September-floor, games, calling, and Disneyland

kitchen floor--a few months ago when the kitchen floor began to sag, we discovered a small leak under our kitchen sink. A huge portion of the subfloor needed replacing. Luckily we were able to get a vinyl pattern that was extremely similar to our old one...just a little more brown to go with the gray swirl than it had previously. So glad the job finally was taken care of.

new games: Point Salad and Letter Jam--Andrew had rated some games in a recent blog post (https://agamedesignersblog.blogspot.com/2021/08/cosmere-and-andrew-reviews-some-games.html) and Eric went out and bought 2 of the games. We really like them. Point Salad is very easy to play. Letter Jam in kind of like a cooperative MasterMind game using words--not as easy to play as Point Salad. Our first game of Letter Jam was painful, but it didn't take us too long to get the hang of it.

Andrew's review of Letter Jam: Letter Jam is a game which in my opinion logically shouldn't work yet somehow does. And I loved it. The main idea is the cards all have a letter on them. You can see everyone else's card, but not yours. It's co-op, so you are trying to give them clues so they know what their letter is and they are doing the same to you. How it works is you spell words with those letters, laying down number chips. So if I see an L, a T, an E, and an R, I can put the 1 chip in front of the L, the 2 chip in front of the E, the 3 and 4 chips in front of the T, the 5 chip in front of the E, and the 6 chip in front of the R. So the player with the T is like, huh, the word is LE**ER, is it lesser? letter? And the other players are doing so as well, narrowing down what their letter is. (9/10)

Andrew's review of Point Salad: Point Salad is a fast card game where every card has one of six types of veggies on the front, and on the back of every card is a completely unique scoring condition. On the table are six cards veggie side up and three scoring condition side up. Turns are fast: either grab two veggie cards or one scoring card. If you grab veggies, the card with the scoring on them get flipped to their veggie side to take their place. I enjoyed this one a lot. The game is fast, fun, with lots of options, cool scoring conditions, and clever plays. I highly recommend this one. (9/10)

Glen's new calling...isn't too much different from his previous. He was 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency, and when the EQ Presidency was reorganized, he was called to be the first counselor to a new President. He'll have the same tasks as before, but if the President can't come to our Ward Council meetings on Sundays, Glen will get to go with me (which he did a few Sundays ago).

My trip to California--I got to go to Disneyland and California Adventure Disney with my friends! We had such a wonderful time just visiting, eating, and riding the rides (loved Guardians of the Galaxy, Rise of the Resistance, and a bunch of other rides as well as the interactive Turtle Talk show, and if I ever go back to Disneyland, I plan to never go on the Matterhorn ever again).

I love Merry-Go-Rounds!

The Turtle Talk show was AMAZING (how'd they do it?)

August: visiting family, Ed Week, school

August started off with Eric, Glen, and me traveling a very smoky road to Oregon to my mom's, where Glen and Eric got to meet Kyle's wife, Melissa, as Kyle and Melissa were on the end of their week long visit to mom. It's always so good to see them as it doesn't seem to happen as often as I'd like.

(smoky road to Oregon)

I had 2 days at home, and then I headed off to meet up with Deni so we could attend BYU Education Week.

One of the series of classes that I attended was written up in The Church News--Strengthening one’s foundation through diet, exercise and sleep. I really liked the classes and the speaker, Dr. Matthew Morgan:

https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2021-08-16/byu-education-week-2021-diet-exercise-and-sleep-222414?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cn-social&utm_campaign=facebookpage-en&utm_content=churchnews-en

So, things that I have already incorporated into my life from the lectures I heard (and most coming from Dr. Morgan's 8 classes that I attended):

I now sleep with socks on to keep my feet warm. 
I don't have "screen time" for an hour preceding bedtime.

I use low light in the evening.

I am better about going to bed about the same time every night.

I focus on my breathing (eliminating other thoughts) and this really helps me to get to sleep faster.

I have been riding my bike 2 miles 3 days a week kind of at a leisurely pace (concern for my knee acting up is part of the reason), but now I sort of do some HIIT (high intensity interval training) where I pedal hard for about 50 seconds and then go easy for 10-20 seconds. On the way home, however, it's more like 20-30 seconds high intensity to 20-30 seconds recovery.

I am listening to more uplifting music first thing in the morning (especially David Archuleta singing "Glorious"). I had done that before after attending Dr. Morgan's classes in past Ed Weeks, but had gotten out of the habit.

I am spending hardly anytime on my main social media source facebook (though I sort of started that before Ed Week, but now it's even less time--I aim for less than 15 minutes/day).

I have found some new educational podcasts to listen to (though for some, I'm only interested in a few podcasts and won't listen to others) and have added them to my spotify account: 

Radical Personal Finance 

You Need  a Budget

Hardcore History 

50 Things that Made the Modern Economy (hate the title, but it has some great topics)

Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, M.D.

Money for the Rest of Us

Some other podcasts that were already on my spotify account that I enjoy:

Hidden Brain

The Missing Chapters: History's Forgotten Stories

Sawbones

And I signed up to take free classes at Coursera.org. I've already done their Understanding Obesity class and have now started their beginning Chinese class. The classes are free unless you want credit for it and then there's a charge.

And the big "find" is Google Keep (keep.google.com) where you can make lists and get reminders and such. No more little pieces of paper floating all over my house. That looks like it will be really helpful to me.

While I was in Utah, Glen went back to school, attending teacher trainings. They had called him a week or so before school started to ask if he could teach one extra class--so he has 3 US History classes and 1 world history class on his schedule this year. The first day of school was after I was home.

After I got home we attended the "all class reunion" that they have every year here. It's really a great idea. 

thought we were done taking "the first day of school" photos