Category Archives: Travel

Trying to Find Something To Write About…

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My lack of updates stems mostly from the fact that there is a whole lot of stuff in my life that I can’t write about because a.) Jon is in the call process and I can’t reveal where we’re interviewing or have interviewed; b.) I keep church drama off of public entries; c.) I’m dead exhausted all the time; and d.) I don’t have anything to say much of the time about my life because it’s pretty much work/Daniel/church drama at the moment.

Here are a couple tidbits that I can mention:

[+] I had so much fun with NaNo this year that I’m going to be writing some murder mysteries based in a small town in Minnesota. Yes, I know Minnesota lost in the poll but I can actually *create* the characters and settings there. I’ve been gone from Ohio too long to set it there and Montana is kind of painful to write about at the moment. I scoured a map of Norway and found a small town called Lesja which will be the name of the town in Minnesota. One of the hard things about creating one there: just about every name that is conceivable has been taken. The main character will be a pastor’s wife who solves mysteries.

[+] We had about a week and a half of -20F and then it got fairly warm again (for Montana) and now we seem to be dropping again. I just checked Weather.Com (which has an interesting headline: “Historic Storm Makes History” — paging the redundancy department!) and it’s actually not supposed to get below 10F.

[+] I’m headed out to Seattle with Daniel on Christmas Eve. We’re meeting my parents at Sea-Tac and then heading north to my grandma’s house. She’s doing well but she’s 89 and I want him to get to meet her. It’s also a chance to show him off to others in the family.

I Can Haz Groupies????

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Jon had a call interview in an undisclosed location in Canada this weekend (undisclosed because he’s in the call process — the first rule of call process is that you do not discuss call process) and Daniel and I were invited to come up with him. (I’ll redux it tomorrow — it’s late and I need to go to bed so I can be a sweet person at work tomorrow.)

Anyway… I was sitting on a bench in the narthex and someone came up and introduced herself and told me that she really liked my blog.

*jaw drops to the floor*

Someone in that congregation reads my blog????? Oh dear Lord, let me not have said anything I should not have said lately!!!!!

I was really flattered and kind of speechless because I’m pretty secretive about this site (mostly because I have to be). Seriously, it was really nice and I’m kind of getting all “OMG-how-did-I-come-across?!?!?!?!?!?” about it.

So… shout-out to Yvonne!!! I’m glad I got to meet you. Now be a nice groupie and leave me a comment. 🙂

Seattle Trip 2008: The Good, the Bad, and the Moronic

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We just got back from our sort-of annual pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I mean Seattle to hang with my peeps.Â? Here is the normal redux:

The Good
-getting to see my parents, evil twin, and his fiancÃ?e again
-good food most of the time
-family bonding
-getting to see my godmother again and meeting her new puppy Rosie (who might almost make me into a dog person)
-nice presents
-my mommy hemming 4 pairs of maternity pants for me (as I’m pretty useless with a sewing machine)
-the pictures we loaded onto my grandma’s digital picture frame
-my grandma’s calico cat Emily who has become nice in her old age

The Bad
-Seattle drivers — let’s just say that they can’t drive in good weather so expecting them to drive well in slush is a bit unreal
-having to shovel and crack the snow/ice on my grandmother’s driveway so all the cars could get in and out
-Seattle traffic — Seattlites are in denial about the fact that it exists
-morning sickness at month 4(!!!!!!) of my pregnancy and the laundry that accompanied it
-missing my monsters at home

The Moronic
-the backpatting that the mayor of Seattle was doing about how well he and the city handled the storm — he gave himself and the city a “B” which most people would argue should be a “D-” or “F”.
-the fact that King County has 26 snow plows and my county (with less than 1% of that population) has 5.

Just A Small Request

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To the people who are going on about the travel horrors we are supposed to encounter on Saturday when we fly to Seattle:

SHUT. THE. DUCK. UP!!!!!!!!

Yes… everyone and their mother got either delayed or had flights cancelled because of inclement weather last weekend. However… they’ve cleaned that mess up already and there aren’t any nasty storms forcast for the next few days.

STOP TRYING TO JINX US!!!!!

Oh… and Merry Christmas.

Melange Goodness

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A melange of stuff because I need to empty my brain.

[+] L’shanah tovah to all who are celebrating at the moment.

[+] Our trip to Lethbridge this past weekend was awesome.Â? We stayed at the Lethbridge Lodge, took advantage of their fitness room, ate good food, got to swim, got to chill in the lounge and listen to an awesome guitarist on Friday and Saturday night, attend an AWESOME church, and just enjoy getting away from the U.S. for a couple days.

[+] My neuro appointment went well today.Â? I wish all doctor’s appointments were comparable to sitting at $tarbux and drinking coffee.Â? I seriously heart my neuro ARNP.Â? We’re upping my beta blocker and she gave me some samples of triptans to try because Imitrex isn’t doing it for me.Â? We also talked about some other health things and some things in my life.Â? I wish I wasn’t her patient so she and I could have $tarbux dates.

[+] If reincarnation were to exist, I’d want to come back as this cat.Â? Sue, you definitely take the cake for cat-spoiling.Â? *MY* cats don’t have their own water bottle and fleece cover.Â? 😛

In Canada and Smug Pollution

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Yes… I’m in Canada for a couple days of R&R, being by myself, and finishing some personal projects.Â? (Sorry for not getting in touch with you Dave — it was kind of a last minute thing.)Â? Jon met me at work last night and we headed for the border.Â? Customs was a breeze and we were in Lethbridge PDQ.

At Christmas, a couple of us were talking about the obnoxious smugness that goes along with “being green” and we were going to come up with a board game for next year about it.Â? Any thoughts, tales, whatever on the subject?

(For those who are wondering why this is a problem,Â? there are some people who act like they are just so perfect for buying hybrid vehicles, having those cloth bags at the grocery store, and getting their power from green sources.Â? I’m not implying that any of those things are bad — it just gets tiresome when people talk about the evil people who don’t carpool or recycle which includes me because one can’t do either of those things easily when one lives in rural Montana.)

More Reflections on SLC

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It’s interesting that I should get back from Salt Lake City and see this post on my Bloglines.

I was actually asked by one of the women on my tour if I thought Mormons were Christians when I was at the LDS Conference Center. My answer: “yes”, mostly because a.) I was in the LDS Conference Center surrounded by about 20 people, b.) I was in SLC which is the Mormon Mecca, and c.) we were on the roof and I didn’t think I’d be fond of the sudden stop that would happen 4 stories down if I were to be thrown off. 🙂 (No… I don’t believe anyone would have thrown me off but I didn’t really want to rock the boat when I was on their turf.)

So what is actually my true answer? Well… I hate to say that my answer would be “no” and it would be explained that they deviate from historical Christianity in their doctrinal understanding of salvation, the nature of God, and Scripture. It’s a painful answer because I had good friends while growing up who were Mormon and they were definitely more “Christian” than many of the people I knew who claimed to be Christians. I just find the LDS Church leadership to be incredibly deceptive and dishonest about doctrine in that they don’t let a lot of their laity know everything about the teachings of the faith — if I was going to stake my life on something, I’d want to know EVERYTHING about it and not just what the leadership of my particular church wanted me to know. There’s also the supercessionist attitude of the people toward regular Christian groups — they believe that we’re not Christian and seriously inferior because we don’t believe in Joseph Smith and all the stuff he did.

Temple worship is based on Masonic rituals, not Scripture. If you don’t believe me, go look at the temple worship script online. It’s linked off of ExMormon.Org and if you know anything about Masonry, it’s copied from it. I also just wonder how a faith can deny 70% of its membership the ability to do something so necessary to their salvation as only 30% of Mormons hold a temple recommend. It just doesn’t add up for me. Oh… and only requiring 6 lessons on doctrine before baptism? Not enough information to make that kind of choice.

So why do I go to Temple Square when I visit Salt Lake City and go through all the exhibits??? Well… it’s a beautiful place, very peaceful, and it is very necessary for me to understand the teachings of the LDS people because I live in the Intermountain West where they’re fairly numerous. (We have 4 missionaries splitting their time over my county and the next one over — apparently we’re important enough to warrant that many people so there must be some Mormons up here.) There are at least 4 temples within 6 hours of driving (Billings, Idaho Falls, Edmonton, and Cardston, Alberta) and the nearest city over the Canadian border (Lethbridge) has a MASSIVE Mormon community.

I think the next time I’m there I’ll probably spend an afternoon at the various visitor’s centers on the square, if for no other reason than to gather ammo for dealing with the Mormons in my midst (who ironically enough keep to themselves).Â? If nothing else, it’s interesting and the little missionary girls from all over the world are very nice.