Bryce's Ramblings

DKC and I watched Parenthood last night, a movie that came out when I was 11, and which I remember thinking "maybe I'll watch that when I'm an actual parent" at the time it came out. It just wasn't interesting to me back then, but I recognized that it might be interesting later on.

So was it?

Well, yes. But I'll throw some disclaimers in there after I get done saying what I liked about it. The movie felt fairly real. As in, the characters all had flaws, and they were believable flaws. They made mistakes. They were consistent in the mistakes they made and how they dealt with them. Of course, they made so many mistakes, that at times it pushed the suspension of disbelief, but for the most part, it felt like condensed version of the many facets of parenthood. Ron Howard (the director) did a good job with it, and the cast was good, as well.

What didn't I like? The fact that it seemed to have a "cheesy" button that it liked to jam down repeatedly. It was just too schmalzy at times, and that got a bit old after a while. Don't get me wrong--the film was plenty funny, and had a lot that was just cheese. But there was enough cheese in it to keep distracting me.

If you're easily offended, the movie might not be for you. Like I said, the characters make all manner of bad choices throughout the film. Choices everyday people might well make. (In fact, according to IMDB, the movie's based on the real life experiences of a number of the film's creators--something I readily believe. Cramming all those real life experiences just makes the film feel too full (and therefore unrealistic) at times.)

Long story short: three stars. But a highly recommended three star film, if you're interested in thinking about parenthood.

One concept particularly stood out to me. It's based on the following exchange:

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story. (sarcastically)
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

At times, I wish I were on a merry go round. At other times, I wish I were on a roller coaster. My life seems to teeter back and forth between which one I want. When everything's falling apart, that merry go round seems awfully appealing. When everything's dull, I'm up for some excitement.

When all's said and done, I think I prefer the roller coaster.

How about you?

Spring is definitely in the air out here in Maine, and even though we may be getting snow in the future (you never can tell!), I'm starting to get the itch to Do Stuff To My House. Of course, some of this stuff is finishing what was left undone from last year: scraping, sanding and painting my barn-turned-garage (and cleaning up all the stuff that's left over from the renovation). But other stuff . . . other stuff consists of me wanting to knock walls down, carve out spaces for windows, take off some of the vinyl siding, finish off the attic, finish the space above the garage, add in a hallway, add a bathroom, install some dormer windows, put down a new driveway, take out the old driveway . . .

Yeah.

Damaging stuff.

I have to keep reminding myself that I really can't start new projects until old projects are complete. Otherwise, the house could quickly get lost in renovation purgatory, and no one wants that. So maybe I'm going to start that whole scraping and sanding thing sooner rather than later.

I know DKC is getting the itch, as well--but hers manifests itself in other ways. Putting in the garden, adding a hedge--botanical stuff. Not me. I want a sledge hammer and a sawzall. If I came into some money, I know what I'd do with the first fifty thousand. Assuming I wouldn't just buy a new house. :-)

Some small steps are being taken already, however. Saturday, I decided to clean up the yard some--get some branches picked up and tidied, haul in some stray logs that had fallen. I used the wheelbarrow for the first load, and the wheel promptly hit a nail and exploded fairly violently. Oh yeah. Forgot about all those nails. So to avoid having more nail problems, I've ordered a metal detector. It should be here Thursday (according to Amazon). At that point, I'll practice with it by getting all the nails. (And then in the future, I'm thinking about some outings to use it to look for buried treasure with TRC. He's quite excited.) Once I can confidently go around my property without popping something, I'll get a new wheelbarrow. (The old one was far too cheap and crummy, anyway.)

Ooh--and I also need to declutter my garage.

So much time, so little to do. Wait--scratch that. Reverse it.

Wish me luck.

So the Oscars were last night, and thanks to the kindness of some friends, I was able to watch the whole thing live. (There are times I miss my satellite. But still not $600 worth of missing it. However, maybe my friends are beginning to get tired of me freeloading TV all the time . . .) What did I think?

Well, I thought it was too long, for one thing. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were . . . okay. Not stunning, not hilarious, just sort of there. The opening with Neil Patrick Harris was moronic. The spiel with the actors and actresses being praised for 16 minutes before one of them got their Best Actor/Actress award was far too drawn out, and talked about them as people, not as performers. Yes, there were some funny bits throughout the evening, and I was glad to have watched it, but in the end, I was fairly happy it was over by the time MIDNIGHT rolled around. (Some of that relief might have had something to do with the fact that TRC and DC refused to go to sleep until it was finished. My kids must have inherited that from me.)

What did I think of the winners? Glad that Avatar didn't win, for one thing. A very good visual feast, but best picture? Not hardly. Haven't seen Hurt Locker yet, so I can't comment on that. Very pleased UP won for best score. Jeff Bridges winning was appreciated. Sandra Bullock, Oscar winning actress? Never thought I'd be saying that.

For those of you playing at home, I was 14 for 24 on my picks. Not too shabby a year, and I managed to squeak out a win among the players watching along with me last night, which means I don't have to publicly state that any of them are better than me. Phew! My pride lives to fight another day.

What did you all think of the Oscars this year? Did you watch? Did you care?

I'm pleased to report that no one broke anything yesterday in our household. No screams were heard, no glass shattering, no toys crunching. All was peaceful and calm. Well, as peaceful and calm as it can get with a five-year-old and a two-year-old-with-her-arm-in-a-sling running around. DC doesn't like the sling--she tries to take her arm out whenever possible--but she doesn't seem to mind the splint too much. The biggest pain to her was that it was her thumb sucking hand, but she's adapted: that's why God gave the girl two thumbs, I guess. She gets her cast on in about an hour and a half. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway--I don't have anything spectacular to report, and I'm okay with that. Better than having other tragedies popping up. Happy Friday, everyone!

So yesterday afternoon, DC had the bright idea of getting out of her crib unassisted. DKC and I weren't there--DKC just heard the thud after it happened. She went into DC's room to see what was wrong, and found her on the floor, crying.

Long story short, she broke two bones in her left wrist. Her arm is now in a splint, and in two or three days, we need to take her in to get a cast put on it. 4-6 weeks after that, she should be good as new.

How's she taking it?

Quite well. For those of you that remember, TRC broke his leg when he was a year and a half old. That was far more traumatic than this. She stopped crying after fifteen minutes or so(!), reduced to whimpers of pain now and then, except when she moved the arm or had it touched. It was really pretty sad. What's worse, is as a parent, there's not much more we could have done, but we still feel responsible. Should we have moved her to a bed sooner? She'd never expressed the slightest real interest in getting out of her crib, and she liked being in it. The doctors all said this happens a lot--and only very rarely is something broken.

I guess we were just lucky.

Really, though, I do count us as lucky. The results could have been far worse. Better to have a broken bone that'll mend than to have her land on her head or something. In any case, I spent the evening last night moving a bed into her room, and she's walking around today with her arm in a sling (which she doesn't like). Traumatic experience, all the way around.

One of the things I love most about recommending movies to people is when I have the chance to talk about a film that is more obscure, but is fantastic. Reviewing well known movies is okay, but in the end, it just amounts to throwing my opinion into the general mix. Everyone's heard of the film, and so sure, someone might be interested to hear my take on it, but my review won't bring anything truly unknown to light.

Not so with Brick, a great little gem that I'm betting the majority of you have never heard of. It barely broke $2 million at the box office, after all. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and it basically takes a classic noir movie like The Big Sleep and transplants it into a modern day high school, leaving everything else the same. The character mannerisms are those of noir characters--just being played by teenagers. The dialogue is noir dialogue--spoken by teenagers. Really, this feels like a grown up non-musical version of Bugsy Malone. But cooler. And I think that's likely where the movie didn't work for some people. For the first fifteen minutes or so, I wasn't liking the film at all. The teens weren't acting like teens, after all. They didn't sound like them, they took themselves way too seriously--nothing felt "right."

But then I realized what was going on--that the stilted dialogue and characterizations were on purpose. That this was an extreme adaptation of a noir film. And as soon as I made that mind shift, I loved the movie. Great acting, great cinematography, great mood, great story. Really well done, and I'm going to go ahead and give it four stars. It's rated R, but I have no idea why. Yes, there's a violent death, but you can see it coming in advance, and the gore lasts for all of a half second. Close your eyes, count to one, and you're done. No hard profanity, no sex. Just a good plot, great characters, and the enjoyment of watching a fascinating adaptation approach, all at the same time.

I finally got around to watching The Longest Day last night. It had been sitting on my entertainment center for a few weeks, actually--but it's 3 hours long, and what with the Olympics and all, I just hadn't found the time to watch it. I'm a bit of a WWII buff, however, so it was only a matter of time before that movie was going in my PS3. For those of you who don't know, it's an all star historical flick focused on the events surrounding D-Day. (It was billed as having 42 stars in it, and it has quite the cornucopia. Everyone from John Wayne to Sean Connery.) The closest movie I can compare it to is A Bridge Too Far, although some might make the more immediate D-Day connection to Saving Private Ryan. The difference is that SPR is more focused on depicting war on an individual level. ABTF and TLD are focused on recreating the many facets of a battle. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, and I enjoy both.

Did I enjoy TLD?

Yes. Not quite as much as I wanted to, however. I liked it for its breadth. It showed all sides of the battle fairly well, not just the Allies. I especially liked the German side of it. Too often, Germans in WWII movies are depicted as faceless evil killer fanatics. The fact that their German is horrendous doesn't help that much, either. In TLD, the Germans were played by real actual Germans, who spoke (gasp!) German, and were directed by another German. It was fun just listening to the dialogue and comparing it to the subtitles. (Most of the time, the two had only a vague resemblance to each other.) In addition to the Germans, I liked the macro-level scale of the war--how everything was recreated on a large level. At the same time, that's also what I saw as the film's weakness. It was so focused on throwing all sorts of characters (and stars) at the screen, that the individual level conflicts got lost. Characters were sometimes reduced to Character Ticks (The Gambler, The Stoic Guy, The Guy Who Likes His Dog), not actual rounded roles. Often, it was hard to remember who was doing what and why, and that's never a situation you want to find yourself in when you're watching a film.

That said, I still give it a good 3 stars. If you like war movies, you'll like this one. Give it a gander, or tell me what you think about it if you've already seen it.

This whole weekend did nothing but confirm what we've all known all along: weathermen, as a whole, are completely clueless when it comes to predicting the weather. I was checking three or four different weather forecasts each day, trying to figure out what was going to happen. Rain? Snow? Ice? How much? Each forecast said something different. And you know what?

None of them ended up getting it right.

Take last night. All of them said we'd get snow. Amounts ranged from 2-7 inches. We didn't end up getting any accumulation at all.

Oh, I suppose they get it right every now and then. (And whichever weather genius came up with the "probability of precipitation" idea deserves an award for weaselly.) But think of what it would be like if other professions got things wrong as often as weathermen. What if your doctor said to you, "We ran some tests, and we're pretty sure you have cancer." How sure? "Eighty percent." Or what if your lawyer told you there was a 60 percent chance you hadn't broken the law and wouldn't go to jail?

People make fun of groundhogs predicting the weather, but when you get down to it, are they any less accurate than weathermen? How sad is that? What are we paying these people to do, anyway? Guess? I could do that for free.

"You want a prediction about the weather, you're asking the wrong Phil. I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."

Dear Winter,

The slushy mess you deposited on my driveway this morning--while a tad less than the fluffy white stuff I desired--did manage to get me a snow day.

Thank you very much.

Bryce

Dear Winter,

You've really been disappointing me lately. I mean, we had a great December. You dumped snow all over my area, and I got one and a half snow days out of the deal. I thought we were set for at least a six month relationship. January came around, and some of the thrill was gone, but I thought we could still make it work. Relationships are all about sacrifice, right?

But then February happened.

You started seeing other places. DC. Philly. New York. Showering them with white, glistening gifts in amounts I haven't seen all year. Why didn't you treat me that way? I mean, those other places don't even want you. You're not one of those girls who's always after the bad boys, are you? The big, glitzy cities who pretend to want you by throwing a flashy Christmas celebration, but then just start complaining about where to put all the snow as soon as you come around? Because they're going to dump you like yesterday's donuts.

Not me.

I'm here. Waiting for you. Things looked good for a few days--snow was in the forecast. I thought you might finally be remembering me. But no, you decided to dump wet slushy crap all over the place. Thanks for nothing.

All I'm saying, is that I want you back. All will be forgiven, if you just would start coming around regularly again. I'm not the jealous type. You can still go down to New York for a getaway now and then. Just be sure to always come back where you belong:

Maine.

Longingly,

Bryce

First things first: I came across these two lists of writing tips by famous authors. Very entertaining, for the ones I disagree with as much for the ones I agree with. So interesting to see how different writing is for everyone.

Second: American Idol. Yeah. I'm not watching this year. Why? Well, I sat down and thought back on all the other four or five seasons I had watched. To watch all of an AI season (not counting the stupid audition shows and Hollywood week, which I'm prone to skip), takes a good 50 hours, more or less. So it boiled down to this: did I feel like 50 hours of American Idol was worth my time?

It wasn't.

End of story.

Ever since Christmas, when I bought DKC a book on how to declutter a home, I've been a decluttering fiend. Up until reading that book (yes, I read it first despite the fact that I gave it to my wife. She wasn't reading it. So I did.) I'd never been able to really get on top of clutter. Stuff just seemed to congregate in various areas of the house on its own accord. I blamed it on SPR (Spontaneous Paper Reproduction). My kitchen was usually a disaster, the area by my bed was heaped with clothes, books, and other detritus . . . it wasn't pretty. Do I really have to give you the nitty gritty details? Suffice it to say that the only time the house got sort of cleaned was when we knew company was coming. This isn't to say the house was dirty--it was cleaned. Just not tidy. Maybe that is a better word for it.

Anyway.

Enter this book. The author, Peter Walsh, breaks it down quite simply: picture your ideal room (bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, etc.) What is its purpose? How is it used. Now, go through that room, and remove anything that doesn't serve that purpose. Viola! Clutter is gone. The trick lies in taking a good candid look at each item you have and deciding how/if you're using it. If you have an extensive collection of something, and you claim it's important to you, but you keep it stuffed in a box and never look at it, is it really that important? (Case in point: I've collected ticket stubs for years, but I never organized them. Now, I took the stubs that were post important to me (first date with DKC, for example), and put them in an album. The ones that weren't that important (random movie I saw in the theaters that I didn't like anyway) I tossed.))

The next key that I've been following is the 10 minutes a day approach. Walsh promised that if you set aside 10 minutes each day to declutter, and stuck with it, you'd conquer the problem. I was skeptical, but I've been trying it--and it's working. My kitchen is decluttered, as is my living room, my bedroom, and most of my home office now. Better yet, the areas I've decluttered are actually staying that way.

It's very encouraging.

Anyway--just thought I'd share with you, the Peoples of the Internet. If you're having trouble conquering the clutter, too . . . maybe this book would help. (No, I'm unfortunately not receiving money for this endorsement.) :-)

I took the day off last Friday to spend some time with the fam before TRC's first spring break was over. (We get two spring breaks out here in Maine, perhaps because we have so much winter?) The initial plan was to go skiing, but we eventually decided to scrap that plan and have just TRC and DKC go skiing in the morning instead, with all of us heading on a road trip in the afternoon. TRC went skiing twice last week, and he's getting quite good. (So good, in fact, that when watching the Olympic downhill skiing event, he calmly stated that he could go faster than those guys, if he wanted to.)

In any case, we ended up deciding to head off to the Maine State Museum in Augusta. I wasn't sure how the kids would take it. I mean, a museum? Would they like looking at objects, and not being able to interact with them? They loved it. I think it helped that TRC was so enthusiastic about it--he rushed from exhibit to exhibit, excited to make each new discovery. DC saw how hyped he was, and she loves to do anything he likes to do, so she was pumped, too. It also helped that they were doing special events for spring break. We all got to work on making our own arrow heads through a process called pressure flaking. TRC thought that was highly cool. Other favorite exhibits included anything that made noise or had moving parts (a car horn and a water wheel, for example), some antique guns, stuffed animals and (of course) the gift shop.

Afterward, we walked around through downtown Hallowell a bit, then took the kids to Friendly's to cap off the day. (TRC adores Monster Sundaes.) All in all, a great deal of fun was had by all, for about $40. (We've made sure to build some money into our budget for "Fun Stuff," and days like last Friday prove how important that is.)

In other news, there's talk of a storm approaching in the next few days. Seeing as how all my precious precious snow has melted on me, I'm hoping against hope that this storm pays off. I didn't move to Maine for snow-free winters. Sigh.

DKC and I took an Olympic break last night to get in a movie: (500) Days of Summer. I honestly can't remember where I heard about this flick. It's been in my Netflix queue for a while, and then it appeared in my mailbox. I got distracted by other things (Lost, Olympics), and it was getting to the point that I was considering just sending it back to get something new. After all, if I'd had it that long and hadn't watched it, it couldn't have been that good, right?

Wrong.

Fantastic movie. The tagline pretty much sums up the premise: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't. Fantastic performances by Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. I think one of the things I liked most about it was how well it seemed to capture my general feel of romance prior to when I finally met DKC. I'm not going to get all sappy here and tell you about it--suffice it to say there are a few movies that really stick with me about relationships, and this has now been added to the list. (Others on the list? Films like High Fidelity, Joe vs. the Volcano, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.) This movie is full of quirky, edited in a unique but easy to understand mishmash of time, and spot on throughout. There's a reason it's in the imdb top 250 list.

One thing that stood out to me was how well the characters were developed. They were all well-rounded and fully believable, and the way they interacted was where much of the interest in the film came from. As DKC put it, the film feels very real. It doesn't feel like your typical Hollywood romantic comedy, because it isn't. (It states that plainly right at the beginning of the movie, which I appreciated.) Don't go in expecting a story where everything fits and people act like people are Supposed To in movies.

In any case--highly recommended. Four stars. See it today.

So I'm watching the Olympics totally online this year, and I thought I'd give you all a brief update on how that's working out.

Not great.

That said, there are some pros and cons. I've discovered NBC is fairly draconian in the measures they've taken to make sure you can't watch the games anywhere other than their site, if you're an American. So all that free streaming Canada is shooting out into the internets? Unavailable. Which is disappointing.

On the other hand, NBC is at least doing a fairly good job of making all the events (with all the competitors) available online at their site, which I appreciate. For one thing, I like being able to watch everyone compete--not just the handful NBC has decided have important enough stories for me to care about. Because you know what? Everyone has stories. So I've gotten to see figure skaters fall, but not just skaters from China, Russia, America, and the occasional German. No--I've seen Estonian and Polish falls, as well. Spread the love around some.

That said, most of the coverage NBC has online has no commentary. This is bad in a way--a lot of the time, I'm not really sure what the rules of the sport are that I'm watching, and it can be harder to tell if someone did something wrong now and then. But it's good, too. I've decided most of the commentary is tripe. You can tell just fine on your own how someone's doing.

Another bad spot is NBC's tendency to boldly announce results on every page of their website. BODE MILLER WINS BRONZE tends to defeat some of the suspense, when you see it before you watch the event.

But in the end, I'd give the coverage a C. Definitely lacks in picture quality, and the rules of when and how you can watch it are frustrating, but I can watch it. Ideal? No. Doable? Yes. Worth $600 to have my satellite back for? Definitely not.

Hopefully NBC gets it better for the next Olympics. Because in the end, I feel like the Olympics are something not to make money off of, but to celebrate as an entire globe.

But maybe that's just me.

This appeared today in an online Mormon scholar site. I don't typically link out to overtly religious pages, but since it's an article by my grandfather, I figured I'd make an exception. (Please note: different grandfather than the one whose funeral I just attended.) It was interesting to read about the journey he's made across the globe as an organist. Some of it I had known, some of it I hadn't. Maybe it won't be as interesting to you, but hey--that's why I have a blog.

I finally took the time to put some stuff I had kicking around the house up for auction on eBay. One of my goals this year is to eBay four things a month at least. So I went for it. Took the pictures, made the posts, calculated the shipping, slapped up the auctions . . .

The good news?

I sold all four items.

For a grand total of $16.

The bad news?

I miscalculated shipping. I don't send boxes much, so I underestimated how expensive it would be.

The good news?

I still made a profit.

How much?

$3.50

I figure I made about $1/hour on that deal. Here's hoping I get better at this in the future . . .

Eight years ago(!), DKC and I were in Utah for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake. DKC translated for the Slovak national team, so she got a backstage pass pretty much anywhere she wanted to go, and I--being married to her--could tag along. That's an experience that I doubt many people have the chance to do, and I'm really grateful we could do it. We ate lunch at the Olympic Village, sitting right next to Sasha Cohen, walking past all sorts of other Olympians I recognized from television. She went to the opening ceremonies rehearsal. We went and saw Germany beat Slovakia in ice hockey. Fun times, and hard to believe it's been that long since it happened.

Tonight, we'll be heading over to a friend's house to check out the opening ceremonies. NBC isn't one of the channels I can get via antenna. But no fear: I've figured out a way to stream them live online, so my days of Olympics watching aren't over. NBC is doing it, and I believe CTV (Canadian Television) is, too. I might even decide to try and check out some coverage in German or Slovak, just for kicks and giggles. One of the things I love about the Olympics is how they bring the world closer together. Once every couple of years, we're all watching the same thing, interested in the same events, and no one's dying or killing people because of it (typically). In my book, that's pretty cool.

What sports do I like? In the winter arena, I go for ice hockey, skiing, bobsled, luge, snowboard, figure skating (for when they fall down--that's always a guaranteed good time, right there)--pretty much you name it. I'll be glued to coverage for the next ever, and then in 17 days or so, I'll blink and wonder where all the time went.

I'm very much looking forward to it.

Yes, I'm back from Utah. No, if your name doesn't end in Moore or Pope, I didn't see you. Yes, I'm extremely sorry. It was a harrowing weekend. Let it go, okay? Suffice it to say that it was great to see the family I managed to see, but I have no desire to do that whole funeral thing again anytime soon. I'd post more about it . . . but I don't want to.

On to happier things.

Hard to believe my daughter's only been with us now for two years today. Back then, it was snowing cats and dogs outside. Today? Sunny as can be, with hardly any snow on the ground at all. Wish I had some of that Philly/DC snow up here. In any case, back to my daughter. She went to the doctor's the other day for her check up. The verdict? She's off the charts on height and weight. 99th percentile plus. However, she's very proportionate. Not too fat or too thin--just right. Of course, this means that if she keeps this up, she's destined for the WNBA or the catwalk as a supermodel. I'm betting WNBA, judging by the way she likes to throw herself into where ever the action is. What is she like today?

Well, for one thing, she loves to sleep. Two naps a day, each for an hour and a half or two. Minimum. Goes to bed each night at 7, wakes 12 or 13 hours later. The kid gets her beauty sleep. Second, she loves to play by herself. She asks to go to quiet time, and she'll sit there happily in her crib for a half hour or more, just playing with a few toys. Third, she loves to eat sweets. Cookies are her favorite. It was her first word, and it remains the word she says the most. She's still not talking a ton, but she's very expressive. She loves dogs--or the concept of dogs, at least. Faced with one in real life, she's not so sure. She loves the color pink, and she's very particular about what clothes and accessories she's willing to wear when. She's a great daughter.

Happy birthday, DC!

My grandfather died last night in his sleep. This was not unexpected--he'd been ill for quite some time, and ever since my grandmother died, he hadn't really been the same. Add to that the fact that his two sons preceded him in death, and there were a lot of people on the other side he likely wanted to see and be around. So while I'm sad to hear that he died, I'm grateful it didn't take longer than it did. It's hard seeing someone you know and love slowly wasting away.

In any case, I thought I'd take a minute and write what I know and remember about him. These certainly aren't all the memories I have of him, but they're the ones that come to mind at the moment. I'll be flying out for the funeral tomorrow, and I'm not sure how much I'll be on the internet between now and next Wednesday. Try to get by without me. Anyway--on to the memories.

I remember going over to his house when I was little. He lived in Payson, and they were just down the street from the big park in the middle of the city. My brother and sister and I would walk down there and swing or slide or monkey around while my mom visited with her parents. Sometimes we'd get treats from the bakery on main street. Grandpa loved to garden, and he always had a well kept garden at his house. He liked to show off what he'd grown and give it to guests to eat. I remember at the time finding that fairly unique. I didn't know a lot of people who gardened that seriously. Of course, now in Maine, I seem to be surrounded by gardeners. Grandpa would have fit in well here.

I remember visiting him and his wife when they went on a mission to Kentucky. I remember them driving out east to visit us one year. In their car, grandma had made a garbage bag-sized batch of popcorn, and they'd been munching on it as they crossed the states. That was pretty cool, I thought. Grandma and Grandpa served two other church missions.

I remember going to parades with him. Onion Days in Payson--never an event to be missed. He was an avid BYU fan and Jazz fan, and he loved to talk about how the teams were doing, and did his best to watch all the games. Before I left on my mission to Germany, I had a blue sports jacket he admired. I gave it to him when I left--it fit him so nicely, and I wasn't going to be able to wear it. He seemed very tickled.

I remember visiting him at his job at school. I found it strange to think that I was related to someone who actually worked at a school. I'm not sure why I thought that, now.

I remember one time when he came out to visit us in the east, he suggested we go out to eat at a hamburger joint he'd liked before: Fuddruckers. Only thing was, he switch the syllables around a bit by accident, ending up wtih Rudd . . . you can do the rest. I found it very amusing.

I remember going on a road trip to southern Utah with him and my grandma and mom. We ate sandwiches in Spring City. He loved touring small towns and seeing how things used to be. His house is filled with antiques and Native American items. He collected them avidly and was very proud of all of them.

I remember how faithfully he stood by his wife after she had a stroke and had to be put in a care center--the same care center he then volunteered at, and then ended up in himself a few weeks ago. He was a great example of love and devotion, and one I hope to be able to live up to myself.

Grandpa could be stern, commanding, jovial, fun loving, caring, wise, confused, concerned--you name it.

He will be missed.