Sophie's Story

   In about five hours the Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will begin. Church members from all over the world will gather in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, chapels,houses and sometimes outdoors. They will tune into the conference on televisions, radios, the internet and from satellite feeds coming from the Conference Center. The Conference will be translated into 93 different languages.    At General Conference, Church leaders give talks (could also be called speeches or sermons) on a variety of topics. According to speakers at the Conference, these topics are not assigned. Those asked to speak at the conference fast, pray and seek spiritual guidance from our Heavenly Father on what topic they should choose. The result is a variety of topics at least one of which applies personally.   This is the first time in nearly five years that I am able to watch the Conference. I have been looking forward to it for a long time. Once t

   When I was dating my exboyfriend, he loved to watch the TV show, South Park. It is an adult cartoon show. I once read that the goal of the creators of the show is to offend as many people as possible. The characters are a group of children. In addition to being offensive they use bad language and at the end of every episode one of them, Kenny, gets killed.   My exboyfriend recorded every episode on his VCR. One time when he was visiting me, he brought over a tape for us to watch. I watched it in complete disgust. I was even more disgusted when Kenny died at the end. What sick person thinks that a child dying, even in a cartoon, is funny? I took the tape out of my VCR and told him that while he was perfectly free to watch this garbage in his own home, he will not be watching it in mine.   He didn't understand. It was such a funny show. The writing was genius. How could I possibly not like it? He continued to record episodes. When the show came out as a movie he bought a copy

   The ongoing project of cleaning the storeroom continues. I'm taking a break from sorting through books to go through the boxes of papers that have sat on selves for ten years. I have come to a couple of conclusions which I would like to share with you. They are in no particular order.   I wrote a lot of letters over the years. When did I have time to do this? Most of these letters were written when I first got out of college. My first job was in southern Minnesota at Snyders. It was a busy pharmacy and I worked a lot of hours. It was not uncommon for me to finish my shift, go home, call a local restaurant and order an appetizer platter. I would drive back to work stopping by the restaurant to pick up my food. Then I would work for a couple more hours and eat my meal at work. On the weekends, I would drive back to my parent's house. My grandfather was living with them and I would help them out by taking care of him. After 3 years I transferred to another store and worked

   We are in the process of tackling the mess in the storeroom. I use the word process because it is very clear to us that this is not a weekend project. It's going to take much longer than that to go through every thing and decide what to keep, what can be donated, what should be thrown away and what can be recycled.  Doing things like this is more complicated now. It used to be that you got a big dumpster and everything you didn't want went in it. Now that I'm older and environmentally conscious, I have to sort things.    Most of the stuff is mine accumulated through years of living in one place, then moving and not having time to sort things out before moving. What happens is that everything gets moved. As a result I'm finding things I didn't know I had. I'm not quite sure what to do with this stuff.   I have notebooks from when I was in high school. Yes, high school. That was 30 years ago. I have no idea why I have those notebooks. That decision was eas

   I have a rule when it comes to plays, movies and TV shows. I will not watch anything where someone dies in the end. There are a few exceptions to this rule. If I watch something about  Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, I know there will be a death at the end. That's all right. It's history. I don't have a problem with the bad guy getting killed off in the end, although I feel a twinge of guilt because people who do bad things are not always bad people.   It would probably be more accurate to say that I don't like it when I watch a TV show or a movie, get to really like a character and then that character is ruthlessly killed off. That's not fair.   I first encountered this dislike many years ago when I watched to movie 'Beaches'. At the end of the movie one of the main characters dies at a fairly young age from a heart condition. I was all right when I left the theatre. A few hours later I was sitting with my head down on my desk sobbing uncontrolla

   C and I got rid of our cable TV two months ago. We decided that it simply wasn't worth it to spend the amount of money we were spending on something we weren't using. In addition there simply wasn't much to watch. We got an antenna. I didn't even know they made those for TVs anymore. Then we got a digital box because our TV predates the digital signal switch.   The funny part is that there are a lot more channels than there were before. One of them has old TV shows on. One of them shows movies. There is also a channel that shows police shows and Star Trek. The Star trek episodes are on in the evening. The first show is Next Generation. ( That's the one where Picard is the captain.) After that is Deep Space Nine.   I did watch a little Star Trek  when I was younger. I was acting pharmacy manager for the first time and was looking for a role model. Fortunately Star Trek Voyager was on TV. That is the one with Captain Janeway, who is the first female captain of

   C and I were planning to drive to Stillwater to walk around a bit when his cell phone rang.  Someone needed a ride to the Bishop's Storehouse to pick up some food and other needed items. We quickly changed our plans.    I was a little excited about this turn of events. I had never been to the Storehouse before. There had been opportunities for people to volunteer at the store house, but I was always working when those opportunities came up. C had helped out there several times in the past and once a couple of weeks ago. I was finally going to get to see this place for myself.   I had read about how the Storehouses of today came into being a few years ago. I was interested in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although there were always provisions in place to help those in need, it did not become a standardized program until the time of the Great Depression. At that time church leaders were concerned about members accepting government relief. They