Retrograde Motion

Time, as far as we know, moves in only one direction, forward. But the past several days have been pretty busy and occasionally crazy. It's probably easiest to look at them moving backwards.

Monday
I got a couple of pieces of good news on Monday. When the paychecks were passed out, mine was about $40 more than I expected. Upon closer inspection, I found that I had received a raise. A rather substantial raise, at that. I was impressed. Of course, it's all for naught if the check doesn't clear....

The other pieces of good news came from Nancy. She's been trying to sell her old car for about a month, and someone finally bought it on Monday. Also, she got a lead on a new job. This is especially helpful because her internship expires on April 14th. While she has generally enjoyed her current position, all the nasty experiences with Old Girl have made for an often unpleasant (one might say 'hostile') work environment. So moving on will be a good thing.

I got one piece of bad news, too. I'm now dead last in our NCAA Basketball office pool. Two of my Final Four (Kansas and North Carolina) are now watching the rest of tournament on television. While I'm a manager and consequently wouldn't be eligible to win anyway, it's a little discouraging to see how poorly I've prognosticated. I've got a great excuse, though. I can always say, "It's hard for me to get excited about basketball during hockey season."

Sunday
I went to church half an hour early on Sunday to practice with the ward choir. We had our monthly assignment to provide the musical number. A lot of times we do "Instant Choir", where the hymn is announced at the beginning of the meeting, then everyone who wants to sing comes up at the appropriate time and sings from the hymnbook. We have a good group of regulars, so it usually goes off pretty well. But Sunday's assignment was Sally DeFord's arrangement of "How Great the Wisdom and the Love", not the kind of piece where you can sightread and rely on familiarity to carry you through. So we practiced, and we sounded pretty good.

I also practiced as part of a quartet on Sunday. We're giving the musical number and the talks at the VA Hospital's service this coming Sunday morning. We're doing the Manookin arrangement of "Because I Have Been Given Much". The bass part's not very interesting, but it was still helpful to sing with the other three (and with the piano). Interestingly enough, the pianist is one of the ward music directors, and she's been looking for someone to do a musical number next week in our ward. So I'll be singing it twice next Sunday.

The evening was spent at Nancy's house, where I joined her family for the traditional Sunday dinner. We had spaghetti with salad and breadsticks. Then we settled down to watch Pride and Prejudice. She's been trying to get me to see that for the last month, and I finally ran out of excuses. (Just kidding.) She has at least four different versions of it, so when asked, I said I preferred to see the black & white version starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. I love old movies. And I was not disappointed. The show was a lot of fun. I may even read the book one day.

Saturday
Saturday's training session was small, and intentionally so. I asked for (and got) permission to limit the training to no more than six contestants. I wanted to make sure I could get done and out early. I had more important things to do: engagement photos.

I called Nancy after leaving work to find out exactly when and where we were meeting the photographer. She told me she'd had an interesting conversation with her. Out photographer had apparently told her she wanted to reschedule. Great. Thirty-four days until the wedding (but who's counting?) and our photographer wants to put us off a week. Nancy told her no, we were going to do it today. And we did.

We started at the historic Salt Lake City and County building. Despite the rain and cold that had dominated the day, we were able to take a lot of really nice pictures outside the east entrance to the building. We moved to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (formerly the Hotel Utah) for some indoor shots. Then, as the light was beginning to fade, we went back outside to Temple Square and got a few shots among the flowers.

Our photographer used a digital camera, so we got to see a lot of the shots right then and there. She's going to get a preliminary set of pictures to us in the next day or so, after which we can order invitations. Which means I need to start getting addresses together. Who would have thought a wedding would require so much planning?

Friday
Friday night I wanted to reprogram our computer system at work—with an axe. Or a sledgehammer. Whatever.

Everything was going smoothly enough for the first few hours of the shift. We ran twelve different projects on Friday night, and all but four were over by 8:00. I was able to run all the necessary end-of-shift reports without too much difficulty.

At that point, I was informed that on of the supervisor stations on the call floor had lost contact with the backup machine, rendering one network drive inaccessible from that location. This is annoying, but not a difficult fix. We just have to reboot the backup computer, and that generally solves the problem. The only real problem is that we can't do that while the dialer is running. Solution: wait until everyone has left at 10:00 and restart the backup machine.

I should have left well enough alone.

We have two interconnected computer programs where I work: one that connects the interviewing stations to the dailer and provides the scripts that our callers read, and one that serves as an electronic time card and helps us manage productivity. After restarting the backup machine, I was only able to run about half of the required reports. The time card/productivity program wouldn't work properly. Fortunately, it is possible to get much of the same end-of-shift data from an application in the other program, but it's logarithmically more difficult to read and interpret. And in the end, there was some information I simply wasn't able to get. What a mess.

Why do computers seem to hate me recently?

Thursday
As usual, I spent Thursday night with the Ogden Gaming Consortium. I came to find out that my GM has some really nasty things in store for my character. That's one of the things I like about gaming. Role-playing is a sort of cooperative storytelling experience, and it's fun to see how other players will affect the story. I had to cut out with a headache, but it was still a lot of fun. I'll miss gaming if I end up moving out of state.

Wednesday
My training class on Wednesday was small; only two contestants were scheduled. Ten minutes after the class was to have started, I still hadn't seen either of them. It turned out that both of them rescheduled for later classes. So I did a few logistical tasks and an errand for Jason (my boss), then left. I wasn't sad to have them both cancel. After six weeks of training twice a week, I was ready for a break.

So I called Nancy an found out she was about to start a service project for one of her classes. So I grabbed a bite to eat, then joined her at her office. He classmates showed up shortly thereafter, and we went upstairs to the production area to start.

Nancy works for the LDS Church's Humanitarian Aid department. They get donations of (among other things) health and hygiene supplies in large amounts. They are unable to use some of these donations due to the size or condition of the donated supplies. Those things they are unable to use themselves are passed along to other agencies who can make use of them.

This is pretty much what we did on Wednesday night. We sorted three pallets' worth of soap, shampoo, combs, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and other such supplies into what the Humanitarian Center could use and what would be passed on to a local shelter. We ended up with a large number of boxes of supplies for the shelter. I never thought you could get your hands dirty from working with soap, but that's exactly what happened.

But the fun really started after we left. One of the volunteers had brought a pickup, and we'd filled it as full as we dared and still had plenty of boxes left over. So the rest went into the back of the Dreadnought. One large, heavy box started to break as we were loading it. So I got into the console of my truck and procured a solution: duct tape. Like the man says, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

With a toothpaste spill of large proportions averted, we set out for this volunteer's home with the pickup leading the way, followed by Nancy's car and then mine. As we traversed 5300 South, I saw Nancy swerve to avoid something. I tried to do the same but was unable to miss the mess entirely. Sure enough, one of the boxes had fallen off the pickup, and there were now hundreds of toothbrushes scattered across the road. We tried as best we could to clean up the mess, a task which was made somewhat easier by the fact that most of the drivers switched lines when they saw what we were doing. Most. Eventually we got the road cleared and made it to the destination, where we unpacked and counted the boxes: thirty-eight.

Afterwards, I followed Nancy home and picked up my computer, about which I've already written in detail. I still have no sound. That will be one of today's projects, I think.

Tuesday, Monday
These two days were both pretty routine. That is to say, I can't remember anything that happened either day that's particularly worth writing about. Whether that's a reflection on the days themselves or on the state of my memory, I'd rather not speculate.

Sunday
It was my turn to teach Sunday School again. While I normally really enjoy teaching the class, I had a hard time getting 'up' for this week's lesson. It was about Isaac & Rebekah and Jacob & Rachel & Leah and Jacob & Esau and the importance of making right decisions. And a lot of it was about marriage, a topic which has been on my mind somewhat of late. But it was hard for me to come up with anything to say. I felt like all I did was read out of the manual. But the lesson went over well. And as long as the class got something out of the lesson, I guess it's not really about what I thought of it.

Saturday
There were two letters waiting for me when I got home from Saturday's training class. Both were from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They told me that my previous sealing had been cancelled and that I was now cleared to be sealed to Nancy. At that moment, my upcoming marriage to Nancy moved from the realm of speculation and possibility into reality. We're getting married!

I called Nancy immediately with the news, even though we'd spoken only moments before. She was running an errand, so I left her a message to call me. She called a few moments later, and I gave her the good news. She immediately got us on a conference call with the Salt Lake Temple. We scheduled our day and time, April 21st at 1:00 p.m. Then we talked to each other, and both got a little teary-eyed.

Saturday was also Derek's birthday. I called and talked to him for about half an hour. He seems to be doing well, and fatherhood suits him. I take perverse comfort in knowing that he'll always be older than I am.

Friday
As with Monday and Tuesday above, I can't recall much about Friday. I know that a late night at work was involved. It's probably sufficient to leave it at that. I look forward to teaching so that I can get home from work before 11:00 p.m. on a regular basis.

Thursday
Thursday was Nancy's birthday. I heard once that a perfect gentleman is one who never forgets a woman's birthday, but never remembers which one it is. I'm striving for perfection in this area.

I met her and the rest of the family and several friends for dinner at Johnny Carino's. Good, good food. Nancy had the Spicy Romano Chicken, and I had the Penne Alfredo with chicken. It was wonderful, and the leftovers made my coworkers salivate the next evening. There were about 20 people there, and the waiters were going nuts trying to keep up with us all. I made sure to give our waiter a generous tip. He earned it.

Amongst the dinner and conversation, there were also gifts for the birthday girl. I had found a Sliding Doors DVD on Amazon.com and ordered it for two-day delivery so it would be here in time for her birthday. Alas, when I left for the party, it had not arrived. So I wrapped up an empty DVD case with an IOU note and gave her that. Wouldn't you know, when I got back from the party, there was the box with the DVD, right there on the front room table. Ironic, isn't it?

From there the party moved to Olympus Hills Bowling Lanes. I hadn't bowled in almost six years. The last time I bowled, the only person who didn't beat me was my six-year-old niece. So I went into the event with no particular expectations of success. Imagine my surprise, then, when I bowled a 159. I cleared five straight frames at one point, with four strikes. Everyone around me was amazed and/or impressed. So was I.

Back to the Present
And that brings us to today. We're at T-minus-31 and counting, so some wedding prep will be a part of my day. I need to get some addresses organized, and I should probably get fitted for my tuxedo in the next day or two. I also need to do some laundry, cash my paycheck, pay some bills, and do a little cleaning and packing. A small nap would also work well if I can squeeze it in. A mundane day, to be sure, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.