Made it to Utah

It was a long trip, but I made it to Utah safely. I got up at 3:40 AM on the East Coast and arrived here 5:15 PM Mountain Time. That's 7:15 PM my Pennsylvania time. Whew! All is well though. I'm having a great visit. It took the baby until today to warm up to me and it was worth the wait. They're all so cute and fun to be around. More tomorrow.

Let it Snow

Yes folks, we are having our first snow storm today. Four inches of really heavy wet snow is expected in the valley. Six inches at elevations above 1200 feet. I asked Michael what our elevation is. It's 1100 feet. So there you go. We have 100 feet to spare. And up to 40 mile a hour winds. It should be over before I'm supposed to fly out tomorrow morning. But, if not, I could go the next day and still make it to Provo by Halloween.

I've been out twice today already and it's only 10:16. The first time was to get the paper. I usually run out and pick it up in my bare feet. But today I put on shoes and took an umbrella. The second time was to pull a big branch off of one of our cars.(Car is okay.) For that I needed my new down jacket. It's not sticking now but we have the whole day ahead of us! I think I'll make chili.

My mom always has trouble Christmas shopping when the weather is nice. She wants it to be cold and crisp outside so that she can get in the mood. I think she would have no problems here! She might even overspend.

Yes, I actually played my violin in church

I think I kept a pretty low profile in Denton, playing my violin in church only on rare occasions. I did play with the girls in a quartet for one Christmas program but that may have been it. There was so much talent in the Denton Stake that I was loath to advertise my extremely limited skills on that instrument. Suddenly I find myself one of only a few violinists in the Wilkes-Barre Stake (a stake is a regional organization of individual congregations which we call wards) and so I actually volunteered to play in an ensemble for the prelude to the Saturday night meetings for our regional twice-yearly conference. And, unbelievably, I enjoyed it. I really could use some practice and my bow needs new hair but it was still fun. Luckily, this is a once-a-year gig so I don't have to worry about it for another year. I also sang in the stake choir which was about half the size of the usual Denton Stake choir. This was a good group and a good turnout for this stake since it is less than half the size of the Denton Stake. We easily fit into one building for our meetings while Denton's conference was broadcast over the Internet to avoid two sessions.

The strangest thing about having the membership of the church be so small in the Wilkes-Barre area is the almost total lack of impact the members have on the community. Our ward here covers the whole county. In Denton, my ward covered less than a fourth of the city, and a much smaller percentage of the county. In Denton, you would be hard-pressed to find a school teacher who couldn't name several Latter-day Saint students they had taught. And we had many members who were prominent in their fields and in volunteer organizations. Here it's amazing to find a person who actually knows a member of my church. And when you talk about growth, here are the numbers according to the census bureau. Luzerne County, PA in 2000 had 319,000 residents. Their estimate for 2006 is 313,000. That's a two percent loss. Denton County had 432,000 residents in 2000 and the census bureau estimates that the 2006 population was 584,000. That's a 35 percent increase. Just a little hard for me to wrap my mind around some days.

More on voting

First, these pictures are random, but I don't have any voting pictures! The little girl is Gracie whom I got to keep two times a week for a month at the beginning of the semester. Pretty cute. The second is a pipe band at the Civil War encampment at Warrior Run. They were extremely good.

Back to voting. I did get my ballot and will be dropping it off in the mail. There were only six people or things to vote for on my Pennsylvania ballot and one of them was an uncontested candidate. It is true that I'd never voted for a state auditor before. So I had to figure out what that person does. But making choices was amazingly simple compared to Texas.

I looked at the Texas ballot from my old precinct. Twenty-three choices. Granted a few of them were uncontested but there were still a whole lot of choices to make. It's true that Texans have a lot more control over smaller decisions. But a lot of the choices are because judges are elected for short terms. A judge in PA is elected for a ten-year term. This means judges up here can worry more about doing their job than getting re-elected.

I'm not sure which system is best. But at least here in PA, I felt that I could make an informed choice on all the candidates. And no railroad commissioner to vote for! I also looked up my voter registration in Texas. If I had decided to visit my son instead of my daughter this coming week, I could have easily voted in two states as I am still registered in Texas. I realize I would have had to break federal law to do that and that that would be grossly immoral, but you have to wonder if that happens? College students who turned eighteen before they left high school might easily be registered in two places, their hometown and their college town. So could folks who are transferred often because of their jobs. I guess that it's just like any other part of a democracy. You have to depend on most people doing the right thing. I looked all over the Denton County election website to find a way to unregister myself and couldn't find out how to do it. Hm-m-m. Don't you think they should at least describe a way to unregister yourself when you move? I guess I have to write them a letter, but I seriously doubt many people do that.

Am I Dense?

I just don't get this stock market thing. If investors just stopped panicking and selling off their stock, wouldn't things settle down for everybody? What are they going to do with their money? Hide it under the bed? And why would anybody want to sell off their stock when the prices were the lowest they'd been for years? Wouldn't this be a good time to buy stock? I must be dense. Somebody explain this to me please.

Tender mercies

A small but dramatic "tender mercy" happened yesterday. It was really cold here. The coldest day since April, in fact. Although it was in the 40s, we had one of those damp, biting winds that Texans are so familiar with. My red winter coat is really cute but it's not warm in a wind. (A real fault, if you ask me.) I had already decided I needed a good coat for a Pennsylvania winter. So while I was out buying my son-in-law's birthday present, I thought I might look for a better, warmer coat. And I was really hoping for a bargain. Aren't we all trying to be penny pinchers these days? Something prompted me to go to Macy's. Even though I doubted that I would find something cheap this early in the season, I realized that, at the very least, I could see what was available and stylish. Stylish was important to me because I am going to be wearing this coat a lot! I looked around and decided that down was what I needed. They had maybe a hundred down coats on sale for a really good price but a little steep for me so I didn't even try one on. But I particularly admired a coat by Calvin Klein and thought I might come back later. Then I went to my favorite store, Ross. You never know what you're going to find there. And I've walked out of it without buying anything as often as I've bought something there. On the rack in my size was the exact same coat I had admired in Macy's, only forty dollars cheaper. So now I have a beautiful, new down coat that will keep me very warm.

In our church, we talk about "tender mercies" a lot. This phrase is mentioned in the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. We have had it defined to us in a special way. A tender mercy can be something that seems like a coincidence but, in fact, you recognize as a personal message from God. Now forty dollars may seem relatively unimportant to you, and in the large scheme of things, it is unimportant. But the knowledge that I am being watched over and personally protected is worth more than all my earthly possessions.

What? I can't vote?

I woke up at 4:45 this morning with the realization that I will not be in Pennsylvania on election day. There is no early voting in Pennsylvania, and the state only tells you that you "may" be able to vote absentee. You must state your reason for being out of town. No excuses of any kind are allowed if you are present in the county on the day of the election. Your excuse has to be a "duty" of some kind but can include vacation if you are employed. So I'm hoping that the reason I gave for going to Utah will pass muster, otherwise I won't be voting in this election. I mailed off my request for an absentee ballot today. This is way before the deadline, but if they don't get it to me before I leave on the 29th, I've been disenfranchised.

This stinks. But voting as an expat must also stink. I found a number on the Internet which may or may not be accurate: 3.7 million expats (including my daughter and her husband). That's a whole heck of a lot of people, many of whom care very much about their home country and how it's run. And judging from mail service in some countries, I bet a lot of them don't get their ballots in time to return them by the deadline in the US.

I found early in-person voting to be very convenient in Texas, especially as a school teacher. So for today at least, The Keystone State is the Stone Age State. I looked it up. Thirty-four states allow early in-person voting without an excuse. More will allow it with an excuse. Come on Pennsylvanians, get with the rest of the world. Early voting is cool and is the way to go.