Wow

Been a while...

Not a lot of stuff has been going on... which is interesting to note since it's obviously been a long, long time since I've updated the blog with anything significant. We're in the middle of General Conference again, and aside from the Saturday afternoon session being extremely difficult to follow, it's been exceptional. President Hinckley last night gave an excellent discourse on the Lord's charge to the men of the Church to improve themselves and their situation. It's really a topic that's been "near and dear" to me for this whole year, and it really hit home, especially with everything that's been going on recently.

Never did post that book review of the first book that I read, and although I'm going to have to renew the second book in order to finish it before it's due, I still feel like I'm making progress.

The writing has stalled somewhere in the middle of the second chapter. I just haven't had the time to write. It's a shame, really. I'd like to have more time, but other than depriving myself of even more sleep, I don't think that's going to happen.

Couldn't afford a bus pass this month, so Italian is going to be on hold for a while as well... I suppose I could listen and practice in the car on the way to/from work, though.

Back to improving myself: I found a bunch of links via Lifehacker for free online college courses. I looked them over, and since I am taking a Statistics course on Fridays this month (courtesy of my job), I've decided that, if I like the course, to review my decision to stop taking Computer Science courses. I mean, I've always liked telling computers what to do (they're often the only thing that will listen - ha!), and there are some good courses online for me to take and get myself up to speed with programming languages. I then would like to post an online resume at some of the webspace reserved for me, maybe work on some open source projects (I know there are some things I would like to see added to Gaim and MS Outlook!), and get my name out there in the programming community. Then, from there -- an entry-level programmer's job? Freelancing part-time? I know that I can't imagine myself working for Intuit for the rest of my life, as good as they've been to me, even though it's been largely a case of "right place at the right time" for me, and I couldn't be more thrilled with it, I can also feel that ennui setting in already with this job, which is a darn shame. Who knows, maybe once things pick up again, I'll be able to start taking on more work at that job, because I missed a lot of opportunities due to being away for a couple of months, and still with things hectic around here, I'm missing a lot of opportunities, I can tell. Not that I should be given the option to take on every new responsibility that comes the team's way, but there are things that others are doing that I would at least like to learn how to do. Maybe.

OK, that was a long paragraph. Let's see, what else is going on? I'm still catching up on scripture reading. I need to read about two pages per day in the Book of Mormon in order to finish it by the end of the year, which is an awesomely realistic and manageable goal (especially since I find it impossible to read ONLY two pages when I do read it). Still catching up with the Doctrine and Covenants, but I only have maybe 20-25 pages to read in there to get myself caught up. I'm either caught up or two chapters away from being caught up on the Old Testament reading I'm doing, as well. So, good.

I also can't not talk about last weekend, when I had the marvelous privilege of baptizing one of my Primary students, Olivia, and then on Sunday blessing Stephen. It was a very spiritually powerful weekend for me, as baptism and confirmation of someone who is not family was interesting, as I really found myself listening to the Spirit to make sure Olivia got the blessing that she deserved, and that the Lord wanted to give her. And Stephen's blessing is almost impossible for me to describe. Dustin returning from his brain surgery, Jeff and Daniel assisting, as well as my home teacher Jason (whom I've given many opportunities to magnify his calling as of late), Josh, a recently-ordained Elder who I worked with a lot in my calling as Priests' Quorum Advisor, and Bishop standing in the circle... it was all very comforting. The microphone not working wasn't as comforting, but I was confident that I could use my dormant theater skills to project my voice to the congregation. The actual ordinance went well, and much smoother than Elizabeth's (when I forgot how it went), however, once I got to the blessing portion, it was as if something hit me out of nowhere. And I know what that feeling was: it was a feeling that after all the time spent in the hospital, away from home, at home, dealing with doctors, nurses, specialists, and so on... after all that, Stephen was here to stay, and we could go to bed at night without fear of whether he'd be there in the morning or not. I was able to release my very closely-held feelings and actually unwind a bit, finally. We know we're not done with his special care, not by a long shot, but we also know that it's going to get a lot easier.

Another long paragraph... this is what I get for not posting for a week and a half. I think I'm going to stop here. I'm pretty sure I've done some stuff on the Clean Sweep that I can talk about, but that merits its own post, and I can finally update those status bars, too. Same thing with the book review. I have it all set, however, that too merits its own post.

I've tried starting an opinion blog ("My Opinion of Everything") to help me with the writing, but as you may have guessed, I have little to no time to keep that maintained, which is a crying shame, because I'm pretty sure I've got some good stuff in there. Pity dailyblastoff.com isn't still up, with all my article archives on there, I could just mine that for material until things picked up.

Until later...