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.

Spring Break / Spring a Leak

Delkys has Spring Break this week, so I have been neglecting some other activities in favor of doing things with her.  However, I have continued working on the kitchen as well.

I have now relocated everything out of the soffits except for one wire - the 240V line to the current range.  The cable construction looks rather complicated, so I am not sure about cutting and splicing it like I have with the other electrical lines.  Also, I am going to run a new line for the new cook top anyway.  Since I have to open up the wall for the latter, I will at the same time move the plug for the range up, so then I will have enough slack in the wire to move it as well.  Clever, huh?

In the interest of ongoing education I tried an experiment today.  Did you know that if you touch a live 110V line to a water pipe that before the circuit breaker can trip it will burn a hole in the water line?  I may not have conducted the experiment on purpose, but the results were rather spectacular - a shower of sparks followed by darkness and a shower of water.  It was a dead enough short that it tripped the main breaker for the house.  Very impressive.  Since both water lines were right together I couldn't figure out how to get a pipe cutter in there, so I thought I was going to have to use a hack saw and risk cutting both lines in order to repair the pipe.  However, just before I started cutting I realized that the reciprocating tool (or whatever they call that multi-purpose cutter) would cut it very accurately, so I was able to repair it fairly quickly.  Whew!

Pipe Fittings and Prophets

So I got all the plumbing in the one side of the kitchen relocated up into the floor.  I still have to get the electrical out of there, which may be another adventure.

While making a connection with the pipe I had a previous connection just fall apart in my hand.  Talk about your basic cold solder joint!  That made me extremely nervous, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised that about 20 minutes after turning on the water another joint started to leak.  Got that fixed, then discovered the toilet leaked when it was flushed.  After a while I realized that was an old problem, not anything I had caused.  A few strange parts from Home Depot got that stopped.  Sheesh.  I may not go into plumbing as a second career.

The new cook top I ordered came in today.  It is a marvelous thing.  It was not clear to me from the installation instructions whether it needs a 120V or 240V supply.  I finally found someone who could tell me, it must be a 240V supply.  No problem.  That just means that I need to add a new subpanel for the house.

Yesterday during the training meeting in the temple the temple president talked about obeying the prophets.  He commented how we feel like we would be able to do some great thing if they asked us, but usually what is required is a few very simple things repeated over and over, like attending church, reading the scriptures, having personal prayers, etc.  I suddenly had an insight that had never occurred to me before.  Doing some great thing sounds wonderful, because all it requires is doing something.  What the prophets are requesting from us is not really about what we do, but about what we become as a consequence of doing it.  So the stakes are much higher on the simple repeated actions than they are on the one big task.

Of Kids and Grandkids

Carter and Levi drove over from Utah yesterday.  Actually, since Carter is only 3 he let his parents drive, so Daniel and Ashley are here as well.  Daniel has been helping me on the kitchen this morning - that has been really nice.

So, in our last adventure I had gotten the cold water pipes reinstalled.  Wrong.  Well, it turns out I had installed them in the wrong position.  So I spent all of yesterday figuring out how to remove them and reinstall them.  And yes, now I am working on the hot water pipes.  Fun, fun, fun.

I realized I was having troubles starting this morning.  I would rather be holding Levi than working.  It suddenly became clear to me that I just don't have enough grandchild time.  It's fun to talk to them on the phone, I love the pictures, but there is nothing like having them here in person.  Oh well - Back to work.

Fire the Bird!

I got most of the water pipes done yesterday.  I think I can finish today before going back to the temple.  However, I had one bad experience related to this.

As I was working I decided I wanted to listen to Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, so of course I just turned on YouTube and played it there.  Well, YouTube now apparently auto-plays if you don't kill it, so it went on to the second movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony - not bad at all! From there they went into Scheherazade.  A little Rimsky-Korsikov is good for the soul.  And then... They started playing Stravinsky's Firebird.  Well, I was trying to finish, and then clean up, and I didn't want to take time out to go to the computer, and it was going to have to end soon, anyway.  Right?  I just discovered a new definition of eternity: Anything by Stravinsky.  AAUURRGGHH!!  It never did finish, and so when I was done cleaning up I finally got a moment to go kill the silly browser!

One experience like that is almost enough to make me think I will just go back to 70's and 80's popular music.  What's that you say?  Tony Orlando and Dawn?  Right!  Stick with classical.

Pie Day

I was in the grocery store the other day listening to them advertise special prices on pies for Pi Day, and it just really seemed to take the fun out of a nerd holiday.  Oh well.

Yesterday I bought all the parts necessary to reroute the water lines in the old soffit space.  Of course there was a little additional destruction to do, but that is all over.  I cut the two water lines leading into the soffit, and capped them, so I can leave the water on while I redo all the piping in there.  The final step will be to reconnect everything.  I'm hoping to finish that today, then I will just need to reroute the drains and the electrical.  In the area that runs parallel to the floor joists the electrical will be very easy - just a matter of lifting the lines higher.  The drains and electrical that run perpendicular to the joists will be another matter.  I am not entirely sure how I will reroute that drain.  I'm sure the inspiration will come to me.  Hopefully it comes before I try anything stupid.