Days of my Life - Window to My World: Weeking

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Currently and Some Weekend Ramblings

Weather - It has been fairly cold, yet sunny, here over the weekend. Temperatures were in the 30s most of every day. The pollution caused haze is returning. We need another storm to come in and clear the air.

Reading - My weekend reading has included finishing a lovely book, Home to Harmony by Philip Gulley. You will hear more about that one, and all the books I finished in January in my January Reading Round-up post coming soon. I just started a library book I checked out Saturday, Everything We Didn't Say, which is crime/mystery/suspense book, which so far, has caught my interest. As always, my daily reading includes the scriptures. I finished the book of Psalms and decided to jump right into the book of Genesis to try and keep up better with our church Come Follow Me study.

Watching - Friday and Saturday nights, we watched an episode (one each night) of a mystery/parody show on Netflix, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It is mildly humorous, but has a bit of language (a couple of F-bombs per episode). It is entertaining, but not spectacular. We also watched Dateline of Friday. This one was an interesting cold case episode where they get the bad guy in the end and it's not who everyone thought it was.

On Sunday, We watched church on Zoom again, and will continue to do so until Covid numbers are down around here. (We set another record for hospitalizations last week). Josh went to church in person. The speakers were an older missionary couple and Josh was so impressed with them he texted me during church that he thinks Charly and I should go on a mission after we retire. We shall see. I would be just fine with doing something like that to help and serve others. I have a couple of things in mind, but that is at least four and half years down the road.

After watching church, the Zoom feed was cut off so we couldn't watch the Sunday School class, but we did watch this wonderful, uplifting talk from one of our worldwide church leaders, Jeffrey R. Holland. It was given this month at Brigham Young University, BYU, the university Josh is hoping to attend. It is such an uplifting talk about having faith in God during the hardest times in life. Anyone needing a spiritual lift, watch this.

Work- Friday was a teacher planning and work day. No students were at school, so it was nice to have the day to grade, plan, collaborate and get things done. It was also nice to have a little "chat" time with colleagues. Some of the other teachers have become friends over this past school year, and it is always great to have friends at work.

Saturday night I received email notification that my Donors Choose project was 100% funded thanks to some generous friends and the State of Utah making up the difference. That means, I will be getting a lot of new books for my classroom library. The books will include some Spanish language novels for my students who don't speak very much English. I am so grateful that the project was funded and that I will be getting some new books for my students.

The next couple of weeks at school will be very busy as we come upon progress report time and also parent teacher conferences which are the week after next. We will have a couple of very long days and then we will have a Friday off, as a comp day, on February 11.

Food - Saturday night, I made homemade pepperoni pizza. I forgot to put onions and mushrooms on it (what was I thinking??) which would have made it better. Also, I wasn't crazy about the refrigerated roll-out pizza dough I used for this one. The dough was too thin and too doughy. I won't use this again. Boboli pizza crust is much better. I won't forget the mushrooms and onions next time either.

Sunday dinner was slow cooker beef with mushrooms and gravy over rice, with steamed snap peas and broccoli. It was very good.

Thoughts - Josh asked me to drive with him down to Provo, a college town about 40 miles south of here. He wanted to scout out some possible dating venues. (We went on back roads because Josh isn't a guy who enjoys driving on busy freeways. I don't blame him. I do it only when I have to). I loved the time we had to talk in the car and the good conversations we had.

Other Stuff - Saturday morning, we went to a "vacation club" sales pitch. We are supposed to get two nights free in St. George for sitting there and listening to an hour sales pitch about why we should pay thousands of dollars to access some website where we could get discount deals on cruises, hotels, and airfare. We didn't buy in, and are just hoping the free two nights stay isn't a scam, but we shall see. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

We are trying to refinance a couple of our properties before interest rates go up. We stand to cut about ten years off our mortgage and pay less interest, but signing all the documents and providing all the documentation is a pain. I am glad that Charly takes care of the lion share of stuff like this. He also takes care of the taxes.

I worked on more voter postcards this weekend, and got another batch finished and in the mail. I also did some indexing of Wisconsin death certificates, as a volunteer indexer at Familysearch.org. Indexing is always so interesting. Reading those death certificates, I felt like I was reaching back in history and touching the lives of real people.

Weekend gratitude: