Government Shutdown

Today was the deadline for congress to pass a budget and avoid a government shutdown. They didn't manage to come to an agreement, so shutdown it is. The senate is currently controlled by the Democrats, and the House is controlled by the Republicans. The house approved budgets that had stipulations about obamacare - either that it would be delayed by a year, or that the medical equipment tax would be removed from the plan. The senate is not willing to change obamacare at all, and so they are at an impasse. The last time a budget was not passed on time was in 2011, but it was passed within a day of the deadline and so there was no real government shutdown. Prior to that, it happened in 1995, and the government shutdown lasted for 21 days. I think that "government shutdown" isn't really an appropriate term, since all "essential personnel" will still be working. Essential personnel are most of the employees of the federal government. The National Parks will be closed, passport offices and permit stuff will come to a stop or at least a slowdown. The change of most impact immediately is probably the fact that military personnel won't (or may not? I'm not entirely sure) get paid. That bites for those families.

Hairpin Lace

Today I learned how to link two strands of hairpin lace to make a scarf.

Relief Society General Broadcast

Today I went to a Relief Society activity. They did a few crafts, which I did not participate in since I don't need more random crap in my house. Instead I re-learned how to do hairpin lace to make a scarf for Christmas for a friend. After the crafts, they had a dinner. I learned that chicken salad made with cream cheese is pretty darn good. The talks were good. In brief, we should keep our covenants, go to the temple, and pray.

Shipping

Today I learned that it costs over NINE dollars to mail something to Canada. That's absurd! It means that I basically sold a pair of rather nice legwarmers for 10 bucks. That customer got a serious steal of a deal!

Birth Control

Today at book club someone (a doctor) was saying that women in Europe don't have periods when they're on birth control and that there is no medical reason why a woman needs to have a period, contrary to popular belief in the United States. I thought it was interesting and is something I should maybe look up one day.

Knights

Today I learned that a knight is powerful when it has a secure, protected post in the middle of the board. If a pawn can challenge the knight's position, it is not a secure post. Find a good spot for the knight!

Basketball

Today I learned that I usually do a decent job defending against Kristi when she's posting up, because I don't get too close to her so she can't easily pivot around me.

Tires

Today I learned that it bugs me a lot when I am waiting in a lobby with two small children waiting for new tires to be put on my car and I see three employees standing in the garage nearish to my car chatting instead of working. Luckily the kids were pretty well behaved for the hour I was there.

Elder Hinckley

Today I was reading more of the biography of Gordon B. Hinckley. He served over the South American mission for only two years when he was assigned instead to the European mission. He served on an absurd number of committees and boards of directors, and went through two reorganization s of the first presidency in relatively short succession. He visited the holy land with president Harold b. lee, who was the first president of the church to go there during this dispensation. There were also a few good quotes about families and raising children. One of them compared children to a tree. It is easy to correct the growth of a tree when it is young and supple, but if neglected in its youth, it will take more serious measures at will undoubtedly leave scars. (A friend for every child, improvement era).

Crater Lake

Today I learned that Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet (I think). I may have known that already, but it's all good. We drove up to see the lake with my Sister and her family. Unfortunately, the tires on my car are bald bald bald and the ranger lady said that it was snowing up on the rim, so I decided to take Henry and go home, but Adam piled into Heather and Thomas's van and went out to the rim. It was super foggy so they couldn't see the lake, and it was freezing. Thankfully, the fog cleared for a few minutes so they could get one good view.

I also learned that there are spiky things along the lava flow area that are fossilized steam. When steam escaped through the earth after the lava flow through fumaroles, it hardened and fossilized along the path that the steam traveled through the ground. As the ground eroded, the fossilized steam remained as cool looking spires.

Heather

Today I learned that my sister and her family are not very good at getting out of the house in the morning. They drove down to visit us today and didn't end up leaving their house until noon, getting in here at about 9pm.

Vomit

Today I learned that it is difficult to get anything else done when you have a vomiting 10-month-old in the house. Also, ham chunks can last in a baby's belly for quite a while.

Mispronunciations

Today I learned that Adam pronounces Tillamook "Till-a-moooooook", my sister pronounces it "Till-a-muck", and I pronounce it Tillamook, like it's supposed to be said.

I also learned that it takes me about 40 minutes to walk/jog 3 miles. Some friends want me to do a 5k in just over a month. I think I could probably do it, so long as my knees hold up. I don't know why but it's so much harder to muster the will power to keep running than it is to keep rowing.

Posting Up and Layups

Today after basketball I had Cathy Peterson stay behind and give me a quickie basketball lesson. I kinda get the basics of posting up and layups but never really try to do them. She was having me post up on the hoop side to get passes up over the head of the defender and get an easy shot. I really want to be able to post up on the other side and turn and shoot but I just can't do it. As far as layups go, I was almost starting to get the hang of it. I made like five in a row and then I had Cathy halfway guard me (like two feet away, not anywhere near close enough to actually get the ball), and I missed every time. D'oh.

Birds

Today I learned that birds are kinda creepy. We went to Lake Ewauna to feed the birds after I was done rowing and they were seriously swarming all around us. We steered clear of the geese, because they're always mean and way too big, and went to feed the ducks. The ducks were pretty bold but the worst were these other birds. I think they might be a type of gull but they looked like they had really sharp beaks. A few of them got kicked for getting too close. I now agree that "The Birds" might be a scary movie.

Teaching

Today I learned that I can teach a decent relief society lesson on short notice. I was asked a week ago to teach and then forgot all about it until we pulled into the church. Thankfully I had time during the first two meetings to prepare a little bit, and our RS ladies are good at contributing to the discussion.

Communication

I learned that Adam is very bad at talking with English-speaking Asians. He can never understand what they say. He'll have to work on that if we're going to live in the NW.

Colonel Gilliam

Today I learned that Colonel Gilliam died during the Cayuse War when a harness or lead rope caught on the trigger of a pistol and caused him to get shot and die.

Chess

Today I learned that, if I manage to get a material advantage in chess, I need to consolidate my position rather than attacking.

Colonel Cornelius Gilliam

Colonel Gilliam served in both the Black Hawk and Seminole Indian wars on the East Coast, was a captain of State Militia of Missouri when they tried to expel the Mormons from the state, and then went on to fight the Cayuse war (and maybe more, I don't know yet) in Oregon territory. He was super anti-any-religion-except-his-own and was prepared to blame the Catholics for the Indian war, and even to go up against the Hudson's Bay Company, even though only one of their main leaders was Catholic.

Henry, Basketball, and Adam

Today I learned that Henry is much cuter after he has a bath, and that I don't like it when lots of people show up to basketball because it's too crowded. I also learned that Adam can, on occasion, get up before 6am.

Vegans

Today I watched a documentary called Vegucated. It was about three people in new york who went on a vegan diet for six weeks and also were given some educational information about the meat and dairy industries and health impacts associated with veganism. I learned that vegans, as well as not eating any animal products, do not use any animal products, including wool and silk and leather. It's renewing my desire to start cutting out some of our meat, but I just don't know very many vegetarian meals that are filling and delicious. Gotta work on that.

President Hinckley

Today I learned that President Hinckley was assigned, I'm 1970 something, to oversee the work in South America, and was thus released from his duties to oversee the work in Asia. He will have the whole world covered before too long at this rate.

Lava Beds National Monument

Today we went to the fair in Tulelake, CA and then visited Lava Beds National Monument. I learned that Medicine Lake Shield Volcano is as tall as Mt St Helens but so broad and flat that you hardly notice that it's a mountain, let alone a volcano. There are multiple sites in the area that have erupted in the past and the lava beds are a bunch of lava tubes and caves that were formed when lava ran down the land. As it started to cool, the top formed a crust while the inside was still molten lava. When the eruption ceased, the lava slowly drained out, leaving a hollow tube with neat looking drippy hardened lava icicles and things. There are something like 600 caves at lava beds though only, I think, 22 are developed. We went in Mushpot, a very easy and short cave with some informational signs about the lava tubes, Valentine, which was pretty challenging to do while carrying Henry because of the low ceilings so we didn't go all the way, and Scull Cave, which was really neat because it has a huge high cavernous opening at the entrance and it's very steep and goes all the way down to an ice floor. They used to let people walk on the ice and go all the way into scull cave but it's gotten so much dirt and stuff that it's messed with the clarity and quality of the ice so they blocked it off. Scull cave was named because they pulled out a whole bunch of bones from the bottom of it, and it was important as one of only a few reliable water sources in the area. There is no river coming into it or anything. The ice forms when cold winter air gets trapped in the bottom of the cave and condenses, then freezes. Pretty neat. There are some places where the lava tubes have multiple levels, either because a second lava flow ran on top of a previous tube, or because a second crust formed partway through the cooling process. It's neat to go through the caves in part because we're so used to walking around on dirt floors and this is all rock rock and more rock. You definitely need knee pads and gloves if you do some of the harder caves. I think it would be nice to come back to lava beds sometime with a group of adults and do some of the slightly more challenging caves, though I'm not sure if I'd be up for some of the really serious ones (12-inch high ceiling? So complex you can easily get lost? I dunno about that...).

Baseball, Scripture Mastery, and Rowing

Today I learned that Jackie Robinson was the first black man to play major league baseball. I vaguely knew that he was a baseball player but I didn't realize that he was the first. His number, 42, was also the only number retired from all of baseball. Once a year, everyone wears 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. His wife, Rachel, runs a foundation that provides scholarships. I learned all this from the movie 42.

I also learned that the LDS church changed their scripture mastery selections. For the most part, I think this is a good thing, but it's frustrating since I was almost done with all of the new testament scripture masteries and now will have a bunch of new ones to learn. I suppose I should be glad that one of the ones they replaced was the one I didn't have memorized yet. I hope they update the scripture mastery app soon since that's what I've been using to learn them. Maybe I'll switch to the articles of faith in the meantime.

I also finished reading The Boys in the Boat. Despite their stroke seat being ill to the point of having lost almost 20 pounds and nearly passing out while rowing, and despite the fact that the US team had the best qualifying time (breaking an Olympic record and a course record), they were given the worst lane assignment, which put them in a position that was estimated to be the equivalent of starting about two boat lengths behind, and despite the fact that the race was started so abruptly that the US and British teams did not even hear the start so they were behind by about a stroke and a half at the start of the race, they pulled off an astounding come from behind victory. It was so close that none of the spectators knew who had won and most of them were still shouting for the Germans (who came in third, Italy came in second) until the announcer broadcasted the results. The Germans won every other rowing event in that Olympics. I'd kind of like to watch the movie that Leni Riefenstahl (sp?) made about the Olympics that year. I think it was called Olympia.

Purse Clasp, 1936 Rowing

Today I learned how to attach a magnetic purse clasp and also figured out how to line a crochet purse I made.

I also learned that the 1936 Men's rowing team learned after they won the Olympic bid, that they would have to finance their own passage. They were given a week to raise 5000 dollars. The people of Washington came through with the money in just two days, despite the fact that they had recently raised money to send the team to Poughkeepsie and Princeton for the national championships and the Olympic trials, respectively.

Exercise

Today I learned, again, that if I don't exercise when I have the motivation, it is very hard to find the motivation later.

Crochet

Today .i learned (or relearned) how to do a popcorn stitch. I'm currently working on a purse pattern that uses it.

Rowing

Today I learned that in the 1930s freshman crew raced two miles, JV raced three miles, and varsity raced four miles. The official Olympic rowing distance was 2k (less than 2 miles). When I was in college the race distances were 5k (3.1miles) and 2k.

Yellowstone

Today I learned from a national geographic series on Netflix, that Yellowstone is a super volcano that is due to blow anytime and could wipe us all out or mostly wipe us out by having ridiculous amounts of ash and gasses that would make acid rain that would kill all the vegetation on earth.