Something against fruit

This hilarious thing happened while I was in Atlanta. My colleagues and I took an Uber to the Ebenezer church and fell into conversation with the driver. Rather, my good friend Jim fell into conversation while I sat in the back, looking at the city.

I forget now how it happened, but they started talking about the local hookah scene, and how there was a shop that had let you smoke fruit. Jim - ever eager to toy with any idea, serious or fanciful - expressed enthusiasm to go there. It would be a cultural exchange for the faculty! Now, at our weekly meetings, I am generally his devoted sidekick, playing along with any scheme, but this one was not for me. I teased, "Jim, what are you getting me into now?"

After we arrived and I got out of the car, the driver said to Jim, "Your friend really has something against fruit!"

Jim and I doubled over laughing later as he told me. The thought that someone assumed it was the fruit and not the hookah smoking was so bizarre!

Jim explained to him that, no, his friend was a Mormon and they don't smoke or drink alcohol. The driver asked him what a Mormon is. Jim told him the proper name of the church, and it didn't ring any bells. Here was a fellow who had never even heard of us! Boy, I wish Jim had called me over then so I could chat with him! Jim laughed at my enthusiasm, suggesting I could have told him to keep the meter running while we drove around the town and teach him a discussion or two. That ... wasn't a bad idea!

Instead, Jim had given him a very brief introduction - having spent a fair amount of time with missionaries, other latter-day saints, and me, he has a decent knowledge base - and invited him to find out more at mormon.org. Not bad.

(Jim and I were playing prior to a forum/debate one day. Here's a video of how we thought about greeting our class on the first day in this one lecture hall.)

Fun things we did in April: rodeo, court of honor, and chicken coops

Even before the Brethren counseled the high priests and elders quorums to combine, ours were busy working at a friend's house to expand and reinforce his chicken coop against a bobcat (of some kind) that broke through the last one. Hopefully if it holds up under big, strong elders with power staple guns, it'll hold up under a 40-pound critter. The kids helped hold the screws for me to drill into the wood.

I took the kids to a program thrown by the Tarleton outdoor and wildlife clubs. (I forget what Joy was doing at the time - maybe visiting the temple.)

JT was nervous about Smokey the Bear at first, but his love of teddy bears eventually won out. He enjoyed the ring toss while Princess painted a paper-plate snake, and all the kids enjoyed fishing. (Though fishing was rather difficult for Superstar, what with two arms being in a cast and all. Hard to cast in casts, y'know?)

Someone had a birthday - Superstar

Superstar turned 10 years old in March. His birthday was very much a football affair. The table was a football field, the ice cream cake was a football field, and his favorite presents included two new footballs, two pairs of football gloves, an electronic football board game with two teams to go with them (Packers and Cowboys). That Friday he had a couple friends over to help him through the pigskin around. Saturday we had fun as a family. Sunday he asked that we save one more present for him to open. (In case anyone was wondering, the reason he opted to have one cast orange and one cast white is for the Texas Longhorns.)

Before breaking his right wrist just a week later, he was talking about his future career in the NFL.

He has also enjoyed a multi-shooting nerf gun, a Land of Stories book on CD, a set of Five Crowns cards, and a few other presents that escape me while I try to get to bed. I'll have to ask Superstar another time if there's anything else he wants to add. Sorry it's late showing up.

Joy agrees that having friends over was the best part of his birthday.

Actually, the Five Crowns story is mildly interesting (very mild). We don't do face cards, so he has had to use Wackee Six cards to make a deck of Five Crowns. We bought him a set of Five Crowns Jr, which has no face cards, only to discover it's not quite the same game. Phooey. (I mean, the Jr is fun enough, but it isn't what he wanted). So we bought three sets of Rook cards. The first two sets give us four colors, doubled up of cards labeled 3-13; the third set Joy and Superstar recolored using markers to give us a fifth color. So now we have a proper set of Five Crowns cards, which he enjoys having very much.

Speaking of card games, Mom, you might like to hear that he was playing with your Lehi's Dream cards today.

Mormon Helping Hands east of Houston

So there was this hurricane that hit Texas a while back. You might've heard about it </hipster>. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called for volunteers from around the area to drive down to Houston and other locales to help.

I went down two weekends ago with 10 other people from my local church and again last weekend with a new group of 10. Someone else was our team leader each time, but I served as assistant since I was going both times. We were joined by 150-200 others from our stake each weekend (that's the Weatherford area) and approximately 10,000 Mormons from Texas and other areas nearby.

No. I AM your father.

We arrived to help muck out houses. Mucking out means we took absolutely everything that wasn't salvageable (just about everything) out of the house to be trashed, tore out the sheet rock and drywall and insulation, and left a barebones skeleton frame in the house. The first weekend we spent the entire time helping one lady, whom I will call "Mary" - about 73 years old, she's a diabetic widow with some pretty serious mold allergies. Mold is one of the biggest problems from this flood as absolutely everything gets thoroughly soaked. Because of the mold, the house smelled absolutely dreadful and I was thankful we had taken the time to buy an industrial grade air filter because of my mold allergies. In the picture you can see the water line that went up to about 4 feet.

But if the water is 4 feet high, then it seeped up the insulation to 5-6 feet and that meant all the walls had to be taken down completely. We couldn't finish her house in one weekend, so we finished the job when we came back the second weekend. We also got to help another couple where the water had only gone up 1-2 feet. It still meant they lost most of their things and we had to remove the drywall up to 4 feet.

Thankful 3

I wanted to be thankful this week for better pain medicine, but I certainly didn't get it. Instead I can be thankful that - now that I know what's gone wrong - I can do something to relieve what causes the pain and that is lowering the pain significantly.

Monday I was quite thankful that my checkbook balanced on the first try. Few things are as aggravating to me as finding that missing $.06 in a month's worth of spending in a cash-only society.

Tuesday I got some work done I had not expected to get to. Anything that reduces that pile is a thing to celebrate.

Wednesday I intended to celebrate being all ready for Joy's birthday, but didn't quite make it. Instead I am thankful for student evaluations I passed around that will hopefully help me be a better teacher. My juniors want me to pass out my own notes more often (sometimes expressed as liking powerpoint which I avoid whenever I can, but more often asking to get their hands on my slides or other notes.)

I was also thankful to finally understand my student evaluations a little better. I tell them expressly - verbally and on the sheet - that I am looking for suggestions and ways to make things better. So when I have them fill in the blank "I like it when my teacher _______________________" I'm expecting them to tell me something I don't do, but their other teachers do. It used to frustrate me to see them say something that I thought I was doing. "I do a shocking amount of relating what we cover to the real world - why do you think I don't??" Finally I understand they think I'm asking for attaboys and telling me something they like that I do. Well, that's nice and useful to know too. Thank you.


By the way, one of my students put that the best day of class was: the day I painted my face. Let's hear it for Halloween and being the only person on campus that crazy! (It'sa Luigi!)

Also on Wednesday, I was thankful this cute little girl wanted to sing on my lap. That was fun.

Feeling Very Blessed

This is one of those "I cursed my fate that I had no gloves until I heard about a man whose $100 cashmere gloves would cost $100 to repair" things.

As we prepared to leave for Nigeria, we were told by more friends than I can count that the only thing keeping them going through their trials was the happy thought that at least they weren't going to Nigeria. ... Gee, thanks. Don't mention it, really.

        Did I just say I have more friends than I can count? When and how did that happen? How blessed I am!

And now my friends are returning the favor - at least I don't have their problems!

I've been overwhelmed on my overtime semester - working every night til midnight or 2am for months, only taking time off for family time on those nights I was actually home and then going back to it, and spent the last week in a feverish rush to get all the grading done for 120 final exams and over 150 papers in under a week.

       And how thankful I am I have had a job this entire time. Not all my friends have, like M&M. My first job market did not have the wonderful outcome this one did. I have colleagues and supervisors who appreciate and praise me. Not everyone has that either.

Coming out here was expensive. There was stress and misery and expense. It was really hard. Joy still gets a catch in her throat remembering it.

        Not nearly as hard as J&S had it. I just read on their blog what a terrible time of it they had! It was an expensive move for both our families, but we still had some savings to fall back on that has been replenished and doubled again. We had people at the airport waiting to greet us, a cool home to walk into, dinner ready for us, a dedicated bureaucracy who took care of everything for us at the embassies and prepped us for everything.... AUN takes good care of us. We are blessed.

Games and Cookies

We have had some fun game nights. The Austin family has been over to play games with us a couple times.  We got together and played Dominion and they brought over some divine homemade peanut butter cookies. Another night we played a fun game of scrabble where you don’t use the board. Everyone gets 7 tiles and you try to make a word or words with it. When someone uses all of their tiles, they say go. When someone says go everyone has to take another tile. When someone uses all their tiles again they say go and another tile is drawn for everyone. When all the tiles are gone the first person to say go which is using all their tiles is the winner. It is fast and fun and I stink at it :) We then played Guillotine which they liked very much. They were good nights.
We got to spend time online with out friends the Peterson’s. We played Dominion online and we are looking forward to playing Carcassone and Ticket to Ride online together too. I have really enjoyed seeing some of their picture lately. It is so nice to feel a part of their lives. I am not very good at online games either, but they are fun.
I have been enjoying a game called Wonderland Adventures on the computer from Big Fish games. Most of it’s levels do not have a time limit so I am doing alright though I usually feel stupid on computer games. Derrill had to help me with one level because it was timed and needed to be faster than my clicker clicks. We had gotten the game for me a while back, but I often lose interest in games before I get very far. Prince is the one that was persistent with this game and once he got farther in his game than I did on my old game I had gotten interested in it again. It is a story line puzzle game (go through mazes, get keys open doors, collect jems and coins. No fighting, but you have to avoid attacks from plants that spit fire.
My activity of choice when I nurse Princess is to read. In the past 2 months I have read 13 books, some of the books of the New Testament,  continuing the Book of Mormon, and some Ensigns. I don’t think I have ever read so much in such a short period of time. Go Kindle!
Have a great week everyone,
--Joy