Seize the week

Several interesting things happened this week. And when I say "interesting," I don't actually mean interesting, but rather new things that I can write about.

We had snow on Friday, which satisfied my need for an April snowstorm. We had like two inches but there was almost no trace of it by the afternoon. I'm still hoping for a year when I see it snow in nine out of twelve months. It always snows in April. May is hit and miss.

With the snow on the mountains this week, I looked out at the Oquirrh range from the windows by my cubicle and saw a prominent cirque I hadn't noticed before--evidence of past glaciation. And North Salt Lake has signs out advertising a city Arbor Day event on May 7, and I thought, "No, no, no, Arbor Day is on April 29!" I'm such a nerd. Or a hippie. One of the two.

The Church Historian's Press this week published online the Journal of George Q. Cannon, and most of the press releases focused on his 1862 meeting with Abraham Lincoln. I was really excited for this, because I have done just a little bit of research on that meeting, but I didn't have the details he provided. So that was nice to have.

All my college French paid off this week, as I was able to determine that an individual had been born in Québec in 1796 instead of 1780. French doesn't have a word for ninety, so ninety-six is literally "four twenty sixteen," and some less attentive person had not noticed the "sixteen" part. You can't forget the seize!

On Saturday I had to give a presentation at a "Family Discovery Day" in Centerville. It was OK; I don't think I was very prepared. But it was a bit of a hard topic. They wanted me to talk about how missionaries are expected to teach investigators and members to do family history. Which is false. They are not expected to do that. I don't have any experience using family history work as a missionary--but I wish I did, because teaching people about family history would have been more productive and beneficial than most of the things we were doing out there. Preach My Gospel has two full pages on using family history to find people, and I never used it, but I wish I had.

Due to preparing for this event, as well as stake conference, I broke some of my New Year's resolutions this week. I resolved to clean at least a little every day, but I missed Friday. And I resolved to lift weights every week (because it's something I hate doing), but I didn't this week. I didn't even go running. It was either go running (on streets because the trails would have probably been muddy) or make spinach-pear soup. I made the spinach soup.

See? I told you it wasn't actually interesting.