Things have been so busy around here that I have not really had time to look forward at all. In the back of my brain I have known that this was the weekend of General Conference, but this afternoon that realization came to me as if I had not known and I recognized a real excitemnet buried inside me. I am looking forward to this weekend and the opportunity to put the rest of the world on the backburner while I get some much needed nourishment of spirit.
After a long weekend with no internet access I was not at all surprised at the long list of emails that I had to deal with. It was a very good weekend to be disconnected since I had plenty to do as we moved into our new house. After a good three day weekend we are pretty well established with most of the boxes unpacked (besides those that are sitting in the garage – which is mostly food storage) and the furniture arranged. I fixed a couple of doorknobs with dysfunctional locks but not before Savannah accidentally locked herself inside the upstairs bathroom (the lock was easy to lock, but unlocking it from inside the bathroom was too difficult for women and children). I also mounted a flag bracket so I can fly the flag here.
It’s been a very fun few days as we have been awed and surprised to watch all the birds and squirrels, to feel the mountain breezes, to see so many stars at night now that we are above the main part of the city, and to look out the window before a storm and realize that we are literally living in the clouds at times. After today I should have internet access again so I won’t have to wait out the weekend before sharing when fun new things happen in our new home.
The last few weeks I have consistently not written on Saturdays. Of course I have been generally less consistent, but Saturdays would seem like the time when I would have the most opportunity to make time to write. This week I have ample time to write, but I find that there is apparently another barrier that I will need to overcome before I can consistently post on the weekends – I am busy enough that I don’t follow the news during evenings or weekends in the last 6 weeks. All that time has been spent working on various projects related to moving (finding a house, preparing the old house, etc. The result is that I don’t have anything that I have been mulling in the back of my mind that I can remember clearly enough to write about it. I am hopeful that this is not a permanent change, but until I have more time to think I expect that my weekend posting will be infrequent at best since I don’t have news articles to react to.
The funny thing here is that just as I am finishing this post I had a thought of something worth posting about from yesterday.
I would think by now that I would be smart enough to predict that it would be hard to keep up with blogging when I am simultaneously starting a new job and moving from Utah County to Davis County. Despite how predictable this challenge should have been in foresight, I have been disappointed that I have not had the time to write those few things that I have been thinking about.
I just wanted to take the time to assure everyone that despite my silence (in new posts and as a voice in the comments) I am paying attention to what is being said and I am trying to make time to be as active in the conversation(s) as I always prefer.
These last couple of days have been overwhelming. I can hardly keep up with everything I need to do – which is why I failed to post. I’m still trying to catch up so this is mostly a chance for me prove that I have not disappeared. It is also a chance for me to point to the Radio West show from yesterday, The Case for the Independent Farm.
I was very excited when I started listening to the show. It really makes you take a fresh look at agriculture as a business and also at how the production of our true necessities (such as food) affects our lives and our lifestyles so broadly. I am hoping to break the whole show down and share more of what I learned from it. Until then, here’s one nugget:
The encouragement {in agriculture} is to do more work with less people, hence the myth that modern farming is efficient – well it’s more efficient per man hour but it’s not more efficient per acre, if anything it’s much less efficient per acre but we tend to measure efficiency in man hours and capital rather than in land which is the one variable that we probably won’t ever have any more of. – George Pyle, author of Raising Less Corn, More Hell
In an effort to get back into the writing habit after a very tumultuous few days – here’s something rather light.
I stumbled onto this video and it took me back to my time in Missouri where I first started seeing billboards from the Foundation for a Better Life. As the smiles and memories came floating back I began to wonder how such a foundation gets started, and wondered if there was anything that could be done to have a few more groups who have no goal in mind but to make the world a better place.
I can just see Laura recommending Ten ways to find time for your family at Parent Hacks as daily reading for me until I can perfect it in my life. I think that numbers 2, 5, and 10 would be especially useful for me – not just for my family, but for everything I do.
After completing an 81 hour work week this week, the concept of having a day of rest takes on new significance for me. In fact, I think it might be time for a couple of 30 hour work weeks so I can get to know my family again. 😉
January was a very nice month for me as I was able to write every single day. Plenty of things have been happening in politics as the presidential primaries have twisted and turned on the path to next Tuesday. I’ve also had final opportunities to comment on the Mountain View Corridor and the opening of the 2008 legislative session to keep my mind occupied.
Having things to write about was obviously not a problem, but having time to write was surprising. things have been building up at work towards a new product launch. I have spent this last week working 12+ hour days in preparation for that event. It’s now crunch time in our product launch, at the same time as political crunch time for people to get serious about making a choice about where our nation should be headed politically. The primaries are the best time to make an impact in the voting booth – after that your options are much more limited.
After some of my coworkers asked my opinion on the Fair Tax proposal I was planning to write about that today, but it was not meant to be. (Maybe tomorrow.) Instead I wanted to share an exciting experience from tonight. I conducted two boards of review for boys seeking their life scout rank. As board members we are seeking to steer clear of the conveyor-belt approach – ask a couple of easy questions and say congratulations. One of the scouts obviously preferred the conveyor-belt version and started out trying to mumble his way through the review.
One question we asked was “what is the purpose of scouting?” He eventually buckled down and answered that, among other things, it is to learn to work. I agreed that our goal was to stretch the boys in preparation for life (like the life stretching that has been causing me to barely look at my personal email for the last week while I try to keep up with work). I don’t think either of those boys left their reviews the same as they entered them.