I drove down to Salt Lake on Wednesday night so I could be up bright and early to go to Provo for the monthly CTO breakfast. That meant staying the night at Heather’s house … a definite upside to the trip. The guest bedroom is a great benefit as well. The CTO breakfast was another highlight of the trip. Not only were two One Laptop Per Child laptops there, we had a good introduction to Facebook applications. These breakfasts are definitely worth my time.

The next stop was at the Apple store. My Macbook continues to loose contact with it’s keyboard. In fact, it currently is in that state. I’ve plugged in an external keyboard which works when the Macbook keyboard won’t. Why does this problem happen? No one knows. It would not fail for the Genius at the Apple store. No matter what we tried, it worked just like it was supposed to. A definitely downside to the day. On the other hand, this problem has happened only at the house as far as I can remember. Maybe that’s a clue?

Later in the evening I went to the monthly Geek / Blogger dinner. The event was in West Jordon, well to the south of town where the weather was definitely not cooperating. There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground when I got there. My GPS wouldn’t take the address. Turns out that 3655 West is really known to Garmin as Dixie Avenue. Further, the building where the restaurant is located is being remodeled and there is no sign outside. I did arrive on time, though, and I had a delightful time. All in all, except for not getting my Macbook fixed, it was an upper day. I guess, though, that would make it a mixed day….

The Big Storm went south, giving a much-needed boost to the ski economy in Utah. Our daughter Heather reported eight inches overnight in North Salt Lake. Some of my Twitter friends in Utah have reported up to a foot of new snow. Here in Pocatello we only got a very light dusting.

So now I’m at the computer writing this blog entry, drinking a cup of hot chocolate (Stevens Belgium Dark with a shot of vanilla), and munching some banana bread. We’ve been home about 45 minutes and I’ve certainly gotten comfortable! We went to Soda Springs this afternoon with a specific objective in mind: straighten up dad’s workshop. The picture is a “before” picture taken after we had been working in the shop for about a half hour. The first task was to get everything up off the floor (dad simply drops stuff on the floor when he doesn’t need it anymore). We then put a table into the shop with a number of bins for him to put thing in rather than just drop tools on the floor. After a couple of hours, the shop floor was clean. I’ve put some pictures in the picture album.

We had dinner and drove back home to Pocatello.

Tomorrow is a dual-dentist day. I’ve got an appointment at 8 a.m. to put in a new bridge in the top front and a new crown on the top left. That’ll leave a gap on the upper left, so it’s back to the dentist at 4 p.m. to put in a “flipper”. That’s a kind of a partial plate to fill the gap until I have an implant put in and a crown on top of the implant. The implant / crown process takes about six months for all the healing to take place.

The other thing I’ve decided to do is to move my “twittering” to a new blog devoted just to that stream. Putting them into this blog, while interesting, seems to clutter up the blog and mask my “real” posts. So, tomorrow I’ll tell you where to find my tweets in the future.

Late last week I was having some pain in my lower jaw … the kind of pain associated with a tooth problem of some sort. On Monday I called make an appointment with the dentist to find that I would have to wait until Thursday morning. The dentist wasn’t going to be in on Tuesday and I wasn’t going to be available on Wednesday (more on that below). So, this morning bright and early I was at the dentist office while he poked around in my mouth. He discovered a cavity in the lower right far back tooth that would be “awkward” (his specific word) but he hoped he could fill it without having to take out the bridge that the tooth anchored. So, I got an injection of anesthetic and waited for a few minutes. My tongue was getting numb, but the tooth wasn’t. Four more times he put anesthetic in to deaden the tooth. It didn’t work. My tongue went completely numb. The back of my throat got numb. The area underneath my tongue got numb, but the culprit tooth and the one in front if it holding up the other side of the bridge were not numb. The dentist said he really couldn’t put in any more anesthetic … that four was his usual limit and he had already injected me five times. No choice but to reschedule. So I’ll go back on the 31st for another try and will be living on Ibuprofen until then. I asked him, “What are you going to do different on the 31st to have a better outcome?” He said he’d have to do a little research because obviously the nerve he was aiming for wasn’t where it was supposed to be. “How are you going to find the nerve?” He didn’t know, yet. He was going to talk to some other dentists. I’m supposed to be comforted by that….

Five injections of anesthetic were definitely enough. I felt pretty lousy the rest of the morning and finally went back to bed for an hour to clear up my head. Next Tuesday I go in to have a bridge in the front of my mouth replaced and crown put on another tooth. But, all the fussing in my mouth this morning loosened up the temporary cement job on the current bridge in the front of my mouth and I was back in the dentist office at 5:45 p.m. this evening getting the bridge cemented temporarily back in. I feel like I’ve been living in the dentist office and they all now call me by my first name like we’re family or something.

Yesterday we took mother and dad to Logan for a Temple session. It was a crisp, cold, clear day … never getting out of the mid-teens the entire day. We had a good session and did some shopping at Sams Club and Lowes before heading home. I put three pictures from the day in my photo gallery (go to the photo album and click on “gallery” on the top of the right side column).

We left the house at 6:20 a.m. and got back right at 5:00 p.m. after a full day, which included uprighting dad’s air compressor in the shop once more. He’s trying to fix the plumbing and needs to have the compressor on the side to get at where the copper tubing has to be soldered. But, it’s too heavy for him to lift back up to test whether or not the plumbing is sealed. But it was also for naught. One of the joints is leaking. He’s having as much problem with the air compressor as I am with my teeth! But, I can also blame his genes … dad had all of his teeth removed when I was in first grade because he was having so much problem with them.

Yesterday was a day of being rescued by my wife. It started in the morning when I needed a book for a talk in Church the next day. I couldn’t find it so I asked her if we had the book. We did and she retrieved it from the bookcase from the shelf it was supposed to be on. I’m sure that I had looked there two or three times. That led me to sign up for LibraryThing and start entering our collection of books. So far that capability has worked pretty well.

As the Stake Sunday School President, each month I speak in a different Ward in the Stake as the companion to the scheduled High Counselor speaker. That usually happens on the third Sunday of the month, except this month the third Sunday is Stake Conference. I also teach the High Priest Group in our Ward on the second Sunday of each month. So that meant I was scheduled to teach in one Ward and talk in a different Ward. In my brain I had it figured out … Priesthood Meeting would be from 9 to 9:50 in our Ward, and Sacrament Meeting started at 10:50 in the other Ward. However, I had forgotten that our new meeting schedule for this year has Sacrament Meeting first … which meant that both activities I was scheduled for would be happening at the same time. Nina, however, had not forgotten. She asked me how I was going to do both things. I explained my logic … and got rescued once again when she reminded me of the new meeting schedule. I found a substitute to teach my class and stopped doing the lesson preparation.

Later that day, I saw the postman drive by without stopping to put mail in our mailbox. That is rather unusual since we always get mail (usually junk mail or bills). I told Nina that we didn’t have any mail and she was surprised. When I went out to do some errands, for some reason I stopped at the mailbox and it was full of mail! I don’t know when it came. The postal vehicle I saw must not have been our postwoman!

We have the Dish Network satellite system here … four satellite boxes feeding four TV’s (to be watched by two people … and we actually have six TVs in the house). One of the satellite boxes is a DVR (Digital Video Recorder). Nina records a lot of stuff on the DVR. The software on the DVR was recently updated, however, and it works differently. Nina had set it up to record Monk and the new software took that to mean to record every Monk episode that came on, including the myriad of reruns and repeats. I decided to DVR a new series that starts tonight The Sarah Conner Chronicles. That way I can check it out on my schedule and decide whether or not I’ll watch future episodes. In order to do that, I had to override a Monk that was being recorded at the same time. When I explained this to Nina, she said that I needed to get my own DVR … it would be a problem if I started recording stuff on her system! We had a good laugh.

But, it brings to mind an interesting point. When we only had a VCR, if something was to be recorded, I always had to set it up. It was simply a complicated procedure that Nina didn’t want to have to learn. And it was a fairly complicated process (I wonder what the VCR would have been like if Apple had designed it?). The DVR, however, is not complicated. Nina has no problem setting something up to be recorded, has claimed the machine as her own, and the hundred hours of video she can record can be easily consumed. Maybe I do need my own DVR!

Several lines of furious thunderstorms are making their way from Alabama into Missouri and on up into Illinois spawning tornadoes on their way. About 5:30 this afternoon sirens started sounding outside. I was wondering where the fire was since so many sirens were sounding. LeeAnn came into the living room to tell us that tornado warnings had been put up for this area and that twisters had been sighted. That was what the sirens were all about! Since then the sirens have sounded several more times. We’ve had some very big winds, lots of lightning, and some very heavy rains — all of the kinds of weather that reinforces my desire not to live here!

It’s been a fun day. I took the three grandkids this morning to the car wash to get some of the grime off the car before we leave tomorrow morning for the two-day trip back home. They had a grand time, particularly little Shaundra. When she pulled the trigger on the wand for the pressure wash, she certainly wasn’t expecting the force of the water pressure which just about knocked her down! The car looks much better and is ready for the next coating of salt and grime. The weather looks fairly reasonable for the trip home. We’ll probably be able to dodge most of the bad weather.

Once Ohio State is able to pull this football game out, we’ll finish the packing for tonight. We’ll load the car in the morning and hopefully be able to leave about 7 a.m. or so … provided no tornadoes actually come around!