Musings on Life and Living

I think most of you know that I got Gretch an iMac for her birthday (and just about every other holiday/anniversary/etc for the next century...) She loves her Mac and continues to point out how wonderful it is. I agree. For the most part. Of course, I'm sure I could get an equally amazing PC desktop, but I wanted a notebook computer. Hence the reason I use my awesome Lenovo ThinkPad. But I digress... Anyway, this evening we discovered a terrible flaw in Mac OS X. Unless someone out there in the Internet knows how to fix this... The flaw is this: if you try to merge one folder with another, you lose everything that was in the latter. Gretch had some really important documents that we use for Simply Spotless in one folder on her desktop. And she had a few other documents on one of her flash drives, also for Simply Spotless. Both folders were cleverly named "Simply Spotless". So folder from the flash drive gets moved to folder on the desktop and *poof* all the documents in t...

Gretch and I went to the St. Louis Missouri Temple today. It was only the second time we've been to the Temple since getting married 9 months ago. I used to go much more often (once a month for quite a while, and almost once a week while I was living in Melbourne), but work and school have created so many time conflicts that we just haven't been able to make it there. However, I feel so blessed that we have so many temples near us. When I was born in East Peoria, Illinois, my family was part of the Washington DC temple district. It took members of the church the better part of a day to get to the Temple. Now, still living in central Illinois, we have the Chicago Illinois Temple, the Nauvoo Illinois Temple, the St. Louis Missouri Temple, and the Louisville Kentucky all within about four hours.  I love the Houses of the Lord. I have seen many of them in my lifetime. On the outside, they are beautiful, magnificent edifices that speak of devotion to the Lord. Even more, though, I l...

To those who are still following along, I have some happy news to provide as an update to the weekend's FedEx Office debacle. I got a phone call this morning from Kevin, the store manager, apologising profusely for the atrociously poor customer service I received on Saturday. He assured me that such behaviour was not the standard he expects of his employees. He also said that the extra charges for converting files to PDFs had been abolished well over a month ago, which means that he obviously needs to provide further training for his people. As I talked to him, I could tell that he was legitimately upset about what happened, and that he wanted to make things right. He asked me if I'd be willing to come back in to get my brochures re-printed, and also offered to print my other documents for me--all free of charge. I gladly accepted his offer. Gretch came in with me, and, while Kevin was not there at first, he did come in and took over our order, personally making sure that every...

Remember Kinkos? That cool place that prints all of your stuff for you for a relatively decent price? And then one day you may have noticed that I was FedEx Kinkos. About the same time, you may have noticed that Federal Express package delivery was FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight. So there had been some cool changes to the names. But FedEx Kinkos was still that cool printing place. And if you've gone there recently, you'll have noticed that they now have signs up that say "FedEx Kinkos is now FedEx Office!" Um... Okay... So I think it is a bad marketing plan, but sure, whatever. Just as long as I can still get my stuff printed off without having to use all of my own ink and paper, right? Right. So, I went to Kinkos (sorry, FedEx Office) this afternoon so that I could print off a bunch of stuff that I needed done for Simply Spotless. The reason I decided to go was because, honestly, I feel that I have more important things to do with my time than to sit around and print...

I stumbled upon the following quote from President Obama today: "The single most important factor in determining [student] achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from," says President Obama. "It's not who their parents are or how much money they have--it's who their teacher is." I agree with the first part: neither colour of skin nor place of nativity is really all that important of a factor. I also agree with the middle of the second part: the amount of money one (or one's family) has is, by and large, relatively unimportant. However, I wholeheartedly disagree with both the beginning and the end of the second part. As a teacher, I recognise that, yeah, I'm a pretty big deal when it comes to the whole education process. But I also realise that there are two people who are far more important than me when it comes to discussing a student's academic success. Those two people are the student's mother and father. And as we h...

Yesterday afternoon I started blog-hopping to pass the time while Gretch was napping on the couch. I stumbled upon a blog that had a discussion about whether or not Mormon missionaries should be allowed to do their work. It was written by a self-described "evangelical Christian" who took the opportunity to attack LDS doctrines, although not in any specific way. I left a comment for him, expressing my concern that, while he had claimed to want to know LDS beliefs, he didn't really. I explained how often I have met evangelicals like this who proclaim to know "all about Mormonism" and yet, whenever asked, they give a bunch of examples of LDS doctrines that are either completely false or, at best, misrepresented. This comment was followed up by several other posters who claimed that I was wrong, etc., etc., etc. The original author asked me for specfic examples of erroneous statements. I had not planned on replying further but then I decided I had "somewhat mor...

While I was living down under in the land of Oz, my friend Millie and I spent a great deal of time discussing literature. She recommended several books to me that I had never read, due to the fact that they had never been published in the States. I recommended many books to Millie, and I eventually created a reading list for her. My friend Amy has recently expressed interest in reading something other than textbooks. I offered to provide the list I originally wrote for Millie. The list has been expanded somewhat, but, for all those who may wish to know (especially you, Amy), here is the official reading list I recommend to all: The Dark Is Rising Sequence by  Susan Cooper Over Sea, Under Stone The Dark Is Rising Greenwitch The Grey King Silver On The Tree The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander The Book Of Three The Black Cauldron The Castle Of Llyr Taran Wanderer The High King The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher The White Mountains The City Of Gold And Lead The Pool Of Fire T...

Susan Estrich is a opinion columnist. Her work is published by Creators Syndicate, which means, of course, that she is not just a columnist, but she is a syndicated columnist. Millions of readers are exposed to her writing each week. Her political views are different from my own, but I read her column regularly, as she is one of those rare writers whose views I can respect, because I am sure she respects my own. Also, I find it quite enlightening to read what other people think. This morning I read her article , and found that she has, as so many people in America have, decided that the passage of Proposition 8 is entirely the fault of the LDS Church. While I do not intend on starting another discussion about the merits of Prop 8 , I did email her to express my dismay at her scapegoating efforts. The following is the text of my letter to her. I do not have very high hopes that she will respond, but I felt it was worth taking the time to respond to her accusation. Dear Ms. Estrich,   I...