Today was another visit to the dentist’s chair. Actually, a bit beyond dentist as I was at the periodontist to have a “crown lengthening” done. I’m in the middle of a lengthly set of dental work being done to replace a long bridge in the upper left front of my mouth.

The dentist Dr. Akers (who hasn’t thought very much about a web presence, it seems) said as I got settled in the fairly uncomfortable chair, “This will be the easiest thing I’ve done in the past couple of days.” In the next breath he had his assistant call in an order for Vicodin to the pharmacy for me to pick up when he was finished. His assistant hooked up the nitrous oxide and off I went into la la land. Even though I know that the bones amplify the sounds going on in my mouth, it sure sounded like he was doing major work around #13 tooth. A couple of times he stopped and said that this was turning out to be a bit more complicated than he had originally thought.

After more than an hour in the chair, everything for this visit was completed. Dr. Akers then wrote out an prescription for Percocet! Vicodin wasn’t going to be enough, I guess. He told me to take a Percocet along with 800 mg of Ibuprofin when I got home and to repeat it when I went to bed, but not before 10 p.m. So, I’m on drugs tonight. Feeling no pain. In fact not feeling much of anything except that I’m a bit loopy.

We did get some snow yesterday but mostly we got COLD. Last night we went well below zero and the high today at the airport was 17 degrees. It’s going to be cold the rest of the week, but no more snow forecast for the next week. The snowblower got a small workout this morning. It’s working well. Now we just need enough snow for me to need it!

While were at the Messiah Sing this evening, a light dusting of snow came through. The radar map shows a cold front headed our way and the forecast says the high for the week will be 26 degrees — on Friday.  This will be a good week for staying inside, thinketh me.

This was a pretty busy Sunday. I teach the Priesthood lesson on the 2nd Sunday of the month, which was today, so I spent much of the morning preparing the lesson. Church services were from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. after which I had choir practice (and we definitely need the practice, don’t we Sister Christensen?). Nina came back down to the chapel at 4:40 p.m. so we could do tithing settlement. As Jim says, “All’s well in the kingdom.” After dinner at home we went over to the east side of town for the 23rd annual Messiah Sing. We got there early enough to sit near the front of the chapel and were soon joined by some neighbor friends. The orchestra did very well, the soloists were delightful (particularly one soprano and the bass), and the chorus was, of course, outstanding. At least the bass section was outstanding! By the end, though, I didn’t have much of a singing voice left and I’ve got a couple of those pieces rattling around in my head. There are lots worse things to go to bed with in my head, that’s for sure.

Music, cold, and possible snow. It’s definitely the season!

December is definitely the month for concerts. We went to two of them this week. Wednesday evening was the Idaho State Symphony and tonight was the Camerata Singers. Both of there were excellent concerts. Of course, the fabulous Jensen Grand Concert Hall definitely helps!

The Symphony featured a guest trumpeter, Ryan Anthony who is an incredible talent. He was with the Canadian Brass for a number of years and is now concertizing on his own.

Tonight’s concert featured the ninety-voice Camerata Singers. The first half of the program was fairly modern choir music including a set of Psalms composed by Leonard Bernstein and sung in Hebrew. John Jemmett, who worked for me at my last job (and is still working there as far as I know), had a solo part in the concert. He has a nice voice and it was fun to hear him “fill the hall” with his voice. The second half of the program included a number of Christmas carols and the audience singing along with four of them. Very delightful.

Christmas can come now. I’m getting into the spirit!

When I got up this morning we had about an inch of snow on the ground that had fallen overnight. About 11:30 I went out to get the paper and took this picture. It was still kinda snowing … that is occasional flakes were coming down. But the snow was melting faster than it was coming down. By late afternoon nothing was left. However, it was some much-needed moisture.

The national weather forecast says we should get four inches of snow or more overnight tonight. It’s 10 p.m. and so far, no other flakes have fallen. It’s going to need to really start snowing to meet that forecast. However, we’ve a number of errands to run tomorrow so having nice roads will be a bonus. It’s just that we really need the snow!

We put up the Christmas tree after dragging a number of boxes up from the storage room. We’ll only put up one tree since (1) there will be no one coming by to see and (2) the second tree would require moving Nina’s desk and where would we put that? After getting the tree set up and the lights on, it was very clear that we had many more lights at the bottom of the tree than at the top. So, Nina started putting on another strand of lights. She got them on the tree, plugged them in, and and about half of that new strand promptly stopped working. Off came the strand and we’ll have a tree with more light at the bottom than at the top. But, I can say that it is beginning to look like it’ll look a lot loke Christmas around here!

Merry Christmas! I needed to go to Idaho Falls to my office there today. Nina wanted to go to Idaho Falls a do a couple of sessions at the Temple today. So, we met each other for the 11 a.m. session, had lunch together afterwards, and then she headed back to Pocatello and I went into the office to sign Christmas cards and meet with some of the people there.

On the way home I stopped at Barnes and Noble to see if they had a book I wanted (they did … and two others besides). Because of the season, I wore one of my Christmas ties and put on my Christmas Elf hat. That resulted in some fun at Barnes and Noble. I made a Seesmic video blog about it: http://seesmic.com/DScxRDS8f1 so I could preserve it for posterity. ‘Tis the Season To Be Jolly!

The “new thing” on the Internet is sometimes called Web 2.0 and generally called “social networks”. So I decided to make a list of the social networks where I have an account:

• Twitter (rolandksmith)
• Facebook (rolandksmith)
• Second Life (Roland Schism)
• Skype (rsmithwork)
• AOL (rksmithlisi)
• Yahoo (rolandksmith)
• Seesmic (rolandksmith)
• Flickr (rolandksmith)

There might be more! I’ll have to write about what I use each of these services for. Some are more useful than others … but that always seems to be the case … particularly when I’m trying to be social!

I had some things to do in the Salt Lake area on Thursday starting with a morning meeting at 8 a.m. in Provo. So I drove down to Heather’s on Wednesday evening. Shortly before I left to drive down, Heather sent me a text message that Kendra was  going to be there as well. Kendra’s family was vacationing in Park City, so Heather drove up to Park City on Wednesday and picked her up for the evening. It was fun to visit with her for a few minutes after they got back from the movies. I tried to record a Seesmic video, but the first attempt failed for some reason. So I tried it again and did get a short video this time. Kendra and Michael seem to be very kindred spirits!

The first event on Thursday was the monthly CTO breakfast set up by Phil Windley. That was a very interesting discussion and I learned some things as well. That afternoon I took my Macbook to the Apple store in Salt Lake City to get it fixed. I had two problems. First, the keyboard would stop working at random intervals requiring a reboot. The trackpad would also not work, but the external mouse worked just fine. Secondly, the faceplate around the keyboard was quite discolored from the oils on my palms. This was a general problem with a batch of white Macbooks and Apple was replacing the faceplates as part of the warranty.

So, I made an appointment for the Genius Bar, showed him the faceplate, and explained the problem. He told me that I would have to leave the Macbook and it’d be fixed in five to seven days. That certainly wasn’t going to fly! With a little more discussion, he went to the backroom and determined that the would be able to fix the computer that day and it would be finished before 9 p.m. when the store closed. I thought that was reasonable and left my computer.

There was also scheduled a blogger / geek get-together at 6 p.m. down at the SouthTowne Mall, so I decided I could go there while waiting for my computer to get fixed. There were about 15 people there, a couple that I had met at other CTO Breakfasts. It was also an interesting conversation at a small Chinese restaurant while munching on good old Chinese food. Just the stuff for geeks!

I got back to the Apple store about 8:30 p.m. A few minutes later they gave me my repaired computer. So far no further problems with the keyboard! Way to deliver, Apple!!