Conference As Usual

when i log in to my blog, it tells me it wants a new look. i agree. i was just thinking myself that i need a haircut. i suppose my blog feels the similar need to switch things up or thin things out when they're getting out of control.

but before my little blog can get a new look, it needs to be more disciplined in updating itself. ahem. it's not my fault, it's the blog's.

every 6 months my church holds a General Conference where our leaders give counsel and encouragement. if you live in Utah, you know about this even if you're not Mormon, because the bullet points are reported on the news. when i came back to Utah after living away for a few years, i thought this was weird.

i love conference. i love the messages shared, i love the updates on numbers and people. i can't help it, i'm a numbers person. i especially love Temple Square. it gets very dressed up for conference and smiles at everyone.

if i were still an English teacher, i would expect my students to ask me why i keep using so much personification in this post. well, it's just my mood. "Who needs an excuse for literary elements?", i would retort.

i have a couple of friends that love conference at Temple Square as much as i.

(speaking of English teaching, the previous is a good sentence to explain when to use "I" or "me" at the end of a sentence. if i said my friends love TS as much as me, it would mean they love it as much as they love me. when i say they love it as much as I, i mean they love it as much as i love it. excuse the mood, dear readers.)

i have the confidence to say that these friends likely love conference at Temple Square also as much as they love me, so in this case it really doesn't matter how i said it. so there, Miss Bankhead.

i digress.

one of my fellow TS lovers is Camilla. when we were in college, we would drive down to SLC from Logan and sleep on the sidewalk outside Temple Square to make sure we could get a good seat. most teenagers/young adults do this for concerts and parades. we did it to see the Prophet and the flowers. i think we liked that it made us feel like pioneers. now, every conference Cam and i have some sort of communication during it. this time it was a text from her telling me one of songs reminded her of me (not I) because it's my favorite, and to see if i liked President Monson's "Hello." i had to confess that i had been cleaning the bathroom while listening, so i heard the song but missed the facial expression that came with hello. it's all bueno, she assured me. neither of us had slept on the sidewalk the night before, but we still love it.

Christy is another of my conference friends. we committed after we got back from our missions to always meet up for fall conference somehow. we are usually successful at this, even though both of us have lived in states outside of Utah for a large portion of our adult lives. this past weekend we met up Sunday afternoon. Christy picked me up and we drove down to our typical parking place. the open space that day happened to be on a hill. Christy parked and then as a second-thought asked me which direction the wheels are supposed to be turned on a hill. i told her, she already knew and did it, and we got out. as we were walking back down the hill, we heard a loud POP! and turned to see the car start rolling. there was not enough time to panic, we just both started running back to it. because the wheels had been turned toward the curb, the car backed itself right into the driveway next to it, and started heading toward the garage of the house belonging to the driveway. by this time, our purses had both been thrown into the flowers and Christy's very-cute high heels were kicked off, and we fumbled to get the door open. we both realized that cars are heavier than we'd ever imagined. my brain was trying to predict how hard the car would have to hit the garage door to seriously damage it, and was relieved that it was heading for a garage and not a bedroom. blessedly, the driveway was on a slight incline and the car lost its momentum going toward the house. it rolled back down toward the street a moment, and then stopped. it was perfect, just as if it were stopping by to pick us up. we grabbed shoes and purses and hopped back in, found a flat spot, and made it to Temple Square.

the adventure of conference never ends.

(the English teacher is back: please name the onomatopoeia in the narrative above. 10 points.)