Grandpa's Funeral

Rees Family

The funeral this morning was very different than the last funeral I went to. Much less grief, and much more fond remembrance. I guess that's the difference between having someone die suddenly and expecting someone to die. I did briefly look at Grandpa today before closing the casket—he looked, quite honestly, somewhat unrecognizable. I'm still not comfortable thinking about it. What I remember most about the eulogy (and I guess in general over the last two days), is the way dad interacted with his siblings. I'd never seen that before. On one hand, he suddenly seemed so much wiser. It's like he assumed the mantle of leadership, being the first born son. On the other hand, it was very much like they were all kids again. I saw a lot of my siblings in the way they interacted. It was also interesting to hear people who had known dad's family growing up talk about those times, and about how much everyone had changed. It was also interesting to watch how all of dad's siblings, whether they were active in the church or not, seemed to return to their LDS roots to understand grandpa's death. In fact, I even seemed to notice this in my siblings. Although Amy seemed a little more upset than the rest of us. She didn't think we should be having so much fun at grandpa's funeral. The other interesting thing was that dad told a lot of grandpa's jokes. It was funny. It's just what grandpa would have wanted. It was amazing to see the turnout. One guy that really stood out to me was a guy Grandma and Grandpa had met a few years ago at a bus stop. He was kind of funny—seemed like he might have had a little bit of a mental handicap, but not much. Anyway, Grandma and Grandpa introduced him to the church. Right before he left, he asked which way Grandpa was oriented in the casket, and then proceeded to give the casket a big hug since he couldn't give it directly to Grandpa anymore. Uncle Joel gave a really powerful prayer at the graveside service—he asked that the whole family could one day be together like this again, with Grandpa. It's a lot to ask, and it's moments like those that make you cry and realize the importance and power of eternal families. Anyway, after the funeral we took family pictures and came back to the chapel and ate. We had a lot of fun talking to Aunt Laurie. She never gets to see us, and I think she really enjoyed being with the family. Then we packed things up and started driving home.

• Family Pictures
• More videos and photos are available for family members. Email me and I'll send you a link.

Posted 11:37 PM | Comments (1)

Driving Back to Provo

We got into Provo about mid-day today, and I had too many chores to catch up on to worry about going in to work. The drive home was mostly uneventful. We got nerds-flavored blizzards from the dairy queen in Roswell. Wayne really liked them growing up, but DQ discontinued them in most stores, and they searched far and wide for a DQ that offered them when they were driving around for things last year when they stumbled upon the DQ in Roswell. They still had Nerds listed (probably by accident) around Christmas of last year, but to Wayne's dismay, they didn't have nerds on the way there or the way back. But they did have them this time. So we figure that they probably got Nerds back in December when they realized it had been asked for twice in a space fo two weeks, and probably hadn't used them until yesterday. Other interesting aspects of the drive: Charles Dickens is annoyingly long-winded, I don't like "Oliver Twist," and Wayne gets carsick (necessitating us pulling over on the road in the middle of the night outside Farmington, and camping. It got very cold. But it was nice and you could see all the stars and you could hear a wolf and drums from somewhere in the distance). Tonight we played our first intramural tournament game. It was a cake-walk. Looks like we'll be earning a championship t-shirt.

Posted 11:55 PM | Comments (1)

New projector

Let's see if I can do a quick highlight reel from the last few days. Thursday we had another city league game. We played Brady's team, and lost of course. But we played them better than I was expecting. They also had Chip and Jeff, who were both visiting from out of town, so what can you expect. Friday was round 2 of the intramural tournament against Barnyard Madness. It was closest game of the season, but still a pretty easy victory (although if Conkie's backbone weren't broken, it would have been harder). After that I showered quickly and Angela and I went to Wayne's art exhibit (he had an open house for his work, which will be on exhibit at the Provo art center for the month). I think Angela thought it was a bit strange, and I can't disagree too much. It was good, but I think you have to have a certain personality to get into Wayne's art, and I used to have that personality, but not too much anymore. Although we did have fun making our own art with crayons. And then we went to Carrabba's for dinner, which wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be. Although the trees growing on top of it are cool.

Mark's been moving stuff and getting ready to be married. I think they'll make an awesome couple. I'm also glad to have his band equipment gone. I've already reorganized the basement accordingly. And Theo (the Catholic guy who stayed with use last year for a month and wants to open a Domino's Pizza franchise in Provo) will be moving in to take his place. That will be pretty cool.

I spent a lot of the week finishing the computer that I started before I left for the funeral. I returned the Celeron processor that I had bought last week to test the computer, and put in the Pentium processor that was waiting for me when I got back. After some bios updates and some almost scary data losses (I almost lost all my videos on the RAID array), my old computer is now a very safe and secure dedicated server in the basement closet. The new computer is a very quite and powerful and small living room appliance. I'm still figuring out exactly where I should put various pieces of data, but I'm so relieved that I didn't lose all the data on the RAID array (the problem stemmed from putting the hard drives on cable-select. Very weird things happened and it took a while to fix). I am a little peeved that the RAID controller on my old computer won't do 0+1. So now I only have 40 Gigs of secure backup instead of 80. Maybe I'll have to get a DVD writer when I run out of room.

I bought a new projector from Dell to go along with my computer. I figure this is my last major toy before going to school. It's very quiet—I mean, you don't even hear it. Which is a pleasant change. It's also way brighter. It's only 800x600 natively, but it resamples to higher resolutions, and the quality has advanced so much that you can't tell the difference between my current one and this one. Well, it does look a little fuzzier up close, but not from far away. It also came with a lot of cables, including stuff for HDTV, and a very cool carrying bag. I got it for only $800. I put up my projector for sale on ebay, and it's already gotten some pretty good bids. I'm thinking when all is said and done, the old projector, plus the cost of a replacement lamp, will equal the price I pad for the new one. Not bad, if I say so myself.

Posted 11:43 PM | Comments (1)

I still don't have an intramural champion t-shirt

I keep falling more and more behind in this journal. I can hardly remember things, but here's the highlight reel:

Tuesday we lost a frustrating game of ultimate versus XXL, Perhaps. It was even more frustrating because Angela and Tina were watching. I don't know how to explain the loss—we have more talent and experience, we just kept dropping the disc and not playing defense. Wednesday night Angela and I went to go see "Papa Married a Mormon." It was about a Catholic journalist who married a Mormon woman in a late 19th century Mormon mining town. It was very good. I wasn't really expecting that much, but it was both humorous and thought-provoking. It was about how this man and his wife helped unite a community that was once deeply divided by faith. Thursday was our city league ultimate game against French's team, which we won pretty handily. Then we had an intramural elimination game against Vance and Sammy's team. That was an awesome game. Despite not having Don, who's out of time, we won 9-8. I had a great game—including the final point, a nice lob to Johnnie who got open in the end zone off a stack on the opposite side of the field. It was just an exciting moment. Afterwords, Amy paid me a big compliment, commenting how amazingly cool I was under pressure. Friday we had an Elder's Quorum activity because the girls were on a campout (at Jerry's cabin). We just played some games. Saturday morning we were supposed to have breakfast and then go play sports, but I had to skip out for the intramural finals and I think they just played video games all morning. Meanwhile, we just barely lost the final game, 9-8. It was against XXL, Perhaps and we looked as ugly as we did Tuesday night at first. Plus we were missing Don and Kenny, and that really hurt us. But after going down 5-2, we almost came back and won it. In fact, on the last point we had four dropped passes in the end zone, all of them thrown by me, and one of them was an almost inexcusable drop by Johnnie. Then they called "last point" when the other team had the disc only a few yards from the end zone. Unfortunately we couldn't stop them. So no championship shirt for me. What a let down. Oh well. Maybe I'll have to stay at BYU just to get a shirt next season. Saturday night we just watched a movie and Sunday we had a birthday party for Sharolyn. Oh, and I sold my old projector for $435, which is about what I was expecting.

Posted 11:46 PM | Comments (1)

And the winner is ... BYU

I'm trying to reconstruct this week (yes, it's months later—June was a very bad month for journal entries), but I can't remember anything that happened. Seriously. Besides that I made a choice about which school to go to. I've decided to go to BYU, at least for a year. I called up Georgetown on Monday--the last day they would refund my $500 deposit--and explained that for personal reasons, I was accepting BYU's offer instead. What were these reasons? Well, first of all I was slightly offended by Georgetown's lack of responsiveness to me--I'm speaking mostly of the financial aid department, which not only failed to offer me even a token scholarship, but hadn't gotten back to me more than 3 months after I met the priority deadline. Twice they told me on the phone or in person that my application was complete. But months later, I'd heard nothing. They also failed to respond to several emails. But I don't think that would have kept me from going to Georgetown. At issue is also the fact that I'm having too much fun in Utah right now--Ultimate frisbee, friends, hiking, summer, and so on. I don't know--am I too comfortable? I hope that's not the overriding reason. It'll be nice to be able to jump in on a creative writing workshop or a CS class or maybe even a theater class, all of which should be easier and a lot cheaper at the Y. It would have been nice to be closer to the family, so that's one regret l have.

Anyways, finances may be the biggest thing. I'm a little worried about being locked into corporate law because of loans. With BYU, it's like I'm getting a law degree for free. I figure that for IP law, it really makes no difference whether I go to Georgetown or the Y. I also was surprised to find that just as many clerks at the Supreme Court came from the Y as Georgetown over the last 10 years. Now if I want to teach or do politics, that's where I'm at a disadvantage. But I think I may just transfer after the first year. I'm told that as long as I live up to my potential as far as grades go, it should be pretty easy to transfer after the first year, especially to Georgetown, since I was already accepted there. But I'd like to try Berkeley again. Or something out in California. I don't know that I'm as intrigued by the east coast so much anymore. I like the west and deserts and mountains. (But not snow, of course). Anyway, I figure that if I do decide to transfer after the first year (and who knows, maybe I'll stay), at least I'll save a year's worth of loans.

Oh, and I played mini-golf with Tina, Heather, and Elena on Friday night. Tina killed us, even though she claims she's not very good. It was fun, though. And we ate at Dairy Queen afterwards. Saturday I went to the Worldwide Leadership Meeting. I again showed up late, and they again ended an hour early. But I still got some good training out of it.

Posted 11:49 PM | Comments (1)

Manti Trip Photos & Video

Me at the Manti Temple

Today, the BYU 229th ward had a temple trip to Manti. We went to the temple in the afternoon, went to Heather's house for dinner, and then came back for the pageant. Here's some pictures and video from the trip.

• Pictures
• Video (8:11)

Posted 11:11 PM | Comments (1)

Manti Trip

Once again, I'm having trouble reconstructing this week. I spent a lot of money fixing my car—I figure I should do it now while I still have money. Friday we had a company BBQ, and then Angela and I went bowling at BYU—I've gotten worse at it. I was barely able to crack 100. But I did better than Angela :). Saturday was the Manti temple trip. That was a lot of fun. First of all, I really like the Manti temple. I'd never been there and I've never done a live session. It was an awesome experience. Then we had a lot of fun at Heather's, eating food and playing Frisbee. It started raining just before the pageant, which made things very cold and wet, but it was still a cool. It was actually kind of funny watching everybody trying to cover themselves from the rain. Angela and Tina and I went to a little museum down the street while we waited. It was quite educational—I learned a lot of history of the valley. It made me wonder why it didn't become a bigger population center. I'd never been to the pageant before, and I was expecting it to be very sappy, but I really enjoyed myself. The drive home took forever—and I read a little Hitchhiker's Guide to Angela and Tina as we drove. Tina really enjoyed it, but Angela was tired and fell asleep. I don't think we got home until 1 or 2.

Posted 11:51 PM | Comments (1)