Just stuff

Sunday morning, while I was getting ready for church, I got a call from my in-laws. My mother-in-law was concerned that Melanie was not in the house. She thought she had heard noises downstairs but when she went down there, nobody was there. She had assumed Melanie was going around the house. Anyway, she was concerned about her daughter who was missing.

I asked her if she had heard anybody come in (any of her grandsons). She said no. She didn't think Melanie would walk to Ben's apartment and I agreed that it was way too far away. I asked if she left her things there. She had. Since she didn't take her things I told her that I was pretty certain that Melanie wasn't planning on leaving just yet. She would probably be back. Then she noticed that her purse was gone. I told her that she had probably walked to Walmart for something. I told her we should wait it out for a bit. I called a little later and while I was talking the doorbell rang. Margaret hung up the phone (accidentally) and then called me back and said that Melanie was there. She had walked to Smiths.

We went to our meetings and really didn't do anything else of note on Sunday.

Monday, I had taken the day off. We used it for a day of shopping for a few Christmas gifts. We were able to pick up quite a bit of what we needed though there are still a few gifts that we need to find. One day (hopefully before December 25th) we will have all of our shopping done. I picked up our daughter in the carpool and then once again, we really didn't do anything.

Tuesday evening we had Young Women in Excellence. We went and heard our daughter in her part as well as her singing with all the Young Women, and then some talks on their Personal Progress. It was a good, spiritual meeting.

Not much has gone on today either. I am having a few problems at work that are perplexing, but I am working on all of them. I guess problems are the thing that keep me in a job. I should be grateful for that.

Well, that's it for now.

Steves Funeral

We had to get up a little bit earlier than we like to for a Saturday so we could take care of the one errand that we didn't get taken care of yesterday before the funeral. We decided that we had to be dressed and ready to go by 9:00 AM. Our kids didn't want to go to the funeral and we decided that they didn't have too. We regretted that decision, after the fact.

What we had to do, was to run to Amelias so we could look over the Santa suits and decide exactly what we needed. We did decide that we would rather get it big than to get it too small. We have already contacted President LaMunyon and he agreed to be our Santa. At Amelias, we looked at the suits and decided on the extra large. I don't know what the large would do, but the extra large was too large for me, but pillows or something could make up the slack on that. I only hope we didn't make a goof up on that. Time will tell. My wife also saw some homemade fudge and she can hardly ever pass that up, so we got about a pound of that.

We went over to the Wachs house to wait for the time of the funeral. It started at 11:00 and we decided to be over to the church at 10:30. We only had a half hour wait before we had to leave, so we didn't leave our house much too early. Melanie looked good in the outfit that we spent all of yesterday getting. She was excited to be dressed as such.

As stated above, we left our kids at home and went to the church. We greeted a bunch of people and there was some general chit-chat. Chantelle told me that she hadn't come over to our house for Thanksgiving because her mom would be there and she was afraid that she would set her mom off. I think she was probably wrong in that assessment, but it explained to me why she did what she did. Steve's brother Ron and his wife chose not to come to the funeral because since they are the ones who took the children away from Melanie and Steve, they were afraid that there may be some kind of problem with Melanie going out of control. I am not sure they are wrong in that, but it would be interesting to know for sure.

The prelude music was a tape that Steve had made of his piano playing while he was in Alabama. It was really quite beautiful, and he was quite good at playing the piano (something I did not know before now). After everybody was seated the funeral started. Steve was cremated so there was no casket, and there wasn't an urn either. Nothing of Steve was there as far as I could tell, unless his spirit was present (which I believe it was). Chantelle was the first speaker at her dads funeral. Hers was the hardest part that I had because when she started to cry, it made me cry for her. She truly loved her father (despite his cocaine usage). Anne followed her by singing "How Great Thou Art" and then a friend of Steve spoke. The friend was Ed Bolander (of whom I have a slight remembrance of). I know his brother better. His remembrance was mostly lighthearted things that boys do with each other in growing up. Anne read a poem, and this was followed by Steve's father. I was glad to see Kent include Melanie as a helper to Steve through Steve's life because she really was. There have been a lot of bad feelings between the two families over some of the incidents that have happened. There was one point when Melanie talked from the audience to Kent saying that Steve died of fear (the fear of what the doctors were going to do in the way of surgery to fix the congenital heart failure he died of). For a minute, I thought Melanie was going to escalate, but that did not happen. I liked the way that nobody tried to steer around Steve's addiction. They simply realized that it was a part of Steve that wasn't the best choice to make. The services were very comforting, as funeral services should be. Because of the way things were presented, we wished that we had told our children that they had to come. We can't look back now and make that decision though. It will have to be water under the bridge. About the only thing that I was disturbed by was that Anne was said to be a family friend rather than family in the program. I wondered how that made Anne and Pam feel, but didn't ever ask them about that. There was no interment of Steve. It was simply suggested that this would be done at a later date. Steve's urn will be placed upon his mothers coffin at that time.

After the services, I went home and picked up my kids to bring them to the church for the luncheon. It was a good luncheon, and it was good to talk with the family members on both sides of the family that was there.

We stayed at the Wachs house for almost the rest of the day. We did have to get home to make sure our dog didn't have any accidents in our house though. Not much else happened today.

Melanie

It's the day after Thanksgiving. My wife and I had planned on going to check out a Santa Suit at Amelias, but when I called them, I was told that they were all out to the dry cleaners. This was something that we were planning on taking care of before going over to pick up Melanie and take her shopping for some clothes for the funeral on Saturday. Anyway, today was an interesting day.

My day started at 5:30. Our son wanted to go to Circuit City because they had a PS2 game on sale that he has been trying to get used. It was less new than any of the used ones that he had seen, and since we had a lot to do today, I told him I would get up at 5:30 so we could be there by 6:00. The store opened at 5:00 for the Black Friday rush, and I really didn't want to be mixed up in that. Fat chance on that.

We arrived at 6:00 as I had promised my son, and found that we still had to stand in line. The store was too crowded. They kept on calling out for 2 or 5 or when things went well 15. We finally got in the store and went back to see if they had the PS2 game. It was a Star Wars game called Battlefront. We found it, and one other game (for the gameboy advance) and got in another line to get through the registers. We finally got out of the store at 7:00 AM. Since we were up and around we went into Target. The line in there to the registers was horrendous. I went back and found an SD card (the last one they had) for $10 (it was 2 gig). I also grabbed some DVDs for the computer. They were pretty inexpensive. We got in a shorter line that was going to the electronics when a man came and told his wife there was an express line. We hurried to that and got out of there in really good time (I had already wasted too much time in the store for what I was getting).

My son put the video game into his PS2 and soon came out to me disappointed. It didn't work properly. It took too long to load in between everything. I told him we wouldn't be able to take it back at this time, but maybe, later tonight we could take it back.

Of course, now, I called Amelias and then we let Melanie know that our plans had changed and we would be to her place around 11:00.

After my wife got ready we headed out. We dropped our kids off at my in-laws and then went to pick up Melanie at Ben's apartment. His apartment was what we had expected for Ben as a bachelor. Melanie was ready and told us that Ben hadn't come home last night.

We went to the Fashion Place mall in Murray. It was a place that had both a Dillards and a Lane Bryant store which was what we needed because of the plus size of Melanie. She was at a size 24 (3x) and that is the biggest size the stores have. We walked into Dillards and went to the plus size area. We looked around at some clothes and there really wasn't all that much that looked good and fit Melanie. We did finally find one outfit that was a pant suit (quite frilly) and decided that it would be OK, particularly if we found a skirt to go with it. As it was, we never did find a skirt to go with the outfit. We did tell the associates there that we were dealing with a widow who had just lost her husband and that she is bipolar. It was a good thing we had done this because it was a little bit embarrassing with some of the stuff that happened.

While Melanie was trying on the outfit, she came out of the dressing room showing everybody that happened to be there that the pants didn't fit. Way too much skin was showing and we were trying to get her to go back into the dressing room. She didn't readily go in there. My wife went to see if she could find another pair of slacks that would go with the outfit and asked me to see what I could do to get her back in. She finally went back in and changed her clothes. In the meantime we had found some slacks that may go with the outfit and had an elastic around the waist. That seemed to fit her.

When Melanie was changing out of the pants she asked if I could get a bag so she could put some mens boxers into that she was wearing. I asked them about this and they told me they could do that for us, but the bag could not go into the dressing room area. Melanie came out, boxers in hand and loudly proclaims that her are the boxers that I need to put in that bag. I have too many layers on now and am sweating because of my period. This was a bit embarassing to me because it is said loud enough for almost everybody within a 50 foot radius to hear, and it is black Friday (a day of shopping). We get the bag and I leave my wife there to make sure they hold this stuff in case we need it and I head out with Melanie to go to Lane Bryant.

We were told that Lane Bryant was by Nordstroms but I had looked on a map and seen that it was by Sears. Since Melanie has a hard time walking, I run down to Sears to make sure where it is rather than having to walk too much. It was there, so I came back to get Melanie and my wife. It was a useless walk as Lane Bryant didn't have anything at all. I really thought they would have a good selection. They told us that at Christmas time they don't really deal in dresses and skirts. We are a bit upset, but tell Melanie we need to go back to Dillards to make sure that the pants we were getting separate would really go with her whole outfit.

On the way back, Melanie tells us that she is sweating so bad that she doesn't want to try on any clothes while she is this stinky and that she needs to find a bathroom so she can wash up a bit. Then she sees a Bath and Body Works and tells us that she can go in there to clean up. We didn't even know they had a sink. They do. It is a place where they have some of their samples that you can wash with and put on some nice smelling lotions. Melanie uses this and washes up as much as she can (including reaching into her blouse). She takes quite a while there, and then we finally leave. One of the sales associates there gives a glare as we leave.

At Dillards again, we find out that everything fits her just fine. We purchase all of it (thank goodness the outfit was 75% off because the regular price is $120) and spend around $70 for the whole thing. Now all we have to do is find some shoes.

We had talked to Margaret (my wifes mother) and are told to go to a place called Sas Shoes that isn't too far from where we are. We go in there and tell the lady what we need to do. She picks up some shoes to our specifications (Melanie needed arch support as she is flat footed) and as she is trying them on Melanie turns and tells us that all of these shoes are over $100. That had us concerned so we called Margaret to make sure it is OK. She tells us that Melanie needs good shoes. We go ahead with the transaction. The shoes that Melanie picks out are $114. We gave the rest of the cash we had and had to write out a check for the rest.

We are hungry so we decide that we might as well go back to our place where we can rest up a bit and eat. This is a much needed thing for us to do, as we are all dropping.

Of course on all the driving trips we communicate with Melanie. She is quite intelligent and wants all kinds of details. While she is intelligent, she is not socially adept. As far as she is concerned there are really no rules. We talk to her about our children, and her children. We talk about her cocaine addicted husband who has just passed away. We talk about her children being taken away from her. All of this goes pretty well.

At one point I make the comment to Melanie that she is a great lady. She asks me if I really mean it. I tell her that I do. Then she asks, "Why?" This is something that I had forgotten about her. You never can get away with small talk. She will get to the bottom of it. It's a bit concerning to me, but I go ahead. I basically tell her that I don't know anybody who has had a Sids child pass away and they get up and move to then have to deal with a cocaine addicted husband, and still she continues on, and then to have the rest of your children taken from you, and to get up and move again while dealing with mental illness. I tell her that she is simply a survivor. Yes, Melanie is indeed a great woman. She just keeps on going, and is still in love with her husband and her children despite all that has happened. She doesn't seem to hold too much against us for not ever seeing her either. I mean, it has been 10 years since my wife had even seen her sister, and we have never seen her in the 18 years of our marriage where we have been able to be around her for much more than 5 minutes before she sets off. This is really good for my wife and for Melanie to again achieve this closeness that was once there that has been lost through the years. I just hope that this is how things will continue. Hopefully, Melanie can stay on her medications and we can be with her, rather than the mentally ill Melanie.

Anyway, we head to our house and have lunch. We then sit down and chat for awhile. My wife is really sleepy, but she continues to talk anyway. Melanie asks us about home movies. We tell her that we don't have that many, and they are kind of hard to get out. She then asks for pictures. We tell her that they are all in a big box and not organized at all. She wants them. We get that box and she starts to go through it. She sees a picture of her son (as a baby) first and thinks that is great. I photo copy it. The next thing I know she is saying that she wants a bunch of these pictures to put into her photo albums. They are pictures of her grandma and grandpa (whom I never had the opportunity to meet). They are pictures of our kids growing up. There are pictures of my wife as a younger person as well as some more recent. I am in a couple of the pictures and she even wants some pictures of my mother. That's a lot of pictures. I go through most of my photo paper (I still have a couple of sheets left). But, she gets a lot of these pictures and is content. I get the feeling that she is simply trying to catch up to the relationships that she had before with her family. She also recognizes my brothers that she thought were handsome when they were growing up (they went to the same schools). I show her a more recent picture of my brother Keith who was a friend of her husband when they were growing up. He is heavy in a beard and his hair is all grown out. In the picture I show her it is all combed which isn't like him at all. He is usually a wild mountain man with no teeth. She says that we shouldn't judge him by his appearance because she is sure that he is a good man. In this, she is absolutely correct. I don't find too much about her that is incorrect.

At one point, Melanie escalates. She is talking about her daughter and she feels that people have turned her daughter against her. To a certain extent, she is correct. It really is more of a protection that Chantelle is trying to accomplish. She now has a daughter of her own (one that has never met her grandmother) that is almost one year old. Melanie knows that she has been in town and not come over. She is also upset that she wasn't allowed to show up at the wedding of her daughter. How unfair is that? My God, how much pain does one woman have to suffer. Life has been a hard thing on Melanie. She really feels that she doesn't have anywhere to turn too. We agree with her that life is hard, that it is hard to not be allowed to your daughters wedding, and that it is hard to have her not come over. Melanie calms back down.

We leave the house. We only have to pick up some stockings. My wife had given Melanie some feminine products so we didn't need to pick up that kind of stuff. I really don't think she was taking care of her feminine things with products but rather she was simply wearing layers to take care of it as best she could. I don't care if I'm right or wrong on that. I don't want to think about it.

JC Penneys is our last stop. We pick up stockings and some earrings for Melanie (my wife also). She just wants to look good at her husbands funeral. We want this for her as well. We head for my in-laws house. The day is almost done with Melanie.

Once at the in-laws, we all go inside. Melanie goes to take a relaxing shower. We show off what we had bought for Melanie and all of it meets with approval. Margaret pays us for the rest. We only stay a short time and then leave.

On reflection of the day with Melanie, I find myself realizing that this was a great day for my wife and I to have. It is a great day for Melanie as well. Yes, we had to learn to have a little bit of patience, but then again, she probably had to have patience with us as well. She is an independent person, so it cannot be easy for her to have to rely on us for transportation, nor can it be easy on her to have her mother paying for things. She doesn't ask for anything from anybody, but she is willing to accept graciously those things that people give her. It puts me to tears to think of all the trials this woman has gone through. She is strong despite it all. I don't know that she is happy though, and indeed she realizes that she has lived a sad life. She said as much. I think Melanie has resigned herself to living a sad, solitary existence, but not so much that she won't get joy wherever and whenever she can. I think she did more good for me than I did for her through talking with her. I think I will have more compassion toward all people because of the time I spent with her. This was a mission in love, from us to her, but I'm not sure that it didn't work just the opposite way. Melanie has touched my soul.

Now back to the finish of the day. As we were driving home, our son asked if he couldn't go back to Circuit City in hopes that they still had at least one copy of his game so he could exchange it. I told him it was early enough that we could do that. We took everybody home and then he and I went for the exchange. The store was still busy, but nothing like it was this morning. He found a copy of the game and we exchanged it with no problems. Thank goodness that when we got back home the new game worked like a charm.

That is the end of my day.

Thanksgiving

Most of the week has passed now. I thought I had better right a little bit about some of the things going on. My work week has been busy and interesting. There have been a few problems that I have been fixing as we move along. There are still only a couple of issues and that is a good thing.

Of course, my sister-in-law and her partner have been in Alabama taking care of getting Melanie and bringing her home after the death of her husband. They say that they had to leave her alone a few times to give both them and her a break from one another. Mostly, things went pretty well. There was a small problem on the plane where a lady asked innocently how things were going and isn't it great to go home for Thanksgiving. The reason that was a mistake was that Melanie told her life story to her and all the problems that were going on. At least she didn't escalate and that was a good thing. The lady did say that she would pray for Pam and Anne as they were getting off the plane.

Pam was a little bit ticked off that there was nobody there at the airport to meet them. Ben was supposed to be there but decided at the last minute that he needed to work. It was only Kiki who showed up to pick up the three of them. I called and told Pam I would come on out, and she broke down and was crying because they expected some relief. She wouldn't accept that I could be there in 15 minutes and just told me to stay home. That is what I did. They got to my in-laws house soon thereafter and there were no further instances of problems.

Of course most of Wednesday evening my wife and I (mostly my wife) were preparing for the Thanksgiving dinner. There was the cleaning up of the house and taking care of little odds and ends all over the place. We also needed to stay up until midnight when we would start the brining of the Turkey with a recipe that my wife had picked up from one of the neighbors. This was supposed to brine for 6 hours, but we left it for about 9.5 hours.

We had decided to serve the Thanksgiving dinner around 2:00 to 2:30. The turkey was done at 1:30 (a little earlier than we expected) and we put it back in the oven to keep it warm. We don't know if that was the reason that it was drier than we had expected, but suspect that that was the reason. Pam and Anne came over at 1:00 to help us out with some of the last minute preparations of the dinner. They also brought over some sugar-free pies because of Pam's diabetes. We were grateful for the extra help because we were getting quite tired from having to do absolutely everything on this dinner.

Everybody else came to our house at around 2:00. Nobody else was early with the exception of what I have written. We were running around a bit, and welcomed all of them to our house. I talked with Melanie a little bit, and she was doing quite well. She did want to see pictures of my family so she could figure out who the two children looked more like.

The dinner went well, but my wife was a bit upset when her sister said that the honey-glazed ham was better than the turkey. People stayed and there was a lot of visiting. Melanie stayed on an even keel during this whole time.

My father-in-laws van needed to have water added to it so he could get home. He added the water and then took a bucket with him so they could get home and put more water in if needed.

Pam and Anne stayed a bit later and we rented "Meet the Robinsons" and watched it. That took up our Thanksgiving Day. I was thankful that it went so well and that we did not have any problems with Melanie (which was our biggest concern).

Anniversary and Death in the Family

Another week has gone by and I haven't been writing much. For most of the week there really wasn't anything to write about. Just the same ol' stuff.

I had the day off on Friday which was nice because this is the day of my wife and my 18th anniversary. I still can't believe that such a wonderful angel saw fit to marry me, and then to stay with me can't be all that easy. We spent most of the morning getting ready to go to Johnsons' Mill for our anniversary. We were able to leave in time that once we hit Kimball Junction (near Park City), we were able to have some lunch at Ruby River. We enjoyed that, and then went to the outlet stores there in Kimball Junction. My wife had waited all this time to get a battery replaced in her watch. They only had one watch battery (of her type) left. Thank goodness they had that.

We next headed to Johnsons Mill. It started out with us being a little bit put out because they had done away with some of the niceties that we enjoyed last year. Last year, when you got to your room, there was a welcome plate with a couple of fresh baked cookies and some fruits and then a non-alcoholic drink. This year they did away with that for some reason. They told us we could get the non-alcoholic drink for an added $10 (what were they thinking? Did they think we were drunk?). Anyway, this is the first year that we didn't go out and get some snacks and such figuring they would be there at the Bed and Breakfast. We let them know (nicely) of our disappointment. That is not the place to cut back for a place like that, that is made for romantic getaways.

Well, we headed to a grocery store to pick up our own non-alcoholic drinks and a few other snacks just for us. We then went back to our room and just enjoyed each others company. It was a great evening for us. I guess you could say we had the funniest sex that we have ever had, and no, I'm not going to talk about it.

The bed and breakfast still had the great breakfast they have had every morning that we have been there. After that, we packed up our stuff and headed back to Kimball Junction. On the way there we had to pull over so I could talk to my Sister-in-law on the cell phone. She thought that my wifes mother had told us about Steve Browns' death. He died Thursday evening, and they had decided not to tell us so we could enjoy our anniversary. What Pam needed was an internet site to get her plane tickets from that was cheaper. I sent her to lastminute.com. This is a site where you can save quite a bit of money with all the travel needs. With it, she was able to get two roundtrip tickets as well as the hotel room for the same price they would be spending for one one-way ticket. They did have to get a oneway ticket for Melanie though.

Here's some of what happened with relation to this death. Steve has been an alcoholic and a cocaine addict for quite a few years. We were all pretty certain his death was imminent. It just had to happen at a time like this. Melanie (his wife) has manic depressive disorder. She is bipolar. Anyway, after his death, she went a bit nuts and because of this they had to hospitalize her. She is taking some medication for this illness now that she is in the hospital (although that medication is going to be $700 a month to continue on). Anyway, we are sending Pam and Anne to Alabama to pick her up and bring her back. They may also need to see if they can sell her two cars while they are down there. Melanie also has to get to the mortuary and sign some papers so they can cremate Steve (nobody has the money to bring him back to Utah without doing this). She also doesn't want to sell her cars, but wants to drive them back to Utah. This is too hard of a task and the cars she has aren't worth all that much (certainly not the expense of getting them back to Utah). When they bought them they were only $2000 and $800 cars to begin with. I just hope Pam and Anne can get her out of the hospital. There's just too much to be done.

Steve died of congestive heart failure. He has known about the problems with the drinking and the cocaine, but never was able to do anything to get out of those habits. Now, he has a grieving family. The two kids were taken away from Steve and Melanie and the third child lived with his mother since he was 18 at the time. There are some rifts there and it will be interesting to see what happens in that area as far as this whole thing is concerned. We don't know when the funeral will take place, but they are going to open up his mothers grave and put his ashes on her casket and then close it up again (this is because of expense again). That will only cost about $1000 and the cremation itself will be about $1000. There will be no obituary for him because neither of the parents feel they can afford the $500 because of various things that have to take place and the lives that must continue on.

People will be coming into town over the next few days and there has been talk as to what we will be doing for Thanksgiving. My wife told her mom that we still need to have Thanksgiving, if for nothing else, at least there will be comfort foods around for the grieving family. We will have it out at our house it looks like (that was always the plan) but now it looks like we will need to foot the whole fare for all (and we will have a few extra mouths to feed). We will be dipping into our Christmas account in order to cover the extra expense (that's OK, because we had already decided that we were cutting back on gifts for the kids anyway). We are a bit concerned about Melanie coming over to our house because of the fits that she can throw. Hopefully, all will go well with her, and we won't have any problems with the neighbors. I mean, there is a reason that my kids still have never met Steve or Melanie. Well, I got ahead of myself a bit here. Let me get back to the journal stuff.

After talking with Pam, we still went to Kimball Junction, but this whole death thing put a damper on what we were doing. Shopping wasn't as fun, and our anniversary wasn't as fun. I mean we had a good time and everything, but things were not as good as they could've been. We bought a few things and then went back to our next room at Johnsons Mill. This was the Honeymoon Suite that we had. It was a beautiful room. We watched a few movies and just spent the time being together. Things didn't go right for us for most of Saturday, and a lot of different things happened (none of which I am going to go into).

Sunday morning we had breakfast and then watched a movie on TV. We then decided to head out. When we got to my in-laws house, we found that our son was at home and our daughter had gone to church with her grandma. Our son mowed the lawn for his grandpa. We stayed there for a little while but needed to get out of there. Things are a bit crazy, but most people are doing OK with this whole thing.

After arriving home, I unpacked some of my stuff and took care of a few odds and ends. In the evening, I went over to the Johnsons house to let them know that it was me and the fire department that had gone into their house while they were gone (we had to go in through a window) because their smoke alarms were going off. They were relieved that it was that way as they were wondering what had happened. Well, that is pretty much what has been happening.

Happy Anniversary (huh?)!

It's in Production!

While there are still a couple of kinks to work out, at least we finally got this RiskMaster project in production. There were some frustrating moments through the whole thing though. Everything was quiet on Friday. I had gone into work just in case there were issues, but thankfully, there were not.

Saturday, I got up and took care of a few things around the house. We had decided that we would go out to a dog park with my sister-in-law, Zach, and the in-laws. Before we went, I decided to check on my emails to see if any problems had come up. Doug was supposed to have everything converted by Sunday, so we were kind of waiting for that. I was surprised to find that he was done. I called Paul to make sure that was what it meant. I was told that it was true. Well, it was irritating to have it done early because had we known that, we could've done things a lot more smoothly by waiting to start on Friday evening rather than when we started on Thursday evening.

I chose to run the things that I needed to run from what he had done. In doing so, I found that he had not corrected a few issues on their side. I had to break things apart a bit so I could run some fixes in order to get the processes through. Of course, the real fix would have to come later. I got most of the stuff fixed before we had to head out to be with family. I took care of one last piece after arriving home.

The dog park was kind of fun. There are a bunch of trails up there, and there was an area that had bike jumps and other things. This is all around a river that goes through the place, and in some places they have dammed it up so there could be some swimming holes in there. It was kind of a hike for my in-laws who are not in the best of health, but we all made it there and back safely. We went to dinner at the Olive Garden afterwards without Zach who needed to get back to his dorm room at the U.

Sunday morning, I checked on a few more jobs that had run over the evening to make sure things were still working out pretty well. They seemed to be OK. My wife and I then went to the church for Ward Correlation meeting. They wanted to know about the Christmas party. We got a couple of more ideas as well as a few hints on how to find some of the things we are looking for. Overall, it was good, but my wife and I are glad we don't have this extra meeting on a regular basis. Of course, we went to our regular church meetings, and then had to stay after so our daughter could be set apart as the Beehive president. We also had to take our son back to church so he could be interviewed to be a priest. It has taken this long just to get to that point. He probably won't be at church next Sunday to be sustained so that will come in a couple more weeks and then we'll have to have him ordained.

Today was a stressful day at the office for me. There were the kinks I was talking about. Gary hadn't looked at test very well when we had it there or he would've come up with some of the problems that we had. They aren't big problems. One of the problems that I worked on all day was that the pennies hadn't come across. I had to modify the code quite a bit to get them since I have to take them in an Alpha format to put back into a Decimal format on our side. The command to do this was kind of awful, but once I got it figured out, there wasn't a problem. I will finish running this fix tomorrow morning first thing. The other problem that I don't know what to do with is a program that worked in Test just wasn't working in production. I also couldn't get it to work in Test. I am going to have to work on that tomorrow. It is dealing with the cleared checks.

I got home late from work, and I guess I looked tired because my wife commented that I would probably end up going to bed early tonight. Truer words have never been spoken. I'm going to go to bed now (It's only 10:00).

Election Mumbo Jumbo

Work has been very busy this week (as I knew it would be) with the preparations to finally go to production with our RiskMaster project. It has been an interesting journey and we will be perfectly happy when it is done. They are getting ready to have a party for it being done rather than for it being done in a successful way. It has been a frustrating project from the first for us because we knew in the beginning that it was a bad idea. Unfortunately, those on the top did not agree with our arguments and in the long run told us to just do it. No more protestations from us. That is what has been done. I know that at least one of them has come out about a month ago and said something to the effect of "what were we thinking". In the IT department, we certainly have not figured that out. It seems to us that they are losing capabilities that they could've kept if we didn't do this thing. But, it is what they want.

Tuesday was a day of voting for us. There really was only one issue that we had to deal with in our area. That was Referendum 1 (which is school vouchers). I voted by mail and sent that off on Monday. I was against vouchers because it wasn't well enough thought out, and I don't think we should mix public money into private schools (there is also the fact that most private schools are religious in nature). I got in a couple of arguments with Brent at work over this, and I really ticked him off on Tuesday. He didn't have any valid arguments for it, and then brought in more things that tended to go with what I was saying than what he was saying. He basically told me to shut up. Thank goodness the vouchers did not make it. Two thirds of those who voted in the state of Utah voted against it. This has really ticked off the owner of Overstock.com. He put about two million of his own money into it, and is really taking the loss hard. He has basically told us that we are unthinking people who don't care about the minority groups among us. As it is, too much money was spent on vouchers. The total spent by both parties was around eight million (about half from each camp although the pro vouchers had slightly more).

Another vote that happened, that I couldn't vote for was the split of the Jordan School District. The east side wants to have its own district. Because of this, West Jordan also decided to vote on creating their own district. West Jordan voted that down. The vote was really close on the east side/west side district with the east side voting to split. The problem with this vote is that it effects those of us on the west side. We weren't allowed to put in our voice. The city of Herriman has put in a lawsuit about our constitutional rights that got knocked down and is currently on appeal with the circuit court. I think we are looking at six months before anything on that is settled. In the meantime, the east siders will be preparing for their new district, and who knows how much money they will spend. Anyway, it was a bad idea all the way around (if you ask my opinion - and it's all that really matters here).

Anyway, I had no fear about the vouchers, because I was pretty certain that it wouldn't pass. I did fear about the split. They actually happened the way that I thought they would (as far as the numbers go). It was almost a 50/50 split on whether or not to split the district. I did tell Brent that I should've voted for vouchers now that the split is going along so that I could receive some money to take my kids out of the public school and put them into the private school of our choice.

Other than the stuff mentioned above, life has been just moving along, and not too much excitement.

Tonight, I got into an argument with my wife. She felt like I didn't listen to her very well and that I went onto the defensive. I didn't feel I went onto any kind of defensive but was just talking things out with her. This made for a kind of unhappy evening for me (and my wife). I am a bit depressed tonight, but I'll get over it. I'm going to bed early because I am really tired (I don't really know why).

Roof and Gutter Heaters

Friday was a busy day at work for me. There was a lot that I needed to accomplish, and I didn't finish all of it. I expect the whole of next week to be a bit busy as well. I'll pull through this, but it is taking too long.

In the evening, my wife and I had set up for a meeting with the Activity Committee. One of the three couples showed up. I am not going to say which one, but we were grateful to have at least them there. We came up with the Christmas party ideas that we were going to do. We decided on a potato bar along with brownies and ice cream for dessert. Later, my wife and I decided that we should also add a salad to the menu. We also made a few assignments, although we have to still get those out to the people. We talked about the program and decided that we would try to find somebody to read a story or find it online that is already done. The story is "Teach the Children". I kind of looked for the story online but could not find one that doesn't have just the words. I would like to find it on Youtube or as a microsoft presentation. If anybody knows where to find this, I would appreciate it. Of course we will have Santa come and give out some kind of gifts. It was a good meeting.

As a part of the meeting, I made my wife feel like I railroaded her. We had printed up a couple of ideas and didn't even talk about them. She also felt like I attacked her when we were discussing the food and what kids would and would not eat. I certainly did not feel that I attacked her, but I can see how some of the things that I said would be seen as such. I guess that is part of the problem with my communication skills (or non-communication skills). It's something that I will need to work on.

Saturday came along, and I had decided that I would take care of getting the water turned off (as far as the sprinklers goes) and to fix up our roof and gutter heaters to try to control ice flows coming off of our house and onto the walkway. That part took no time in comparison to adding another heater to the other side.

I went out looking for the heaters (it's just a wire that heats up that you put on your roof) at Home Depot. I figured that I needed about half of what was on the other side. I had 80' on the other side, but then figured that I would need an extra ten feet because I would have to double back. The Home Depot had two sizes 60' and 80'. The 80' one was only ten dollars more than the 60' one, and as I thought about where the plug was, I figured that it was the way to go.

The first thing I had to do was to get the cord down the drain and to the ground. That was the most difficult part of this whole thing. I had to tear apart the drain pipe because there were a couple of curves I could not get the cord to go past. That was a pain, but it was the best way to finally take care of it. I'm sure that a word or two escaped my lips that I shouldn't have said. This took me the majority of the day. At the last part, Pon came over (from across the street) to help me. I was grateful for that because I am afraid of heights and he was able to go to the places I would've had to go to in order to finish this out. Buying the 80' cable was the right choice. I was glad to have this over and done with. For the evening, I relaxed and watched a couple of movies.

I set the clocks back one hour last night as daylight savings time is now over. We had also talked to our son and he told us that he would be home early Sunday morning.

I was awakened at around 5:00 AM this morning by our son telling us that he would be home in about 20 minutes and to meet him at the school. I put on some clothes and headed over there. I got there soon after the bus had arrived. We then had to wait for the second bus. It wasn't fast in coming. As I got questioning about it, I found that it had been involved in an accident at the point of the mountain. It had hit a deer. It's front headlight was out and there was a cracked windshield. We ended up waiting until around 6:30 for it to get done with all the police reports and then come along. We just had to get one lousy suitcase off of it.

After arriving home we told our son to go to bed. He just kind of fell asleep on the floor over a heater vent. He later went to his bed. I got back into bed as well to sleep for a bit.

Our daughter got a call in the morning asking her to meet at the church a little bit earlier. She was called to be the President of the Bee Hives. She is a bit nervous about this, but I think she'll do a wonderful job as she is very good at organizing things (I just wish she would organize her room a little bit). Nothing much happened today. Our son told us tid bits about his trip, but we didn't get a full picture. I think he enjoyed it (especially going to Disneyland).

Halloween

Well, yesterday was Halloween. I was kept busy at work and at lunch time they had the annual soup day. The only difference was, instead of having people bring in various soups, they had this one catered by Jasons Deli. The soup was good, but it was only luke warm when I ate it. One of the problems that I saw was that they had come in a bunch of quart containers for over 300 people. At least if the containers would've been bigger, it may have stayed somewhat warm. Anyway, I am not going to complain about a free lunch.

I got home at the regular time, and soon after we had dinner (our sons favorite - chicken and broccoli casserole) I took him to meet up with the band at the school. They met at 6:00 and were planning on loading the buses at 7:00. I stayed around for a bit and grabbed a packet that they were handing out to the students. I made a few copies of the itinerary so that parents who wanted too, could figure out what their kids were supposed to be doing while they are away in California.

As usual, my son did not want a fathers blessing before he left (I have never been able to give him a fathers blessing as per his choice). We did get to say a family prayer before he left (and this included prayers for protection) and we had to leave it at that.

We don't know what time they left, but they did get there safely (I called today around 5:00 PM and talked to him).

Our daughter dressed up as a Hawaiian and went out trick or treating with her friend. My wife and I stayed home and handed out candy to the various children that came around to our house. At one point, we both went out (separately) to see a couple of houses on our street. I watched at one home where they had put up a graveyard in their front yard because they are interesting. The door was left open, the lights on the home were all flickering, and he was standing away from the door waiting for kids to ring the bell or yell trick or treat. He then walked very slowly to the door with a Jason type mask, and black robes. He also very slowly put some candy in each childs basket. Some of the kids were afraid to go up to his house, but those mean parents made their children do so and let them take candy from a stranger.

Down the street (at another graveyard) we had Jason outside. He was dancing to Thriller (by Michael Jackson) when I got there. Of course he had the chainsaw in his hand, and some teenage kids were around the home also doing some dancing. While I was there, the next door neighbor came out (dressed about the same way) and they had a competition to see whose chainsaw was louder.

When my daughter made it home she told me of an experience that she had. She went by the house with the chainsaw (the neighbor) and when they rang the bell, he started up his chainsaw. Melina (the friend my daughter was with) ran leaving my daughter on the porch alone. He opened the door and made a bunch of noise with the chainsaw and about that time Melina came back and put her hand on my daughters shoulder. My daughter screamed, causing Melina to scream and they were screaming back and forth for a bit and then the chainsaw guy held out a bag of Halloween candy and said Happy Halloween. They went across the street from there, and I guess he hadn't had enough fun yet, so he followed them and right behind them started up his chainsaw. The two girls ran (they believe he chased them a bit) and that was the end of that. Anyway, just kind of fun.

While my daughter was out, my wife and I were watching a movie called "Messenger". It was a fairly spooky movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was perfect for the evening. We did call our daughter and found that she was at her friends house. The problem was, there was an older guy out (at least he was big) with a hockey mask on and he had something in his hand. He was wandering around. He went to a couple of houses across the street from us, and when he came our way my wife told me I was to answer the door. For some reason, he passed by our house. He went next door and my wife went outside and heard him talking to himself. We didn't know what to make of him. We don't think our neighbor gave him anything because he seemed to be wondering why. He walked down the street, and then came back our way. He made us nervous enough that even though my daughter was across the street, we decided to send my wife over to pick her up and walk home with her. I guess the movie didn't help out with that at all.

There isn't much going on today. Tonight, I got on the computer to try to get some ideas for our Ward Christmas Party (kind of late in the game). I didn't really come up with too much though. I had to switch computers because my wife wanted me to print out a couple of things (the printer is on the other computer). The problem was, that computers internet wasn't working. It took me awhile to figure it out, and it was that a USB extender that we have wasn't working and it is hooked into the modem through the USB cable. That was a bit maddening. I got through it all right though. I got everything back to the way it should be, and left it at that.