As The Days Pass Along...

The 2-week overnight excursion has ended. Finally. And once more I get to readjust my internal time clock. Don't worry...I woke up at 1:49a (nearly 2 hours ago) after going to bed about 10p last night. Hopefully this won't take more than a few days to fix. And hopefully I'm not keeping Oriah awake with my tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard... We sure did get a lot accomplished at work though so ideally the investment in manpower will make work that much more smooth moving forward.

Now, the heart of the post: After having DISH Network installed 7 months ago Oriah and I decided to cancel the contract and shut off the stream of noise. There were a few factors at play but what follows was fundamentally the driving force:

"Largely because of television, instead of looking over into that spacious building, we are, in effect, living inside of it. That is your fate in this generation. You are living in that great and spacious building."

This little jewel came from Elder Packer during a BYU devotional in January 2007 called "Lehi's Dream and You" (which I attended sitting on the floor level of the Marriott Center but it would appear that his comments didn't quite register with me at the time.) His talk was republished in August's Ensign magazine. Here's a link to his entire talk. The sum and substance of the matter is that no matter how much we may love watching Biggest Loser, Cupcake Wars, ESPN, NBC Nightly News, CNBC, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, etc. there's little eternal significance to what television offers. It does however provide a very subtle distraction and enormous time suck from numerous, other worthy endeavours. Long story made short: We cut the cord. One week down and so far all is well.

Homework: Check out verse 35 in 1 Ne. 11 and bounce it off Elder Packer's last sentence in his statement. Let me know what you come up with.

And just for good measure we took the already absurd to the ludicrous level by purging out our movie collection to the point where we basically have only G-rated and church materials left. I'll also be demolishing my iTunes library here later this week and pumping it full of wholesome goodness (i.e. Conference talks and such.) All in all...it's been a complete media purging and purification this past week. Ultimately, an increased and more focused discipleship is what we hope will be the outcome with a lot less noise and distraction. After all, we're all in Lehi's dream and we need to get back on the correct side...the non-big and spacious building side.

In other news, for our date night this past Friday, Oriah and I went to dinner at a Brazilian grill called Tucanos. She received a free birthday meal and we cashed in a portion of a gift card we received a few months ago for my dinner. I love $Free.99!!! And the food was great. So much meat! There's nothing quite like a carnivorous binge from time-to-time!

Saturday Oriah made a day trip to Colorado to attend a League lacrosse meeting. After she got back into town we made a stop at our favorite Aunt's and grabbed dinner at Chili's. I just love spending time with Al!

Oriah's birthday is coming up next week. But not just any birthday. It's her "golden" birthday. She'll turn 28 on the 28th. I've been planning the big day for some time and we've both been blessed to get the big day off from work. Should be a memorable day!

And last night, while at the 'rents, I was introduced to Canasta! Good times I say. Good times. Team "MC Hammer" had team "Po-pos" where we wanted them but somehow Oriah and Pegasus staged a comeback for the ages. Don't worry Celeste, we'll get them next time!

I think that's about it. Hope this finds you and yours well. Much love.