Orange Hoodie

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Last Saturday I went to the state Republican convention as a delegate. I listened to speeches, I voted, I fled.

It was held at UVSC’s UVU’s McKay Events Center.

Governor Huntsman speaks, telling us why we should vote for him for another term. He got the nomination. As if there was any question he would.

I spent today becoming one with the word “blivet”. It’s a fun word. Really. Say it out loud several times (preferably in a quiet room with a lot of people around so they can look at you like you’ve lost your mind). I didn’t even know what a blivet was until a couple weeks ago, and then today I got to add it all over the place in my document. We originally had it in only one place, but the program manager is apparently mildly insane and wanted it here and there and everywhere. So I rolled my eyes and shrugged my shoulders and added it in every single place he wanted it.

“Blivet” has several definitions that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. We’re using it to mean “carrier for liquid: a collapsible rubberized bladder used to transport and store fuel and water in forward areas of a battlefield.” However, it also has the following definitions:

• something pointless or annoying: something useless, pointless, or annoying
• problem difficult to solve: an intractable problem, especially in computing
• something difficult to name: something whose name you do not know or cannot remember

But that’s not all, my friends. Oh no. According to Wikipedia, “a blivet, also known as a poiuyt, is an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion and an impossible object. It appears to have three cylindrical prongs at one end which then mysteriously transform into two rectangular prongs at the other end.”

Wikipedia gives more info on the definitions above, as well as more definitions.

It seems to me that this is a word that can be used to mean whatever you want it to mean. And hey, maybe one of your definitions will catch on.

To conclude today’s word of the day, say “blivet” just a few more times. It’s fun! Sure, not quite as fun as a food fight with lots of moist cake, but still fun.

The government editor came over to our realm today to make nice. She said she came into work this morning and felt like everyone hated her (we do!) and needed to rectify it. I appreciate her coming over, and I explained why I was so frustrated (gee, for some reason, when I’m told every single document I send over sucks, I find that wearing upon my soul). She said she doesn’t understand why I think that because she likes my documents better than anyone else’s and thinks I do a great job. ARGH! So why do you tell me the documents all suck?!

I honestly appreciate her effort to fix this, but I just don’t think there is comprehension there. I don’t think she realizes how what she says affects us. Is there some disconnect between what she says and what she actually thinks? Could be. It’s not just me; all of us writers are frustrated by this.

And then my least favorite test director stopped by to tell me he has two documents he’s going to send to me tomorrow to edit. I welcome the work because it’s so slow right now. He’s one of the creepiest people on the planet, but I’m one of the few people on the planet who has managed to figure out what he wants done when he sends documents, so we actually work well together. He can really be a pain in the mikta and refuses to work with pretty much anyone else, so… hey, it’s something to do.

Anyway, when he was over here, he said (creepily) that he loves me and would make me his second wife if he could. I managed to not visibly shudder, but I don’t think I was able to mask the horror in my eyes. I was having a hard time trying to find an appropriate, professional response, so just sort of ended up doing nothing but have an awkward smile on my face. Then he went over and hugged my officemate (SO INAPPROPRIATE) and told her he would make her his fourth wife. I didn’t ask who would be number three.

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I love my job, I love the pay!
I love it more and more each day.
I love my boss, he is the best!
I love his boss and all the rest.

I love my office and its location,
I hate to have to go on vacation.
I love my furniture, drab and gray,
And piles of paper that grow each day!

I think my job is really swell,
There’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my peers,
I love their leers, and jeers, and sneers.

I love my computer and its software;
I hug it often though it won’t care.
I love each program and every file.
I’d love them more if they worked a while.

I’m happy to be here. I am. I am.
I’m the happiest slave of the Firm, I am.
I love this work, I love these chores.
I love the meetings with deadly bores.

I love my job - I’ll say it again -
I even love those friendly men.
Those friendly men who’ve come today,
In clean white coats to take me away!

For Mother’s Day next week, our ward is giving all sisters a day off from their callings. Thus, in Ward Council yesterday (which I both remembered to go to and also to bring the ward/stake calendar for the next two months; it’s a miracle) we planned who would replace who for Primary, Sunday School, Young Women, and Relief Society callings. As much as possible, we had husbands replace wives, but brothers who already had callings in Primary or Sunday School will just stay where they are.

For some of the Primary callings, we placed fathers with their kid’s class, and some were just random brothers who didn’t already have a calling during those two hours (since we had to come up with two men for each class, we kind of had to stretch). I’m definitely curious to see how sharing time and music time will go in Primary. Hopefully the kids will have fun with the unexpected brothers running everything.

The husband of next week’s Relief Society teacher was in Ward Council, so he got the news right away that he’s teaching RS next week. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but was a good sport. Should be interesting :-). Young Women was easy. The YW were going to combine with RS that week anyway because we’re trying to ease our graduating seniors into RS, so we didn’t have to come up with YW teachers. However, even when the YW are combined with the RS, they still have their own announcements and say the YW theme. The YW president was quite happy to inform her husband that he would get to do that in her place next week. She later said he was annoyed with it. She told him to suck it up; it’s not like the two minutes it will take will kill him.

Anyway, it was pretty fun planning who would do what. I asked if, for Father’s Day, the sisters would give all the brothers the day off, and thus the Relief Society would conduct Sacrament Meeting. To my bishop’s credit (he’s a cool guy) he got this bemused expression and said, “Well… if I were presiding, then technically… well, could we…?” But no. Can you imagine the calls the stake president would get that afternoon?

Meanwhile, in other news, we have moved into our 10th month since we’ve had a Mia Maids advisor. Grrr…. My bishop is a cool guy, but he doesn’t exactly move with swiftness on callings. To be fair, they’ve had a difficult time finding anyone. A lot of people in our ward simply refuse to accept callings. It’s sucks. I’ve never been in a ward where so many people just won’t contribute. In addition, we’re not a big ward (we have 100-120 people in sacrament meeting each week, and that’s including kids), so there are only so many people to chose from. Still… 10 months!

And we need to replace the first counselor in the YW presidency. She’s got some family stuff going on that is making it impossible for her to have a calling at this time. The bishop says he’s working on it, but who knows how long it will take. It took the bishop four months to replace the entire YW presidency last year when people moved (that was stressful). Since the first counselor is the one over Mia Maids, that means our Mia Maids have no one. They have been combining with the Laurels for the last couple of months, but they’re getting frustrated with it. (Our ward also hasn’t had a Sunday School presidency – not a single person in the presidency – since December, so we’re not the only ones unstaffed or understaffed.)

Oh, and also the Mia Maids class presidency is supposed to be changed. Actually, they don’t have a class presidency because everyone advanced to Laurels. A new class president was chosen a couple months ago, and she provided the names of her counselors to the second counselor in the bishopric over a month ago, and… nothing has happened. We really wish he’d hurry, because the girl who is going to be called as class president advances into Laurels in July. Sigh.

Oh, and apparently the Young Men president is a moron. On Saturday we had a youth temple trip. I didn’t go because they already had plenty of adults. We’re in the Salt Lake temple district (I love the SL temple baptistry), and it’s an hour and a half drive to get there. Our temple time was at 3 PM, and they were expected to be done by 5 PM. We usually have a time earlier in the day, like 10 AM, and so usually go get something to eat afterwards (though we always went the food courts in one of the malls across from Temple Square, but neither mall exists anymore, so…). However, because this was a later time and they didn’t want to get the kids home too late, they had decided not to get something to eat and just head home afterwards.

Except the YM president decided to take them to get something to eat. I don’t know where they went (and we told the girls they didn’t need to bring money, so I’m not sure how that worked out), but they didn’t leave Salt Lake until almost 9 PM. 9 PM! Parents were calling the YW president by 9 PM wondering where their kids were since they’d been told they’d be back by 7 PM. The YW president had a family thing and didn’t go, so she called the YM president who informed her that they’d just left Salt Lake because where they went for dinner had slow service. Four hours of slow service?! In addition, one of the girls who went is diabetic, and since they weren’t planning on eating, she didn’t have her insulin with her. So they go back from Salt Lake around 10:30 Saturday night. Our YW president was NOT happy.

And with that, I bring the an end to the tales of my ward.

I received my economic stimulus check (or rather direct deposit) today. I’ve transferred it to savings to spend during the Gatecon/Vancouver trip in August. So I guess technically I’ll be stimulating Canada’s economy.

Another power outage. This one was scheduled (I can’t remember its purpose; probably to fix something) and planned for 7 AM to 5 PM. I saw no reason to stick around in a cold, electricity-less house and fled to civilization. On the drive, I passed two herds of sheep. So now in addition to the deer, antelope, cows, and occasional buffalo, I get to worry about hitting sheep. Joy.

I arrived in civilization and visited with my mother. She showed off her two new aquariums. I harassed the fish for a while (I try to pet them, but for some reason they don’t like it), snapped a couple photos, and let them be. She has a huge pleco (plecostomus) that I really want to touch, but the beastie wouldn’t leave the floor of the aquarium, and the aquarium was too deep for me to reach down. Alas.

After thoroughly washing my hands (ew, fish germs!) she and I headed down to Macaroni Grill for lunch. Yum! I love their bread. Best stuff ever. Upon returning to my parents’ house, I stared at the plecos a bit more (I think I made the smaller pleco nervous), then bade my mother farewell, went grocery shopping, and returned to the middle of nowhere. Based on the temperature of my house, I believe the power had been on only 10 minutes or so.

Last night was the Tooele County Republican Convention (where the Republican nominees for county positions are selected to go on to the vote in November). Only one position was up for election this time: county commissioner. As a county delegate (because no one else showed up to the precinct caucus), it was my duty (nay, privilege!) to go and vote. I admit I kind of get a thrill from parliamentary procedures, so it’s fun even when it’s boring.

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The entrance to the convention.

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It was held at Tooele High School (which apparently has purple as one of its school color; as a lover of purple, I approve). That meant a 50-minute drive to Tooele, the county seat. They had the Lincoln Day Dinner beforehand as a fundraiser with Congressman Rob Bishop as the guest speaker. While I wasn’t totally opposed to forking over $20, I was opposed to eating amongst strangers and listening to a boring speech from a guy I don’t particularly like. So I passed on the dinner and showed up at 7 PM for just the convention part. Congressman Bishop was still speaking and continued to speak for about another 15 minutes after I arrived. It was really boring and I was relieved I wasn’t there for the whole thing. I said hello to a couple coworkers who turned out to be delegates from their precincts (one of whom I would never have pegged as a Republican).

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Congressman Bishop, the guy in the middle,
stayed for the convention.

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I checked in and got my credentials: a sticker identifying me as a county delegate, and a sticker identifying me as a state delegate (the state convention, the one I’m actually interested in, is next month). State delegates are identified and invited to attend their county convention, but they can’t vote unless they also happen to be a county delegate, as in my case. Two years ago, when I was only a state delegate, I went to the beginning of the county convention because I wanted to meet some of the people running for state and national positions who were going to be there, Senator Orrin Hatch in particular. I consider the Patriot Act a repulsive piece of legislation and wished to express that. I did, Senator Hatch and I argued, I ate some quite tasty food provided Senator Hatch’s minions, and then I left because I had a ticket to the symphony. It was a pretty fun evening, actually. The county convention was apparently quite good, I heard, because some incumbents were ousted, providing much drama (I believe there were 17 positions up for election last time, opposed to our 1 position this time).

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My credentials/stickers.

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This year, with fewer offices up for reelection, there weren’t many non-county-relevant people. Mark Walker, a guy running for State Treasurer, actually showed up (I believe he’ll get my vote), as did a couple others, and a few others sent representatives, so we listened to mercifully brief speeches from them, but there really weren’t many. We’re a low-population county, so we’re really unimportant to most of those running, even though they all say, “Oh, yes! We care about Tooele County and represent YOU!” I don’t buy it, but it’s nice they put forth effort for the rural counties anyway (but let’s not kid ourselves - the highly populated Utah, Salt Lake, and Davis counties are the only ones they put forth great effort for). The guy running against Governor Huntsman for the Republican nomination was there. He seemed like a nice enough guy with heavy Libertarian leanings, but he hasn’t got a prayer of getting the nomination. Governor Huntsman is doing a very good job as governor, and unless some horrible scandal erupts between now and November, he’ll totally be reelected.

But back to the matter at hand: county commissioner. Colleen Johnson was the incumbent, and Michael Wells was the challenger. They’ve both been hassling us delegates for our vote, and I’d already decided. But first we had to listen to speeches from them both. They each had 5 minutes. They spoke. Ballots were handed out. I voted for Ms. Johnson. She seems to really have done a lot of good things for the county (believe me, no one was more shocked than me to see a government official actually doing GOOD things). The votes were tallied (while they were counted, this is when we actually listened to the speeches from everyone else), and Ms. Johnson won with 70-something percent of the votes. (If someone doesn’t get 60 percent or more of the votes, then a primary election must be held.)

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Colleen Johnson.

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Michael Wells.

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Our duties brought to an end, I fled to the grocery store, where I found some nice looking artichokes, which I am looking forward to eating later today. Yum. I love artichokes.

Old water heater

New water heater

I have also apparently angered the water gods. I had no hot water upon awakening this morning and I was inches from creaming an antelope on the way in to work. It was not a good start to the day. I showered this morning despite the lack of hot water. It was not a happy time. My hair is particularly soft and shiny now, though. I’ll have to wash it in cold more often. In the summer. Afterward I had a large mug of hot chocolate for breakfast to try to return my body temperature to something resembling normal.

And then an antelope went charging across the road right in front of me. ARGH!

So called maintenance and left work early so they could fix the water heater. I don’t know if something fried with yesterday’s electricity problems or what. However, there was a diagnosis: water heater dead. Totally and completely. Not revivable. (It was also leaking, which I didn’t even notice.) He also declared it really old. It’s been drained and he’s now trying to remove it to replace it with a new one. There’s clanking and mild sounds of annoyance.

Luckily I had yummy veggie curry for lunch, and I have leftovers for dinner. Somehow this eases the annoyances of life.

The following just went out to maillist (i.e., everyone on post):

An emergency power outage is required on Tuesday, 15 Apr 08 from approximately 1020 to 1220 hours in order to make repairs to a burnt electrical meter and restore service back to Housing Unit 56-A.

Power outage will only affect the north side of East First Street and the south side of East Second Street in Housing.

Um, yeah, that’s my unit. But I’m guessing this means I’ll have power when I get home tonight! Yay!

I awoke in the middle of the night to no electricity. I crawled out of bed and staggered into the livingroom to see what time it was on my only battery-operated clock. 3AM. Returning to bed, I dug through the drawer of my nightstand to try to find the travel alarm clock, but it wasn’t there. Must still be packed from my last trip. I made a note to try to find it sometime in the near future and return it to the nightstand, hoped the battery in my regular alarm clock wasn’t dead, and went back to bed.

Reveille awoke me at 6AM (an advantage of living on a military base). Rats. The battery in my regular alarm clock is apparently dead (normally I get up at 5:30AM). I got up, saw lights on across the street, saw lights on behind me. Hmmm… not a basewide power outage. It’s just me. (Have I angered the electricity gods?)

I called maintenance (another advantage of living on a military base), a guy came and fiddled with some stuff and I got partial power back, but only a few things. However, he said I’d have to wait for the electrician to arrive to do some high-voltage stuff. I have no hot water (a leak I’ve never bother to get fixed ensured any hot water in store dripped away), so I skipped showering. I feel mildly slimy, but not too bad. I called in to work to say I’d be in late.

A second maintenance guy came, but he wasn’t the electrician. He poked around a bit and said he couldn’t fix it (did he not believe the first guy?) and I’d have to wait for the electrician.

A third maintenance guy came, but he wasn’t the electrician either. However, he could at least better diagnose the problem and seemed to know more of what he was doing.

I don’t know exactly the problem (as far as I’m concerned, electricity is this magical entity that comes to my house when the electricity gods are feeling benevolent), but apparently the power box thing in the back of the house is charred and totally dead and needs to be replaced. The third guy showed me it’s charred-ness. Yep, looks charred, I agreed. Living in abject terror of fire (and electricity), I was glad nothing started on fire. (When he showed me the thing out back he told me not to touch anything. Dude, I get nervous just plugging something in to a wall outlet because I’m certain something will go horribly wrong and I’ll die a painful death from electrocution when I plug in my cell phone or whatever. Believe me, I’m staying many feet away from it and wouldn’t touch it even if you asked me to.)

So anyway, that thing in the back of the house has to be replaced. The third guy turned all the power off so that no fires would start (I agreed that no fires is a good thing). However, there are two problems to the issue being fixed quickly: the electrician is not in today (ah, that would explain the parade of not-electricians), and they don’t happen to have one of those power box things kicking around so will have to acquire one. I asked if this was, like, a one-day thing or if it would take longer than a day. He didn’t know. Joy. He assured me that this was a rush, urgent, high-priority thing, though. But who knows how long it will take.

I have apparently angered the electricity gods. I believe a cold shower is in my future tonight. And a cold front is going through right now, so it’s going to be very chilly in my house as the day (and night) passes.

So now I’m at work. And it’s shaping up to be another very boring day because the workload is non-existent for everyone right now.

Alas.

Guy in charge of test (GICOT): Here is a whole lot of meteorological data. It needs to go in the test plan.
Me: Hmm… that’s a lot of tables and graphs. We don’t usually put this sort of thing in a test plan. Can it go on a CD and then we can just mention the CD in the plan?
GICOT: No, we really need it in the plan.
Me: Sigh. Okay. The government editor will probably object, so you’ll probably have to talk her into it.
GICOT: That’s fine. It needs to go in the plan.

The next couple of days are consumed by formatting 40 pages of really boring wind data. I grow to resent the wind – how dare it be so dull! The plan is returned to the GICOT.

A couple weeks pass.

GICOT: You know, that met data is really a lot of pages. Can we pull that out of the plan and make it a separate document?
Me: Well, we could put it on a CD and then mention the CD in the plan….
GICOT: Yeah, that would be good. Can you do that?

As I survey the large desert that surrounds me, I can’t help but think that I should be able to hide his body well enough that no one will find it.

So… the weekend. I’m trying to think of what I did yesterday and am drawing a total blank. Clearly it was an exciting day. Wait… I did run to the grocery store because my milk was getting rather ripe but I’ve still got a couple boxes of cereal. I know you’re jealous of my exciting life.

This morning I got up at 6:30 to go to a choir practice at the edge of civilization. We have stake conference coming up in a couple weeks, and they’re having a women’s choir. Normally I don’t bother with such things. I like singing and enjoy singing in our ward’s choir, but the stake center is a 50-minute drive each way. Forget it. But I heard they were singing “I Saw a Mighty Angel Fly“, which I love, love, love and never ever get to sing. I’ve begged our ward music director to select it for church, but she says no because no one knows it. I figure if we sing it a few times then people will know it, but she still says no. I’ve asked our choir director if we could sing it, but so far no go. So when I heard the stake choir would sing it I was game even though it meant getting up way too early on Saturday and taking a long drive.

But they’re not singing it. Blech. So I’m bailing on that idea. I stuck around for today’s entire practice, of course, but the director is seriously whacked. For one of the songs, she’s having the choir sing one line slow then the next line fast and the next line slow, etc. All for no discernible reason, clearly having nothing to do with the actually words of the song. Random. On another song she has changed some of the notes and it is horribly awkward to sing and painful to listen to. She also added half a verse, which is totally out of place. It sort of makes sense as part of the third verse, but has absolutely nothing to do with the fourth verse, which is where she stuck it. Random. And painful. So, yeah, I’m out.

After that I took a quick trip to Walmart to get cat food and kitty litter (it’s never good when those things run low) and then started the drive home. It’s general conference this weekend, and I knew I wouldn’t get back in time for this morning’s session, the solemn assembly. I set my DVR to record it, but I really wanted to listen to it live and hoped the radio would work out. There’s just something about live. I thought I’d lose the radio signal before it even got started, but the signal lasted through the entire sustaining. Woot! So I participated in my car while driving at 70 MPH :-).

So, good talks today. I’m disappointed we didn’t hear from President Monson. I definitely expected he would speak in one of today’s sessions. Tomorrow, I guess.

P.S. I’ve watched that video in my last post another half a dozen times. It enthralls me. I love the music. I love the animation. It’s so beautiful and fascinating.