23 September 2012 - Funerals-n-Picnics

Wow.  What a week.  Early Monday morning I received a call that a sister in our ward, Loretta Scott, had passed away during the night at her home.  Over the past several years, I had grown close to Loretta, and to her daughter Karen who lived with her, so I was sad to hear this news.  We did her funeral at the church on Wednesday, so it was a busy couple of days getting ready.

On Tuesday, I was at the hospital visiting a member who was in critical care, and it looked like she might not make it.  As I was finishing my visit, a nurse came in and asked if I could come help a lady whose husband was also in critical care and would soon  pass away.  The nurse thought I was the on-call minister at the hospital that night.  Of course I wasn't but I offered to help anyway.  I went in and had a prayer with the wife of Lowell Clark, a man I never knew but who passed away within minutes while I was still there trying to comfort his companion.  In a strange way, I was grateful to have been there to help her.  Maybe it was good karma too -- the sister I was actually at the hospital to visit has since enjoyed a miraculous improvement, and may even get to go home soon.

On Friday, I received a call that a very dear brother in the ward, a man who has in the past served as bishop, and as counselor in the Pittsburgh stake presidency, had fallen ill with infection following a surgery.  He was in intensive care at a hospital in Pittsburgh.  I had planned to try to take a motorcycle ride with a friend from the ward that afternoon, so we rode into the city to give a blessing.  Joanne came too and we were grateful for decent weather for the ride.  This brother has since recovered and returned home.

Saturday brought a break and finally, some fun.  The farm where the girls and I work during the summer had their annual year-end picnic. We always eat good farm food and have a blast. This year we took turns launching green tomatoes into the pond with a giant slingshot. Here's one of Madeline's turns.

Here's Emily with a mega-launch.  She was one of only two kids to launch a green tomato all the way over the pond.

After the farm party, we had a ward party.  The ward has a tradition that goes back over 40 years.  Each fall, at one of the farms owned by a member family, the Washington Ward has had a fall hayride and bonfire.  Church regulations have since killed off the hayride part, but we have kind of re-invented the activity as a ward service project and bonfire.  For service this year, we had ward members donate toiletries and assembled them into hygiene kits for the womens' and homeless shelters in our area.  Here's Emily with her hot dog roasting stick.

A bunch of our ward members around the bonfire.  You can see a mix of clothing -- sweatshirts on some, shorts on others.  Fall is definitely here.

16 September 2012 - Settling Back into School

So I've gotten behind with this post.  Things have been crazy, insane and hectic since getting back from Europe and starting school the very next day.  We've actually been in school for two weeks already, but I'm only now adding some updates about it.  On Friday night, we were invited to a very nice event.  Joanne's old boss, Vicki Staton, was inducted into the W&J College Athletics Hall of Fame.  Vicki is awesome.  She was the college's first ever women's basketball coach (until 1974, W&J was a men-only school).  The championship years on the banner behind her are all Vicki's.  Over 35 years, Vicki was basketball and volleyball coach, chair of the PE department, Title IX officer, and athletic director.

My favorite part of the evening was dessert.  (Although the prime rib before was a pretty close second.)

Things are going well as we start back to school.  For those who are counting, Jessica started eighth grade, Emily started fifth, and Madeline started third.  Joanne's back to teaching multiple sections of yoga (demand is so high she only gets to teach water aerobics during Intersession anymore), while I'm teaching data mining, advanced databases, and a first year seminar on Technology and Film, which is a lot of fun because we get to watch and dissect movies.

9 September 2012 - Budapest, Bratislava & Vienna

We had such a great time in Europe.  Our rental car for the week was a black hatchback Skoda.  A Skoda is a Czech-made vehicle that is now owned by Volkswagen.  It was slightly larger than our Fiat the last time we were in Europe.

We bought a Europe map card for our GPS and man did it make all the difference, even though on more than one occasion, it told us to drive on "Trail".  It always got us where we were going though.

My conference was at the Budapest University of Economics and Technology in their brand new Computer Science and Information Technology building.  My talk and book launch went great, and there is much enthusiasm about the book.  Although most of my week in Europe was spent inside this building, most of the pictures in this blog post will be of the things we were able to fit in at night and on the weekend, because frankly, those things are more interesting.

Here is me at one of the many bridges across the Danube.  All of the bridges in Budapest are no older than 60 years, because every one of the old ones were destroyed in World War II.

Budapest is made up of two old cities: Buda and Pest.  Buda, on the west side of the Danube is built on a hill, and Pest, on the east side is built on a plain.  This is a view of Parliament (Pest side), taken from the hill on the Buda side.

This is the church at the Fisherman's Bastion.   Joanne was standing at this church when she took the picture of Parliament above.

This is the Fisherman's bastion fortress.

I saw this car while walking at the university one day.  It was so teeny I had to take a picture.  It's an Enzo, which is often associated with Ferrari, but there's a big difference.

On the Buda hillside, there is a very cool church, monastery and convent, built and carved into the rock.  At the top of the hill stands Hungary's Statue of Liberty, which was erected after Hungary's emancipation from the Nazis.  One very beautiful evening, Joanne and I spent some time touring the various attractions on this hill, then had and outdoor patio dinner at a restaurant near the statue, overlooking the city.  None of my moonlight pictures turned out, but it was amazing.

We took a Danube river cruise and I got this picture of the full moon rising over Parliament.  Often, photos just don't do justice...

After the week in Budapest at the conference, we drove back to Vienna by way of Bratislava, Slovakia.  It was a very interesting experience to see the city since the fall of Communist rule and the break up of Czechoslovakia.  Bratislava has remnants of the old world, but the evidence of democracy and capitalism are everywhere, and most of the city has been built or renovated in the last 20 years.  Many of the churches show a mix of old and new.

I wanted to drive on up to Prague as well, but time simply didn't allow it.  After a few very rainy hours in Slovakia, we headed for Vienna.  We had flown in and out of Vienna because airfare was a good bit cheaper, and because I had hoped to see a few cities on this trip.  I was not disappointed.  The drive from Budapest to Vienna is only about two hours, and Bratislava is in between the two.  We were able to spend the weekend touring Vienna.  This is Joanne in front of the reflecting pond at Karlskirche, one of several prominent cathedrals in Vienna.

Inside the sanctuary at Karlskirche. there is an elevator that takes you to the cupola.  From there, you can climb a breathtaking (in more than one way) staircase to the very top of the rotunda.  This is Joanne's camera looking off the top of the platform back down.  It was a little nerve-bending, even for folks not afraid of heights.

This is St. Stephen's Cathedral in the very heart of the historic district in Vienna.  Although it was still summer, the weekend we were there was very rainy and quite cold, so St. Stephens is soaked and cloaked in gray here.  Unfortunately it makes it harder to see Eagle's Powers symbols laid in tile on the roof.  You could easily spend an entire summer in Vienna and not see all there is to see.

We took a tour of Mozart's house, right around the corner from St. Stephen's.  I got yelled at for taking this picture of his bedroom ceiling, so I figured I ought to put it on the Internet.

This is Hofburg Palace.  This photo is essentially the equivalent of standing in front of the White House in Washington D.C, only everything's way older.  It's where the president lives, and it's surrounded by things like the parliament building, national library, etc.

This is Joanne at Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna's attempt at matching Versailles in Paris.  It's not Versailles, but it's no slouch either. In fact, I found Schloss Schönbrunn to be preferable to the gaudy, over-the-top extravagance of Versailles.

One of the very cool things about Schönbrunn is the hill that goes up behind it.  This is a view of the palace after our hike up the hill.

This picture of Joanne and me is from the back terrace of the palace, looking up toward the hillside.  The structure at the top of the hill behind us is called the Gloriette, and the picture above was taken from the reflecting pond in front of the Gloriette.  The terrace we're standing on in the photo below is visible at the center of the palace in the photo above.

After a full day of touring Vienna, we attended a show at Schönbrunn Orangery.  It was comprised of symphony orchestra, ballet and opera, and even if you're not a fan of those things, it was really cool to experience them in the place where Mozart, Strauss and Bach once played.  The show was made up of pieces from Mozart before intermission, and pieces from Strauss afterward.  It was awesome.

After a very full and very busy week, it was time to come home.  We arrived home late Sunday night after traveling for nearly 18 hours to get home.  Totally worth it.

2 September 2012 - Aunt Jennifer's Arrival

In connection with my new book, Joanne and I had the opportunity to go to Eastern Europe for me to speak and launch the book at the RCOMM Conference in Budapest.  To make it all possible, Jennifer offered to come stay with the girls while we were gone.  The girls were so excited.  They got the guest bedroom all cleaned and ready, and even set up a hotel reception dog with guest register.

Madeline of course could not pass on the opportunity for a practical joke, so she positioned her toy snakes strategically on the floor and bed.

Jennifer arrived the weekend before we needed to leave, so we had a couple of days to spend with her, including attending stake conference with Elder Bruce D. Porter on Sunday.  Then it was off to Budapest!