What I’m up to right now
March 29, 2009
I don’t talk too much about what I’m doing on this blog. A bit comes out here and there. But today I thought I would write out some of the things I’m working on and write where I am in each of them.
Being a husband and father: I won’t talk too much about this. It’s the center of this blog and I hope that it’s also the center of my life. Mostly that means doing things like wrestling, cleaning, keeping the peace, doing dishes and cooking, playing soccer and ping pong, chatting and flirting with Gina, getting tooth brushes ready and brushing teeth, combing hair, changing diapers, dressing and undressing, praying in the evenings and the mornings, having family scripture study and family home evening, telling jokes and teasing and so on. Gina is an amazing companion regularly gives me more to aspire to in this area. For the older kids, I’m trying to keep up with their goals and help them achieve them. I’m trying to have formal interviews for this each month to keep up with that.
Working: Most of you know that right now I have the amazing blessing of having my work and my schooling be combined. I’m writing up my dissertation right now and hope to have a draft done by late April. After that, I’ll go through it and make it into a first formal draft to get out to everyone by the early June. I’m collaborating on a paper and seeking to understand some very old questions regarding the energy and momentum of light in a medium.
Writing: The first chapter of a book is on the blog a few entries back. I’ve continued my efforts and am working on chapter 16 now. I’ve always wanted to be a (fiction) writer but haven’t done it because I’ve been too worried about making whatever I write amazing. I’ve now decided that it’s more important to go ahead and create something than it is to do nothing because I’m worried about whether or not it will be something great. Now I’m giving myself a chance to crawl and hoping that eventually I’ll be able to walk or at least crawl better. I began by writing a minimum of 200 words each non-Sunday and then went up to 300 words. I’m debating about whether or not I should move up to 4 or 5 hundred words per night. We’ll see. I should have a first draft done some time this fall.
Arabic: I want to become fully competent in Arabic. It’s an amazing language and its associated with many fascinating cultures and with a fascinating history and body of literature. I read Arabic daily and have begun to train my ears as well by listening daily. We’ll see how things go over time.
Piano Lessons: When the piano teacher the girls were learning from moved, I took over teaching lessons. It’s fun to have that bit of time with the girls and it’s fun to see what I can do to help them learn. I have a lot of progress to make, though, as their teacher.
Soccer: I’m the soccer coach for Timmy’s team. I like the kids on the team a lot and I like soccer. It’s fun ot be involved. This endeavor just began this last week, so we’ll see how things go.
Historic Fiction Magazine: I’ve recruited an old friend, John Crawford, to help me put together a monthly. I think the world could use a quality magazine devoted to historic fiction short stories. Right now we’re working on infrastructure and learning what the business is about. It would be neat if we could get the first issue off the ground by July 1st. Together, we applied for seed funding to do this from Ycombinator. If they give us the funding, they may wish to have us focus on another project or they may just give us the time and resources to focus on this full time. If they don’t fund us, we probably won’t work on this full time but we will most likely continue forward and create something interesting.
Primary: Gina is in the primary presidency and successfully lobbied for me to be put on as one of 2 teachers of a dozen CTR 5’s. It’s been really fun. We don’t try to fill the whole 50 minutes with a lesson. For the first few minutes we go through a routine consisting of a review of names and rules, a CTR News section where they tell how they chose the right in the past week, prayer, and then a lesson. After the lesson we go to closing prayer, and then games/coloring. We have a lot of fun playing simple games like Charades and “What’s the biggest” and so on.
Exercise: This is a mixed routine of biking (7 miles to work), running, and other things like shoveling snow or whatever comes up. I do pullups a couple of times a week and am trying to work up from 10 to 20.
Home teaching: We try to get this completed the first Sunday of each month and almost always fail. But trying makes it a lot easier to complete it early. My companion, Jordan, and I have only three families. But they are great ones and we have fun making our visits.
That’s pretty much it. Besides that, I read and check blogs and waste time doing this and that. And we try to go to bed pretty early, so I’m off to bed. Goodnight!
Snow Day
March 29, 2009
- Lily's favorite new phrases are "okee dokee," and "umm . . . yes!"
- Elsie was disappointed watching Backyardigans each time the villains lost,
- Timmy walked up through a crowd of cheering kids, getting several high-fives along the way to collect a principals award for being a great helper,
- Abby aced her first set of standardized tests,
- While the rest of us cheered because we were out of school and work for a snow day, Kate cried sporadically through Friday morning because of all the things she wouldn't get to do at school,
- Gina went through the trauma of getting Lily immunized (I've noticed, by contrast, that she seems to revel in my booster shots–she likes to bring up child birth at those times), and
- I got to spend Friday morning shoveling snow.
Lily is 2!
March 22, 2009
- Lily broke into song during prayer saying "happy birthday to me,"
- Elsie has refused to eat something at almost every meal this week,
- Timmy had his jaw collide with a head on the trampoline and is swelling up,
- Last night Abby made fruit salad, unloaded the dishwasher, loaded it up with dirty dishes, and did other dishes by hand–all without being asked,
- Kate read several books on fairies,
- Gina made a remarkable cookie monster birthday cake, and
- I officially began acting as a soccer coach for Timmy's team.
Pi week
March 15, 2009
- Lily started objecting to labels: if we call her cute then she indignantly replies "No! You're cute!"
- Elsie kept violently shaking her curly hair during primary,
- Timmy got a shoe thrown at him in the bus for telling a kid to behave,
- Abby made a sign for our pi-day gathering (shown here),
- Kate almost got her cursive certificate (permission to use cursive writing for her school work) , but forgot to cross a t and had two other faults,
- Gina volunteered at the book fair, and
- I accidentally spammed every email address in my primary inbox with an invitation to join Facebook and "see my pictures." (I only had one picture, and there were a lot of addresses of people that I hardly know. It was painful.)
Untitled
March 8, 2009
- Lily started climbing onto the table, onto the shelves, and into the dishwasher again (which means that she got mostly better),
- Elsie explained to Gina that Gina would do whatever Elsie wanted "because I'm a darling,"
- Timmy wrote a couple of sentences in his journal,
- Abby decorated the Brie box I gave her to use to organize her trinkets,
- Kate decided to keep her room clean after cleaning it (this is a big change that has already lasted one day),
- Gina had a great time trying a new cinnamon role recipe, and
- I helped administer about 20 emergency preparedness surveys as part of an Eagle scout project.
They didn’t have me pack heat.
March 1, 2009
- Lily kept pushing 103 F despite judicious doses of Ibuprophin or Tylenol,
- Elsie kept convincing to help her walk on the ceiling,
- Timmy took Flat Stanley all around town,
- Abby wrote me a note thanking me for going to work every day,
- Kate's legs ached for several nights in a row,
- Gina had 8 mothers and their children over to celebrate National Pancake Day in style, and
- I got to be on security patrol for stake conference (but they didn't have me pack heat).
