General Conference - Sunday Sessions

General Conference Favorites - Sunday

Robert D. Hales. Responding in a Christlike way.
Elaine Dalton. Return to virtue. Forever texting and never coming to a knowledge of the truth...
President Monson. Enjoy life now. Change is inevitable...
Boyd K. Packer. Pioneers who remained true to the constitution despite persecution.
Russell M. Nelson. Patterns of the shoppers...trade up to a better marriage.
Carlos Godoy. Testimonies don't necessarily come with big events. I might use some of his talk tomorrow for seminary if I can download the MP3. All the other sessions are online already, so I have hope.

General Conference-Saturday Sessions

General Conference favorites - Saturday

New temple in Rome!!?! Awesome. Can't wait to see the design.

Silvia Allred. Loved her conversion story.

Neil L. Andersen. You don't know everything, but you know enough to serve.

Joseph B. Wirthlin. My, is he getting old and frail - but still a treasure to listen to. "Come what may, love it".

Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Rocking the hair. Great story of his mother's faith.

D. Todd Christofferson. Establish a home in Zion, give up summer cottage in Babylon.

David Bednar. Prayer. I will definitely be using parts of his talk in seminary.

Looking forward to another great day of conference.

Word of the Day

busk
(bŭsk) intr.v. busked, busk·ing, busks

1. To play music or perform entertainment in a public place, usually while soliciting money.

[Earlier, to be an itinerant performer, probably from busk, to go about seeking, cruise as a pirate, perhaps from obsolete French busquer, to prowl, from Italian buscare, to prowl, or Spanish buscar, to seek, from Old Spanish boscar.]

busk'er n.

There was an article today in our local paper about an engaged couple that planned to spend the next two year roaming the world as street performers. They are both college graduates...26 years old...

I can just imagine the conversation with their parents:

"Mom, Dad, we really appreciate all of your great support through the years. The thousands and thousands of dollars you spent on college. We would now like to thumb our noses at you as we take off for a couple of years to try our hand at busking."

I can think of a much better way to spend two years. Thanks Andrew and Nathan. I like your choice better.

Debbie Van Winkel

My internal clock is great at getting me up at 4:30am. I'm not so great at predicting the length of a "quick" afternoon nap. I've been running in the 10 to 20 minute range. Pretty short. Not sure why today was an exception - I slept for over an hour and a half.

I don't mind having a long nap(except for the nap hangover I now have), but I was planning to put in a Costco lasagna in time for Nathan to have dinner before going to an activity this evening. The lasagna takes a little over an hour - oops - I woke up after 4:30(pm)...to find that Nathan had already put it in the oven.

Thank goodness I had already mentioned my dinner plans to him...and thank goodness he listened...and thank goodness for Costco lasagna - I don't really have to make dinner tonight. Thank goodness.

Beef. It's Not Just For Dinner.

Keira, you may want to just stop right here. Consider yourself warned.

I had to go grocery shopping today. Had to. First stop, Albertson's. Albertson's is having a great sale back in the meat department on chicken tenders (raw), and extra lean ground beef. Because of the sale there were a couple of people ahead of me - some lady buying about 30 pounds of meat (not kidding) and a cart with a couple of things in it. I was trying to be courteous so when a guy stepped back up to his abandoned cart I let him go before me. Bad move. Bad. Move.

First of all we both had to stand there and wait for 30 lbs. of meat lady - which was taking a while. Fine, I wasn't in a huge hurry. The mistake I made was not paying enough attention to the guy when he first walked back up to his cart. If I had, I might have just gone before him. He was one of those scruffy looking guys - dirty plaid shirt over dirty tee-shirt - dirty jeans -...you get the picture. Thankfully this is not smell-o-vision, because besides being dirty he reeked. Reeked like there's no tomorrow. Like Weyerhauser on a foggy morning. Like he had started smoking as a teenager and took a vow to never change his clothes again. Cigarettes and BO. Yuk. But wait, you say, I've stood beside that guy before (or his brother). He might smell bad, but give a guy a break. He may honestly not know how foul he smells. Fine. I'll cut him slack on the filth and odor. That's not enough to blog about. No. What really got to me happened after he ordered his 4 pounds of raw hamburger. Yeah. He started eating it. And then raving about how good it was. And how he always snacked on it when he was making meatloaf or hamburgers or whatever.

Next time, I'm going first.

Now Hiring

I looked ahead at Daniel's history assignments...he is still studying the Renaissance. Yesterday he started a chart that listed some of Baldasarre Castiglione's ideas (from The Book of the Courtier - quite the bestseller in its day)of what qualities a good Renaissance courtier should have. Then he had to fill in the next column with examples of how Isabella d'Este showed those qualities. Today he will fill in the next column with examples of Leonardo da Vinci's qualities....tomorrow has me a little worried. He has to create two more columns...the first with characteristics of a modern Renaissance man, and then he has to chose someone who typifies those qualities.

Any suggestions? Here is a list of possible qualities:

speak multiple languages

play an instrument

knowledgeable about current affairs (political, economics.)

athletic

good dancer

artistic

architect

engineer

well educated

able to write in prose or poetry

person of good character

witty, but never crude or impolite

modest

Applications are now being accepted. (I KNOW what you're thinking.....me, me, me, also me...)

Really, I'm looking for a modern day Renaissance Man or Woman. They don't have to have ALL of the above qualities, but a good smattering would be necessary. Ideas???

It was the best of "times", it was the worst of "times"... A Tale of Two Math Papers

I'm especially impressed that Nathan did his quiz in pen.

I wonder if Charles Dickens had just spent the morning tutoring one of his children in the times tables. If so, I totally get it.

After two grueling days of playing "virtual academy catch-up", we started the month of October off pretty much up to date. It was all downhill from there.

Math is usually a breeze for Danny, but his lack of desire to write any possibly extra words didn't work for him today. He ended up having to go back and do a couple more problems to show that he understood the concepts. Tears ensued. Literature was not so bad - just reading today - no writing. Ah, but then came Composition. Daniel was supposed to write the final draft for his essay, which he did. He isn't supposed to do it on the computer - so it was all neatly hand written. And I failed him. As in, I gave him a failing grade. He probably would have squeaked by with a C- in public school, but that's not the way Washington Virtual Academy works. You have to pass every assessment with 80% or more to show mastery before you can move on. He had 70%. I showed him where the problems lay in his essay (tears again), then he laboriously rewrote it. This time I passed him.

Any volunteers to be a Language Arts tutor? Anyone?? Anyone at all?

World History wasn't too bad...which was nice, because that's where we ended our school day.

Nathan came home soon after and handed me his math quiz. Excellent.