Sanding Drywall Compound

Well, I finished putting up drywall, taping, and the first coat of mud where the soffits were.  However, the next step was to sand.  I hate sanding drywall.  The dust gets everywhere!  I cough and gasp, even if I am wearing a mask.  But then...

I read about a sander with a vacuum attachment!  What a great idea!  As you can see, it has pretty good suction (I bought a new shop vacuum while I was at it).  Sanding is a little difficult because it sticks to the wall so hard, but there is no dust!  Even the hand on the sander has no dust.  I was sanding a spot right above my head, and breathed in no dust.  What a marvelous invention!

General Conference - More Thoughts

One of the unanticipated blessings of driving to and from northern Idaho was the amount of time I got to listen to General Conference.  I basically got to listen to the whole conference four times.

One of the talks that has caused a lot of reflection is President Nelson's talk about the Savior.  He makes the interesting observation that it is "doctrinally incomplete" to refer to "the Atonement," instead of "the Atonement of Jesus Christ."  Since we so commonly do that in talks and lessons I really had to think about this.  I finally realized that his point is that the power comes from Jesus Christ, not the atonement itself.  So I am working on correcting my phraseology.

Well, I need to go mail in my taxes... What?  No, this isn't last-minute.  Last-minute is 11:59 tonight.  Anyway, then back to work on the kitchen.  I started putting up drywall over the old soffit areas, but at some point realized that I had forgotten to replace the insulation there, so it is going to have to be undone.  Sigh.

Travels

I have spent the last week at my mother's house.  She lives in northern Idaho and I decided to drive up here - a 16 hour trip.  She is actually getting ready to move to Salt lake, which is only about an 8 hour trip for me, but I needed to complete doing her income taxes, so I came here.

We have had a lot of fun visiting, perhaps spending more time on that than on other work.  But I have helped her pack a few things, and I did finish her taxes.

General Conference

We have just finished listening to General Conference.  During the sessions I have repeatedly felt the witness of the Holy Ghost that this is the work of God, and those to whom we have been listening are called by him to lead his work.  As usual I have retained almost nothing of the talks.  I will not begin to remember them until I have listened to them a number of times.

I remember my father setting up the stereo so he could record the conference talks on a cassette tape recorder when they were rebroadcast on KSL at midnight the day after the conference.  We lived in Omaha Nebraska, and typically only got one session of conference on TV, but at night we could pick up KSL radio, so Dad recorded the talks then.

Now anyone in the world can watch General Conference on the internet, and the talks are available for download almost as soon as the sessions end (for some reason the last three talks from Sunday afternoon are still not available - but they will be by tomorrow).  It is trivial to download those talks and listen to them on my phone or in my car.  What a blessing this is in my life, and how grateful I am for this technology which allows this luxury.

I watched one brother turning away from the pulpit at the end of his talk, and wondered what he was feeling.  He was a member of the presidency of the Seventy, so he will speak multiple times in General Conference, but for some of those speakers it is a once in a lifetime opportunity.  The transcript of the talks must be submitted in advance for the translators to work on, so I guess they don't have to worry that they forgot something they meant to say (that's what I am usually thinking when I finish a talk).

My favorite talk at this point - one I did remember some, and have already listened to again - was Joaquin E. Costa, who spoke about what he had learned about listening to the missionaries.  He had a bright smile on his face during almost his entire talk, and although he must be a year or two older than me, looks quite young.  His description of how he learned about the gospel and arrived at baptism is very powerful.

I am looking forward to listening to these talks again and again.  I don't spend as much time in the car as I used to, so I am going to need to come up with another way of listening to them to supplement the car.  Maybe I can listen while I walk Charlie - he doesn't care much about conversing with me.  But I have a renewed commitment to pay more attention to my personal religious observances, especially with reading the Book of Mormon, being considerate of others, and keeping the Sabbath day holy.

I am grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ, for the organization of the church, and for listening to the testimonies of others.  I have a strong testimony of the truthfulness of this work, based on repeated impressions and feelings from the Holy Ghost.  I feel great hope for the future as I consider God's plan for us.  I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.