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