Missionay Schmissionary

We are now in the middle of trying to get Matt ready to go on his mission. In the old days, the days when I went on a mission, you just went in to the Bishop and he filled out your forms and sent them in to a big building in Salt Lake and the rest just magically happened. Well, not so any more. It is a big on-line conspiracy and we are just a tiny blip on the radar.

Well, after hours of trying to log on many different ways I called the missionary department. A very nice, yet condescending, lady got me to a nice, but condescending, man who told me that my bishop needed to initialize the process and then we could access the system just fine. He did insinuate, with the tone of his voice, that perhaps I was not paying a full tithe or maybe, just maybe, I was not worthy enough to access the Lord's website. I got over this and am now in the process of leaving voice messages at every phone my bishop has even used trying to get access to this system before Matt's scheduled physical tomorrow. I think there is a biblical precedent for this in Hezekiah. "Yea, the Priest of Baal shall not triumph over the hosts of the Israelites until he shall gain access to the website of the Moabites.." I am paraphrasing but I think you get the point. It was all about access and band width, even in ancient times.

So now we wait. I hate waiting. When I am ready to get moving I think everyone should be available to get me the information I need. Immediately. No down time. I need answers and I need them now.

Other than that Christmas was bizarre. It was so cold and icy and snowy here that we were mostly homeound the week before Christmas. Of course, that was the week we were planning on getting much of our shopping and such done. The freeways were mostly clear but getting out of our neighborhood was a nightmare. So we sat and enjoyed each other's company. We enjoyed the tree. Then we broke down and opened Sam's present and played on the Wii until we were hurting. We figured the Wii is new and it wouldn't hurt if we made sure there were no bugs or glitches in it before he took it back to Provo. So when Sam and Tamsen finally made it here we wrapped up the Wii box and gave it to them. So who cares if there are already high scores and named players in the system, we were bored out of our noggins and had to do something. We actually purchased our own Wii system the next day and are enjoying the snot out of it as we speak.

So, after many days of not working I am back to work again. I have always felt the sine qua non of a decent vacation is if you can't remember your password when you get back. Unfortunately I was able to remember my passwords when I logged in this morning so, by definition, the vacation was not long enough. I also woke up to more snow on the roads this morning. I can't believe this. We moved to Portland to get away from the snow and now it is all over the place.

During the storm we had snow, then ice, then lots of snow. This caused all sorts of tree limbs to come crashing down all around us. We heard several large branches come down on our roof and hoped for the best. A few days ago I went up on the roof just to see the amount of foliage up there and found out that one of the crashes we heard actually penetrated the roof. Luckily the branch was still stuck in the roof so the hole was plugged quite snugly. I got someone out the same day and they patched the roof so when the remaining rain and snow came the next few days I am comfortable my roof is in no worse shape than it was before all of this happened. They joys of homeownership. We also visited out widow neighbor Eva and found that her back yard was a battleground of broken tree limbs. So a few days ago the entire famiy went back there and cleaned up her backyard. Even Diane and Matt got to enjoy this service for our neighbors. Matt got to use the power saw so that was fun. The rest of us just hauled stuff to different piles. Lots of fun. Eva thinks we are superheroes though. I think we are.

The sun is out. The snow is melting. I am out.