Baton Rouge Week 31

Hi there everybody.

Well, it is official; I am now the new Young Men’s president of the Baton Rouge 2^nd ward. We have about 12 young men in the ward. Most of them are active, with active parents. Between the things Dana has to do and the things I have to do we have our Sundays planned out. Dana has her presidency meetings on Sundays after church. She also does most of her home teaching on Sundays as well. I think the young men’s presidency might meet on Sundays as well. Aside from that option, we might meet on Tuesday night after the young men’s activity.

We had some people over last Monday for family night. We invited my graduate student and her husband and her parents (they are about our age). We had a nice dinner and then played aggravation. I also hosted a small gathering for graduate students connected to English Education in some way. Some are in English and some are in Education. We held the activity Friday from 4:00 to 6:00. Most people left by about 6:30. It is a great way for all of them to connect with each other. It also gives us, the professors, a chance to talk about the graduate classes we are offering. For example, I am teaching a graduate class this summer and it needs to have at least five students in order to carry. So, overall it was a nice event.

During the week we were very busy. I finished some proposals for the next fall conference of NCTE. I also had a proposal to submit for a paper connected with a project in India. It is amazing how many projects can seem to show up. It is good, though; all of these projects lead to papers which equals academic work which leads to tenure. Things have been going along pretty well for us right now. We hope Dana gets an interview, but programs and job opportunities are still up in the air. The economic times are tricky. Jobs in education can still be viable, even in a bad economy. People need to retrain and more people seem to want to go into education.

The final inspections for the reconstruction on our apartment will take place tomorrow and Tuesday. Now, we have to get our property management people in gear. They are a little hard to motivate. We will be back in the swing of things with all of our property. Oh, a word to the wise. An afterhour’s locksmith in Salt Lake cost 49 dollars for the visit and 99 dollars to pick open the lock. You should make sure to have an extra key on your property somewhere or an extra in your cars. You should also make sure that your door knobs and deadbolts work. One of our tenants had a door knob that wasn’t working very well and they got in the habit of only locking the deadbolt. They made a mistake and locked both and then couldn’t get in. They want us to pay. Well, we will probably have to because it was a faulty doorknob. I would certainly have preferred to just pay to have the doorknob replaced; which, by the way, the locksmith did not replace for all of that money. Can you believe it?

Dana is working very hard as always. I seem to be able to think about a lot of things all of the time, but Dana is very good at just working very hard on a single project until she finishes.

All of the birthdays are over for the five, only Mitch’s is left next month. Amelia is now 30 years old. It is hard to believe. She is a great person. She has done so much. We are very proud of her. If any of you think we are slighting you and your birthdays, we will make it to you when you turn old as well.

We also managed to do about a ten minute video connection with Amelia’s crew today. We had a few troubling connections near the end. We are moving into the 21^st century.

We love you all. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana

Baton Rouge Week 30

Hi all
We started teaching this week. It basically means meeting your students and telling them that there is more work to do than they want to do. It was also a week of getting our car back from the body shop. Drive carefully, it is expensive to knock off a mirror and scrap the door.
We did manage to see a movie with a good message that will probably be missed by most people. It is called “Not Easily Broken”. It is geared to mainly a black audience. It has a Christian context and a lot of people will probably just let it slide by.
This was also one of those weeks when I had several deadlines to meet. I had to finish a submission proposal for next year’s National Council of Teacher of English conference. The deadline is always right after Christmas and just when classes are starting. I managed to get that off my plate yesterday. Then the Dean wanted a 2 page version of my academic vita. She asked Thursday and needed it by Monday. I finished that as well. So, those two things are done and I finished all the course work planning I need to do. Now I need to finish the first year review. I have to catalogue what I have done since I have been here. They make you start building the file for your tenure review from the very beginning.
I have two more small paper things to do this week, so I will take a deep breath and start again.
Dana and I got a revise and resubmit on an article that we sent out about two months ago. One review hated it, but gave out very good feedback. The second one liked it. The third seem indifferent, but suggested that we needed more international references. If we want to turn it around they gave us three months. We would like to have it done by the end of February. We have some work to do on that project that I hope to start this week.
I have started work on The ALAN Review work. We had to have pictures taken for the next issue and submitted a brief biography that will be in the next issue. I guess that will serve as a formal introduction to the work we will be doing.
It was another cold week here—20 to 30 at night and 40-60 during the day. Nevertheless, several trees are beginning to flower. I will try to add some pictures.
We think the remodeling on the apartment fire will be done this week. We have been fortunate on that account. We have had to front some of the money, but our insurance has been good. It doesn’t look like we will be out any money out of our own pockets after everything is said and done. Speaking about insurance, you should all check and make sure that your house policy covers replacement value of things and not depreciation value.
Our stake will be hosting a displayed called the “Reflections of Christ” www.reflectionsofChrist.org It was at the Mesa temple visitor center for a long time and has just finished up at the Washington D. C. Temple. It will be here for two weeks. The opening night is a fireside with the photographer and the closing night is a musical performance. Apparently some original music was composed to accompany the photographs. Mark Mabry is the photographer and there is a lot more information at the website. This is an exciting opportunity to share the gospel. We hope a lot of our neighbors will be able to attend the fireside or the display during the week. Oh! I forgot the missionaries were over for dinner and then I went with to visit Sister Lamb. She is a woman in the ward whose husband died just a couple of years ago. We worked as an accountant and property manager for years. But is passion was making violin and fiddles. He has made instruments for classical players and for county players as well. Bill Monroe played one of his fiddles and so has Ricky Skaggs and Roy Acuff. She has about a hundred instruments that she is contracting with broker to sale them as a group. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to get to know her a little better.
This is Dana. Yesterday, for the first time, I taught a class in my field, preparing principals. It is a master’s program for teachers who are interested in getting an endorsement as a principal along with their masters. It was fun to finally get to do what I was trained to do in practice and with my PhD. This class will mean a lot more work for me this semester (I have to visit 16 schools where these people are doing an internship), but I think I will like doing it. This new class and my work with the Relief Society means I have to be very structured with time. Your dad and I both thought, however, that it would be best for our physical and mental health to start working out again. We joined the LSU rec center and played racquetball this Friday and Saturday. I am about a 5 out of 10 on the soreness scale, which means being way out of shape. We hope that we will get in a rhythm to regularly workout.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana

BR Week 29

Hi there!

Well, we have rested in the glow of the Utah defeat of the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Tide is Crimson this week because of the flushed cheeks of embarrassment. There was a lot of positive talk around here about Utah football.

We had a few meeting throughout the week. We were able to do some work for school at home and at the office. We start work schedules again tomorrow in earnest. We also saw a couple of matinee movie, just so we could still be on vacation. The weather here has been great. We had some rainy days but it usually clears up after a few hours.

We had stake conference this week. That meant a leadership meeting in the afternoon and an adult meeting in the evening. On Sunday, the meeting was a broadcast from Salt Lake to 21 Stakes in the gulf coast area. We heard from Elder Walter Gonzalez, Sis Beck, Elder Holland, and Elder Uchtdorf. All of the meetings were very good. Beginning with the leadership meeting the messages focused on the little things. The message is that the little things are the big things--reading the scriptures, saying daily prayers, and doing your best to serve your family, friends, and neighbors. I found the whole message timely and important. For example, Sister Beck said that reading the scriptures doesn’t require a system it requires a habit. Reading something every day is the important thing. Attention to other things will come as you stay in the scriptures. In the leadership meeting someone told a story about how Elder Packer asked Elder S Dilworth Young about how to deal with contention at a conference or a meeting. Elder Young said “read the scriptures.” Elder Packer asked “which ones?” Elder Young said “it doesn’t matter.” I was struck with the simply purity of that. Read the scriptures, have faith, work toward making things in all aspects of your life better.

Dana also finished here first bishop’s store house experience. We figured out when and where the truck with the orders comes in and we met the truck to pick up a couple of food orders. The church and the world needs more people doing more things for each other. We are grateful for the acts of charity and service that you have been involved in. If we all did what you kids did this Christmas season the world would be a better place.

We keep discussing the severe poverty that grips so many people in the south. We don’t understand how it continues so unabated. We are trying to understand the things that we might do related to education. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18. We hope that good people will continue to go into education and work in communities that need help through a variety of careers.

I know that this sounds like a Sunday school lesson, but living the gospel with an eye to service helps everyone. I was also struck by how the speakers mentioned the difficult economic times but still talked about the blessings of tithing and living the gospel. Struggles will come but the gospel helps us make sense of the difficult times.

We love you. Take care of each other.

Love Dad and Dana

2009 Sugar Bowl--Utes Win!

If you didn't watch this game you missed out completely.

It was a fantastic game. The Utes started quickly and out coached Sabin all the way.

Baton Rouge Weeks 27-28

Hi all,

I should never skip a week, even if I am on vacation. We left Baton Rouge on December 22 and arrived back here on Jan 1, 2009, a new year.

We arrived in Las Vegas in the evening of the 22^nd. I fought a little bit of a head cold for a lot of the time I was on vacation. I am feeling better now. It was mainly a bother during the night when I was trying to sleep. Which helped a lot, because none of my relatives or children really believe in going to bed early.

On Tuesday we checked out of the hotel and went to our friends’ house for lunch. Teresa, worked with Dana in Jordan District, and her husband, Paul have retired to Las Vegas. They have a nice house and Teresa fixed us a nice lunch. We chatted for a couple of hours and then planned to meet Kent for a ride to St. George. He was in town to pick up his in-laws. They were supposed to arrive at 4:00, but weather delayed flights all over the place so they didn’t get in until almost 9:00 pm. We rolled in to St. George at about 11:30. We slept in and had a nice time talking with Mom and Dad, Dawn and Greg, and Mica and Michael. We talked, we played aggravation and greed; basically, we relaxed on Christmas Eve. We did eat red beans and rice.

On Christmas day we got up, ate breakfast and tried to beat the snow up to Salt Lake. The weather was remarkable good. We only had a little bit of fog before the Kolob Canyon turn off. After that, it was smooth sailing. It was a good thing. I think they had snow in Salt Lake most of the day and at around 10:00 it snowed heavily for most of the night. Cold weather was everywhere. It makes you wonder why people with options choose to live there. On Christmas evening Bill and Mary held their annual dinner (usually it is on Christmas Eve) at Suzie and Byron’s house. They held it for us. They shouldn’t have, but it was great to see everyone.

We did stop in Orem to pick up Mitch; he was only in Utah for a bit. He had to leave the day after Christmas to help with a soccer clinic. We talked with on the road, played some games at Terry’s (Terry and Kim put is up in Salt Lake) before the dinner, and in an act of extreme kindness got up early in the morning, drove over ice packed roads to take Mitch to the airport for early flight. We wish him well in his school pursuits and in his new coaching situation.

We also made it over to Curt and Cindy’s place. They recently bought a new home and we were excited to see the place and hear about all of their plans.

We had a great time at dinner with all of our kids at Sophia’s house (Friday night I think). We played aggravation. We watched deacon play with the slide and the new work bench. It was all very interesting. Deacon only fussed when he knew we were all playing while he went to bed.

On Saturday we meet Abbey and Isaac and Lesley for lunch at La Frontera (what a great lunch place). Isaac and Lesley went to Roy for the rest of Saturday. We hung out with Abbey for the rest of the day which was really nice. It was great to talk with her. She is doing so well in Boston. We were also able to catch a movie. We saw Marley and Me. I actually thought it was very good. Even though Curtis hates every Owen Wilson movie.

Sunday was a great landmark day. We help Isaac and Lesley bless baby Wil. It was great even though Isaac and Lesley were the last ones to show up. They may be late to almost everything and forget to bring the diaper bag to a lot of events, but they seem to remember to bring the baby. We are really proud of their family. Wil has grown tremendously and is a very happy baby. We loved spending time with Wil. Soon he and Deacon will be traveling to visit us in Baton Rouge.

After the church meetings we went to see Dana’s Aunt and Uncle, Kent and Judith, in Sugar House. We had a nice discussion with them and it was great to get a chance to catch up on the coming and goings of their family.

Lisa had everyone over for dinner Sunday evening. It was nice for her to have us over for dinner. We played trivial pursuit. Too many people—Too many opinions and a ton of noise. I think we all have too much to say to each other to also think hard about questions.

We drove by our property and also made arrangements to talk with our property management people in Salt Lake. It looks like they are doing a good job we should be able to write a lot of the trip off of our taxes.

Finally, Monday afternoon we were able to stop in and see Jack and Julie. Again, it was great to catch up on all of their family. Monday night we had a pizza diner with Terry’s crew and played “golf”, another new game that we learned.

Tuesday, we had a birthday breakfast for Abbey and Sophia. Of course, Sophia did most of the cooking. Lisa added some great potatoes and I brought the best part of all—some store bought Orange Juice. Seriously, it was a great breakfast and we got to watch Deacon go down the slide, do his dance, dance, dance routine, and play with his tools from the work bench. It was a lot of fun. We loved being there with Abbey and Sophia for their birthday celebration. Unfortunately, we had to flee Salt Lake back to St. George. We had a easy drive back to Saint George. We left a little bit early so that we wouldn’t have to fight snow or bad weather.

The next morning we washed the car, looked for printer/scanner/faxer/stapler/babysitter/ the works, and we managed to find a cable so that Mom and Dad can use their video/DVD player again. I think I am going to order the HP printer online for a big discount tonight. We also watched LSU beat down Georgia Tech. I was surprised, but happy. I sure wish UGA could have managed to beat them for their last game. We played aggravation and unfortunately the girls in the house dominated the games. Not, a good way to end the year for the boys. I am blaming Michael; he is new to the combination.

New Years Day we were up and on our way to Las Vegas for the flight back to New Orleans. We got into the Big Easy at about 4:30. Our friends picked us up and we headed to Baton Rouge. We were trying to get to Baton Rouge before Bill and Mary’s flight arrived. We went out for dinner on the way home. We slept in and then moved on to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl. Go Utes. It was a great time. The first quarter was tremendous—the Utes put up 21 unanswered points and then fought on to win. We had some friends who happened to be in church last Sunday with members of the U of U football team. Here is what happened in sacrament meeting.

Here is the link to the story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from last Monday.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/for_some_university_of_utah_fo.html

The last two paragraphs are the funniest part, and it was even funnier in person.

We had a great time with Bill and Mary and got them safely on their way after church today.

We love you all. Take care of each other. Work hard and stay close to the gospel.

I am going to try so hard not to miss another week. It is too hard to try and catch up.

Love Dad and Dana