Time keeps on flying by

A little more than a week has gone by now. I don't know how much I can remember from a whole week, but maybe I can remember some of it. Here goes my attempt at that.

The first thing I can think of was having Friday off of work. We really didn't do that much, but the kids were home from school (end of quarter) and my wife had Gwen come over. It snowed just before Gwen got to our house. My wife cut Gwen's hair (just a trim) and then Gwen visited with us for a bit. She got reacquainted with Dee Anne and saw how our kids have grown (it's been a really long time since we had last seen her).

Gwen is a childhood friend of my wife's and it was good that she had the opportunity to reconnect with her. They also set up a lunch for a couple of weeks down the road.

In the mail of Friday we got a Netflix CD that allows us to use the WII in order to connect and watch the movies online. That seems to work quite well and now we can get the movies to our TV. I have watched a couple of movies using that and like the way it works.

Saturday I had to get with the Scouts and do a food drive for the Utah Food Bank. I drove the vehicle around while a couple of Scouts went to each door and asked for food. We didn't get a lot, but we did get more than what I thought we would. After arriving home, I headed back out to get the Honda Pilots emission check. That way I can pay the taxes on it and have it legal. I paid those yesterday as that was the last day we had to be legal.

My wife and daughter headed out to look at (and buy) a swimming suit for my daughter. This is to be her birthday present and I think they did well in getting it. It is a whole month early, but they decided that it is better to get it now than wait until everything is picked over.

Sunday, my wife took some of her medications wrong. This made her tired. I went to church with the kids. It was James Sanford's farewell, and he did a pretty good job (as I knew he would). We spent the rest of the day just relaxing at home.

Work has been pretty busy this week. I haven't had a lot of time for anything. A conversion happened over the weekend that caused me to have a few issues. I think I have mostly taken care of it (as of today) but tomorrow and Friday will probably be spent in trying to get everything in its final form. At least I am not in crisis mode.

Tuesday was a Court of Honor for me. Our son went to pizza and our daughter went to some jewelry making thing with the Young Women. The Court of Honor finished early so I was able to be back home in a short time.

Nothing much (out of the ordinary) happened today. Our daughter has been babysitting at the Morden's house tonight and is still out. I will be going to bed soon, and my wife will stay up waiting for her.

One thing I should mention is that last week, my right wrist started to ache. I have carpel tunnel. My wife had braces that I was able to find in the basement on Saturday. I started to wear it and it seems to help out. I have taken it off for quite a bit and when I do certain things I have a sharp pain in the wrist. Tonight it seems to be a bit less pain, so I'll hopefully not wear the brace so much starting tomorrow.

Well, that's it.

Zach - Health Care - Caucus

There's not too much going on, but I had better write something in here, or I'll forget.

Friday evening, Pam and Anne picked up our two kids to take them home for a final time for them to spend with Zach (their cousin) before he heads back to Johns Hopkins University. We didn't do much with them gone.

Saturday, we called to see what was going on and they said they were going to go to the Wach's home and then get some gelato. We headed over for this and to spend some final time with Zach. We had done some housework in the morning, so we were good to go. We also stayed over there for a spaghetti dinner. It was quite nice and we had a good time visiting with family.

Dee Anne and I thought we were going to be taking our kids home but they did not bring their clothes with them and so they went back with Pam and Anne to their home. It was Stake Conference and Dee Anne and I also missed going to it (we really should have gone but didn't).

Zach left Sunday morning and Dee Anne and I showed up to Pam and Anne's house around 5:00 for dinner and then to take our kids home. Marie and Scott showed up and Anne did a little bit to help her cut a dress that Anne had made a while back but Marie wanted it to be shorter now. Anne had to get to work. We didn't stay very long. It was a good time though.

I was disturbed most of Sunday as I knew that The House of Representatives of this country were probably going to be passing this health care that I have been worried about. We call it Obamacare, and I don't believe it is a good thing. There are good things in it, but it is also taking away some of our current liberties. I was right to be disturbed. It passed with only Democrats passing it through reconciliation so they just need a few votes. They chose to do it this way because they lost the super majority which made it possible for Republicans to filibuster the whole process. While this reconciliation has been used in the past, it has not been used on such a huge bill, nor has it been done in a partisan manner. In fact, if anything is bi-partisan it is the rejection of this bill (35 democrats voted against it). The arm twisting that has gone on behind the scenes with the Democrats has been terrible. This is something that we really should take out of existence. At the end of the day, they did pass it.

Nothing much went on yesterday. We all kind of ignored each other.

Today, at work, we had an all employee meeting. As usual, I got bored just being there, but it is something that they expect us all to go to. I wish I could say that I learned something there, but it was more of the same and I already pretty well knew how the company was doing. I didn't win any prizes either, or it may have been a wee bit more fun for me.

We just had sandwiches tonight and then I went to a Republican Caucus. First though, today is the day that Obama passed the health care bill. He is hoping that the amendments that the House Democrats asked for (in return for passing this bill) would go through fast. Republicans are going to do everything to get the amendments back to the house where it can be scrapped. It's kind of doubtful they can do it all though.

The Republican Caucus. Wow! I was a bit late because the lines on the roads just getting into school were phenomenal. The roads were completely backed up. I had to park about a half mile away from the school. When I got to the school, there were oodles of people in the building in various lines. I was glad that I didn't have to get into the unaffiliated lines to sign up to be a registered Republican. Instead, I looked at my card to see that I was in precinct 3530. I went to that line and found that they didn't have my name. He let me sign his roll if I was going to go over and sign up to be a Republican. I went and stood in that bigger line to register (though I knew I was registered). When I got to the front, Bill Ashton was there and had a different precinct number that I didn't have. It was at that time that I found out that our precinct had split. I just had to go to precinct 3521. My name was on that list (so I wasted time in the one line). I had to also take my name off of the 3530 precinct roll.

After all this, I went to the auditorium. It was crammed full of people. They say there were 1200 people at the school. It was hot in the auditorium with standing room only. In the long run there were also people out in the hall that could not fit in. We joked about having to call the fire marshal in to kick out those who did not have a seat. There was some business done at the beginning and then they read the Republican values statement. I found that I agreed with most of the values, but a couple I didn't. Cans went around to collect some money for the party and then we broke off into our precincts.

There weren't very many people there from my precinct, which was a bit scary because I did not want to be a delegate. I guess I didn't need to worry. That did not happen. We voted for the officers (not hard because only one person wanted to be in each position), and then voted for a group of three (I don't remember what they were called) where four wanted to be there. We picked the three and then the State delegate was to be chosen. We needed two. We had four that signed on for that. We had to vote twice to get that through. Each of them had to speak and people were concerned with how conservative they were as well as would they vote against Bob Bennett making it back into office. That was all taken care of and after I talked with Bill and Lisa on the way out, I left.

It was a long night, but interesting. All of the caucuses in the state of Utah (Republican) were filled up. Partly because people seem to be against Bennett for Senate, and a bigger part was because people are up in arms about our current president and Obamacare in particular which was signed into law today. I am quite discouraged. Right now thirteen states have joined a lawsuit against Obamacare for forcing us to have health care. People don't think it will go anywhere, but we can only hope. I am glad that Utah is one of the states on that list. There are 23 other states that are also looking into filing lawsuits.

Magruders - Missionaries - St Patricks Day

Well, I'm back to trying to figure out what went on for most of this week. That's what happens when you don't write things down every day.

On Monday I was able to pick up my laptop from work. It was finally ready, but it would be taken away from me soon enough. I was a bit late from work because of the laptop and met my wife and kids over at the Wach residence. Magruders were there along with their son Zach. We all went out to dinner together at the Olive Garden. It was a nice dinner and then we went back to the Wach home. We had a pretty good visit while we were there, and there were no family arguments as far as politics or religion.

Tuesday evening, I went to the church where the Young Men and Young Women went out as missionaries to various homes to teach a lesson to one of the members who decided to do that. I went with two other adults and three kids. One of the three was in my Deacons quorum. We had a good spiritual time there where all three of the kids did quite well. We then went back to the church were James Sanford spoke to us. He will be going on his mission soon.

Wednesday was St Patrick's Day. After I arrived home and then our son did, we headed out to Pam and Anne's house for a St Patrick's Day dinner. It was a great dinner and then a bunch of people sat down to play a game. I can't remember what it is called right now, but it was a pretty fun game. I mostly watched but had to take the losers hand when they left. I thought it kind of humorous that Marie was out to win at all costs. It didn't matter that nobody else had ever even heard of this game before this. There were things that had people known they could've done a lot better and then she didn't give them any kind of leeway when they did something a little bit wrong, and in one case she had done the same exact thing and got away with it. Oh well. It's only a game.

This morning, I started work on my laptop from home. I took care of some things and then headed into work. Once I was at work, I found that parts of my laptop weren't letting me do what I needed to do. I spent quite a bit of time down at the help desk hoping it was an easy problem. It wasn't. In the long run, I knew they would have to rebuild the software on it again. Hopefully, I will get it back (all fixed) on Friday. Thank goodness I still had my other PC on my desk so I could do my regularly scheduled work. I was even given a task to complete as soon as possible, which I have now done. Paul only told the guy I would have it completed by Monday.

Well, there is nothing else to tell.

Exercise - Zach - Family Arguments and Bipolar disorder

Well, another week has come and gone (well not quite but almost).

Last Tuesday evening I didn't go to the School Districts Board meeting, but I saw some results from it which I disagreed with. They have voted on Public comment to make it so that there can only be 45 minutes worth of total comment and people are limited to just two minutes. People in the audience must be silent and it seems to me that they really don't want to hear what we have to say. In their defense, they did at least get another room where they piped what is going on in the meeting so more people could attend.

Instead of going to that meeting, I, on the advice of my wife, went to Young Men/Young Women. There were two missionaries there who were there to give the Young Men and Young Women a mini MTC (Missionary Training Center) experience. They mostly went over how they commit somebody to do something after they teach them the principle. There was also some role playing. I have to say that I think this is a better way of running this whole thing. Last Sunday, they filled out mission papers, then this on Tuesday. Today, they were to receive their mission calls (my daughter was not there), and in the evening they were to go to their mission presidents home. Tuesday, they go out and teach. It should be interesting.

I can't think of too much that happened on Wednesday or Thursday. However, Thursday I was glad to see that a lot of what we were hoping to pass the Legislature for our district was coming to pass. Hopefully, now that there is a bill that allows us to move funds from one account to another we can pay for our teachers with a part of this and minimize how much we need to pay in taxes. We still will need to be taxed I think, but it could be less. The fight with the Legislature (for this year) is over. Now we need to make sure they District Board takes these new numbers and does the right thing. I will be watching.

I had the day off on Friday. My wife and I stayed home most of the morning and then finally went out and went to lunch. We barely got home in time to see the kids. We told them that we were going for a walk and we went with the dog up to Daybreak Lake. I made the mistake of not wearing a jacket. It was a bit cold (but not too bad). It took us about an hour (at a pretty good walking clip) to walk around the entire lake. I thought I would feel it the next day, but fortunately I was mistaken. After arriving home, we had some Lutheran youth (missionaries?) come around with a survey about beliefs and then they gave us the "right" answers. Well, I disagreed with their right answers, but didn't tell them that because they were not there to argue, but to spread the gospel as they understood it.

After talking to these two, we had to call Pam. She was going to come pick up our kids, but she had an episode where she had too much insulin in her. She had passed out. We told her that we would go ahead and drive our kids up to Bountiful a little bit later. We did this, and visited with Pam for awhile. We stayed until Anne came home and then just a few minutes more. Our kids were more than ready for us to leave.

Saturday was a day of chores for us and we watched a movie.

Today, we skipped going to church and instead headed out to my in-laws home. We had to grab a couple of things on the way there, but got there in good time. The reason our kids had spent the weekend at Pam and Anne's house was because Zach was coming in. He did come in Saturday night. We were going over to the house to meet up with them and spend time with Zach along with a dinner. While over there, Melanie had what I am going to call three episodes. We were talking a little bit about politics and a particular Republican in Utah's House of Representatives who had to resign for a mistake he made almost thirty years ago which got exacerbated in 2002 when he paid 150K to keep the woman quiet. Well, to Melanie it came down to Women Libbers and all of her problems came to the forefront (for the last 20 years). Her father told her to shut up multiple times (which didn't help at all). She was shaking with coffee in her hand. It was a nerve wracking thing. Nobody knew what to do, but I kept on hoping everybody would just calm down and let her go off. But, when you have an 84 year old man who is not going to just be quiet it just went on longer than it needed too. Pam took Zach and left for awhile. Melanie calmed down and we talked with her a bit and then all of a sudden she went off again. Pam and Zach came home just after she had gone off. There was only one more small episode and then we were done. These kind of foreshadowed the whole visit, but we did have a pretty good visit with some humor and good times.

I sure wish we knew what to do about Melanie.

Anyway, we grabbed our kids and headed home.

Not too much going on

As I put in the header, there isn't a lot going on right now. I just thought I better write something because that way I am more certain I didn't miss anything in my life. I must lead a fairly boring life though.

Last Saturday, we mostly did some chores and had to turn a girl away that was with Kirby sales. She was a pretty girl that I couldn't believe they would have out there on her own. We told her that it is hard to get Kirby sales people out of your house after you let them in. I think I kind of proved true because she was a bit hard to get off of our doorstep. She was nice enough, but she was insistent. I'll bet she makes a great sales person.

We did take a nice walk with the whole family around a part of the Daybreak lake. We really should get up there more often. I don't know about the rest of the family, but I quite enjoyed that. Other than that and the regular chores, it was a normal day.

Sunday was church and I had taken the time to make a roast. I think my wife was happy that I would take the time to do that. Brother Ball, the Gospel Doctrine teacher, gave a great lesson on marriage. He has a good sense of humor and mixes that in with his gospel teaching. He knows when to make fun of something and when not too. He is also very good at making people think about things.

Not much going on tonight either. My wife and I watched "One Mans Treasure". It was a Mormon Missionary flick. It was quite entertaining. We enjoyed it. We probably should've made the kids come watch it with us.

I need to look into going to another district meeting tomorrow night. We need to show our support and make sure things are going right with that.

Well, like I said, not much to talk about.

Jordan School District Stuff

It's been a rough week for me. I have been busy trying to make sure that the kids in my school district (and my daughter) will have a future. I don't think I can adequately explain some of the things that have transpired over this period of time.

I have been emailing like crazy to the School District, to members of the Education Committee in the Utah State Legislature, to the Governor, and anyone else that I thought I needed to email. This has been done multiple times over this past week to each of them. I let them know that I am thankful when they have voted the right way, let my disappointment be known for those that voted against. There were a couple of bills that really would've helped out a lot, and both of them got knocked down.

One of those bills was one to equalize money between the Jordan School District and the Canyons District. The Canyons District split off from us and were able to take money from us by changing borders and making sure they had the businesses. We got 60% of the kids, and we got less of the businesses that can help us out with paying for the education of those kids. This took us all down from $1600 per student to $1200 per student while Canyons went from the $1600 per student to over $2000 per student. Our side didn't think it was fair, especially since we weren't even allowed to vote on this issue. We let them know at the time that it wasn't fair that we couldn't vote because we knew it would negatively affect us. Of course that is why the east side wanted to split because they knew it would positively affect them. The bill would've made sure that none of that would happen again. Of course, it didn't pass. There was another one that didn't pass either that would've helped us out. In the meantime more equalization bills are being put out there and another bill that will allow us to put take money from various budgets to be able to save our teachers. That is the biggest problem, that we might lose our teachers. Two Hundred Fifty teachers is a lot to lose. This would raise the class room sizes by about four students to a teacher and could lose accreditation of our schools. It is all unacceptable.

Some students walked out of schools to protest the possibility of losing their teachers. I don't know that this did any good, but at least they are trying. I probably am getting to much into the problems. It has taken over my mind and I am beside myself. I have been angry and am still fighting. Another bill is to raise sales tax by .1 percent to help the schools. One that I am against is the cigarette tax which will add $1.00 to each pack of cigarettes. I don't believe you should ever add a tax that is specific to a product. It looks like that one will pass which could help out the budget crises for the schools.

I have attended another meeting (on Tuesday night again) and then went to the State Capitol for the teachers on Wednesday. There weren't as many people at the Capitol as I would've liked to have seen. But, I was there, and did my part.

Well, that pretty well tells you the week. Everything else has taken a back seat. I mean, the regular stuff went on. My kids had a night over at Pam and Annes after Dee Anne had done their hair, and I played a little bit in a new game on the Wii console called Endless Ocean. Time kind of gets the better of me when I am playing that. Well, I don't know what else to put her, but at least this is an update. It wasn't a day by day like I mostly do because the days kind of blurred in together this week for me.