Sophie's Story

Every year C and I make up a list of things we want to do or buy in the coming year. I'm talking about big purchases or major projects that will need a lot of time or money. We each spend several weeks thinking about what we would like to do. Then we get together and make a master list. Once our tax refund money comes back we look at how much we have and prioritize the list. We figure out how much these things will cost and budget accordingly. It has worked out very well for us. Sometimes things come up. For instance, last year we had intended to replace the furnace and air conditioner and were going to do so at the end of the summer. The air conditioner broke down during a heat wave and forced us to revise our plans a bit. This is my wish list of things to buy/do this year. I want to replace the picture window in the living room. In the winter the living room gets pretty cold. I suspect it is because the picture window is not a very good one. It was good when it was put in about 3...

It's all Jimmer's fault. I had my brackets all set up. I had picked the majority of the first round correctly. The ones I missed turned out to be close games so I wasn't worried. My bracket was still intact. Then BYU played Gonzaga and beat them. That's when things started to fall apart. My intact bracket was gone. Half of the teams I'd picked to go into the Sweet 16 were packing up their gear and going home. I blame Jimmer. If you haven't heard of Jimmer Fredette or the BYU Cougars you must have had your ears plugged or been in a coma for the last few months. Fredette has put up some amazing numbers for the Cougars this season and the team got into the NCAA tournament. This was pleasant news to Cougar fans. Many people didn't think that BYU would go far into the tournament due to the loss of Brandon Davies for an honor code violation. The team has pulled together. They beat Wofford to get to the next round and then beat Gonzaga another team on a...

There is a new member in our family of instruments. She is a Celtic lap harp. She has 22 strings,a lovely carved sound post and inlay work on the rest of the instrument. Made of some kind of dark finished wood, she stands about three feet tall and is about 17 years old. I have chosen to name her Margaret after one of my grandmothers and after an ancestor of the man who sold it to me. You probably think it strange to name an inanimate object, but it is something that C and I do sometimes. C's bike is "Blue Ryder" and my car is "Blueberry on Steroids" or "the Bug". Even if something doesn't have a name, C and I usually use a gender based pronoun when referring to things. I think this has to do with the fact that both of us have studied foreign languages where all nouns have a gender. We especially tend to refer to our instruments this way. All of them have some sort of name usually the name of the company that made the instrument. The twelve st...

My friend, Kent, has a job that requires him to travel a lot. I don't know all the places he goes, but it seems like it is mostly Florida, South Carolina,a few places on the east coast and the occasional jaunt to Switzerland. All nice places to visit. He and I have been "discussing" the upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball tournament via email. He is in Florida right now and ended one of his messages with a weather report followed by "Jealous?" I'm sure he was expecting me to say yes. It is March. March is not always Minnesota's best month. Daylight Savings Time give us a bit more light, but it can still be cold and snowstorms are still a possibility. Heck we have had snow in April and I think even in May. When it is 75-80 degrees out, the logical answer would be yes. I thought about it for a minute. I have been to Sarasota in November so I know that Florida is a nice place. Was I jealous? I looked outside the window. The sun was shining. The sky ...

Stake Conference was this past weekend. This is one of the semiannual meetings that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints attend. Stake Conference is when members gather to listen to talks from local church leaders as well as talks from General Authorities and Auxiliaries (those who lead the Church as a whole). There is always one talk that sticks in my head. The talk that stuck in my head this time was by Mary N. Cook. She is one of the three women who leads the Young Women's programs in the Church. I was hoping to find a copy of her talk to refer to as I write this. I couldn't find one so I am going from memory. I did find her biography and I see that we have something in common. Like me, she is a stepmother and also a step-grandmother. The talk she gave was on honesty, one of the several virtues that young men and women in the Church are taught. I was looking forward to this. I am very serious about honesty. Maybe too serious. Honesty, to me,...

It was time. We needed to start cleaning out the spare bedroom. I had big plans for putting in a bed or futon of some sort so people visiting us would have a place to sleep. Instead we have used it as a room for sick cats to sleep, a place to store books and musical instruments and as a sort of office for C. There's a file cabinet,a bookshelf piled with books,a plastic bag filled with Beanie Babies, a large cardboard box filled with books,catalogs and other stuff and a wicker hamper filled with stuffed animals. There's also three guitars and my viola. There are magazines and papers stacked on the floor and on the built in desk. I forgot to mention the cat tree in the corner. We keep the door shut most of the time. It's not a pretty sight. I was starting to get tired or the disorganization. I would go in there to try to find a book and spend 20 minutes digging around the piles. I was tired of having to walk around things and hoping I wouldn't trip over something a...

Those of you who read this on a regular basis know that I like sports. I don't like playing them, I'm not athletic enough, but I do like to watch. This also extends to sports movies. Although I am also not a big movie fan, unlike the rest of the family, I do enjoy movies about sporting teams and events. I have my favourites "Bull Durham" and "Hoosiers". To this line up I've have recently added "Secretariat" and "The Blind Side". My goal is to find a movie for each sport I like to watch. I have football,baseball,basketball and horse racing movies. All I need is a hockey movie and my collection will be complete. Last week my tech, Santiago, suggested another one for me to watch. Santiago and I have spent many a shift talking about football and basketball. He's very patient with me as I don't really watch basketball that much. He prefers to follow the pro teams, while I tend towards the college teams. The movie is "...