Today's empathy webinar was less impressive than Tuesday's, but that's okay. I worked on some other stuff in the background. The topic next Tuesday looks better, and the final one on Thursday is the one I am most interested in. (Can't remember what each title is at this point; I'll make a note once I find them.) A different webinar today gave me some good ideas I can work on to help analyze our finances at work. That was worth attending. The third meeting on a new recording platform for our phone system was almost a waste of time.
I tried to work fast on all the month-end tasks I was responsible for, but the day still went way too fast. I hoped to come home a little early this afternoon, but it was nearly 5:00 by the time I left the office. One thing was kind of fun at lunch. Four F-35 Lightning II's went on a "tour" over Utah hospitals and Veterans' homes today. Since my office is right next to the hospital, I went outside to watch them fly over at 1,000 feet altitude. It was neat, but was over way too fast.
Tonight we cooked hot dogs in the toaster oven. Neil decorated one of his with mustard to look like the late markings on a road. We had a short thunderstorm that was really nice. Julie bought some flowers at the store today and put geraniums in the flowerpots on the back deck. I think they'll be pretty. She also transplanted a bunch of seedlings that Isaac successfully started from seeds in the house.
For fun after dinner I hooked up the projector that I borrowed from work and we watched the last 15 minutes of Rise of the Guardians. Then the kids played some games with Julie while I had a Self-Reliance meeting with the stake. I held Nathaniel. He played for a while, then got tired so I wrapped him up and he went to sleep. Nice.
Thankful: Dad had cataract surgery yesterday morning; I'm thankful that it went well and he is recovering nicely. What a miracle that we can remove and replace lenses in our eyes!
Ministering: I am making a conscious effort to be more empathetic and charitable with others, but I'm afraid I can't identify anything specifically that I did to minister to others today. But two items come to my mind today.
First, I had a bunch of things to accomplish today at work. I was tempted to get right to work when I got to the office and plan to study my scriptures at lunch, but I stopped myself and started the day with scripture study. I'm glad I did.
Second, I cannot attend the temple each week now because all the temples are closed due to the pandemic. I need the spiritual strength and rejuvenation that comes from consistent temple attendance. I think next week I am going to set a goal to do indexing or some other family history work for at least 90 minutes each week. That's roughly the same amount of time as an endowment session. It's not a perfect replacement, but it's the best I can think of. I believe the Lord will honor this consecration of time as if it were spent in the temple.
More later…
Neil's "road" hot dog:
