A Cozy Catch-Up

As Harry Potter’s friends come to spirit him away from danger, Mad-Eye Moody tells them, “All right, all right, we’ll have time for a cozy catch-up later!” Mad-Eye ends up dead not long after and never has time for that chat. Which is really sad and brings to mind the old axiom, “Never put off until tomorrow that which can be done today”. While I don’t plan on dying anytime soon, I notice that I’ve been extremely derelict in my blogging duties lately, and perhaps it’s time for a cozy catch-up.

It’s been a month since the end of the Utah Legislative Session, that marathon of policy-making that lasts 45 calendar days and seems to last twice as long. My word for the year is balance and the first quarter of the year is always my most unbalanced portion of the year.  Not that I am unbalanced, as in crazy, although that’s been known to happen during session, but unbalanced in that it’s all I really do for that time period.  All in all, it was a difficult session as public education took a real beating and there was a fair amount of unpleasantness.  On the other hand, this was the first session in several years where I didn’t experience a lawmaker yelling or screaming in my face.  I’m not sure if that’s a sign of my effectiveness or non-effectiveness, but it was certainly more pleasant for me.  I tweet a lot and live-tweet meetings, and mostly I avoided twitter wars, which are really tempting.  The fallout from some controversial legislation has allowed us political junkies to already experience a special session and numerous extra public meetings to discuss open and transparent government which has been fun and entertaining.  It looks there will be a veto override session soon so it just goes on and on.

Now to my gardening news-feel free to skip this paragraph.  I have started seeds in shifts because I only have so much shelf room in the furnace room.  We have all the available space rigged with shelves and lights, but I can only start so many flats at first because when it’s time to transplant them into 4″ pots, they take up more room.  I transplanted some more yesterday and all my shelves are now full.  Soon it will be warm enough at night, (I hope), to start moving some out to the shelves and lights in the garage, freeing up more shelf space in the basement.  Oooh, I love to see my babies getting bigger and bigger!  It’s so fun to start from seed!  We’ve had nice days when I’ve been in Salt Lake City for meetings and rain or snow when I’ve been home so I haven’t been able to get going on the flower beds outside, but there are lots of early daffodils up and many mid-spring daffodils ready to bloom soon.

I signed up for a quilting class at my local quilt shop next week and am excited to learn some new techniques.  It was advertised as perfect for a confident beginner, so I’m ready to roll.  I’m still crocheting baby blankets and burp cloths and reading as much as I can.

Scott got a promotion at work and is now up a level and managing lots more people.  It just happened so he’s still trying to get it all figured out.  Mark has finals at BYU this week and then a break for a few days and it’s on to spring term.  He is a student manager in the Missionary Training Center media department and directs the Sunday and Tuesday night meetings, as well as training new hires on the equipment.

Brian is still on his mission in California and is currently in San Clemente.  He is struggling with mono and has been sick for over a month now.  He seems to be improving some but has been restricted in his activities for the last couple weeks and things are still touch and go with his future there.  It’s been really hard for the three of us here to worry and not know all the details, but we keep fasting and praying that he’ll improve and can finish out his mission.

So that’s the news.  Thanks for catching up with me!