Stake Conference, The Big Cactus and Job Hazzards

There are still things about living in Utah that we find odd or at least different. I know those of you who are Utah natives may think me strange for finding this funny, but I just had to snap a drive by picture of this sign. It has been sitting in our church building's lawn facing a major road all week leading up to stake conference this weekend. Is that funny to anyone else? I've just never seen that before! They had similar signs in front of other buildings in our stake as well.

Anyway, so obviously we had stake conference this weekend and it was great! We had visiting apostle Elder Craig C. Christensen of the 70, Jordan River Temple President Crump and his wife, as well as the mission president of the mission here and wife. We kicked things off Saturday evening at the adult session which was probably my fav. The best was a quote by sis. Crump. "In this chapter, Jesus was admonistering His diciples to..." I love it when 2 words become one! Then I was able to attend an early morning stake youth session Sunday where I found out that an 18 year old young man in our ward had committed suicide the day before. The youth were visibly shaken up by it. What a tragedy! My heart goes out to his family and friends. That is probably one of the most difficult things in the world to deal with. We're going to have a special mutual this Wed. to talk to the kids about it, kinda like a group therapy session. I hope it helps.

Speaking of tragedies, how 'bout them Suns? We have now fallen to 7th place in the West and are a mere 3 games from getting knocked out of the playoffs altogether. Anyone who is still riding the "the big cactus was a GREAT trade" bandwagon can see me personally for counseling. We're witnessing our season, our team, and our fun to watch games go down the tubes. I couldn't be more heartbroken to watch it happen. I will ALWAYS cheer for my boys in purple, but it does NOT look pretty folks! The season isn't over yet, so I'll hold my "told you so" until it is, but for the record, I NEVER thought this was a good thing for our team, even after the Lakers game. And Nedra, this is not just pessimism talking. :)

This week is going to be a really tough week at work for me. Due to some problems with funding, some of our key players are going to be locked out of the lab for 4-6 weeks starting today while the issues are sorted out. Meanwhile, I have been elected to learn all their processes so we can keep the work going. Many of these involve yet more fun chemicals and acids that I'm not particularly thrilled to be using. Layne was less than pleased with that news last night as we were going to bed. However, I did a little research this morning and found out that there are a lot of jobs that are more hazardous than mine. Take being a runway model for example. In order to be at the top you have to starve yourself, never sleep (to achieve that pale faced, baggy eyed look), not to mention the risks associated with traversing the catwalk in some of the most heinous and impractical shoes ever conceptualized by the human mind. I found a lot of funny videos of runway models meeting with accidents, but this was one of my favs because of the (Southern) news anchors. So Layne, don't worry about me, at least I get to wear sneakers to work. The rest will sort itself out!