Road Trip

We did Greek Easter dinner today. We had keftides and spanakopita. Lots of fat. Why on earth do the Greeks fry their meatballs? I didn't want to try baking them instead.

I'm heading out again tomorrow. Going to see the parentals. Mom is doing really well; the medical team is going to meet tomorrow and talk about moving her to a stroke rehab center.

I will be working while I'm there. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? I'm starting to have visions of vast profit centers feeding from the projects I'm involved in. Good times! I will miss my streaming audio while I'm in the corporate office, though.

I'm off to bake another strawberry shortcake. The days of cheap local strawberries are almost over, I fear. The most recent crop at the Winn Dixie is from California.

Ultimatum

"If the strawberry shortcake isn't gone when I get home, it will be very shortly thereafter."
- Ann's DH, Wednesday, April 19, 2006.

Ethics

Do I eat the last strawberry shortcake, or do I offer to share?

I guess it depends on whether he had one at lunch today.

Better

I feel better today than I've felt in a week.

Mom talked to Dad this morning. He walked in the door, and she said, "You're wonderful."

Today has been a very nice day. A couple of games of Candyland, egg coloring, an easter egg hunt. Oh, and chocolate.

Scalloped potatoes are in the oven. We'll have ham and roasted asparagus with the potatoes for dinner. Friends coming over later this evening for dessert - strawberry shortcake.

Strawberries have been abundant and cheap here. I got 3 lbs. for $5 today at Winn-Dixie.

Strep

I have strep throat. I got two shots; penicillin and a steroid to reduce swelling. The MD said I would probably be feeling better by this evening, and just fine tomorrow.

I went in to wake up older son, and he said he had a sore throat. I sent him off to the same MD right away.

Little boy had strep twice last month. The MD said that adults can walk around with strep for a long time without feeling sick, so I may have been a carrier. DH was kind of sick even before little boy, but he didn't go to the MD about it. We could all be contaminated. I'm just glad I didn't give it to my mother!

Speaking of which - she walked 50 yards yesterday. That's five first downs!

Chalmette Ward

Louisiana is a pretty Catholic place, and there aren't a lot of Mormons here. My town used to have two congregations (called wards), but when the oil companies scaled back their staffing in New Orleans, they rolled back to just one. So our stake (the Mormon equivalent of a diocese) is pretty small.

It just officially got smaller. The Chalmette ward, in St. Bernard Parish, has been dissolved. Any Mormons living in Chalmette are under the auspices of the New Orleans Stake (a different one from mine). I sobbed at the news. I was not alone, although I may have been the most vocal.

I've known this was coming, but I was still stunned at the news. Not so much that the ward is gone, because there aren't so many Mormons in Louisiana, and less than 15% of the population of St. Bernard has come back since the hurricane. The announcement was a bright neon reminder: a whole town - a whole parish - is gone.

I stuck around for the whole first meeting Sunday, for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that I wanted to be with my husband. I mostly get through LDS sacrament meetings, when I attend, by not listening, but this week the final speaker caught my attention. He just got back in his house. He was buying breakfast a few weeks ago, before the kitchen was done.

A lady in line at McDonald's said to him, "It sure was cold last night."
He replied, "Yeah, we had to turn the heater on."
The lady said, "It would be nice to have a heater."
Speaker asked her, "Well...where are you staying?"
"We've been living in a tent about a block and a half away since the hurricane."

A lot of people around here want to put this behind them, and are ready to move on. But others, for very concrete reasons (i.e., living in a tent) are not yet able to do that. And those of us who want to get over it need to be aware of this, and kind and patient and helpful to them.

A very good talk.

Camps

It's time to start arranging for summer child care for Little Boy. Summer camps are a hugely popular way to structure time for school age children in this next of the woods. I've signed him up for one day camp just around the corner, that runs for six weeks. Bus transportation to and from, lunches available, and a variety of activities. He'll be home around 3:30, but he's home around 3:30 now, and it works fine.

I still have 3-5 weeks to fill, and they are more troublesome. I'd like to stay close to home but I'm not real crazy about the options. If I cast a wider net geographically my options get a lot better, but transportation becomes an issue. College Son can come for a week or so at the end of July to help with that.

I've printed out a list of the most viable options for DH to review. I will probably have to make decisions in the next week. Spots go fast!

No!

That's what my mom said today. Dad said it was music to his ears. She also stood unsupported for several minutes at a time.

Still a very long haul ahead, but I hope this means that sometime in the next couple of months, I can call my mother on the phone and talk to her, and have her talk back.

Internet Time Sink

I followed a link on a Blog that was titled "Why the BBC is Brilliant." I ended up spending over two hours reading about Doctor Who on Wikipedia.

I really need to get a grip on my internet time.

Getting Things Done

I finally got my copy of "Getting Things Done." I bought it from an Amazon Marketplace seller through the ever excellent 43 Folders web site, thinking I would support them a bit if I could. Yikes. It took almost three whole weeks to arrive. Serves me right for not paying attention to their delivery dates - yes, they didn't commit to delivering before today. They must use slow boat shipping. Because it's pre-paid, the rate wasn't listed on the postage.

I've been applying some of the concepts as I learn about them through 43 Folders, but I'm hoping it will be even more helpful to get the big picture.

I had a cool experience with Next Actions at the end of my work day today. I had three items on my to do list with the prefix "Write." So, I look at all of those things, and I knocked them out. Bang, Bang, Bang. I no longer need to write. The Next Actions have all been revised to the NEXT action, and I can move those items forward.

April Fools Day on the Internet

I've seen a couple of good April Fools sites on the 'net. Every year, Google has a really fun site. Last year it was GoogleGulp; this year it's Google Romance (Beta). Read the whole thing and do a search!

One of the Mormon sites I read has a fun setup today. Check out By Common Consent.

And Slashdot has a "new" look and a couple of article that are a little out of character for the site. Warning: I guess some of the links are not safe for work.

Have any/either of my readers seen any fun April Fools Day sites?