Let the record show --

That today, the 24th of September, we approved the final proof copy of the Mission Memories book and left it with the printer. It's done! Out of our hands! In print! When we get the first bound copy I'll take a photo of it and post it so our adoring public can see what we've been up to in the Publications Department. No wonder we're so tired tonight. We went to a temple devotional after work and slept through the entire thing, like a couple of senior citizens. Sheesh.

Awww...

I opened my e-mail tonight and saw the following from a Flute List member:

Dear List: My flute choir is playing Nancy W. Wood's "Pedazitos" in concert this weekend, and in preparing the program I can't find her birthdate anywhere. I'm assuming she's currently amongst the living, and if anyone can help out I'd be grateful - perhaps she's even a List member? If we solve the mystery, perhaps Larry can add her to his composer page. Thanks, Rebecca Quigley

So, of course, I had to answer it, and now the entire flute world knows my real age. Of course, I have several different ages, so maybe they could average them out and arrive at something a little more kind: parts of my brain are very mature, around 45 I'd say, but parts are spiraling into senility, which is scary. But average in my gullibility factor, say around 10, and things look much nicer. My back and knees are around 110, but my elbows are easily 16 or 17, as long as you don't factor in the upper arm stuff sloshing around. Let's just stick to the elbows for this exercise (if Katisha can do it in the Mikado, so can I). My right eye is about 87, but my left eye is only about 45 or so. My hands look like the wicked witch in Snow White but my feet are in great shape! So that makes the average . . . mumble, mumble. . .
75 and 25 divided by . . . I'm just guessing about 30. In fact, that's an age I'd be happy to stick with. I wonder if I can convince anyone else.

In the real world, Bob came in for some lovely compliments on his camera work yesterday. We had our 4-month interview with our mission president, a very intimidating gentleman, and he said that there was a marked improvement in the photos since Bob has been taking them. He appreciates the way Bob understands light and uses it effectively. He's been taking such lovely exit shots of departing missionaries that he's gotten a lot of requests for copies from people who have said they've never liked any of the photos before now. It's very gratifying, needless to say! There's no doubt in my mind that he was called to be here. He's setting an awfully high standard for whoever follows.

Addendum to the addendum

I see that I never did post about my recordings. I guess I was thinking about my journal. Suffice it to say that I thought I had lost my recordings forever, including the one of Cameron singing "So Many Voices," and I was a little bummed about it. Okay . . . a LOT bummed. But now I am NOT bummed, and besides my husband just handed me a dish of ice cream. Life is good.

Happy Addendum!!

I found my recordings! They tried to outfox me, but I persevered and won. Ha! Now I have them safe and sound where I can always get at them -- not that I do, very often. But it's like looking at baby pictures -- you don't do it all the time, but you'd sure hate to lose any of them. I am aware that you were not all dying to hear that, but I needed to crow. Cock-a-doodle, etc. Have a happy day!

This 'n that

You may not see anything different, but I certainly do. Everything has changed on my little computer since I re-installed the OS. The only things I seem to have permanently lost (and I'm rather sad about it) are all my flute music recordings. I had them on my external hard drive and tried to import them, and they got lost in the ether somewhere. The other files are merely lost on my computer and I can usually find them in some illogical place or other, but at least they're there.

Hey, Frisco people -- do you recognize anyone in the above photo? Reading from left to right: Elder Zornes, Sister Zornes, Tessie Roberts (President Roberts's mother), and Arvilla Finlayson, formerly of the Frisco 5th Ward, and one of my old visiting teaching victims. We had them over for lunch today after the conference, along with my first trainer, Ann Bettinson, and her husband Neil. We had such a good time! These are all people that I love dearly and whose company I love being in. We now have it on good authority where Pres. Roberts gets his famous sense of humor from, and we have material that will take him a long time to live down. Of course, now the group has material on me that I will have to live down, because when we walked in the door after conference it was to discover that the oven, which I had carefully set to come on at 10:30, hadn't cooked the pork roast -- I had forgotten to set the oven temperature! So we did some quick micro-waving, and everything was delicious. But it was a little embarrassing.

I know Bob will talk about the multi-stake conference in his journal. It was wonderful. We had great seats, and the talks were wonderful. It's always so good to hear dear Pres. Monson speak. He can tell a joke with the best deadpan delivery I ever saw. We all loved him.

I have nothing particular to say, but it's nice to be back to normal on my computer, and I just plain wanted to send something. We've been following the train wreck news pretty closely because we both know exactly where it happened -- so close to Bob's old home -- and it's the commuter train that Deane and Debby used to take to work. Very, very sad.

Hey -- I love you all!! Every single one of you!

The computer problem wasn't our router at all. I don't know what Bob's problem was, but it seems to be fixed now. My little baby, on the other hand, is one sick puppy and I've spent the last few days trying to save all my Encore music files onto my external hard drive. Then tonight or tomorrow I say "Hail and farewell" to whatever is left on my sicko hard drive and re-install the guts back with my recovery disks, which will force me to re-purchase Encore (not cheap, but absolutely necessary to the quality of my life!). And then, Dear Readers, I can go back to blogging with a vengeance, and post photos (I believe I have most of them saved, thank goodness) and generally foist stuff upon you. Just hang in there, and keep on enjoying Bob's journal posts.

We're having a huge multi-stake conference this Sunday, with some 69 wards meeting in the Conference Center (ours is one of the lucky ones!) for a meeting presided over by President Monson. Everyone else is doing the broadcast thing in their respective meeting house. Then we're having company over for lunch -- our Texas stake president's mother, another Texas friend, and my old trainer and her husband. It should be great fun and a lovely Sunday.

Bob is very close to getting the Mission Memories books finished and ready to go to the printer for a galley copy. Which is why we're here 45 minutes after quitting time, and look to be staying for another 45 minutes or so. But we sure would like to finish this and take an afternoon, or even a whole day, off for Personal Research. Stay tuned!

We seem to be having a problem with our router/gateway or whatever it's called and have someone coming tomorrow night to fix them. We can get online without any trouble at the library or in the Starbucks parking lot. I'm without any urgent assignment right now, so will try to catch up and hopefully post some photos that I've been wanting to share. So here, in whatever order this screwy program decides to place them are: my branch choir, our trainers, Elder and Sister Tom and Tressa White, and shots of our cubicle.