Two Pews in a Pod

A couple of weeks ago Liz managed to run over some goat-heads on her bike and flattened both of her tires. We had put a "puncture-proof" tube in the rear tire, so we were frustrated that that didn't work out. Life has been really crazy lately, so I hadn't had time to work on fixing them for her. Monday night I got home from "Beauty and the Beast" practice around 8:30, so I decided to see if I could get them fixed.

Liz had tried pumping up the rear tire with a pump she got that plugs into the car cigarette lighter on Saturday, and it seemed to hold some air, but didn't stay all the way pumped up. I thought maybe I should let the rest of the air out of it and take it off the rim so that I could check the tire itself to make sure that it didn't have any stickers left in it. However, I discovered that the slime that's supposed to seal the punctures started blocking up the valve, so I couldn't get much air out of it.

Liz had bought a new puncture-proof tube for the front tire, so I decided to switch to the task of removing the punctured tube from the front tire and replacing it. That was going pretty well, until I started putting the tire back on the rim with a little plastic tool that is designed for that task. When I had the tire almost all the way on, the plastic tool snapped, and a piece of it stayed inside the tire somewhere. That same tool is also used to take the tire off the rim, but since it was broken I couldn't get the tire off to clear out the broken piece.

"Okay," thought I, "I'll have to buy another tool to finish the front tire, so I'll switch back to the rear tire." I read the instructions that came with the new puncture proof tube, and discovered that it said that after you get a hole in it you need to pump it up and ride it around a bit to get it to seal up well. So I decided to just pump the tire back up, have Liz ride it around a bit, and see what happened.

Erin's car was in the way so I couldn't use the power pump without moving cars around, so I decided to use a good old fashioned hand pump. I hooked the pump up to the tire, and proceeded to push down on the pump handle. What happened next was not a good thing. As I mentioned, the valve had gotten plugged up with the puncture-proofing slime, so when I pushed down on the pump handle, all I accomplished was to compress the air in the pump, since it couldn't force its way into the tire. Just when I hit the bottom of my push, to my surprise the pump handle snapped cleanly in two, leaving one half in each hand. This resulted in there no longer being any downward pressure on the pump rod. At this point, all that air I had so energetically compressed down in the bottom of the pump became a fine propellant to shoot the metal rod upward at great force, directly into my stomach. This did not feel really good.

At this point, even though I didn't really have any more tools to break, I decided to not work on repairing tires any more that night. What I have to show for my efforts is one partially pumped up rear tire with a clogged up valve, and a partially pumped up front tire that almost has the tire all the way on the rim, but that also has the broken off piece of plastic hidden in it somewhere. And a nice oval shaped gouge/welt in my stomach about an inch below and to the right of my belly button.

I had previously scheduled my annual checkup for Wednesday this week, so I waited until then to have the injury checked. The doctor didn't seem too worried about it, except that it was a little infected in spite of our putting Neosporin on it. He gave me a stronger anti-biotic for it, and it seems to be getting better. He also gave me a tetanus shot, since I couldn't remember when I had last had one, even thought the rod didn't tear my shirt so it actually never made contact with my skin.

Today, I started feeling a little achy. I don't know whether it is a reaction to the tetanus shot, or the flu. I stayed home from work after lunch, but I went out to play practice tonight. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Erin had been down with a sinus infection for several days late last week and early this week, so hopefully I don't get that, and hopefully it's not the swine flu!

Posted by Erick at 10:19 PM | 4 comments  

Hey, it's only been 4 weeks since my last post instead of 4 months. In that 4 weeks Liz and I have both turned 32 (hexadecimal) years old. Since our birthdays are only two weeks apart, Erin and Anna planned a party for us on Friday the 14th, which was close to halfway between the two dates. They invited friends from all three of the houses we've lived in, as well as friends from MTI (our theater company friends), and one couple that we met back in college that now live up in Idaho City. So, a lot of people there didn't know each other, but it was fun to see them all. Erin reserved a picnic shelter at a local park, and we had a pot luck dinner and cake. It was a bit windy, but that also kept it from being too hot. It was a lot of fun, but everyone went home too early. We like to party later into the night, even if we are old!

On Saturday the 22nd Liz and I drove up towards McCall and went on a short hike down to a small mountain lake called Blue Lake. The hike was a bit steep, but not too strenuous for us 32 year olds. It was a nice little Saturday getaway. I would post a picture or two, but they are on my computer back at home, and I am not there currently.

The reason I'm not there is because we are spending the Labor Day weekend in Utah. Anna and Liz drove down on Wednesday so that Anna could be at the wedding of her first mission companion on Thursday. Liz spent that day visiting with some friends from back when she lived in Provo while her mom was attending BYU. Erin and I drove down to Salt Lake on Thursday night, and stayed at a downtown hotel so that Erin could be at the Church Office Building early Friday morning for an interview for an internship with the Humanitarian Department. The brother she interviewed with wanted her to meet with the actual hiring manager, but apparently he was too busy that day to talk to her. It was a little frustrating that after she arranged to drive down for the interview they hadn't arranged to have everyone that needed to talk to her available to do so. It sounds like it would be a good opportunity for her, and I am sure she would do an excellent job at it, so hopefully they will get their act together and offer her a job soon.

I wandered around temple square taking pictures while she was interviewing. when she got done we had breakfast at the JB's next to temple square. They had told Erin that if they could get this other manager to schedule some time for her they would give her a call, so we wanted to hang around for a while. We went and toured the roof of the conference center, and then went to an organ recital in the Tabernacle. After that we took the shuttle bus over to the Humanitarian Center to take the tour there, and Anna and Liz met us there. It really is amazing all the Church has been able to do around the world. We went from there to the Hogle Zoo (we'd never been there before) and had a couple of hours to see the animals there before it closed. They had quite a few baby animals there, so the girls were all particularly excited about that.

We back south from there through some pretty heavy traffic and eventually made it to Amy's house where everyone from these parts was gathering for dinner. We enjoyed a fun evening of visiting.

Saturday noon we headed over to Edwin's to help celebrate Marie's birthday (she turned 3C hexadecimal). All of their kids came into town and surprised her Friday night, and then they had a barbecue on Saturday. Kathy and Becky came down from Logan, and Alicia and Ches and his wife came as well. It was fun to see all of Edwin's kids, some of whom we hadn't seen for quite a while. Edwin had gone through a bunch of old boxes of Marie's and framed a whole bunch of pictures, and made a scrapbook of letters and stuff, and wrapped them all up and gave them to her for her presents. She also got some pretty nice stuff from her kids.

Liz stayed there to visit for a while, but Erin and I headed back to Dad and Mom's to watch the BYU game. We missed the first two possessions in transit, but we heard them on the radio. Tim and most of his kids and Amy and Nate and their kids also came over to watch, and we enjoyed cheering the Cougars to victory together. Apparently Oklahoma has trouble beating teams that have a B and a U on either end of their names. First BSU in the Fiesta Bowl a few years back, and now BYU! We hope the Cougars can keep up the good work for the whole season. It would be nice to put some more pressure on the BCS to come up with a better method for determining the national championship.

For those who weren't there Friday night to hear in person, I should mention that in the 4 or 5 weeks that Anna has been home from school between terms, we have had two young men spend a week at our house (different weeks). The first was a guy she had met at school, and the second was an elder from her mission. Apparently the relationship with the first guy is now over, and Anna isn't sure what to do about the second guy. I think I might have mentioned in my last post that Erin was spending a lot of time with a young man whose family is in our ward, so I guess I should update you on that situation. They are now just friends, as he has returned to BYU and wanted to basically keep his options open. Erin went to visit him last night, so maybe someday he'll come to his senses and realize he won't find anything better than Erin out there. If not, it's his loss.

Now you have all the juicy details on our last 4 weeks.

Posted by Erick at 10:23 AM | 1 comments  

Well, it's only been almost 4 months since I last posted on here, so I guess it's about time I caught you up on what we've been up to. The first two months since my last entry (May and June) were pretty much taken up, for me, by "The King and I." As I mentioned last time, I was the music director for the production, but for the first time in a while, I wasn't also cast in an on-stage role. It turned into a pretty good production. I was able to recruit the largest orchestra MTI has yet seen (28 musicians), and they sounded really good. I even got a harpist! You can see pictures of how it looked on stage here.

"King and I" finished on June 27th, and the following week I was required to take off from work because they decided to shut everything down for the 4th of July week to save money. Unfortunately, I would have rather taken the week off two weeks later when some of Liz's family was converging on Yellowstone that week -- but I wasn't given that choice. Rather than sit home all week, we were able to exchange our timeshare for a week in beautiful downtown Blanchard, Idaho, (well, there really isn't a downtown to Blanchard, but if there were this condo would be there) which you can see on the map below is in between a bunch of lakes in northern Idaho.


View Larger Map

Unfortunately, the condo's check-in date was on Friday, but because of the play we couldn't leave until Sunday, so we lost out on two days of the week. We went to an early ward on Sunday and then headed north, arriving around 9:30 that evening. Monday we played some racquetball at the resort, and just kind of hung around, but we did take a drive down to Spirit Lake in the evening. It was a very pretty mountain lake, but unfortunately there weren't too many places that you could drive down to the lake because the shoreline is mostly privately owned.

Tuesday we drove all the way around Priest Lake. A good portion of that trip was on mostly deserted dirt roads, and while on those dirt roads we actually saw a bear. We both saw it in a meadow off to the left maybe 100 yards away, but by the time I stopped the car and backed up to where we had seen it, it had disappeared.

Wednesday we drove across the state (which isn't very far up there) to the Montana state line where we rented some bicycles, which we then hauled to the beginning of the Trail of the Hiawatha, which is an old railroad route that has been converted to a biking trail. We rode around 15 miles through tunnels and over trestles through beautiful mountain territory. The thing that made this a great idea was that it was downhill all the way, and when we got to the end of the trail they had a shuttle bus that hauled us and our bikes back up to the beginning of the trail. It was really quite spectacular scenery, and was a very fun trip. They also had interpretive signs posted all along the trail describing various details about the history of the trail and the trains that used to travel over it. Kudos to my intrepid wife who came across information about this trail on the internet.

On the way back from the bike ride we spent some time at Coeur d'Alene Lake, and stopped off in the city of Coeur d'Alene for dinner.

Thursday was our Lake Pend Oreille day. We first went to Farragut State Park on the southern end of the lake, which used to be a US Navy training base. The lake is 1,150 feet deep in places, and they used to train submarine crews there. There was a really nice swimming area there, and Liz went swimming while I drove back to the condo to get the camera that I had forgotten when we left that morning. We did a little more driving around in that area before heading north to Sandpoint, where we had reserved a dinner cruise on the lake. They took us out to an island where some bald eagles are nesting, and we ate dinner while watching the eagles sitting around in the treetops.

Friday morning (the 3rd) we headed back to Boise. We had taken the interstate through Spokane going up, but we took the slower, more direct route down US 95 coming home. It was slower, but it was prettier. You can see pictures of our trip here. Our actual 4th of July was pretty boring. We watched the Boise fireworks on TV and saw a few neighbors lighting some stuff, but that was it.

As I mentioned, some of Liz's family got together a couple of weeks later in Yellowstone N.P. They stayed at cabins at Old Faithful Lodge. Erin and Liz spent the week over there while I slaved away here at work to pay for their adventures. I guess I'll leave it to Liz to fill in the details of that trip, if she ever gets around to it.

Anna finished up her semester at school the same week Liz and Erin were over there on that side of the state, and she returned home the day after they did (Sunday, July 19th I think). She brought with her a young man that she has been dating over there, Eric Anderson. He stayed through Thursday before flying home to his family in Texas. It remains to be seen what will come of all that. Apparently an elder from Anna's mission is also coming to spend a few days here in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, Erin has also been seen spending quite a bit of time with a young man, Joe Morton, whose family actually lives in our ward. They were in the Edinburgh ward but got moved into our ward the last time the boundaries got realigned. His dad was on the high council with me when I was first called, but he was released a couple of years ago. He goes back to school at BYU in a few weeks, so who knows what will come of that.

In between all of that, work has been pretty crazy. They have us trying to meet an absolutely insane schedule on our current project, but in the current economic situation, who can complain? Speaking of the current economic situation, who decided it was a good idea to take some of my money and use it to help some other people buy new cars? I can't afford a new car, why should I help other people buy one?

And with that, I will close this entry. Maybe I'll see if I can get around to posting again before the end of the year.

Posted by Erick at 8:37 PM | 2 comments  

It definitely feels like spring today. We had some days that teased us with spring-like weather in the last few weeks, but then it went back to being gray and cooler the next day. Yesterday and today have been really nice.

The big news for the past week is that Anna has been home. She actually got here a week ago Thursday, and then just left a few hours ago to head back to Rexburg. Her friend, Mandy, who is from Virginia, also spent the week with us.

Anna's best friend, (and Mandy's cousin) Carrie, got married a week ago yesterday, so that took up most of our day. We were invited to the sealing ceremony, then the luncheon at Johnny Carino's, and then, of course, we went to the reception that night. Liz helped Carrie plan their honeymoon to DisneyWorld, and she made them up a detailed itinerary as part of their present (she knew they wouldn't have time to do it themselves while they were planning a wedding). Then we also gave them some Disney Dollars to spend while they were there for the rest of their wedding present.

We had our first couple of rehearsals for "King and I" this past week. I am music directing it, so I had to get all of the music entered into MIDI files, which has been occupying most of my free time over the last few weeks. The rehearsals were only the first three days of the week, because they had the final performances for their current production, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" on Thursday-Saturday. Liz, Anna, Mandy, and I went to see it on Thursday night. They did a good job -- lot's of energy and fun music. Tom was being played by a young man who we have been in several productions with, but this was really his first big role, so it was fun to see him do well.

This weekend we had stake conference. It was broadcast from Salt Lake. We had talks from Elder Richard Hinckley, Sis. Barbara Thompson, Bishop McMullen (can't remember his first name), and Elder Todd Christopherson. Our Saturday evening session was also very good. Erin and Anna sang a duet right before the stake president's concluding talk, and they did a great job. In some ways it would be nice if our stake conferences were not always so close to general conference, but they are always good anyway.

That's our exciting news for the week.

Posted by Erick at 6:01 PM | 2 comments  

My present from Erin this last Christmas was that she would pay for my ticket to go and see the musical "Wicked" in Portland. I still had to pay for the travel expenses, but she paid for her and my tickets. We ended up deciding to go last weekend. It took a while to figure out how to make it all work for the whole family without Anna missing too much school, but here's what we ended up doing.

Liz, Erin and I left on Thursday (March 26th) and drove up to Portland. We made a few short stops along the way to see Multnomah and a couple of the other nearby falls. We stayed at a hotel close to the airport, so that we could pick up Anna the next morning. She had a flight from Idaho Falls that left at 6:00 am and arrived in Portland around 10:30. We met up with her without incident, and then headed for the coast. Of course, we were in Oregon, so pretty soon it started raining. We got out to Cannon Beach around lunchtime, and after a little trip through Ecola State park, we eventually found our way to Mo's to get some lunch. There was a pretty big line there, but by agreeing to split up into two groups we got in quickly. Then it turned out there were two tables for two right next to each other, so we were pretty much together anyway. Ah, seafood on the beach.

After lunch we went back into town and hit a couple of kite shops (Erin and Liz bought kites at the second one), then an antique store, and a candy store. Then we found the same place to park that we did last time we were on the coast with Mom and Dad, and walked out on the beach by Haystack Rock. The weather was not nearly as nice as it was last time we were there! It was still drizzling, the wind was blowing, and it was cold! Erin, Anna, and I didn't last long and went back to wait in the warm car, while Liz continued to explore the sandy stretches.

She eventually returned, and we headed north to Seaside where we had a condo type place reserved for the night. It was fairly new, and pretty nice, but the room layout was not well thought out. We had dinner at a pretty good sushi restaurant that night.

Saturday morning we headed back to Portland. We made our way (through the rain again) into downtown Portland and found the Keller Auditorium where we were going to see the matinee performance of "Wicked, the Musical." After having fun negotiating all the one way streets, we found a place to park close by and had lunch at a Quiznos, finishing up just at the right time to head over to the theater. We had pretty good seats about 15 rows back on the main floor in the center section. As we entered the auditorium we were greeted with the sight of a map of Oz where the curtain would normally be, and a big animated dragon over the top of the proscenium.
They definitely know how to gear up the anticipation for the show. And it was a spectacular show.

For those who don't know, "Wicked" is the untold story of the witches of Oz. It turns out that the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North were roommates at sorcery school. I won't spoil the story for you, but it has quite a few twists and turns before you get to the end. For our performance, it turned out the understudy was playing the role of Glinda, but she and the rest of the actors were all wonderful. The really amazing thing, though, with professional productions is what they can do with the sets and lighting. We do a pretty good job on our sets at MTI, but when you have the amount of money they have on Broadway and with these touring productions, and professional set builders, they can pull off some pretty jaw-dropping stuff.

After the show we drove around town a bit and found Powell's Bookstore. A friend of Erin's told her about this place, and it is huge! Pretty much a whole city block with multiple levels and multiple rooms all filled with books. We spent a little over an hour there -- I found a book that was published a few years back that attempts to rank the best baseball players throughout history from 1 to 75 or so. So far I've made it through number 7, and it's pretty interesting.

Another place we heard about from a couple of people was Voodoo Doughnuts, so next we set out to try and find that. It wasn't too far from the bookstore, but more fun with the one way streets, and the fact that this place is pretty small, caused us to take a while to find it. When we did, there was no place to park. After we drove around in circles for a while we dropped Erin and Liz off and Anna and I continued to circle and picked them up when they got out. They have some pretty crazy flavors there.

We finally headed to our hotel for the evening, which wasn't too far away. We ordered in pizza, and Liz and Erin enjoyed the pool before we turned in for the night. Sunday morning we found a church not too far away, and attended Sacrament meeting before heading back to change and check-out of the hotel and head back home. We needed to get back to Boise for Anna to catch a 9:45 flight from here to Idaho Falls. The weather was pretty good until we got close to LeGrande, and then we hit some pretty good snow for a stretch, but it never really stuck to the roads so it wasn't too bad. We made it back in plenty of time, especially since her flight got delayed. She eventually made it back to a snow storm in Idaho Falls around 11:30. Her friend Carrie picked her up and they slowly made their way back up to Rexburg.

That was our Wicked weekend. If you get a chance to go see this show, do it!

Posted by Erick at 1:43 PM | 5 comments  

I was sitting on the stand before Edinburgh Ward's sacrament meeting on Sunday the 22nd of March, when I heard the two counselors in the bishopric discussing an announcement that was to be made at the end of the meeting. I glanced over and saw that they were going to announce that David Archuleta was presenting a fireside for the youth of our stake that very evening. I knew he had performed a concert in town the night before, but I knew nothing about the fireside. Later I found out that no one knew about the fireside until about 9:00 Saturday night when David's father made contact with Pres. Cambron, the first counselor in our stake presidency, to see if we would be interested in hosting the fireside.

The announcement was very specific about who was invited to the fireside: the youth and youth leaders of our stake, and each youth was allowed to invite one youth not of our faith to attend with them. This was to keep the stake center from getting overwhelmed with people. So, I wasn't sure if I was even going to attend until I got a call later that morning that they wanted the high council to serve as ushers for the fireside.

In the afternoon, after our ward's meeting block, I was about to leave after helping set up chairs for the fireside when I saw Pres. Cambron in the foyer. He was looking for the assistant executive secretary, who had already left for home. I asked if I could help with anything, and he then asked me to give David's dad a call to finalize the arrangements for the evening. That's how I ended up sort of being his escort for the evening. I ended up not getting to go home for dinner until after everything was done later that night.

We had announced that the doors would open for the 7:00 fireside at 6:30 so that we wouldn't have people camping out in the chapel as soon as our ward finished at 4:00. We cleared the building and locked the doors at about 5:30. Right about then was when people started showing up and lining up at the doors. We ended up letting people in a few minutes early around 6:25. David, his pianist, and his dad showed up with some friends from the area at around 6:40. We had him come in and meet with the stake president to finalize what was going to happen at the actual fireside. Then he and his pianist went to the Relief Society room to work out what he was going to sing. Nothing like preparing ahead!

Shortly after 7:00 David entered the chapel for the fireside. After an opening hymn and prayer the time was turned over to him. He started out by singing "I am a Child of God," and then he started answering some of the questions we had had the youth write down on little slips of paper. He only ended up answering a couple of them. He said up front that he didn't feel that he was very good at public speaking, and that was definitely true. In spite of that, there was a great spirit as he shared his experiences on American Idol and shared how his testimony had helped him get through it all. He ended up by singing "Be Still My Soul," which he said was one of his favorite hymn, and then an a cappella rendition of "How Great Thou Art."

Afterward, we brought David down to the Relief Society room where David had graciously agreed to shake hands and greet those who wanted to meet him (which I think was pretty much everyone there). In order to help the traffic flow, we had them line up down the hall, and after they shook hands with David we had them go out the back door to the outside. I ended up getting the duty to man the back door and keep people moving outside (where it was quite nippy that night). It was pretty funny to stand there and watch the faces of many of the young women after they had just had the chance to shake hands (or, for those brave enough, hug) DAVID ARCHULETA! Some of them looked like they might faint, and some were practically in tears.

All in all the youth behaved very well, and David even commented afterward that he felt a special spirit being with the youth of our stake. We ended up only having the cultural hall filled about half way back, so the concerns of getting flooded with people didn't come about, which was a testament to the obedience (for the most part) of our youth who had been asked to NOT text all their friends or put anything on Facebook about it.

David appears to be just what he seems on TV, a humble, nice, clean young man with a very talented singing voice. I think it was a great opportunity for our youth to attend this fireside. Oh, and Pres. Cambron gave me permission to invite Liz and Erin to come sit with me (they're the real American Idol fans of the family), and they enjoyed it too.

Posted by Erick at 1:03 PM | 0 comments  

I don't remember why, but the subject of an essay I wrote back in high school came up recently. Erin told me I needed to post it to our blog, so here goes.

First, some background. We came into the first day of Mrs. Goforth's junior AP English class and sat down. The first words out of her mouth, after the bell rang, were "Take out a piece of paper and a pen." These words greatly offended the sense of justice of the entire class -- "We're not supposed to have to do real work on the first day of class, are we?" Once the rustling of papers and pens being retrieved settled down, Mrs. Goforth began talking. And kept on talking. She talked a little bit about current events, she talked about the school, and seemingly whatever other random thing popped into her mind.

Then, about halfway through the class period, she said, "Okay, start writing."

As I'm sure she expected, this command was met with blank stares.

She said, "What are you waiting for?"

Someone hestitantly asked, "What are we supposed to write about?"

"Would you like some suggested topics?" she asked back.

I think I was the one who said, "Sure, if we don't have to choose one of them," as I was starting to suspect that her topics might not be the easiest ones to write about.

She then began to write some topics on the blackboard, most of which didn't really make any sense. When she wrote the words, "What is the meaning" I thought maybe she was finally starting a concrete topic, but then she simply added a question mark after those four words, and moved on to the next suggested topic.

After a few minutes of pondering my options, I decided to write my essay on the topic: "Who or What is the Meaning?" Here are the results.

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Who or What is the Meaning

The Meaning is the meanest ing ever known to man or ing. An ing, in case you didn't know, is a thing who left his th behind him somewhere. The Meaning likes to eat little ings, and things, and he also sings and wears rings, and unless he drinks the right kind of juice, he pings. The Meaning used to be a nice little ing; but when he started thinking about life, he decided there should be some Meaning to life, so he decided it was up to him to provide this service to the world.

Everyone should avoid the Meaning; for if you ever found out the Meaning, you would be in a mess. If you are a thing, I advise you to hold onto your th, because if the Meaning ever found out about a thing turning into an ing, he would grab an extra th plus an hy and turn the ing into a thinghy, which is related to a dinghy, which is usually all wet.

When the Meaning was found in the past, it was stuck in a dictionary, from which it quickly escaped. In the future, if the Meaning is ever found again, it should be reported to Mrs. Goforth, who would best know how to confuse it, and a confused Meaning is as good as no Meaning at all.

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Oh, by the way, I'm sure you're wondering: I got an "A" on the paper.

Posted by Erick at 8:10 PM | 2 comments