Especially for Dee

She asked for a photo of Laura where you can actually see Laura and not just her leap into the swimming pool. So here's one.

New links

I've added the Johanssons and Joneses to my links list.
Trina and I were visiting teaching companions in our singles ward in Tempe, Ariz., ages ago -- back before we each got married and had kids. (She got married first and is way ahead in kid-having, but that's OK because they're all so darn cute.)
The Joneses are our friends from Houston who now are in Russia for his job with ExxonMobil. Dee saved me from going crazy at church when Laura was a baby; she'd take her from me after sacrament meeting and keep her all through Sunday school and Relief Society. And then later, when Laura started going to nursery and didn't like it, Dee got called as the nursery leader. Talk about miracles!

Hijinks in the Colorado Capitol

This Rocky Mountain News story about a prairie dog statue missing from the office of the state Senate majority leader reminds me of a similar thing that happened when I worked in the Williamson County bureau of the Tennessean.
Beanie babies were a brand-new fad, and several of my co-workers bought a few -- from an advertiser, of course. George Brooks, our graphic designer, had a penguin. (As I recall it had something to do with the Pittsburgh Penguins although he'd never been to Pittsburgh.)
So Chuck Morris, Williamson A.M.'s sports reporter, decided to birdnap the penguin. And George got photos of in various places. I remember there were some of it taking a tour of the state capitol (where Chuck's girlfriend worked) and kissing the bride at a wedding in Kentucky (courtesy of our advertising manager Sara McKissick).
Finally, George got his penguin back. Of course, there was a lot of complaining that led up to that.
I suppose Ken Gordon finally will get his prairie dog back, too.

Thank goodness I don't have to rely on subsistence farming

In our tons of boxes that arrived a few weeks ago, I came across some seeds. Whether they'll grow here, I don't know. But I figured I'd plant some sunflowers, marigolds and basil and see what happens.
I'd identified a couple of areas in the dirt along the retaining wall behind the swimming pool that I thought would work for planting. I didn't have a trowel but figured I could poke around in the dirt and loosen it up. Wrong! Way too hard, and not good dirt. But this was an experiment, right? And I don't have the car today and thus can't drive to the home store to buy a trowel.
So I decided to use a big kitchen spoon to dig. If I have plenty of anything, it's kitchen utencils, and there was a spoon ripe for sacrificing to the garden gods.
But that didn't dig well either. So I poked around in the pool house and found a bamboo stick. It broke almost immediately.
In the end, I just scratced the surface of the dirt, distributed some seeds and decided to look away as a trail of ants arrived to see what was happening.
Now if those seeds grow, I'll be ecstatic. And maybe I'll be investing in a trowel the next time I'm at the store.

This is getting depressing

We got mail yesterday. No, that's not the depressing thing. But we only get mail a couple of times a week, so it's a big deal when it happens.
Among my share of it was the most recent BYU alumni magazine. In itself, not very exciting. But for some reason I flipped back to the list of alumni who have died recently and recoginized a name: Jenny Rebecca Oman.
Jenny and I shared an office as BYUSA officers for a semester in 1993. We oversaw advertising and other publicity for BYUSA events and programs. We both resigned the next semester (I went to work at The Daily Universe), but it was lots of fun while it lasted.
I hadn't talked to her in years but within the past few months had been trying to track down an e-mail address for her so I could find out what she was up to. I never could find one, but that probably was because she'd passed away in June.
So here's a link to yet another obituary. And now I'm going to find something less morbid to talk about ...

From the Rocky Mountain News

A son of one of the families we knew in the University Hills Ward in Denver died on Friday from injuries suffered in Iraq in September. The story is here.

Farewell to President Hinckley

Wow, these are a sad couple of posts.
Our prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, died last night in Salt Lake City. He'll be sorely missed. I watched and listened to him countless times over the years, as well as seeing and hearing him in person several times at general conference and at BYU. He was spiritual, as all prophets are, but he was more interesting to listen to than most. And in many places around the world -- including here in Trinidad -- he'll be remembered as the prophet who introduced small temples.
He was 97, so this wasn't a complete surprise. And I love President Monson, so perhaps the transition won't be incredibly painful. But he'll be sorely missed.

Remembering my friend Charlene

This afternoon I received an e-mail from my friend Tracie telling me that our friend Charlene died a few weeks ago. She was only 34 but had been undergoing cancer treatments for some time. Her obituary is here.
Tracie and Charlene are two of my best friends from my dorm at BYU. (That was Helaman Halls' Hinckley Hall before it was renovated.) They lived down the hall, and we spent many an hour playing Skip-Bo -- a card game I remember nothing about except the name.
We went to church together and football games and took funny pictures around campus. (I'm going to have to see whether I can find any of them.) The three of us exchanged funny stories about our brothers -- neither of them have sisters -- and had tons of fun.
And even though I hadn't talked to her much recently, I'll really miss Charlene.

More things that make absolutely no sense

We've gotten food from Burger King quite a few times since we've been here. (There's no McDonald's, and many people who read this can vouch that "processed chicken nuggets" are one of Laura's favorite foods.)
We've been to at least three different Burger Kings, and every one has an employee I call "the drink guy" (or girl).
This person just dispenses drinks out of the machine. It's not like you get your drink when you order -- you have to wait for your food to be done. And it's not like the drink guy has a computer screen where he can see what's being ordered -- the system is far too low-tech for that.
So the drink guy dispenses drinks at a faster rate than they're being ordered. Random sizes and flavors. Just a big group of drinks, sitting there on the counter, waiting for the off chance that a ticket with that kind and size will make its way down the line -- and that the drink guy will remember what's in the cup in question.
I assume some kind of training takes place for this assignment since at least three different restaurants have a person who fills this role.
Maybe in a couple of years when I'm ready to leave the country, I'll ask someone behind the counter what in the heck the deal is with the drink guy. But of course, they'll look at me like I'm the one who's crazy.
Because some aspects of fast food are universal.

There's a rainbow there, I promise

Yesterday as Laura and I drove to the embassy to pick Kevin up at work, we saw a rainbow. I told her to hand me the camera -- which we carry around for events just such as this -- but this was the only photo I could get of it. Perhaps I should get a full-time driver just so I can have more photo-taking opportunities.

Another one bites the dust

I guess I'm just full of Nashville memories the past couple of days.
Fred Thompson dropped out of the presidential race today. He never really had a chance -- not that he asked me what I thought.
When I went to work at the Tennessean, in 1995, he was in the U.S. Senate. He also was dating a country singer named Lorrie Morgan (whom I'd never heard of and none of whose songs I've ever known). But having the job and social life he did, we ran a lot of pictures of him in the paper.
You'd think that would be enough. But no. Apparently he'd call (or got one of his minions to) when he didn't like a photo we'd run.
What was odd was that it turned out the photo he didn't like was a publicity shot his people had provided to us -- which was why it kept getting used.
Ah, the memories. The insane memories.

Priceless pep talks from Peyton Manning

I'm not really a football fan, but I do like Peyton Manning.
Neither has always been the case. Growing up, I really liked football, and I had BYU season tickets for a few seasons in college. But I moved on, I guess. When I went to work at the Tennessean, I got sick of hearing about Peyton Manning. (He still was at the University of Tennessee, and we ran stories about him all the time.) I mean, really, he couldn't beat Florida or win the Heisman Trophy, so why should I care?
I still rarely watch football and care about it even less often, but some of Peyton Manning's commercials are just hilarious. At priceless.com, you can have one of his "pep talks" personalized with your (or someone else's) name. And they must have a lot of names available because Zoe is a choice.
It's nice to see what the fees I pay to MasterCard go toward.

More swimming pool action

One of Laura's favorite pasttimes is to jump into the pool over and over again while I take pictures. Amazingly enough, she's not even afraid when we find little frogs swimming in the pool. If we ever find an iguana in there, I doubt she'll be as nonchalant about it.

Come one, come all

Babzanne asked in a comment on an earlier post whether it was OK for her to read my blog. Most certainly! Tell your relatives! Tell your friends! (OK, so it's not THAT exciting, but you get the idea.)
We miss our Colorado friends. Babzanne was our Relief Society president for a while, and later her daughter Diana was Laura's after-school babysitter. Laura still asks all the time when she can go to Colorado to see Diana's daughters Alexis and Tori. We've even had conversations about how their family has moved and they no longer have to share a room with their brother Levi. Whereas adults see the complications of needing three kids (including an infant) to share a small bedroom, Laura thought it seemed like great fun -- mostly because of the bunk beds.
Of course, she's never needed to share her room. That would change her outlook considerably, I'm sure.

Thanks to my grandmother

When I was little -- I'll mention that was in the 1970s and early 1980s for Laura's sake -- I didn't like apple pie. It was squishy and runny and overall just not something I chose to eat.
But at some point my grandmother, my dad's mom (with whom we spent a lot of time), started making pie that uses grated apples instead of chunks with syrup. And I would eat it.
When I was in South Carolina in August, I got a lot of my grandmother's cookbooks. And one of the recipes I've come across -- handwritten but not by her -- is for that pie. I made it over the weekend (in between complaints about pain in my side), and it's just as good as I remember.

So, you mix up:
2 cups grated apples
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 stick butter (she used margarine, which I avoid)
1 egg
apple pie spice (I used 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg)
vanilla (I used about 1 1/2 teaspoons)
Dump it all into a pie shell (I baked the shell first, but it's hard to tell from the directions whether you need to) and bake it for 45-50 minutes at 325 degrees.

I suppose it would be good with ice cream, but the only ice cream we have in the house right now is coconut, which I haven't tried.

Definitely not Kaiser Permanente

So the pain in my side was such that Kevin insisted I go to the doctor. He (actually the clerk in the embassy's health unit) arranged for an appointment.
The doctor was very nice (and has a very nice office). The radiology office he sent us to wasn't as nice, but I survived.
Apparently I have some kind of infection, although whether that was causing the pain is undetermined. But I did acquire some inexpensive generic Indian-made antibiotics.
Gotta love capitalism and globalism and many of the other -isms.

Medical advice from a 6-year-old

Last night and this morning I've had an ache in my side -- not as bad as when I had to have my appendix out three years ago, but still painful. Laura's advice this morning:
"Maybe you could put 100 ice packs on it."
Yeah, I'll get right on that.

Current events -- sort of

Any American without their head in the sand the past few months has heard or read all about Mitt Romney's run for president -- and the inevitable accompanying coverage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A simple explanation of my stance: I wouldn't vote for him just because he's Mormon any more than I think anyone should not vote for him because of it.
But some of the coverage of the church -- this story in last week's New York Times Magazine in particular -- has reminded me of other reading I've done recently.

Richard Lyman Bushman's Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling is an academic look at our faith's first modern-day prophet. Joseph Smith ran for president, too, although that was in 1844 and, unlike now, the church was very involved in politics. I think the book does a very good job of discussing both the good and bad things about Joseph Smith, although someone with only a passing interest in him probably would find it to be way too long and dense. But it is amazing well-researched and footnoted and does a passable job of trying to explain Joseph's wife Emma, too.

Orson Scott Card's Saints is a fictional work in which Joseph and Emma Smith also are characters. Like the Work and the Glory series, it inserts fictional characters into real historical events. But unlike the Work and the Glory, it stretches pretty far in its assumptions. Among them: that after so many of his children died young, Joseph Smith refused to get attached to his children until they were a little older. (I can't imagine a prophet of God would do such a thing regardless of how painful losing many babies was.) And although I think the book does a good job of explaining some scenarios where polygamy was practiced righteously, the liberties taken with details of Joseph Smith's marital relationships are a bit of a stretch. Overall, I think it's about half history and half romance novel, which I assume is just the way the author intended it.

Maybe it could happen -- but probably not

Laura keeps asking whether it will ever snow here. The answer almost definitely is no (and I wouldn't want to see the traffic if it ever did).
But it did snow today in Baghdad, where it never snows, either. So maybe it's possible.

Another driving milestone

I'm now the proud owner of a Trinidadian drivers license. And I got to ride in an armored car. I guess that's two milestones.
My new license goes nicely with my two passports (regular and diplomatic), Colorado drivers license (although I'm really a resident of Texas), embassy spouse ID card and Trinidad diplomatic ID card.
In other words, I really should know who I am by now.

Update on the living room from the depths of ... well, you know

We've unpacked a lot of boxes, but there still are zillions to go. Among the things I haven't been able to find but think are in there somewhere:
The crock pot. It's not like those things can hide, can they? It's the big kind with a removeable crock.
Laura's stuffed kitten Licorice. We found the rest of his family, but perhaps he took a detour.
Laura's Game Boy. Admittedly, I haven't looked very hard for it.

What do 5,200 pounds of boxes look like?

This, in case you were wondering.
The 5,200 pounds did include the piano. But there still are (literally) tons of boxes to deal with. Luckily, I'm planning on weeding out some of the stuff so it doesn't move with us next time.

Where does she come up with these things?

Yesterday I was reading the label on something Kevin had bought. I said, "Hmmm, this is from the Philippines." It was some kind of fruit juice, so its origin wasn't a big surprise. At least not to me.
Laura said, "The Philippines! They eat dogs there!"
OK, so I'm sure some people there do. But how does Laura know about it? And, more importantly, why is that the first thing she thinks of when it's mentioned?
Of course, it's not just the Philippines. At least she's not old enough to have heard the stories about my uncle being served dog when he was in Vietnam during the war.
Obviously the Foreign Service is teaching her about all kinds of cultural differences I hadn't thought to address.

As close as Laura gets to diving

Contrary to her declarations, she's not a risk-taker.

Window treatment recycling

I'm hoping to replace at least some of the ugly curtains in our house while we're here, but so far as far as I've gotten has been to put up valances in the kitchen. (One of the valances from my kitchen in Colorado was sacrificed for the cause.) Our walls are cinderblock, so drilling holes is problematic. But since the kitchen has blinds, I was able to attach these to the top of the two windows with sticky-back Velcro. (How I still was in possession of the sticky-back Velcro left over from the assembly of my bridal veil in 1999 -- and how it was with us in Trinidad -- remains a mystery.)

New Year's visitor

We discovered this iguana hanging out on the retaining wall behind our pool yesterday afternoon. He had a bigger friend who didn't want to be photographed. This was the first time Kevin had seen the big green ones (he took this photo), so at least now he knows I'm not making up stories about having seen them in the yard.