40 YEARS! Oh No!

I got the dreaded postcard in the mail today, no not the one from the doctor. The one from Bonneville's class of 1970 telling me about our 40th High School Reunion. Way to make me feel really old. Having 5 kids and 8 & 3/4 grandkids doesn't matter it's that big 4-0 that really brings it home. You're just going to have to ignore my moodiness for the next 10 months until it is over.

A whole bunch of catching up.....

I think the appropriate term is "slacker", but I am going to claim "busy". We haven't updated this blog forever. The last post was from the first day of a conference in San Francisco and I had these grand delusions that I was going to post fantastic summaries of my trip every day. As it turns out, the conference was outstanding, and I spent all my time doing things for the conference. Not blogging. Since then, our life has been pretty busy and exciting. I will try to give a quick rundown, then just post a ton of pictures...

At the conference, I learned a of great information to help me do my job better. They had a party one night which was a lot of fun. There was free bowling, a Foreigner concert, pool, ping pong, mechanical bull, lots of food, air hockey. They had a baseball throw and I went to show my stuff at the baseball throw. Turns our they only had softballs. It hurts to throw a softball at 60 MPH. On the last day, I had ~6 hours in the morning before my flight to wander around San Francisco. I walked ~10 miles which felt like ~25. San Francisco is a pretty city, with a ton to do. The cable car museum was really cool, but the lighting sucked so none of my pictures turned out.

Gracie had her birthday and turned 3. She had a blast. We did a small family party the night before and then she had a bunch of friends come over and play for her birthday party. She was _VERY_ excited to get a lot of Blues Clues toys to play with.

Noah turned 5 a couple weeks after that. His favorite part of his birthday was the BlueTrak racetrack he got. Heather and I like it because it doesn't take batteries. I am surprised what kind of loops and turns you can get Hot Wheels cars to do with just gravity getting them going.

Our other news recently is that Heather has an official due date (no longer is it a 3 week range). She is due on Jan. 4th. The doctor says that the baby will likely come before the new year one way or another though. In anticipation of this, we bought a van last week. We looked around at a lot of different vans. We were lucky enough to find one that some people in Holladay were selling that had everything Heather wanted. When people ask what options it has I tell them it has all the ones Heather cared about (heated seats and power doors).

Last week Heather and I had the chance to go to Saint George without the kids for a few days. It was a good trip. I attended a security conference for work and Heather had a nice break from the kids. The highlight of the conference is that out of ~230 people, I won the hacker challenge (a bunch of geeky challenges that involved un-deleting files, eves-dropping on network traffic to get information from other computers, picking locks and that kind of stuff). I was pretty happy to win.

The thing that brings Heather the most joy from the last month though, is the basement. The walls are painted. The carpet is re-laid. The doors are hung. We even have some things put away. Our house has a chance of getting back to normal at some point in the future.

To Be Well Read

One of Matt's friends just posted on facebook that he wanted to be well read by he was not sure what he should read to accomplish that.
So Matt asked me and I made a list.
What do you think?

Science Fiction
Enders Game by O. Card
Foundation by I. Azimov
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Princess Bride by W. Goldman
The Postman by David Brin

Classics
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Scarlet Letter
Little Women by L. Alcott
Jane Eyre by C Bronte
Gone with the Wind
The Count of Monte Cristo
Les Misérables
The Hobbit J R R Tolkin
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway
I Heard the Owl Call My Name:
by Margaret Craven
Children’s books
Danny the Champion of the World by R. Dahl
The Giver by L. Lowery
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Ugglies by Scott Westerfield
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Inkheart by C. Funk
Holes By Sacher
Mystery
The Westing Game by E. Raskin
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle
The Beekeepers Apprentice by L. King
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Non Fiction
Tuesdays with Morrie by M. Albolm
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver,
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Brent's Theory gets published

Brent observed to me once that being members of the Church seems to erode our social skills, possibly because church gets substituted for sociality. This makes me sad, especially when I think about Brother Joseph's take on the subject.

Anyway, my brother's most recent post at by common consent refers to this by recounting a conversation with me. I observed to him that when we invite non-LDS friends over for dinner, we always get reciprocal invitations. When we invite LDS friends over, we never do. I'm not complaining (insert snarky comment about how I'm a better cook than they are anyway here) but it was from Brent that I first heard the idea, so I thought I better give credit where credit is due.

In case you missed it...

So, I'm teaching yoga...

In the last week or so, I have made arrangements to teach yoga to kids. About two months ago, I heard about a teacher training that was happening in Durham and I thought it sounded fun, but it was expensive. When the teacher said that a lot of students teach right away after attending her workshops, I started thinking about teaching in order to cover the cost of the training. So, anyway, a lot of thought and talk later, I have an arrangement with lady who runs the local Holistic Healing Center (which is only a year old and is very close to where we rented the house in downtown Raleigh near the campus).

I thought you might like to see my little class descriptions on her website. I have put up a couple of flyers and my friend Meg from Oregon is graciously creating a lovely logo for me. So far I have one student, the daughter of the lady who runs the center. But I'm hopeful.

I also found out this week that I will be able to complete the teacher training with my teacher (Carson) before we leave. Her program is going to start in January and finish in April (or May). We'll have 5 weekends together in that time (Friday 5 - 9pm and Saturday 9am-9pm. I'll miss the Sunday class, but she said that she'll still let me come) and every Wednesday. I'm very excited that it will work out! So, Heather, you can start advertising for me--I'll be ready to teach when we get to Logan next July:)

San Francisco day 1...

I am in San Francisco for a conference this week. The conference is called VMworld. 15,000 geeks like me come here and learn more about virtualizing computers. I am pretty excited for it. There is a ton of really cool information, displays and some great training offered. Today was registration and labs. I was only able to get into 2 labs today, but that is okay. The day started kind of early (6:15 for registration). I got to meet a lot of nice people (most of whom I will never talk to or see again...).

As I was planning the trip, I was saying to Heather that I wanted to go see the Golden Gate Bridge. Since I knew I wasn't going to have a car, I told her I was thinking about running across it. The next morning on a blog, I read that a couple guys had decided that they wanted to do an official conference activity of running across the bridge. It was the perfect opportunity. Even though I forgot my running shoes, I decided to go for the run anyways. It wasn't bad at all. We traveled a total distance of ~5.5K.

Here is a photo album of today's adventures. I'll probably post more as the week goes on...