Sunday, October 31, 2010

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I'm grateful for cars, and for warm houses. I'm grateful for family and family fun. I'm grateful that there are now chairs to sit on upstairs (most of that sort of thing's still in the garage from remodeling). I'm grateful for temple marriages and I'm grateful for my ward. I'm grateful for beautiful music.

Friday, October 29, 2010

I'm grateful that I live so close to so many temples. I'm grateful that I can make frequent temple trips. I'm also grateful for bagels.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

I'm grateful for a warm house, socks and that I get to see family tomorrow at my cousin's wedding reception.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Gratitude

Starting now and through the month of November I'm going to be celebrating Thanksgiving by posting about things I'm grateful for. Hopefully I'll do this every day, but we'll see.

I'm grateful for the snow that's outside and so beautiful but I'm also grateful that it's not on the roads. I'm grateful for warm showers and space heaters and the fact that we have indoor plumbing and enough water that we can all shower every day. There are places where that doesn't happen.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

A cool experience

Today I got to sing at the conference center in the choir loft for a regional broadcast that was broadcast to people all over the area. It's been a pretty cool experience, to see the conference center from a different perspective, to sit in the same seats that the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir routinely sit in, and to read the teleprompter while apostles are speaking and to know when they deviate from their writen talks.
The conference was wonderful with a great spirit and so many wonderful talks and insightful messages including talks by Elder Nelson and President Uchtdorf. The choir sang beautifully (I'm not tooting my own horn here, I was only a small part of the choir and not the best part by a long shot). It was a rare experience and I'm grateful to have been a part of it. I'm also grateful that the conference is over, we worked long and hard to sound our best, the songs were beautiful but challenging.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Lately I've been thinking that fall might be my favorite time of year, I don't really know that that's true but I do love fall. The leaves have been turning colors and the world is so beautiful. The mountains are filled with blushing trees alongside those that are ever green. There a hues of yellow, red and orange all against blue skys. Crunching leaves beneath your feet, really, what's not to love?

Monday, October 18, 2010

I had a very culturally enriching weekend this past weekend. I was able to go to two operas and to visit an Islamic Center. I didn't plan for it to be such an opera packed weekend, it just happened.
The first opera I got to see was La Boheme, which is a very famous opera by Puccini. I wasn't sure how much I would like La Boheme because it's a tragedy and I'm not a huge fan of tragedy, however there was a fair amount of comedy in the opera and so I did indeed enjoy it. The music was beautiful and beautifully sung. If you get the chance you should see this opera.

The next event of the weekend was visiting a local Islamic Center. My friend's co-worker invited her to come and have a tour and to be able to talk to the Iman (the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center) and my friend invited me. When we got to the Center I realized that I'd actually been there a few years earlier on a field trip. The building itself isn't exactly what one might think of when they think of an Islamic place of worship (aka a mosque, however I found out that mosque isn't really what it's called but I forget the other name), I think of the grand mosques like Dome of the Rock, etc. which are exquisitely beautiful. The Islamic Center I went to is a more humble building, many of it's patrons are immigrants and refugees, but it is still a lovely building.


It was very interesting as the Iman showed us around the building and told us about his religion, correcting popular assumptions as he went. We were able to observe as members of the community gathered for their prayers and afterwords the Iman and those who were there taught us more about some of the essentials of the Muslim faith. It's really very interesting and intriguing to see how very similar the beliefs of different religions are. Islam is a fascinating and very simple, yet complex religion. If you'd like to learn more about the religion find your local Islamic Center and ask about a tour etc.
The last big event of the weekend was seeing Mozart's The Magic Flute, I've been interested in this opera for a while, I had a brief introduction to it when I first saw the movie Amadeus, years ago. I really enjoyed this opera, if you're new to opera this is a good opera to see, the music is beautiful, the plot intriguing and comical. This opera was a little different from other opera's that I've seen, the music was sung in German and then there was dialogue in English, I enjoyed the opera but all the same I would have preferred language continuity. In a lot of opera's rather than spoken dialogue they have would sing/speak along with piano/harpsichord accompaniment and this was called recitative. German didn't lend itself very well to recitative and so instead they did Singspiel. In singspiel they sang the music and then spoke the dialogue making it a bit like a musical today. The plot of The Magic Flute is very fantastical and also contains a lot of Free Masonry connections which are really cool. I whole heatedly recommend The Magic Flute. PS the queen of the night's aria is insane.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wallpaper

I am here to say that I am not a fan of wall paper. I've spent a lot of time lately scrapping away the old and ugly layers of wall paper pictured in this post. In some ways disposing of old wall paper can be fun, those ways are when the paper comes off in long strips or big chunks; that doesn't happen very often. My whole family are long time watchers of the show This Old House, I've watched this show my whole life, I remember an eppisode lately where they were taking down layers of old and ugly wall paper in a house and the crew that were doing it were preforming wall paper miracle, they made it look so easy, the wallpaper was practically falling off the walls. There's several differences between this eppisode and what the rest of us might meet up with; We're not professionals, nor did we do all the stuff that happened behind the scenes to allow the magic to happen. A life lesson learned I suppose, TV still isn't reality, and I don't think I ever want to have wall paper in any house I might live in, in the future. May you be spared ugly, old wall paper in your remodeling endevors.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Conference

Saturday and Sunday the 180th Semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Durring these two days members world wide gathered to hear the words of our church leaders. It was wonderful to be able to listen to these good men and women and to feel the spirit. I'm so grateful to be a part of this church, for all the blessings it brings in my life and conference is one of those blessings. I've had things that I've been struggeling with, things that I've been pondering, things that aren't working well in my life and so many of these things were addressed in conference. Though others have different struggles, etc. than I do, I know that many others also recieved answers they were seeking or advice they needed.
Last weekend the Relief Society, the women's organization in the church, had it's conference meeting, it was such a wonderful meeting and I came away feeling so uplifted. This was one of the talks that I enjoyed most from that meeting.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Hollywood

I really enjoyed this song and this video by Michael Buble.