A Good Weekend

Hello Everybody! (Remember that quack doctor on The Simpsons who does infomercials and always starts with “Hello Everybody”? So funny.) It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post. I’ll admit I was burned out on the blog for a while. Every time I started to write something, I got nothing. My brain shut down. Here’s hoping that a break did me some good.

Would you like to know how I spent my 4th of July weekend? Ok, I’ll tell you. On Friday the 3rd Melissa and I went to the Real Salt Lake soccer game. What fun! We went because they were doing a big fireworks display after the game, and we like a big fireworks display. And I felt like it had been too many years since I’d really done something to celebrate the 4th. The game was great, and what’s also great is having a brother and sister-in-law who have season tickets with awesome seats in a half empty section who let us leave our cheap seats in the very top row and join them with the elite. We were right behind the Real team, and the action was at eye level. We could see the details of the player’s footwork, and what they can do is fascinating. And, we have some very good looking men on our team, and they’re fit, and they run around in shorts…I’m a fan.

Barry was good about telling me some of the rules of the game, which made it all more interesting. The end score was a tie, 1 to 1, which was a bit disappointing. The other team scored first, and then we scored toward the very end of the game. It almost happened without anyone noticing. The ball just rolled into the goal net. I still don’t know how it happened. Suddenly everyone was on their feet – the cheers were deafening. It’s so exciting, that rush that runs through the crowd. Really fun, I’m ready to go to another game soon.

I had to work at the bookstore on Saturday. Holidays at the store are known for being very, very quiet. Melanie decided to count every customer that came through the door, which wouldn’t have been hard because there weren’t many. She decided that we should have a code word that we had to work into every conversation with customers, and we’d get a point for every success, and the winner would get a treat from the pantry. We chose Philadelphia as our word because of its ties to the Declaration of Independence and the 4th. One of our first customers was an older man who went over to the comfy chairs by the TVs and sat down to watch the movie we were playing, “Scout Camp”. It’s about a Scout Camp. I wandered over, and he made a comment about the show, and then I said, “It’s interesting – this was filmed in Pennsylvania right outside Philadelphia, in the woods.” Total crap – that film was probably made up in Heber Valley, I don’t know, but I got my point, and Melanie and I laughed for the rest of the day. I won the contest, and she made me some very delicious cinnamon rolls. All in all a good day for me.

That afternoon I spent some time studying for a mid-term. I’m taking a world civilizations class online through BYU, and am at the point where I need to take the mid-course test. I finished all of the prior assignments back in May, and then my family was in town, and then I was down for a week with an illness, and then June was gone, and I realized that I was going to have to go back and relearn everything before taking this test, and that is taking some time. But it’s been interesting. I know more now about Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete than I ever thought possible.

That evening I went over to Marla’s house. Her older boys were camping with friends, so we just had Jonah and William. Have I ever mentioned how cute those boys are? They’re very cute. We went for a ride around the neighborhood in their golf cart. They bought this golf cart years ago, and I thought it was kind of weird at the time, but that thing is surprisingly fun and useful. The older kids love to bum around the neighborhood in it. We rode for about 20 minutes, waved at the neighbors, felt the cool evening air; William fell asleep in his car seat. It was very pleasant.

Back at the house we just hung out in their back yard. I brought some sparklers for Jonah (I love sparklers!), and we ate the prize cinnamon roles. There’s a fairgrounds about a half mile west of their house where there are usually fireworks that we can see from the yard. So we waited till 10, and nothing. No fireworks. We saw some that were further away, but too far away. It was a little disappointing, but we survived the pain and still had a nice evening and a good 4th of July. Sometimes you have to muster up the courage of your fore-fathers and persevere.

I taught my primary class about the building of the Kirtland temple on Sunday. The teacher from the class just older than mine called me earlier in the week and asked if I would combine her class with mine. I said sure, and then she said that she didn’t think that any of the kids would be there because so many families were out of town. It’s true that a lot of the primary kids were gone, in every class but mine and the one I took on, and we had visitors. My little classroom was jam packed. I was worried about discipline, kids talking, pandemonium. I pled with them at the beginning of class to please be very quiet and good, and they were! They were very good. They even made comments and told stories that were relevant to the lesson. I couldn’t have been happier.

So that was my weekend. In other news, I’m thinking of faking my death. I read online today that Michael Jackson’s albums have sold 800,000 copies in the last two weeks, and people have downloaded 4.8 million songs online. For crying out loud! He never could have made such a comeback while alive. So, I’m wondering just how much appreciation, and riches, would come my way if I were dead. I might try it and see. Although, if you hear that I’m dead, you need to forget that I said anything about faking it, and act like you would if I were really dead, otherwise this whole test is ruined.

I think that will do it for now. I need to get some more studying done. Hope you’re all doing well, and that you had a fun holiday weekend.