there is a political party named Personal Choice. This political party was down on the bottom of the list, with their icon which is a happy face. Some people thought that they wanted to go through and choose their personal choice, and in so doing voted a straight ticket. It was correctable, but it threw a few people.

Another problem that they had was in Utah County, the voting machines were down. They were turning people away, rather than giving them the Provisional Ballot. That would've made me mad. I have taken the time to come and vote, and they are telling me to come back? What's up with that? They did get things working, but it is disturbing that they didn't prepare better for a problem.

Since I was close to home, I decided to stop in. My wife was decorating the tree. She had been at it all morning long. I grabbed something to eat, and left to get back to work. Still, not much going on at work.

On my way home, I decided to go in and pick up a trimmer for my goatee. That's something I haven't had, even when I had a full beard. Hopefully, this will make the keeping up of this thing manageable. My wife wasn't home when I arrived home. She came in soon after though, and made us some shepherds pie. I love that stuff.

As she looked at the fully decorated tree, she didn't like the way the ribbons were coming down. It didn't flow, was what she said. She and I took off all the ornaments, and then the ribbon so she could start all over again. Man alive, what a perfectionist. I thought it looked great the way it was. She only got on the ribbon tonight, and will probably start to put the ornaments on it again tomorrow. We also had to get the room somewhat in order because Connie and Maddie were coming over for a hair cut.

O Christmas Tree

At work today, I was able to finish up the weekend stuff that I had worked so hard on. It was finally finished today at around 3:00 PM. It was a pain, but it is one that I am grateful to be done with.

When I arrived home, I saw that my wife had pulled out our Christmas tree. She was trying to see if it was still good enough to use this year (that's why she pulled it out early). While she and my daughter were putting it together, I went out to finish up some work on heated lines on my house to keep the ice melted near our front porch area. I had to staple the things to the shingles since they were sliding out. I also made sure that it went down the drain pipe rather than just being in a clump right there. That was the biggest pain.

When I got in, my wife was swearing at the Christmas Tree lights and she was wondering why she doesn't like Christmas anymore. She was also upset because it is hard for me to help because of my asthma. I didn't know what to do, and, there really wasn't anything for me to do. Finally, it got to the point where some lights went out while she was stringing them through the tree, plus all the faults of the tree. We headed out around 8:15 tonight to go looking for Christmas trees. We found one that we liked at Target, but went to look at Shopko, Home Depot, and Smiths Market Place. We went back to Target and picked up the tree.

My wife started to take down the one tree, and I started to put up the pre-lit tree. There were some things that we didn't remember seeing in the one on the floor at Target, but that was probably because we really didn't look that hard at it. Anyway, it looks like it will be all right, even though there was one problem with it. The top part of the tree didn't light up. I looked into the lights for about 15 minutes before finding that one of the wires wasn't inside of the light. I put it in place and taped it up for now, because I really don't want to string these lights up. I just hope that works.

My wife will work on the tree tomorrow as it is getting pretty late tonight.

Overtime

If I were paid for overtime, I would've made a lot of money over this weekend. Instead, it was just one huge pain in the rear. Oh well, it's just the way things go sometimes.

Since I last wrote there hasn't been a whole lot of things going on, but I have been rather busy. Friday, I had a seminar that I was supposed to go to. Thank goodness it was at my place of employment, because I was able to keep up on the problems that were going on. Not only did we have issues with the policy levels table (things that were completely redone that I had to bring into the data warehouse), but a lot more than normal amount of policies came into being. Normally, I have between 3000 - 5000 policy renewals to deal with. On both Friday as well as Saturday, there was over 150,000. This caused some major hiccups in the system. Jobs were dying because resources were not available, and I had to work with all of that. During the seminar, I kept on checking up on my jobs. They were not even close to done when I left work (these are jobs that are normally done by 4:30 AM on a regular basis).

When I arrived home Friday evening, I logged onto work immediately. Things were still running, and the thought was that at least I could finish some of this stuff on Saturday. I did have to shut it all down around 11:00 PM, so new stuff could come in. Little did I know that there would be over 150,000 policy renewals again. Basically, when I woke up Saturday, I found that some more jobs had died and I had to get them all fixed as well. So, not only did I not get Fridays stuff done on Saturday, but I didn't finish out Saturdays stuff. I was stuck watching the computer all day on Saturday. In the meantime I had family things going on around me. Kids wanting to go for a late night as well as sleepovers. This got them out of my wife's hair as well as mine. My wife did have to drop off and pick up the kids though. My wife was able to go out with her friend for part of this night to do some shopping at the crap ... er, I mean craft store. She lost one of her favorite earrings of course, and so this was disturbing to her. Of course, Saturday, my daughter came home for awhile with her friend, but thank goodness that her friends dad took them around to places like the library. I had my own issues. Also, in the morning, my wife called Tony (her friend) to see if the earring was in her car. It ended up that it was, although we still need to figure out how come that earring was found in the backseat of the car.

I did watch a four hour DVD with my wife called Triangle. It was a pretty good show, but I had to stop it about every 20 minutes to make sure that everything was OK with my work. That was a bit frustrating, especially when I had to take a few extra minutes to clean things up and try to get things restarted. Anyway, it was a frustrating day on Saturday. I was forced to close things down when there were backups on the mainframe and decided that Sunday is another day. I had finished quite a bit up on Saturday but still wasn't through the day.

This morning, I got up around 6:00 to try to start things up again. I guess another backup was happening and I wasn't allowed to do anything. I finally got a call about 8:30 that I could start some things up. This didn't quite work, and I had to wait until 9:00. I got it all kicked off and headed on over to church (just a little bit late). After priesthood meeting, I met up with my wife and told her that the eagle project for my son may not work because two other boys were doing the same thing. This upset her (and I had upset her in the last two days as well) so it wasn't a good thing. In the long run it will all be OK. My son can still do an eagle project based on the "Happy Factory" if he so chooses. We just need to get out there and see what it is that he actually needs. We will do that either Tuesday or Thursday.

Anyway, I came home during Sunday School to make sure things were working appropriately and got back to church in time for Sacrament meeting. My son was asked to go out for fast offerings with the deacons and he did so. I had changed, but got a call asking me if I could go out to do fast offerings. I had to get back into my clothes and go out. I was with Josh. The first house was his house and he said that he had to knock on the door because that was part of the requirement of going out to collect fast offerings. His dad thought he was nuts, but there is nothing new to that. The next house was out vacuuming up her leaves. She told us that she was not a member. It was an obvious lie, but she does not want to be approached again. We also ended up going to my dads cousins house for fast offerings. He invited us in and wanted to chit chat for a bit. He asked me if I could live the United Order. We had that conversation while his daughter was getting fast offerings from them. We did finally get out of there and over to the church.

Of course, arriving home, I still had my work to do. I continued to keep up with what was going on and fixing jobs and rerunning. Finally, around 6:00 tonight, I finished up with Saturdays work (remember this stuff should've been done Saturday morning). I now had to see how much of Fridays stuff I could catch up on. This was running until about 10:15 tonight when I knew that there was no way I would be able to finish up (I didn't believe I could anyway). I killed my jobs and set the system back up so we could run Monday mornings stuff. Now, we need to see if that is going to finish OK or not.

Anyway, it's been a long weekend, and it may be OK to go into work on Monday. There will be a lot to do, and I am going to have to see if I can start up Fridays jobs bright and early Monday morning. I'm tired, and frustrated, and going to bed.